they are challenged; but there is one thing in its teaching which is worth maintaining against all comers-that, if we think that we ought to investigate what we do not know, we are better men, more courageous and less slothful, than if we think that what we do not know is something which it is neither possible to ascertain nor right to investigate. Zeller's reason for maintaining that the doctrine of áváμvnois, set forth in this passage and in the Phaedrus Myth, is to be taken literally seems to be that the doctrine is propounded by Plato as the sole explanation of what he certainly accepted as a fact the presence of an a priori element in experience, and, moreover, is an explanation involving the doctrine of Ideas which, it is urged, Plato wishes to be taken literally. I do not think that because introspection makes Plato accept as a fact the presence of an a priori element in experience, it follows that even the only "explanation" which occurs to him of the fact is regarded by him as "scientific." The " explanation" consists in the assumption of Eternal Ideas which are "recollected" from a prenatal experience on the occasion of the presentation, in this life, of sensible objects "resembling" them. I go the length of thinking that the Eternal Ideas, as assumed in this "explanation," are, like their domicile, the Plain of Truth, creations of mythology.1 It is because Aristotle either could not or would not see this, that his criticism of the doctrine of Ideas 2 is a coup manqué. Milton's poem De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit seems to me to express so happily the state of the case -that the doctrine of Eternal Ideas set forth by Plato in Myth is erroneously taken up by Aristotle as Dogma-that I venture to quote it here in full: 3 1 This view of the Ideas as we have them in the Phaedrus Myth is, of course, quite consistent with an orthodox view of their place in Logic. In Logic the elon are scientific points of view by means of which phenomena are brought into natural groups and explained in their causal context. Answering to these scientific points of view are objectively valid Laws of Nature. Couturat (de Plat. Mythis, p. 81), after pointing to certain differences in the accounts given in the Tim., Phaedo, Republ., and Sophistes, respectively, of the idéal, ends with the remark that we might complain of "inconsistency were it not that the whole doctrine of idéal is "mythical." This, I think, is going too far. It is interesting to note that Dante (Conv. ii. 5) draws a close parallel between the Platonic idéal and "Gods": so far as the parallel goes, the former will belong to "mythology" equally with the latter. 2 Met. M. 3 Masson's Poetical Works of John Milton, vol. iii. p. 76. Dicite, sacrorum praesides nemorum deae, Ter magnus Hermes (ut sit arcani sciens) At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus, ; (Haec monstra si tu primus induxti scholis) Jam jam poetas, urbis exules tuae, To put the matter briefly: I regard the whole doctrine of ἀνάμνησις, and of ἰδέαι qua involved in that doctrine, as an Aetiological Myth-plausible, comforting, and encouraging— 1 Prof. Masson (o.c. iii. 527) says: "Tu is, of course, Plato; and here, it seems to me, Milton intimates at the close that he does not believe that the Aristotelian representation of Plato's Idea, which he has been burlesquing in the poem, is a true rendering of Plato's real meaning. If it were so-if Plato had really taught any such monstrosity, then, etc. I rather think commentators on the poem have missed its humorous character, and supposed Milton himself to be finding fault with Plato." to explain the fact that Man finds himself in a World in which he can get on. The Myth is a protest against the Ignava Ratio of Meno and his like-the sophistry which excuses inactivity by proving, to the satisfaction of the inactive, that successful advance in knowledge and morality is impossible. IV Phaedrus, 248 D, E The fact that the Philosopher and the Tyrant are respectively first and last in a list of nine can be explained only by reference to the importance attached by Plato to 9 x 9 x 9 = 729, which, in Republ. 587 D, E (see Adam's notes), marks the superiority of the Philosopher over the Tyrant in respect of Happiness. The number 729 had a great vogue in later times. Plutarch, in his de animae procreatione e Timaeo, ch. 31, makes it the number of the Sun, which we know from the de fac. in orbe lunae, ch. 28, stands for voÛS: Kат' aνтòv dè τὸν ἥλιον θ' καὶ κ' καὶ ψ', ὅστις ἅμα τε τετράγωνός τε καὶ κύβος ἐστί. It is also involved in the "mysterie of the Septenary, or number seven," which is of two kinds- évτòs Seκádos éẞdoμás, i.e. the 7 which comes in the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; and ἡ ἐκτὸς δεκάδος ἑβδομάς, which is the seventh term from unity in the series 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729. This is both a square (= incorporeal substance) and a cube (= corporeal substance), i.e. 27 x 27 and 9 × 9 × 9 both = 729. This is worked out by Philo in a passage of his Cosmopoeia Mosaica, quoted by Dr. Henry More in his Defence of the Moral Cabbala, ch. ii. p. 164 (ed. 1662); and More's application is worth quoting: "Seven hundred and twenty-nine is made either by squaring of twenty-seven, or cubically multiplying of nine, and so is both cube and square, Corporeal, and Incorporeal. Whereby is intimated that the World shall not be reduced in the Seventh day to a mere spiritual consistency, to an incorporeal condition, but that there shall be a cohabitation of the Spirit with Flesh in a mystical or moral sense, and that God will pitch his Tent amongst us. Then shall be settled everlasting Righteousness, and rooted in the Earth, so long as mankind shall inhabit upon the face thereof." Again, Dante makes 9 the number of Beatrice. She was in her ninth year when he first saw her (Vita Nuova, 2); his first greeting he received from her nine years afterwards at the ninth hour of the day (V. N., 3); and she departed this life on the ninth day of the ninth month of the year, according to the Syrian style (V. N. 30):—“ Questo numero," he concludes (V. N. 30), "fu ella medesima; per similitudine dico, e ciò intendo così: Lo numero del tre è la radice del nove, perocchè senza numero altro, per sè medesimo moltiplicato, fa nove, siccome vedemo manifestamente che tre via tre fa nove. Dunque se il tre è fattore per sè medesimo del nove, e lo fattore dei miracoli per sè medesimo è tre, cioè Padre, Figliuolo e Spirito Santo, li quali sono tre ed uno, questa donna fu accompagnata dal numero del nove a dare ad intendere, que ella era un nove, cioè un miracolo, la cui radice è solamente la mirabile Trinitade." With this may be compared a passage in Convivio, iv. 24, in which Dante, referring to Cicero, de Senectute (§ 5), as authority, says that Plato died aged eighty-one (cf. Toynbee, Dante Dict., art. "Platone," at the end, for a quotation from Seneca, Ep. 58, to the same effect); and adds: "e io credo che, se Cristo non fosse stato crucifisso, e fosse vivuto lo spazio che la sua vita potea secondo natura trapassare, egli sarebbe all' ottantuno anno di mortale corpo in eternale trasmutato." V The contrast between the celestial mise en scène of the History of the Soul represented in the Phaedrus Myth, and the terrestrial scenery of the great Eschatological Myths in the Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic, is a point on which some remarks may be offered. In the Phaedrus Myth we are mainly concerned with the Fall and Ascension of human Souls through the Heavenly Spheres intermediate between the Earth and the πεδίον ἀληθείας. Reference to the Sublunary Region which includes Tartarus, the Plain of Lethe, and the Earthly Paradise (Islands of the Blessed, True Surface of the Earth, τὰ περὶ γῆν = οὐρανός), is slight and distant. In the Phaedrus Myth we have light wings and a Paradiso; in the three other Myths mentioned, plodding feet and an Inferno and a Purgatorio. This distinction answers to a real difference in the sources on which Plato drew for his History of the Soul. On the one hand, he was indebted to the Pythagorean Orphics, who put Kálaρois in the forefront of their eschatology. On the other hand, he had at his disposal, for the selection of details, the less refined mythology of the κατάβασις εἰς "Αιδου, as taught by the Priests denounced in the Republic.1 By The eschatology of the Pythagorean Orphics may be broadly characterised as celestial and astronomical. The Soul falls from her native place in the Highest Heaven, through the Heavenly Spheres, to her first incarnation on Earth. means of a series of sojourns in Hades, and re-incarnations on Earth (the details of which are mostly taken from the mythology of the κατάβασις εἰς "Αιδου), she is purified from the taint of the flesh. Then, at last, she returns to her native place in the Highest Heaven, passing, in the upward flight of her chariot, through the Heavenly Spheres, as through Stations or Doors. The earliest example which has come down to us of this celestial eschatology is that which meets us in the passage with which Parmenides begins his Poem. Parmenides goes up in a chariot accompanied by the Daughters of the Sun; he rides through the Gate of Justice where the paths of Day and Night have their parting; and comes to the Region of Light, where Wisdom receives him.2 In contrast to this celestial eschatology, the eschatology of the Priests denounced in the Republic may be described as terrestrial. All Souls go to a place on Earth, or under the Earth, to be judged, and the good are sent to the right to eternal feasting (μéon alwvios, Rep. 363 D), and the wicked to the left, to lie for ever in the Pit of Slime. Of the true κάθαρσις Kálaρois effected by a secular process of penance and philosophic aspiration these Priests have no conception. The 1 363 C, D; 364 B ff. 2 See Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 183 ff.; and Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 197. The passage does not express the views of Parmenides himself; but is borrowed from the Pythagorean Orphics, probably for the mere purpose of decoration. The Soul-chariots of the Phaedrus Myth are derived from the same source. |