PHILOSOPHICAL REMAINS RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP 1889. PHILOSOPHICAL REMAINS RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD ry. EDITED WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH V- \ BY A. C. BRADLEY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD FORMERLY FELLOW AND LECTURER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE SECOND EDITION Hon&on MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1901 [All rights reserved] Originally issued in 1897 as Volume I of Mr. Nettleship's Philosophical Lectures and Remains. SECOND EDITION, 1901. OXFORD: HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION THIS book is practically identical with the first of two volumes published in 1897 under the title Philosophical Lectiires and Remains of Richard Lewis Nettleship, and edited by G. R. Benson and myself. The Preface which follows this Note is the Preface to those volumes, which are now published as separate books. A few alterations have been made in the Biographical Sketch, and to the Extracts from Letters numbers i, 7, and 36 have been added. The portraits are reproductions of photographs taken in 1871 and 1889, the latter by Nettle- ship's friend, Arthur H. D. Acland. For the Index I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. E. N. P. Moor. A. C. B. August, 1901. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION THE persons jointly responsible for the publi- cation of these volumes are the editors named on the title-page, and Professor C. E. Vaughan, of the University College of South Wales, one of the executors of Nettleship's will. For the preparation of the first volume, the form in which everything in it finally appears, and the notes contained in square brackets, Mr. Bradley is solely answerable. Mr. Benson is in like manner solely answerable in the case of the second volume. In addition to the matter here published, a considerable mass of material was prepared by Mr. Vaughan from reports of Nettleship's lectures on the history of Logic and of Moral Philosophy. But it was decided not to make use of this material, as the more original parts of the lectures could not well be separated from other parts which, however well adapted to their purpose, seemed less characteristic of the author. Explanations regarding the different portions of which these volumes are composed will be found PREFACE Vll prefixed to them. The only portion which was written for publication is the essay on ' Plato's Conception of Goodness and the Good.' The 'Miscellaneous Papers and Extracts from Letters' are, almost without exception, of the nature of private and probably hurried correspondence. The remainder of the first volume, and the whole of the second, consist of redactions of lecture- notes. In regard to these, a few words are required here in addition to the remarks of the editors. Nettleship's own notes were, as a rule, very scanty, and have been of use only in occasional passages. The editors have therefore attempted to reproduce the lectures chiefly by comparison, selection, and combination of reports by pupils who heard them in various years to- wards the end of Nettleship's life. They have endeavoured, as far as possible, to preserve the original phraseology and the forms of the sen- tences ; but, especially in difficult passages, they have sometimes been compelled to choose between various possible interpretations, and even occa- sionally to represent what they believed to be the author's meaning without professing to reproduce his words. They have also modified or removed, where they detected them, such unguarded or ambiguous statements as naturally occur in ex- tempore lecturing. They are, of course, answer- able for the correctness of the references inserted. Vlll PREFACE No one can feel more keenly than those respon- sible for the publication of these volumes how difficult was the task of determining what should be printed, and how likely they are to have erred in their choice. They will only say that they have been guided by anxious consideration of three questions, what was most characteristic of the author, what promised to be of most use to readers, and which of the proposed selections Nettleship himself would, to the best of their judgment, have accepted or rejected. Their thanks are due to many old pupils of Nettleship, who lent their reports of the lectures ; to several friends, especially the Master of Balliol, Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, Mr. R. G. Tatton, Pro- fessor J. Cook Wilson, and Professor John Burnet, who gave advice as to the selection of lectures for publication ; to Mr. Vaughan, to Mr. George Macdonald, Lecturer in Glasgow University, to Mr. J. A. Smith, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol, and to one another, for assistance given in various ways in the preparation of these volumes. CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS AND EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS i I. IMMORTALITY (PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS) ... 3 II. PLEASURE (PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS) . . . . n III. SPIRIT 20 IV. INDIVIDUALITY 33 V. THE ATONEMENT 39 VI. FLORENCE AND ATHENS 43 VII. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 50 LECTURES ON LOGIC in SECT. I. THOUGHT, SENSE, AND IMAGINATION . . . .115 II. THE VALUE OF THEORY 124 III. LANGUAGE AND ITS FUNCTION IN KNOWLEDGE . . 129 IV. CONCEPTS AS THE PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE . . 144 V. FORMAL LOGIC AS THE SCIENCE OF THE PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 150 VI. THE CONCEPT AS UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDI- VIDUAL ...... ... 155 VII. CONCEPTION AND PERCEPTION, MEDIATE AND IMME- DIATE APPREHENSION 167 VIII. CoNCErVABILTTY AND SENSATION AS TESTS OF TRUTH 176 IX. CONCEPT AND THING. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE. SELF AND NOT-SELF 193 X. CLASSIFICATION AND DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS . . 214 XI. EXTENSION AND INTENSION. THE GENERALITY OF CONCEPTS 219 X CONTENTS PAGE NOTE A. EXPERIENCE 227 NOTE B. CERTITUDE. LAW. NECESSITY. UNIFORMITY . . 230 NOTE C. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE ..... 233 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS AND THE GOOD 237 INTRODUCTION, CHIEFLY ON PLATO'S CRITICISM OF CURRENT IDEAS 240 THE PROTAGORAS , 252 THE MENO 260 THE L. ACHES AND THE CHARMIDES . . . . . 266 THE EUTHYDEMVS 270 THE GORGIAS 278 THE PHILEBVS 309 THE REPUBLIC 338 PLATO'S IDEAS ON PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE .... 385 INDEX 397 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH A DETAILED biography of one whose main work was that of a College tutor will not be expected or required by the reader of the following Remains. I shall merely recount the chief events of Nettleship's outer life, and shall then attempt such a description of his mind and character as may explain in some degree the great in- fluence he exerted on his pupils and friends, and the impression of ' uncommonness ' which he almost in- variably left even on acquaintances. Lewis Nettleship (for he was called by his second name) was born on December 17, 1846. His father was Henry John Nettleship, a solicitor of Kettering in Northamptonshire ; his mother, Isabella Ann, daughter of the Rev. James Hogg, of the same town. Among his elder brothers were Henry, who became Professor of Latin at Oxford, and who died in the summer of 1893 '> John, well known as a painter ; and Edward, well known as an oculist. Lewis was educated at Uppingham School, and was deeply influenced by his head-master, Edward Thring, for whom he retained a very strong ad- miration and affection l . He early showed most unusual ability, and for some years before he left Uppingham was 1 Some of the correspondence which passed between master and pupil during Nettleship's undergraduate years has been published in Mr. G. R. Parkin's Life and Letters of Edward Thring. Xll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH head of the school. At this time, we are told, he ap- peared ' old for his age,' sober and sedate, and (says Thring) very reticent ; but he entered readily into ' all the fun,' and practised the school games, not with marked ability, but with a characteristic desire to do everything as well as he could. Those who met him as a man have often unconsciously echoed the remark made by an ac- quaintance in the year 1864 ' though he was very quiet and reserved, one felt the better for being in the room with him.' Curiously characteristic, again, in turn of phrase as well as in substance, are the words which he is remembered to have used in addressing the school on an occasion when Thring, according to his custom, had left it to the senior boys to bring an unknown offender to justice. Nettleship 'asked the lads to remember they were trusted, and called on them to be worthy of the trust. He ended his appeal to the sense of honour by saying, " Uppingham is a little place, and I dare say you fellows think it doesn't very much matter how we treat either our masters or one another ; but at least it shall never be said, if I can help it, that Uppingham boys are either liars or cowards. Those who agree, show their hands." And the whole school rose, and cheered their head boy to the echo. One remembers how, ever after, one seemed to look to Nettleship as a kind of impersonation of truth and bravery.' 1 Nettleship entered for the Balliol Scholarships in November, 1864, and came out head of the list. He went up to Oxford in October, 1865, and began a career of brilliant University successes. In addition to minor honours, he won the Hertford Scholarship in 1866 and the Ireland in 1867, and was generally recognized as the 1 H. D. Rawnsley, in Good Words for January, 1893. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Kill ' best man ' of his year. He was not, however, merely a ' reading man.' He rowed in the Balliol ' Torpid ' and then in the ' Eight,' and entered fully into the life of the College. His quiet manner, and the thoughtfulness, delicacy, and refinement, which were as evident in his face as in his speech, did not prevent him from being eminently companionable. He was perfectly free from conceit and priggishness, keenly enjoyed the humour and 'chaff' of undergraduate society, and was not one of those unhappy beings who never acquire nicknames. At the same time, throughout these years his nature and mind, which were not precociously developed and (as he afterwards thought) grew very slowly, were continuously deepening. His undergraduate life was at times full of intellectual and emotional struggle ; but to outward appearance he advanced steadily and calmly, and he was too thoughtful and modest to leave a record of phases and crises among his contemporaries. Doubtless the intellectual influence which he felt most strongly was that of Green, who was just then becoming famous in Oxford and bringing a ferment into the philosophical studies of the abler men. This influence Nettleship quietly absorbed, and it did much to mould both his thoughts and his character, although he was hardly so ardently excited about philosophy as were some others among Green's pupils, and it was never natural to him to regard Green's teaching as a kind of gospel which it was his mission to spread. Even at this early time, too, the individuality of his mind was as marked, if not so obvious, as its receptiveness ; and the essays which he wrote as an undergraduate bear scarcely a trace of that imitativeness in which enthusiasm for a teacher is apt to show itself at first. He owed much, also, to the kindness XIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH and the wise advice of Jowett, who was his tutor ; and the influence of his brother John was probably at least as powerfully felt as that of any of his elders in Oxford. His most intimate College friend was H. S. Holland, now Canon of St. Paul's. In the summer of 1869 Nettleship went in for his final examination, and astonished his teachers and fellow-students by failing to obtain a first class. This mishap, like some other startling reverses of that time, was attributed in part to the effects of Green's teaching, or, in other words, to the incapacity of certain of the examiners. Nettleship himself thought that his failure had, at any rate, additional causes, ' even including rowing.' He regretted, however, neither the teaching nor the rowing ; and therefore, though, on account of the College and Green and his old school, he was ' vexed not to have managed better,' * the mishap did not further trouble him, and he declined to follow the advice of a friend that he should enter for a fellowship that happened to be vacant at another College, and try to prove that he was still invincible. In the autumn of 1869 he competed for a fellowship at Balliol, and was elected. The question of his future profession had naturally been already considered. He had thought of going to the Bar, and also of becoming a schoolmaster, but had put aside both these ideas in favour of another. His love of painting, and his in- timacy with his brother John, had attracted him to the plan of preparing himself to write upon art ; and his interest in philosophy only stimulated this desire. What he meditated was a study of all the main branches of 1 These words, like most of those quoted in the present sketch, are Nettleship's own. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XV art, in their connexion with religion and the history of ideas. He had thought of pursuing his design in London, where he could combine it with work among the poor, and where he hoped to find an intellectual air less irritating and more vitalizing than that of Oxford The idea was not abandoned when, on gaining his fellowship, Nettleship began to take work for the College ; and for some little time he remained in doubt whether he should stay more than a year or two at Balliol. What chiefly decided the question was the marked success of his first lectures (on the Republic of Plato), and the value set upon his presence in the College by Jowett and Green on the one side, and by the under- graduates on the other. But he was also influenced by characteristic feelings. He was acutely conscious of the immaturity of his mind and character; the thing he most needed, he felt, was training ; and for training the Oxford work would stand him in as good stead as any other. Besides, then and always, he put a good deal of faith in the precept which bids a man do what lies nearest to his hand. Nettleship remained a tutor of the College until his death. His energies were given therefore to work which, however valuable, cannot be eventful, and could hardly be briefly described. He had gained his reputation mainly in the field of classical scholarship, and he continued for a long time to take part in the teaching of Latin and Greek composition. Even after he gave this up, he was kept in touch with the junior under- graduates through the Balliol custom of weekly essays. But from the first his chief work lay in philosophy ; and after Green's appointment to a professorship he became the principal teacher of this subject, which is studied by XVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH men reading for the final classical examination. In addition to his duties in the way of lecturing and dis- cussing essays with pupils, he held the post of Junior Dean, and sometimes, during a part of the year, that of Senior Dean. He continued, also, to take a lively interest in the Boat Club, was always a welcome guest at bump-suppers and College concerts, and made full use of the gift which he possessed of establishing an unconstrained and equal relationship with men younger than himself. Thus an unusually large proportion of the undergraduates felt the effect of his presence, though it was in those who studied philosophy that his influence struck deepest. Something will be said of the nature of this influence in a later part of the present sketch ; but I believe it would be agreed by most of those able to judge that, from the time of Green's retirement from tutorial work, the strongest intellectual and spiritual force felt within the College issued from Nettleship. The subjects on which he most frequently lectured were Logic and Plato's Republic, and his courses on these subjects had a high reputation in the University, and were largely attended by out-College men. He occasionally lectured also on Aristotle's Ethics^ and on the history of Moral Philosophy. The greater part of the lectures on Logic was historical, dealing chiefly with Aristotle and Bacon. It will be seen, therefore, that, except in the introductory portion of that course, Nettle- ship confined himself to the interpretation of authors, if not of particular works. His practice in this matter was due quite as much to his own choice as to the character of the University examinations; and the prominence given in those examinations to Greek philo- sophy, as compared with modern, was not distasteful BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XV11 to him. Though his position in regard to the main philosophical issues was well denned, he had very little desire to propagate his own opinions ; he wished chiefly to help others to think, and to bring their minds into contact with those of great men. And for the beginner, at any rate, he thought Plato and Aristotle better than modern writers of any school, because the Greeks put their questions more simply than the moderns, and be- cause they were less apt to lead the student prematurely into controversy on burning questions. In the practice based upon these views Nettleship's teaching differed somewhat markedly from Green's. It does not follow that he estimated the achievements of modern philo- sophers less highly than Green, but he regarded the teaching of philosophy more strictly from an educational point of view, while he no more subordinated it than Green did to the exigencies of examinations 1 . When Xettleship began to teach, he wrote his lectures out at length ; but before long he abandoned this practice, and spoke from very scanty notes and without verbal preparation. This plan necessarily involved much labour ; for, instead of repeating or re-casting in any one year the material used in some preceding year, he had always to construct his lectures anew. But he thought the labour well spent; indeed, if he borrowed from an old pupil a report of his lectures, it was principally in order to guard against saying what he had said before. And the result justified him ; for his mind continually ad- vanced instead of being hampered by its past, while his 1 He had, on the other hand, no sympathy whatever with the idea that a teacher who pays some regard to the fact that his pupils are going to be examined must needs ' cram ' them for their examination. On the question whether his own lectures were, as a matter of fact, ' good for the schools,' there seems to be a difference of opinion among his pupils. K.K. b XV111 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH hearers felt that every subject he discussed was fresh and living to him. The distinguished success which he achieved on this method implied a considerable gift of speech ; and that he possessed such a gift was, I believe, very evident on the few occasions when he addressed an audience outside the lecture-room. In his lectures he was able without loss of freedom to speak slowly enough to suit those who wished to take full notes. He spoke with interest but equably, seldom emphatically, and never with any attempt at impressiveness. He rarely hesitated, and was little troubled by the tendency, com- monly observed in lecturers who use but few notes, to expand unduly or to be seduced into parenthetical remarks ; indeed it seems probable that for the majority of his hearers he often expanded his ideas too little. On the other hand, his habit of returning in one lecture upon an idea introduced in another was evidently intentional. The two heaviest of the literary undertakings on which Nettleship entered were interfered with by un- foreseen interruptions, and were only accomplished in part. The first of these was historical. In the spring of 1873 he gained the Arnold Prize for an essay on the History of the Normans in Italy and Sicily. He was led to write for the Prize partly by the characteristic idea that his success might compensate the College for his failure in his final examination. His essay was very highly estimated by Professor Stubbs and the other Examiners, and they urged him to pursue the subject and to publish his results. The enterprise cost him much labour. His memory was accurate, but not particularly strong; his historical reading had been comparatively slight; he found himself constantly driven from his immediate subject, which was large and difficult enough, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XIX into wider fields ; and the instinct of the scholar and artist made it impossible for him to work hastily or at second-hand. His vacations from 1873 to 1879 were mainly devoted to his projected history; and to it he gave also most of a year's holiday which the College granted him in 1875. In this year he travelled a good deal in South Italy, visiting the scenes of the events he was to narrate. He stayed for some time working at Naples, and there he made one of the most valued friend- ships of his life, that with B. Zumbini, now Professor of Literature at Naples, and an eminent writer 1 . By the year 1879 he had made considerable progress with his work. Large materials had been amassed, and a part of the book was written, when his advance was arrested by the news of Freeman's intention to write a history of Sicily, and by a proposal that he should therefore confine himself to the history of the Normans in Italy. Though the arrangement involved the surrender of the most fascinating part of his subject, Nettleship readily adopted it ; but naturally it checked him in his course, and for a time, as will be seen presently, he turned to philosophical writing. This being finished, in March, 1882, he was hoping to be able to return before long to his history; but in that month Green died, and the work of writing a memoir and preparing for publication the lectures of his friend occupied most of Nettleship's leisure for some years. He gradually came to recognize that it was beyond his power to combine both philo- sophical and historical writing with his College work, 1 In Macmillan's Magazine for November, 1878, there is a paper by Nettleship entitled, ' An Italian Study of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.' The ' Study ' referred to, together with one not less admirable on Paradise Lost, wOl be found re-published in Prof. Zumbini's Studi di Letttraturc Slraniere, 1893. b 2 XX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH and he therefore abandoned the enterprise on which he had spent so much time and thought, hoping that his friend and colleague, A. L. Smith, would some day be able to use his materials and carry out the design of the book. That Nettleship should give so much of his leisure to a historical work was surprising to many of his friends, who thought that his natural bent was in another direction. He himself was accustomed, more than half seriously, to deny that he had any decided natural bent ; or rather, it seemed to him that 'there were several things that he could do pretty well, and nothing at all that he could do well.' Within certain limits he was curiously indifferent as to the mode in which he should put forth his energy ; and, if the College had been mis- taken enough to wish it, I believe he would readily have consented to teach history or ' classics ' instead of philosophy. In any case, he became thoroughly interested in his essay-subject. The adventurous and stormy characters whom he had to describe appealed powerfully to one element in his own nature ; he loved Italy, too ; and though he had no tendency to substitute reflection for narrative, or to compel the facts into the frame of a theory, many passages in his manuscript prove that his researches in history gave plenty of scope to his philosophical imagination. This manuscript shows the conciseness and the verbal felicity which marked his writing, and in addition a power of producing rapid and vivid effects for which philosophical composition offers little room ; but an unrevised historical fragment is ill fitted for separate publication, and Nettleship 's executors, after taking the opinion of experts, decided to leave his manuscript unprinted. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxi In the summer of 1879, when his historical work was suspended, Nettleship had written, for a volume called Helknica and edited by his friend and colleague Evelyn Abbott, his essay on the Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato. With the purpose of the volume, which was to illustrate the undying significance of Greek thought and literature, Nettleship was in entire sympathy. Although he recognized the importance of the more purely historical and critical questions involved in the study of Greek philosophy, he was never keenly interested in them, and cared deeply only for what is permanent in that philosophy. He could not regard Plato as a fascinating relic of antiquity, nor could he use Plato's theories as a mere cover for the discharge of his own. In his eyes Plato was a man of extraordinary genius, to whom the world around him presented problems among others, an educational problem which, in spite of many differences, were fundamentally identical with those that confront an Englishman in the nineteenth century; and at the same time it seemed to him that the Greek writer drove straight to the heart of those problems with a force and directness less easily attained in the rich confusion of modern life. Hence his first object was, by a sympathetic and almost affectionate intercourse with the mind of his author, to re-create in imagination the occasion and the mental processes which had led to the formation of Plato's theories, to ascertain, as nearly as might be, what made him feel this and that, and why this and that seemed to him so important. And then he asked himself in what manner and with what modifications Plato's ideas could be applied to the changed conditions of our own time. In attempting to answer this question, Nettleship did not abstain from XX11 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH criticism ; but in his criticism he still held to the method of sympathetic interpretation : he did not oppose to Plato's opinion an opinion of his own, but rather tried to show how a true development of Plato's own ideas would sometimes lead to conclusions other than those which appear in his dialogues. Doubtless such a mode of treatment was not the best way of conveying to the casual reader an impression of brilliant originality, but it gave to Nettleship's work a truthfulness and a sureness of touch which are nothing less than invaluable to serious students. The method adopted in the essay in Hellenica was followed by Nettleship in his memoir of Green and in all his teaching. The notes of his lectures on Aristotle, on later Greek philosophy, on Bacon and other modern writers, show that he applied it indifferently to all, without regard to the degree of his own sympathy with the ideas which he was endeavouring to expound. There is no more of negative criticism in his treatment of Hobbes or Hume than in his treatment of Plato or Spinoza. He approached the works of a philosopher just as he would have approached any man of acknow- ledged genius whom he might have met face to face. The ideas of such a man, he thought, may be one-sided or imperfectly connected, but they are likely to represent some real and important aspect of truth ; and the first thing to do, if not the last, is to get, by sympathetic study, at those parts of human experience which he realized with peculiar force, however unsatisfying the theory which he wove round them. After the completion of the essay in Hellenica, Nettle- ship took part, with Green and some of Green's old pupils, in the translation of Lotze's Logik and Met a- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXlll physik, published under the editorship of B. Bosanquet in 1884. His share of the work was the translation of the first book of the Logik. Meanwhile, he had under- taken the second of his main literary projects. He was invited to write, for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a small book on Platonism, as a companion to Prof. Wallace's volume on Epicureanism and Prof. Capes's on Stoicism. A large book on Plato would have suited his way of working much better ; but he was attracted by the very modesty of the plan, and not less by its difficulty ; he felt that it would be more of an achievement to express himself in 250 small pages than in two or three large volumes. Although he was to write for the general public, he did not intend to avoid Plato's metaphysics ; his aim was ' to give some idea of what was in the man's mind in its original, unmitigated, form, without apology or attempt to soften it down for modern culture.' He began his task by analyzing for his own use all the dialogues of Plato ; and by the summer of 1883 he had finished at least one of the five sections of which the book was to consist. This was a chapter on Plato's Ethics, somewhat similar in character to the Hellenica essay, though naturally less elaborate in its treatment of the various dialogues. But even before the chapter was complete, it had become evident that the proposed limits of the book were likely to be greatly exceeded ; and the publishers, who had allowed the title to be changed from ' Platonism ' to ' Plato,' were unable to sanction such an extension of the plan as Nettleship now thought desirable. He therefore made some changes in the whole design, and began to reduce without mercy the matter already composed. But during the next five years his leisure was mainly given to a more pressing XXIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH duty (to be referred to presently), and, although he con- tinued during these yours to work at intervals on his ' Plato,* he made but little progress in the composition of UK book. In the Long Vacation of 1889 he was able again to give it his whole attention, and he was occupied with it till the end of his life. But, as he penetrated more deeply into Plato's mind, and as his own mind grew, he was ^nanpfllMi once mote to modify his plan ; and, although some of the notes he made for the ' Plato' after 1889 probably show his philosophical power as adequately as anything in his lectures or essays, they were merely notes for his own use, and at the time of his death but few passages of finished composition had been added to the ftia|*r whkh is printed in the present volume. The duty just alluded to arose out of the death of Green, in March. 1882. After the publication of the Prolegomena to Ethics, which Green had left nearly *"""****. it was decided that a part of his remaining MSS. should be edited and published, together with a memoir. No one else could be so competent in all ways to undertake this task as Nettleship, who (so far as it was possible for any man to do so) had filled Green's place at Balliol, and for whom Green had felt an admira- tion as great as his affection. In bis editorial duties Nettleship received help from various friends very great help from Mrs. Green; but there remained much laborious work, which he executed with characteristic thoroughness. The Memoir of Green was published in the third and last volume of the edition of his works in 1888. Nettleship was better content with it than with anything else that he wrote; he even admitted that some of it was ' rather well done.' The memoir is BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXV markedly impersonal both in tone and in substance, and it was intended to be so. Nettleship felt that the thoughts and actions in which Green had openly and deliberately expressed himself were the truest exhibition of his person- ality; and by dwelling on them he was able to give a very distinct impression of that personality without lingering on the details, or breaking through the reserves, of private life. The remark sometimes heard, that he did not succeed in making Green's philosophical ideas more easily intelligible to the general reader than their author had left them, is probably true as a statement, but it is surely unreasonable as a complaint. To ' popularize ' these ideas would really have been to substitute for them something which would have been nearer to the reader's everyday thoughts and, for that very reason, less valuable. So, at any rate, it seemed to Nettleship. He made no attempt, therefore, to popularize Green's teaching ; but he succeeded in simplifying it by bringing into relief the unity which pervades it, and which connects with Green's central ideas the outlying questions on which he so persistently dwelt. The Memoir of Green was Nettleship's last publication. In Oxford, where his reputation was so great, there is probably an impression that in the way of literary work he accomplished less than might have been expected ; and he himself felt that he had 'done very little.' Whatever he had done, he would have felt this ; and if he wrote comparatively little, there were many causes besides those for which he might take himself to account. Among these it is quite a mistake to reckon a failing which is supposed to be characteristic of gifted Oxford dons. Nettleship was by no means irresolute or over- fastidious in composition. Certainly he was not fond of XXVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH second-rate work ; but his dislike of producing it was free from morbidity, and he was untroubled by the dread of committing himself 1 . On the other hand, he had no strong impulse to literary composition, and took little pleasure in it ; his temperament, also, was not that of the mere student or author ; and, except when there was an obvious need for prompt action, he was perhaps somewhat deficient in the power of ' putting a thing through.' He was also impeded by a marked peculiarity of his mind. He could produce good work rapidly under pressure (for instance, his article on Green's philosophy, in the Contemporary Review for May, 1882, was written very quickly); but when he was making his greatest intellectual advances he appeared to himself to work very slowly, and at such times he certainly composed very slowly. His con- versation on philosophical subjects was then extremely interesting, but one could see that his whole mind was in ferment, and that, as he said, he was not ' fit to write.' Naturally, these times of restless progress were apt to come towards the end of the Long Vacation, when he had recovered from the effects of his College work ; and they were cut short by the return of Term. In fact, the main reason why he did not write more was that he regarded his College work as his first business, and gave himself to it so ungrudgingly that, although he was on the whole a healthy man, little troubled by pain or ailments, the bulk of his energy was exhausted in it. And, considering what he made of this work, it is not clear that we have any right to wish that he had diverted 1 I have often heard it said that Langham in Robert Elsmere is a por- trait of Nettleship. To any one who knew Nettleship the idea is merely ludicrous; but it seems a pity that one or two tricks of speech and manner, which could hardly fail to remind Oxford men of him, should have been associated with a character so contemptibly unlike his. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Xxvii more of his force to composition. His life was ended in its prime by an accident; but I see no reason to doubt that, had this not been the case, his five and twenty years of teaching would have been followed by a period of philosophical authorship as concentrated and as successful. Of the events of Nettleship's life little remains to be told, and the most important can only be touched on. After the year 1880 his greatest happiness and unhappi- ness arose from a passionate attachment which was not returned, and which lasted till his death. He met the suffering it brought to him bravely and unselfishly ; and, although he was saddened, he did not allow his sympathies to be narrowed or deadened. Several in- ducements, of which the strongest was his desire to make a home for his mother, led him, in 1882, to give up his College rooms and take a house. He lived for the last ten years of his life at 7 Banbury Road, next door to his friend Mrs. Green. He saw per- haps less than he had previously done of his colleagues and of acquaintances in Oxford, and he spoke with regret of this loss ; but I do not gather l that the change diminished his influence within the College, and he found a fuller satisfaction of the need for affection in his daily life with his mother, his devotion to whom was none the less beautiful because it brought with it its own reward. The change put within his reach, too, pleasures granted only in part to the inmate of a College. Relatives, old pupils, and other friends 2 visited the house in Banbury 1 I should mention that I left Oxford at the end of 1881. * Among the friendships formed or strengthened during the last ten years of his life, I cannot help naming that with Mrs. G. W. Prothero, to whom every one who loved him must be grateful. XXV111 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Road. He worked in the garden regularly, and with a characteristic mixture of enjoyment and conscientious- ness. A Dandie Dinmont, ' Jenny,' became his constant companion. He saw more of children, of whom he was fond, and with whom he had a very taking way. And, lastly, I must mention his love of music. He had eagerly welcomed the Sunday evening recitals in Balliol Hall, which his friend, C. B. Heberden, had organized about the year 1877 ; and he took an equal interest in the concerts which succeeded these recitals, when Mr. Farmer came from Harrow to Balliol in 1885. He occasionally sang at the College concerts ; and at home, where his mother, while her health allowed her, used to accompany him, the singing of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms became a constant practice with him, which he more than once referred to as almost his 'greatest comfort.' I do not know that he cared less for painting in his later years than in his earlier, but he certainly cared more for music. For the sake of hearing great compositions he would go out of his way as he never would to see a play or any kind of spectacle, and the hearing of some music came to be for him, as he said, ' almost the only reasonable form of worship.' l When, as a young man, Nettleship thought of living in London, and of writing on art, he thought also of working among the poor ; and no doubt he would have carried out this intention after he had given up his 1 The words were used after he had been hearing Cherubini's Requiem. I may add here that the sum subscribed by Nettleship's colleagues, pupils, and other friends for the purpose of a memorial, was used to found a scholarship by which a student of music is enabled to spend some years at Balliol College before completing his musical training or pursuing his profession. The first holder' of the Scholarship was Mr. Donald Francis Tovey. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXIX College work. But during his Oxford life he abstained entirely and deliberately from attempting anything of the kind ; nor did he ever take any part in the civic or political affairs of the city. Work among the poor would probably have been congenial to him ; he had a natural feeling of equality, and was perhaps more at his ease with people below him in station than with the average person of culture, who frequently irritated him. He was also full of kindness without being at all senti- mental. On the other hand, he had no liking for ' affairs,' and not much turn for them ; and he had less than the usual interest in politics. This does not mean that he was indifferent to political or social movements, as artists and men of letters not seldom are. He sym- pathized warmly with democratic ideas, had some strong admirations (e.g. for Mazzini and for Bright), made up his mind on important questions of the day. and" used his vote 1 . But the interest he took in current politics was a matter more of duty than of inclination. He had little of the spirit which makes many Englishmen open the day's paper anxiously or eagerly, and none of the spirit which makes many others rejoice in party conflicts as they do in football-matches. Nettleship never (except perhaps in boyhood) had a passion for books, and in the last fifteen years of his life he read neither very much nor very widely. As a boy and as a young man he was fond of history ; later, his favourite reading was biography and poetry, with an occasional novel. He was rather a slow reader and had 1 So far as I know, his vote, in University and in national politics, was invariably given on what may be vaguely called the liberal side. He hesitated a good deal in 1886 about Home Rule, but ultimately decided for it. He was always inclined to what seemed to him the courageous policy. J XXX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH a difficulty in skimming ; partly perhaps for this reason, he was less interested than most intellectual men by second-rate books, and he was intolerant of second-rate work in philosophy. Indeed, in the last few years of his life he read little philosophy except Plato and Spinoza, and he more than once spoke of the best poetry as the only literature that he found very much worth reading except as pastime. By this he doubtless meant that the best poetry seemed to him to contain most of the kind of new experience that he chiefly valued. His appreciation of poetry was catholic, but his favourites were few. 'He was fond of George Herbert, of Browning, and of Whitman, though he would not have ranked any one of them very high. Dante and Shakespeare were probably the poets most congenial to him ; but, as he had never studied Dante much, he could not turn to him with ease in odd hours, while he read Shakespeare more and more. The books he took with him on his last Swiss tour were -'a volume of Spinoza containing the Ethics, and the shilling selection from Browning. From early days Nettleship had been fond of travelling ; and in the last ten years of his life he went once to Italy (where in earlier days he had often been), twice to Norway, several times to Switzerland or the Tyrol, and twice to Greece, on one occasion making an extremely trying and somewhat hazardous journey on foot through Albania and Thessaly. Though he seldom spoke of them, famous places and works of art were much to him, and some extracts printed in this volume record his impressions of Athens and Florence ; but he liked best of all to travel under conditions which made it natural for him to live roughly, to exert himself strenuously, and to depend upon himself; and partly BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXXI from necessity, but probably quite as much from choice, J he often travelled alone. He could not live without' doing something ' violent,' as he called it ; he felt also a recurring need to get away from society, and to dis- pense with the ' swimming-belts ' of regular habits and duties, public opinion, the aid of books and friends. Contact with nature seemed almost always to revive him. He had something of an artist's enjoyment of form and colour, and when he was watching a sunlit landscape his face wore a peculiarly happy expression ; but perhaps his strongest impulse was to feel in nature ' an elemental force in whose presence man finds peace by escaping from himself ' * ; and this impulse led him most often to moorland or mountain districts. For mountains especially he had always felt (and these were strong words for him to use) 'an intense love tinged perhaps by fear ' ; and the very fact that he was doubt- fully conscious of a mingling of fear with his love attracted him the more to mountain-climbing. In all things that which called for courage, as well as effort and skill, appealed to him most. One may even say that in Xettleship's experience all the virtues tended to appear in the shape of courage, just as to another they may all appear as forms of unselfishness; and it was natural to him to think of most moral weaknesses as kinds of fear. To prevent misunderstanding, I may add that I never saw any sign that he was more inclined to timidity than most men. At various times he had done some climbing in the high Alps 2 . In 1890 he went to Switzerland with two friends who were first-rate mountaineers, and he much 1 Memoir of Green, p. xviii, 1 See Extracts from Letters, No, i. XXX11 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH enjoyed the necessity of attempting the utmost of which he was capable. The next year he went alone, first to Grindelwald, and afterwards to Saas Fee ; did all the work and attacked all the difficulties that lay within his powers ; and came home looking alarmingly thin, but feeling full of vigour and also of ideas. In August, 1892, he again went to Switzerland, expecting a friend to join him in a short time. Settling at the Montanvert Hotel, he engaged two Chamouny guides and made various ascents, in which, for the sake of practice, he took the place on the rope usually assigned to the first guide, and to a large extent declined the aid commonly offered in abundance to the amateur. On those who met him at the hotel he left, as he always did, the impression of helpfulness and gentleness, and of being 'uncommon.' His guides became much attached to him ; he was ' si gentil, si aimable ' ; he treated them ' as brothers.' On an expedition, they noticed, he was generally silent in the valley, but ' as soon as they got up into the high air he seemed to be another person, so joyous and full of song and talk.' The sum he had laid aside for climbing being almost exhausted, he determined, by way of a last ascent, to go up Mont Blanc. In this expedition he lost his life. The plan was to spend the night of August 23 at the Pavilion Bellevue, on the Col de Voza; to proceed, on the 24th, by the Aiguille and Dome du Gouter, to the Cabane des Bosses, and to sleep there ; and on the 25th to go to the top of Mont Blanc and descend to Chamouny by the ordinary route. The early morning of the 24th was brilliantly fine. The party ascended the Aiguille at a leisurely pace, and lunched at the hut on it, which they found filled, wholly or partially, with snow. By this BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXX111 time (between one and two) the weather showed evident signs of a serious change. The sky seems to have been still clear overhead, but 'heavy clouds rolled up from the south as early as eleven o'clock,' l and a south wind was blowing strongly from the Dome. It was, however, determined to advance, though the guides recognized that they must lose no time in making for the Cabane des Bosses. On their way, about an hour later, a snow- storm, of extraordinary violence and intensely cold, burst on them. According to the guides it was impossible for them to return to the Aiguille on their track, as they were blinded by the storm and their foot-prints were at once effaced. They pushed on, hoping that a break would show them their way (both men knew the moun- tain well) ; but no break came. They completely lost their bearings, and wandered to and fro for some hours on the slope of the D6me. When the daylight began to fail they hewed out with their axes a hole in the ice of the mountain-side and crept into it. Here they spent the night, their bodies protected, for the most part, from the storm, but lying on the ice in an atmosphere which became almost stifling. Nettleship acted in his last hours as his friends would have expected of him. During the night he was cheerful ; his companions even fancied that he did not realize the position ; they, almost hope- less and thinking of wives and children, could not sing, and he sang to them. In the morning he ate, and pressed them in vain to eat. After a time, probably about nine, as the storm showed no sign of abating, he proposed to start. Some such words as, ' II faut faire quelque chose; mourir ici ce serait mourir en laches,' were almost his last. The guides objected ; they thought 1 Mr. Mathews. K. H. C XXXIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH it better to wait some hours on the chance of a lull ; but he answered only, 'Aliens,' and stepped into the storm, and they followed him. They proceeded very slowly down the slope, testing every step, suffering terribly from the cold, and often unable to see one another. The guides had thought him the strongest of the three ' We shall die first,' one said to the other in patois ; but it was not very long, perhaps an hour, before he fell forward. They ran to him ; for a minute or two he continued to speak in English (which they could not understand) ; then he grasped them each by a hand, closed his eyes, and died. Some hours later the storm lessened, and the guides escaped, though one of them was in poor health for several months afterwards. Nettleship's body was buried at Chamouny. The inscription on the cross over his grave ends with the quotation, chosen by his mother, ' He maketh the storm a calm.' l Those who saw something of Nettleshtp without 1 Some further details, not in all cases trustworthy, regarding the expedition may be found in the English newspapers of August 28, 1892, and the following days ; and in Mr. Rawnsley's paper in Good Words and article in the Westminster Gazette of July 10, 1893. I have had before me also some notes made by Mr. Benson, who had gone to Chamouny to meet Nettleship, of his conversations with the guides and others. There is no reason for dwelling on some of these details in this slight sketch, when one has to pass without mention many incidents of Nettleship's life which would illustrate his character at least as well ; but for the sake of those who are interested in mountaineering I have mentioned everything material to the question whether the disaster was 'unpreventable,' as it was often asserted to be. I fear there cannot be much doubt how this question will be answered by the great majority of those who are able to judge, though they may not all accept the statement of a high authority that, ' if on this occasion the ordinary rules of prudence had been observed,' Nettleship would not have lost his life (see the important letter of Mr. C. E. Mathews, written from Chamouny on August 28, and printed in the Times of August 31). BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXXV becoming intimate with him were often at once im- pressed and puzzled ; and it was possible to know him pretty well without losing much of this feeling of bewilderment. That he was a remarkable man was quite evident ; but he belonged to no obvious type, and, while his character was transparently sincere, it united qualities so unlike that a first conception of it was liable to be greatly modified on further acquaintance. He was plainly very serious and thoughtful ; quiet, self- possessed, and somewhat retiring; courteous, frank, and simple in manner; grave, occasionally melancholy. in expression. But to some he seemed repressed, in- different, or even austere, while others found that he talked with interest and ease, and, if he did not often say humorous things himself, showed a quick and hearty enjoyment of humour in others. One person would say that he was a philosopher ; that he regarded things even the most ordinary things in a strikingly original way, as though he saw them from some hidden central position of his own : and that, taking life so seriously as he obviously did, he was probably somewhat stem and stoical in moral judgment. Another might notice that he did not use philosophical formulas, would even put them aside with a certain impatience, and would discuss anything that concerned human nature with the interest of a novelist, with almost startling frankness, and with a ready sympathy for wellnigh any kind of passion or difficulty. He would have winced to know it, but ft is the fact, that he gave the impression of living on a height, and of carrying something of an ideal atmosphere into the most every-day occupations ; yet, if there was little exuberance, there was no reservation in his enjoyment of sunshine and laziness; of eating and drinking; of c 2 XXXVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH walking, rowing, bathing, games ; of singing, talking, and mirth. Few can have met him without being struck by his modesty, and even by a certain diffidence and indecision in expressing an opinion ; yet he was often decided, quick, and plain-spoken, and he could be irritable, combative, and brusque. In the years of his early manhood there was a look of quiet placidity in his face, in his latest years an expression often of hard- earned but settled peace ; but, at almost any period of his life, the marks of the strain of work, and of incessant inward struggle, would sometimes be evident even to a stranger. The various impressions just described answered to various aspects of Nettleship's character, and I shall do best if, at the cost of repetition, I dwell on some of these more at length. The gentler and happier side of his nature was more quickly apparent in his earlier years than afterwards ; and probably most of those who knew him only as an undergraduate or a young tutor would be surprised to hear that he ever struck any one as austere or even melancholy. Nor did contemporaries who, after a long interval, saw him again in later life, find him changed in this way, though he seemed to them to look ' lean and intense,' and less peaceful than in youth. The change that passed over him was possibly not greater than that which middle-age often brings, and a very simple circumstance made it appear greater than it really was. In the later time his dark eyes, deeply set under a projecting brow and thick eye-brows, were the most noticeable feature of his face, while his mouth was almost hidden. In earlier days, when he wore no beard and moustache, the delicate and mobile lines of his mouth, betraying every transitory touch of sympathy, pleasure BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXXVll or amusement, gave to his face a look of sensitiveness and a peculiar sweetness. This look was in entire harmony with the gentleness and modesty of his address, while the upper part of his face, which was rather immobile, left the impression of intellectual power and of a patient but somewhat stern sadness. His modesty was one of the most essential and beauti- ful traits of his character. It was native, and was only increased by the consciousness of intellectual power. To compare his own gifts with those of others was unnatural to him ; he was not competitive, and had hardly any temptation to be vain. He went out into the world, as Thring had bidden him, ' not as a lord and judge, but as an humble child seeking wisdom.' ' Wisdom,' philosophy, deepened in him the sense of mystery, the need of worship, and the feeling of his own littleness ; and habitual intercourse with the greatest minds kept him constantly aware of the difference between their powers and his. I have heard him say many * irreverent ' things, but I never once saw him in an irreverent state of mind. This humility towards all that was above him was the source of much of his influence over younger men, who felt it the more because it was linked to abilities and achievements far above their own. It put conceit or assumption to shame, encouraged the timid, and led Nettleship's pupils to regard him as a fellow-worker. To this modesty, which was a spring of strength alone, were joined a diffidence of nature and a disinclination to self-assertion, in which strength was mingled with weak- ness. These traits were often obvious at a glance. Nettleship's hesitation in beginning to give an opinion, his preliminary disavowals of knowledge, and his qualifi- cations of statement, amused his pupils and formed the XXXV111 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH grain of truth round which a body of College legends gathered. To a large extent they were mere unconscious tricks of manner. So far as they were more, they arose from his constant sense that his knowledge was frag- mentary and his insight limited ; from the perception that different minds, however unequal in power of vision, still catch glimpses of different sides of truth ; and from the fact that, until he began to think, he was often unaware that he had an answer to the question put to him, while it never occurred to him to suppose that it was his duty as an educator to pretend to have an opinion when he had none. His diffidence led some people to imagine that he was not only in the best sense humble, but had a lower estimate of himself than of them ; and in this they were generally mistaken. If ' humility ' means this kind of self-depreciation, he neither was humble nor, on the whole, appeared to be so ; indeed, his readiness to treat seriously the opinion of a beginner was frequently touched with irony, and there was sometimes traceable in his manner to intellectual men of his own age his feeling that they were as far as himself from being great or wise. Still it is true, for good and for ill, that it cost him an effort to assert himself. He had little of the temperament, the gifts, and the defects, of a leader and ruler. Though he influenced men greatly, he scarcely set himself to influence them, and was not inclined to direct their lives for them. He could take and hold his own way, but he was not eager perhaps was too little eager to induce others to join it. He hated conflict, and was ready to sacrifice a good deal to avoid the waste caused by friction. Yet I do not know that he ever sacrificed what he thought essential ; and though the effort which it cost him to oppose or pain those BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Xxxix whom he admired or cared for was sometimes visible in a certain roughness of manner, neither in his private nor in his more public life did he flinch from ungracious tasks. It would be misleading to describe Nettleship simply as reserved or unsociable, and he was not exactly shy. But it is true that in society he was often silent and appeared uncomfortable. The surface of social inter- course was not his element: after a short course of 'saying pleasant things to pleasant people' a feeling of unreality and futility came over him and made him dumb. This does not mean that he could only interest himself in intellectual subjects. Indeed much of what is called cultivated conversation was as unsatisfying to him as the merest gossip, and he was quite at home with people who had never heard of philosophy. If I may so put it, an intelligent and affectionate savage would / have suited him, and a philosopher or poet would doubt- I. less have suited him better still ; but in proportion as* people were further removed from one of these extremes without approaching the other, their attraction for him diminished. Thus he could be happy with any child of nature, of whatever nationality, rank, or degree of culture ; and he would talk readily with any one keenly interested in his own experience or occupation, or in human beings, or ideas, or works of art. But in the middle region of political or literary discussion he moved with an air of forced interest or suppressed discomfort ; and, when he felt a barrier between his own mind and that of another, the feeling that conversation was useless tempted him to withdraw into himself or (more rarely) to become combative. Such dumbness or combative- ness arose almost wholly, I think, from irritation at his J xl BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH own inability to enjoy the good of the moment ; and he made many efforts, if not many successful ones, to master what he himself regarded as a weakness. When his society suited him, his conversation was remarkable in more ways than one. It was not brilliant, and he never attempted to make it so ; but it was original. His mind was eminently unconventional, and, unlike some unconventional minds, it had no ruts of its own. He approached a subject as if he were ignorant of the received views, and wished, by observing it steadily, to learn something of its nature ; and his ideas about it, while as far as possible from being eccentric or wrong-headed, were often surprisingly fresh and pregnant. They presupposed, however, in his fellow-talker a willing- ness to press into the matter, and also to supply con- siderations which Nettleship himself thought too obvious to be mentioned. His omission of these was sometimes a cause of bewilderment, as he appeared to be maintaining, as the whole truth, what was merely a partial view. Another marked quality of his conversation was its intellectual sympathy. He seemed not to compare an opinion of his own with the opinion of another, but to adopt the idea offered to him and to win from it new suggestions which often transformed it. His constant study of Plato's dialogues no doubt strengthened this tendency, but it was a part of his nature. He did not care for argument. To ' talk philosophy ' meant to him the attempt of two minds to arrive at new results in company, these results being something which neither iof the explorers had foreseen, and in which neither could have distinguished his separate contribution. In this kind of joint search after truth I have known no one at all equal to him. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xli It is evident from the reports of his pupils that these characteristics of his conversation reappeared in his tutorial teaching. In discussing philosophical questions he appeared to ignore the recognized views and the recognized terminology with which his pupil had prob- ably some acquaintance ; he attacked the matter as if it were something perfectly new, into which he was making his way for the first time. At the end of two years a pupil might have heard not a sentence from him about some of the most famous controversies, yet he found himself familiar with the points really at issue. When he read his essay to Nettleship, he found his tutor assuming that he had something of value to say, and that he meant what he said ; and this was equally taken for granted, whether he had advanced some hopelessly confused view, or some wilful paradox, or an idea which he imagined likely to be welcome, or one which he expected to hear condemned. .In any case he was led into a joint attempt to examine the position stated, and to get from it nearer to the truth which he was believed to be anxious to find. He recognized, at once or after- wards, the intellectual sympathy which had enabled his tutor to conduct this process ; and indeed it may be said that Nettleship's intercourse with his pupils differed from his conversation with older men only in being deliberately adapted to an educational purpose, and, of course, in being less unrestrained. It is no exaggeration to call him a master in the art of educating able men in philo- sophical thinking. If his art ever failed him, it must have been in dealing with the less able among his pupils. He probably left some of them doubtful of his own position, possibly doubtful whether he did not regard all philosophies as equally true. xlii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH The same doubts were occasionally felt by strangers of his own age, who surmised from his conversation that, with regard to theories, he was an eclectic, and that in moral judgment he was over tolerant. Neither of these im- pressions was correct ; he had not even the tendency to think all ideas equally true, or all modes of life and action equally good or bad. But no doubt his instinct was to look for the truth or goodness of everything, and to thrust nothing aside as insignificant or worthless. His mind was naturally synthetic. He had a strong feeling of the unity or continuity of human experience, and was more inclined to dwell on the presence of one principle in many manifestations than upon the defects which make any one manifestation of it imperfect. In regard to morality he did not, as a rule, use the language most familiar to Englishmen. It was natural to him to think of better and worse rather than of right and wrong; of the attainment of an end, the fulfilment of one's possibilities, the increase of one's being, rather than of obedience to law, or conscience, or duty. Antitheses like those of duty and pleasure, or self and others, were not to his mind ; like all antitheses, they were apt to provoke him, so that he would startle a neighbour with whom he might be in substantial agreement, by declaring that every one does in the end what pleases him best, or that there is no action on earth which may not be good or may not be bad, or that for a man's self there is no difference between things called great and things called little, though there is plenty of difference between what is hard and what is easy. Thus he sometimes seemed, especially to a listener unused to philosophy, to be denying the most obvious distinctions, or perhaps to be maintaining the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xliii heresy that good and evil differ only in degree. In reality no one could have held more strongly that the difference between them is absolute; what was alien to Nettleship's mind was the pretension to be able to separate the world into two parts called evil and good, or the attempt to restrict the manifestation of goodness to its generally recognized forms. Doubtless, he would have said, it is chiefly in these forms that human nature is able to realize its possibilities ; but that is no reason for attempting to bind it down to them. Nettleship's sympathy with almost any passion, or with any action which, however unusual, seemed to spring from a real conviction, was connected with this mode of thought, and also with his own inward experi- ence. There was nothing really strange in its being combined with an exceptional seriousness, patience, gentleness, and dutifulness. These traits were obvious ; the passionate aspiration and effort of his life were less evident, but not less characteristic. He struggled vehemently to attain singleness of purpose, his ' one pearl of great price,' and to make a harmony of the different elements of his nature. But these elements were very diverse. Among them were strong animal impulses, and something wild and untameable, which found no satisfaction in the limits of his habitual life, and made him feel, when he escaped from that life, that some day he should leave it for ever, although it, too, answered to a no less urgent need within him. Nor could he, like some men, flatly deny the justice of these demands of his nature, or feel that they were wholly alien to the spirit which drove him to seek for truth, and to love and serve his fellows. Hence, while he was as far as possible from undervaluing the great typical virtues xliv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH which form the basis or substance of morality, he sym- pathized keenly with any strenuous effort to reach the good of life, however unlike the direction taken by it might be to the recognized order ; and when an action seemed to him to embody this effort, he could not acquiesce in hearing it condemned merely because it was not easy to apply to it one of the common terms of approval, or because it was easy to affix to it one of the common terms of blame. Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! the spirit of these lines appealed to him. The readiness to find good wherever there is a full pulse of the soul drew him to Browning and to Whitman, and was one of the reasons why Plato and Spinoza attracted him most .' among philosophers. ' He seems to me,' he wrote of / Plato, 'to have more of the eternal human nature in him than any one else except Shakespeare.' It was a natural result of Nettleship's way of think- ing that the unity in his ideas and character was more easy to feel than to understand. It was felt by those who knew him that, in everything which he said or did, he was emphatically himself, that he brought into the little things of life the same spirit that appeared in his best thoughts, and that he did what was common in an uncommon way. But few of his friends would have been able to say in what centre his thoughts met, or what system they formed, or to predict with entire confidence what his view of a given question would be, or how he would feel about any particular occurrence. Thus the unity and connexion so obvious in the lives and ideas of men like Mazzini or Green (I name them because of Nettleship's admiration for BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xlv them) were in his case far less visible. He himself would have been the first to laugh at the comparison, and to say that the reason of the difference lay in the fact that these were much greater men than he, and knew their own minds much better. But the reason did not lie solely here. To say nothing of his never having set himself to express his ideas in writing, it lay also in the complexity of his nature, his impatience of limitations, and the continual effort, which was so characteristic of him, to bring a larger and larger experience into the focus of his inner life. Absurdly exalted as the claim would have sounded to him, there was in him the impulse to appropriate, what Browning, on his higher plane of genius and energy, had the impulse to express, the various experiences of the philosopher, the scholar, the artist, the man of action, the philan- thropist, the lover, and even the saint. At the same time what he longed for, and perhaps felt most hopeless of attaining, was something of the simplicity of the child or the great man. The lines most frequently on his lips were Goethe's couplet Nur wo du bist sei alles, immer kindlich ; So bist du alles, bist uniiberwindlich. Feeling intensely the unity of experience and the presence of the whole in every part, he was compara- tively little interested in dwelling on the connexion of the parts, or in demonstrating that the aims of artist, philanthropist, and philosopher are ultimately one, while he felt that the way for a man to realize his whole self was to throw his whole heart into each thing that touched him, and to make of each thing all that it was capable of being 1 . 1 The following words, from Nettleship's discussion of the PhiUbus, xlvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Some other traits in Nettleship's character seemed to be connected with the philosophic strain in his nature ; for instance, his disposition to bring himself into positive relation with views of the most different kinds, and (if Plato was right J ) the habitual gentleness with which his occasional irritability or brusqueness formed so odd a contrast. He was also in a remarkable degree, and in a peculiar way, ' impersonal ' in feeling and in expres- sion. I do not mean merely that he was very disin- terested and free from touchiness, personal resentment, and the like ; but it was more than usually easy to him to regard things from a general point of view, and, in speaking of them, he was accustomed to ignore their effect upon his own feelings. Even in matters where he or his friends were most deeply concerned, he maintained the attitude of a dispassionate and, one might almost say, of an indifferent spectator with an ease and a naiVete which was sometimes comical as well as beautiful. He would speak of the harm done by the teaching of philosophy, of the possible decline of his College or his country, of the troubles or the death of a friend, of his own sufferings or his own shortcomings, always with seriousness, no doubt, but still as though he were a ' spectator of all time and all existence,' anxious only for the truth ; and it is easy to fancy him discussing his own death as though it did not affect him personally at all. Statements like these are very characteristic of his own feeling : ' If the end of our being is to be, to be the utmost we are capable of being, then the higher the constant level at which we can live, the less the energy which we have to spend in escaping the pain of depression, the more each moment contains in itself, and the less it borrows from felt contrast with a lower past or a higher future, the more nearly do we approach the full measure, the full beauty, the full truth, in which, according to the Philebus, the principle of good is manifested.' 1 Nettleship was fond of the passage referred to, Rep. ii. 376. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xlvii may give to those who did not know him a strange impression, perhaps even the ludicrously false impression that he was affected or priggish ; but the peculiarity of manner to which I refer was too characteristic to pass unmentioned. Perhaps, also, it may have led strangers to suppose that he was apathetic and likely to be too quiescent. But in reality the personal feelings which be ignored in speaking of things simply as they are. were warm enough, and he would have been the first to fight against the avoidable evils which he so quietly discussed. Balliol. for example, had not in his eyes the glamour it possesses for many of its sons, but he was as ready to work for his College and as devoted to it as any of them could be. As a friend he was not only true but affec- tionate, and untiring in helpfulness. Indeed, to be helpful to those he loved, and, I may almost say, to any human being who needed him, was one of the keenest of his pleasures. Perhaps it was a pleasure all the keener because his feelings were not easily expressed in look or tone or spoken words. And if this is true of his affection for others, it is quite as true of the pleasure he took in their affection for him. He showed such pleasure less than most men, but he certainly felt it more. To be dis- liked by any one, however poor an opinion he had of the person, was painful to him. He had a longing for sympathy from those whom he liked which most of them can never have guessed; and perhaps even those nearest to him never fully realized, while he lived, that his delight in being loved was as simple and strong as a dog's or a child's. It remains that something should be said of Nettle- ship as a student and teacher of philosophy. Readers will prefer to gather for themselves from his own words xlviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH a notion of his philosophical position, or at least of the ideas on which he dwelt most. Of the former, I need only say that he was in substantial agreement with the idealism represented first and most powerfully in Oxford by Green. He was very sensible of the difficulties of this point of view, and did not expect to see them alto- gether removed ; but he was convinced that they were not to be avoided by falling back upon easier theories, and that their solution, so far as it lies within the power of the mind at all, must be sought not in giving up idealism but in pushing it farther. He thought also that critics were apt to forget that the question is not merely whether a certain theory is wholly satisfactory, but whether it does not interpret and harmonize our experience better than any other. With all his admira- tion for Green, however, his own mind was framed on another model. In his handling of questions he scarcely ever reminds one of his old tutor ; and he took excep- tion to some of Green's language, though rather because he thought it likely to mislead than from disagree- ment with what he believed it to mean. This applies especially to some of the statements in Green's works regarding nature and the difference between nature and mind. Students of philosophy will notice in these Remains* how frequently and emphatically Nettleship recurs to the continuity of all existence ; and an ex- tract from a letter written towards the end of his life may indicate the constant direction of his thoughts. 1 Particularly in some of the Miscellaneous Papers and Extracts from Letters. However slight and hasty these may be, they seem to me to represent him more adequately than his lectures or even his essays, in which the subject, or again the predominance of an educational purpose, often prevented him from emphasizing his own view or dealing fully with the most difficult questions. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xlix * I think,* he writes, ' I shall end my days as something like a Spinozist 1 . At least I get more and more to feel that there is absolutely no difference in principle between what is called physical and what is called spiritual, and that if one can understand a triangle r. one can understand oneself.' Many similar expressions occur in his later letters. They do not mean that he was inclined to reduce something higher to something lower, but rather that he believed himself to find more and more of the higher in the lower. These terms, however, he would probably not have used ; he was ac- customed, rather, to distinguish between the more partial and the more complete, the more abstract and the more concrete, appearances of the whole. It may be added that, in weighing Nettleship's words, the reader will do well to remember what has been said of his tendency, in dwelling on a particular aspect of truth, to ignore as self-evident more obvious complementary aspects. Nettleship's insistance on the continuity of things may be seen in another characteristic of his philosophizing. He was deeply impressed by the truth that the answer tQ complicated questions lies in the understanding of simple ones, or that the only way to approach the interpretation of the highest facts of experience is to arrive at clearness about the most elementary. He writes, for instance : ' If I had to begin over again, I should like to try to master the elements of a few big things. Till I have done this, the rest is all confusion, and talking about it is beating the air. And whenever I at all understand the elements, 1 Some readers wffl perhaps object that in that case be would not have ended his days as an ' idealist.' If so, it wffl be safe to say that he was and remained in substantial agreement with the type of phflo- / sophy represented, with differences, by Plato, Spinoza, and HegeL .... d 1 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I seldom find much difficulty in finding " applications " everywhere. Anything presents every kind of problem ' (January 1 890). Again : ' These old chaps [the Greek philosophers] certainly do bring one face to face with elemental things, and that is what I want. I sometimes feel that if I could only be quite clear about such things as one and many, same and other, rest and motion, all life would be simple' (July 1891). And with this characteristic, again, was connected another. ' One always comes back to the feeling that the truth in these ultimate problems is not got by thinking (in the ordinary sense), but by living' so he wrote in 1880, and the words have nothing unusual about them, except perhaps the implication that there may be a 'thinking' which is equivalent to ' living ' ; but in his last years Nettleship felt equally strongly the necessity of this ' living,' or of personal experience, for the real understanding not merely of ultimate problems but of the simplest facts. He writes in 1889: 'One cannot understand anything unless one can in some remote way experience it.' Again, in the same year : ' I am at work at Plato again. The endless difficulty of these big men is that one can only understand them at the rare times when one has fragmentary glimpses of their actual experience. At other times they are mere words.' And a year later : ' I have got on slowly, but, I think, fairly satisfactorily with Plato: but I am continually being pulled up by inability really to feel certain extremely elementary facts which, I am sure, meant any amount to him.' The mis- giving which most troubled Nettleship regarding his capacity to write a valuable philosophical book was, I think, the doubt whether he had sufficient ' experience.' The feeling expressed in these quotations explains in BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH H part some traits already touched on, and some others worth mention. It supplies one reason why Nettleship's interpretation of great philosophers was so exceptionally close and sympathetic, and why it sometimes advanced so slowly. It partly explains also his want of interest in much philosophical writing. He often felt that though, in a sense, he understood an author's meaning, he was unable to ' realize ' it, and that, instead of repeating and grasping an unusual experience/ he was going through a mere exercise in dialectics, though it did not follow that he laid the blame on the author. He seldom read the writings of a great man's disciples, because he thought they generally made him easier by pulling him down to their own level. He was averse to philo- sophical controversy, largely from a feeling that often the disputants were separated ultimately by inability to reach one another's experience. He thought, for instance, that to a competent ' hedonist ' the word ' pleasure ' could not denote the experience of which his opponent wrote ; and although Green's arguments against hedonism seemed to him sound, the problem that really interested him was to find the central flaw in the experience which Green called pleasure, the flaw which is the real ground of the intellectual difficulties of hedonism J . Two other characteristics may be mentioned in conclusion. Nettleship's own language was studiously simple, and he had a strong dislike to needlessly technical terminology ; partly, no doubt, on grounds of taste 2 , but partly because 1 He attempted to indicate this in a few lines in his Memoir of Green, p. cxxxvii. * I have had no opportunity of referring to the accuracy and delicacy of Nettleship's feeling for language. This was evident in his criticisms and translations, (and I am told) in his compositions in Latin, Greek, and Italian. It is obvious in his English prose, and also in the few d2 Hi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH he knew how easy it is for students of philosophy to suppose that they have appropriated an author's meaning when they are really doing hardly more than repeating his phrases. He also took comparatively little interest in the working-out of ideas into detail, in their application to a wide field of instances, or in the solution of subordinate problems. His own method was to state his main idea as simply and broadly as possible, to illustrate it by one or two very familiar examples, and to leave the rest to the hearer or reader. His taste in these respects was repelled by the verbosity and repetitions of some philo- sophers. For example, though I do not suppose he underrated Kant's greatness, much of the Critiques seemed to him mere surplusage, an ocean of unnecessary words containing a few ideas, profound and far-reaching, but capable of simple statement. Some of the characteristics lately mentioned seem to account both for the striking effectiveness of his teaching, and for the few defects, real or imaginary, which I have been able to conjecture from report. To begin with the latter, a few of his hearers thought his lectures common- place, and the less able men found some of them difficult to understand. The simplicity both of his method of treatment and of his language seems to be the main source of dissatisfaction in both these cases. For those who wanted striking or piquant remarks upon Plato, instead of interpretation of Plato, Nettleship's lectures can of course have had little attraction ; and his avoidance of technicalities, of reference to controversies, and of pieces of verse that he wrote. Green suggested to him in early days that he might approach philosophy from the side of language ; and various passages in his lectures and letters show an inclination to do so. See 'Language' in the Index to this volume. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH liii negative criticism, as well as his reduction of every problem to its barest expression, might easily deceive a clever man who, in his ignorance of the difficulties around him, was led so simply to a result. And, though it may seem strange, these same characteristics may have been a cause of perplexity to the less able of Nettleship's pupils; for reference to controversies, negative criticism, and even technical terms, though they may bewilder and mislead the beginner in philo- sophy, also arrest his attention, give a certain support to his mind, and sometimes open a passage from his ordinary experience to the world of thought, while a very simple positive statement on a difficult matter conveys very little to him, and therefore seems to him either trivial or obscure. Nettleship himself felt that his simplicity sometimes made him hard to understand, and in one of the last of his letters alludes to the fact. He says : ' I find my mind perpetually running on certain elementary things, and at the same time I only get at anything by realizing it in very homely instances ; and I fancy the combination is embarrassing to many people. The natural way to most men seems to be to move in a sort of middle region of half-imagery, half- abstractions, which always bothers me.' To this may be added that, whatever a lecturer's powers of speech may be, a treatment of difficult questions not preceded by any verbal preparation must sometimes be hard to follow, and even wanting in lucidity. On the other side, only a few words need be added to the remarks already made under various heads: for, if the foregoing pages have conveyed to the reader any definite idea of what was most characteristic of Nettle- ship as a man and a student of philosophy, he will be llV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH as well able as I to imagine the effect of his teaching and influence. His pupils felt that they were in contact with a man remarkable for intellectual strength and subtlety, but still more remarkable for the seriousness and sincerity with which he endeavoured to find and to convey to them the truth. They felt that he was careless of novelty and brilliance, and uninfluenced by partiality and antipathy ; that, sympathetic as he was to ideas from every source, and full of reverence for great men, he still valued ideas solely for their truth, and emphasized only truths ' which he had himself experienced ; that, greatly as he cared to help them, he did not seek to win their adherence to any doctrine, or even to elevate and inspire them, but simply told them what he saw to be true. At the same time, they felt that the search for truth, the philosophy which it was his business to teach, was no mere intellectual employment to him, but his life ; and that the truths which he had learned and wished them to learn with him made life, in his eyes, significant and great. He founded no school, and perhaps few of his pupils could have set out in form the ideas he gave them ; but he taught them to think and to believe in thinking, and some of them are conscious that most of what they value in their own minds derives from him. He could not preach to them ; but they know from his silent witness that the only sure way of doing good to others is to try to be good oneself. How can they remember him without feeling, as he fell, that conceit is ridiculous, cowardice more painful than any pain, selfishness treason to oneself; that sloth and hardness and all forms of evil are literally a dying of the soul, and that no other death is worth a thought ? They may have guessed that his interest in them sustained BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Iv him in weariness, and that to him there was * no reward so great as the feeling that one has won the gratitude and affection of the undergraduates.' They will like to know that when, just before he left home for the last time, circumstances led to his making his will and writing other directions in case of death, he remembered many of them. * I should like,' he wrote, ' to send greetings to a huge number of men whom I have known at school and college, but I could not make a complete list, and I should not like to make an incomplete one.' I have said that Nettleship could not preach to his pupils (and the word is not used hi any offensive sense). Feeling so strongly that philosophy ought to be, and. at its best, can be, only the utterance of personal experience, he was keenly conscious of the distance between his own life and the thoughts of great writers, so that he would sometimes exclaim that the more he understood what life really was, the less he lived it. Even as a young man he was half afraid to speak of his higher aims and aspirations, and when he did so would break off with such words as, ' it is no good dreaming until one has bridged over the gulfs in oneself.' It was therefore quite impossible for him to adopt the tone of a preacher, and he even shrank from lecturing on those subjects which touch most directly on life and conduct. After a single experiment in 1872, he never gave a general lecture on Moral Philosophy *, and even in his lectures on Greek Ethics or the history of Moral Philosophy he was often ill at ease and felt himself ' a solemn humbug.' 1 Almost the whole of die cotnse given in 1872 dealt really with metaphysical and psychological foundations, not with moral philosophy itself. The lectures were written in full, but no trace of them remained Ivi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH It is not likely that the effect of his teaching was diminished by this feeling, but it cost him many a struggle. Chiefly for this reason, too, he would never give any- thing in the shape of a religious address. He did at one time begin to write for his pupils a paper which touched directly on the nature of religious ideas : it was studiously matter of fact in tone, but he put it aside. A good deal later, when he was invited to give an address of this kind, he declined. f l am quite clear,' he wrote in reference to this proposal, ' that whatever religion there is in me had better come out in the only form which is natural to it, i. e. in my ordinary work. The specifically religious form of expression preaching seems to me only to be right when it is one element in a specifically religious life.' His objection, it need hardly be said, had nothing to do with the fact that he was a layman ; and no one was more anxious than he that the men should hear from Green as many lay-sermons as he was able to give. But those ideas and modes of worship which are considered ' specifically religious ' occupied in Green's life a place which they did not occupy in Nettle- ship's, after he had definitely broken with traditional beliefs. Though he would have accepted most of what Green wrote and said of those ideas, they ceased to be the natural channels of his religious experience, and he seldom found in the customary forms of worship the ' best moments ' on which he relied for inspiration. Yet the thoughts which ruled his life, though far too difficult and too free from the alloy of sense to form the creed of a Church, were fitted to be the medium of religious experience in a mind like his ; and assuredly they were so. If ' religion ' means the union of a man's whole BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ivii being with that which he conceives as at once the source and the perfection of all that he knows, admires, and loves ; and if a man may be called ' religious ' when his deepest desire is to attain such union, and when his life is full of the effort after it then those who knew Nettle- ship best will feel that they have scarcely known a more religious man. In his last years he had given up some of his Col- lege work, and it is most likely that before very long he would have retired and have devoted himself in London to philosophical writing. Nor is it probable that, even if his colleagues had wished him to become Master, he could have been induced to accept a position which in some respects would have been very uncongenial to him, and for which he considered himself in those respects unfitted. He was thought by the friends who saw most of him in these last years to look decidedly older, and at the same time to have grown more peaceful, if not happier. He had, I think, mastered the restless- ness of unsatisfied love ; and, while his sympathies were only deepened and enlarged, he seemed to have attained much of that indifference to the chances and changes of life of which religious writers speak. Alike in intellect and character, which in him seemed in a peculiar degree inseparable, he was standing, when his death came, higher than he had ever stood before. The last of his letters to me was written the night before he started for Switzerland, never to return ; it was meant to be read only if he chanced to be the first to die ; and almost its final words were these : ' Don't bother about death ; it doesn't count.' Not for him, doubtless, or for that which includes both him and all who loved him or felt his influence ; but to them, and. as they believe, to others, Iviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH his death counts only too much. He lives indeed in them so long as they are true to him ; but they must feel how dim is the reflection that their memories, or even these Remains, can render of a spirit so ardent, deep, and pure 1 . A. C. B. 1 I have been asked to print the inscription on the beautiful memorial tablet (designed by Mr. Lewis F. Day) in Balliol College Chapel. The words are as follows : ' In memory of Richard Lewis Nettleship, for twenty-three years a tutor in this College. He was born at Kettering, December xvn, MDCCCXLVI, and died on Mont Blanc, August xxv, MDCCCXCII. He loved great things, and thought little of himself: desiring neither fame nor influence, he won the devotion of men and was a power in their lives ; and, seeking no disciples, he taught to many the greatness of the world and of man's mind.' MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS AND EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS IMMORTALITY (PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS) [This paper, and the two that follow it, entitled ' Pleasure ' and ' Spirit/ were written two or three years before the author's death. They were composed, by way of experiment, for a friend who wished to discover how far the want of education in technical philosophy would be a hindrance to the understanding of some of the ideas which were occupying Nettleship's mind.] i. PEOPLE talk of ' personal ' immortality, and often find fault with what philosophers say on the ground that it is merely ' impersonal.' It is clear that the first thing to do is to come to some understanding as to what we are to mean by personality. It is probably the hardest of all subjects, and yet it is one upon which we are all ready to pronounce in the most easy-going way. It is worth while to bring home to oneself how extraordinarily vague, confused, or inadequate, many of the things are which we suppose ourselves to mean by personality. B a 4 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS To begin with, we generally assume it to be a definite, self-contained, unchanging thing, round and about which all sorts of more or less separable and changing ap- pendages confusedly float. Or it is something ' inward,' the most inward of all things, that to which we think we should come if we stripped off all the coats of circumstances, custom, education. But we soon realize, on thinking, that there is no circle to be drawn round any one, within which all is ' personal,' and without which all is ' impersonal.' We realize what may be called the continuity of things. What, for instance, is a triangle? A space bounded by three straight lines. Where does ' it ' stop ? At the lines, of course. But these lines are merely its contact with surrounding space, and the ' personality ' of the triangle is one thing if the surrounding space be limited to the page of a book, another thing if it be extended to the room where the book is, another thing if it be carried on to include the solar system, and so on. And though for particular purposes it is necessary to define the triangle in particular ways, it is, strictly speaking, quite true that it is continuously one with the spatial universe. What is a ' person ' ? A body occupying a certain place, keeping out and otherwise acting on other bodies. What and how many other bodies? It has weight, it exerts pressure, it causes the sensations of colour, sound, smell. Each of these again is continuous with other sensations, and ultimately with universes, of weight, colour, sound, scent, &c. A man touches me with his hand, looks at me, speaks to me. All this is called ' personal ' communication. He writes a letter to me. This too would be called by some IMMORTALITY : PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 5 ' personal.' He builds a house, makes a picture, founds an institution, passes a law : I live in his house, enjoy his picture, am maintained by his institution, am put in prison or protected by his law. Is this personal or not ? If not, why not? Well, it will be said, you may not know or feel that it is his house, his law, &c., whereas you must know or feel that it is his hand or voice. But what does ' his' mean? There lies the whole question. In calling the touch the touch of his hand, you mean that you know, or have reason to believe, that under certain circumstances the touch would be accom- panied by some other sensations, and those by others, and so on : and this possible continuity you call ' him.' Apply the same principle to the other things. It is only want of power that prevents me from connecting the feelings which I have when I look at the picture or am protected by the law, as continuously and as indissolubly with the ' him ' who made them. Of course it will be said, ' This want of power is just what makes the difference.' No doubt it does, but it is good to realize that it is want of power that puts the limits to our sense of personality, and that, as a matter of fact, those limits are very varying in different people, and in the same people at different times. Everybody is ' continuous ' with a good deal more than (say) the space six feet round him and the time an hour on each side of him. The simplest memories, hopes, associations, imaginations, inferences, are extensions of personality far greater than we can easily realize. Every ' here ' and every ' now ' is the centre of practically innumerable 'theres' and 'thens,' and the centres are absolutely inseparable from their circumferences. 6 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS Loss, separation, death, is failure of continuity. A being which was (so to say) always closing up with everything would change but would not die. 2. There is an irresistible tendency to associate, or even to identify, immortality with duration. Yet when we think of it, we see that duration, strictly speaking, plays very little part in what we really mean by immortality, so far as we mean anything by it. Take any simple fact of duration, e. g. an hour of time. What is an ' hour ' ? ' The time taken by a hand on a clock to go round a certain space and get back to the point it started from ' ; ' the time taken by a shadow to move from a certain point to another certain point,' &c. But these simple-sounding phrases are not so simple. The 'time taken by the clock-hand to move,' &c., is supposed to be a definite, absolute, thing. But it is only so by reference to, or comparison with, some other ' time taken,' e.g. a certain portion of the motion of the earth in regard to the sun. Try as hard as you like to attach a definite meaning to ' hour,' you will inevitably find yourself thinking of at least two things, which you will probably call at first ' the time ' and ' what happens in it.' Thus an hour may mean that, if you could watch the clock-hand and the sun together, a certain position of the one would coincide over and over again with a certain position of the other : i. e. they would take the same time to do a certain thing (get from here to there). Or again, 'it takes an hour to read twenty pages of a book,' ' it takes an hour to feel at home with so and so ' ; these mean that, if we could watch a clock-hand IMMORTALITY: PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 7 and certain parts of ourselves, we should find certain acts of the clock-hand (reaching a certain point) coin- ciding with certain acts of our intelligence or feelings : and ultimately (as the position of the clock-hand means something which we see, or infer from what we see) an hour means two or more acts of consciousness compared and identified (i.e. felt to be the same in a certain respect, viz. in respect of points of beginning and ending). Accordingly ' an hour ' is a very different thing accord- ingly as the experiences compared and identified are different. There is no such thing as ' absolutely long ! or ' absolutely short.' As we all know, ' an hour ' (in the sense of two observed positions of a clock-hand) may be long or short according to what we do or experience in the interval. If we are simply * waiting ' for something. 'it' will probably seem very ' long.' What is the 'it' in this case? Probably it is the observation of the clock- hand hi a great many different positions, or of the pendulum making a great many beats. These are the things to which we attend, and, properly speaking, t/use are what we are doing or experiencing during the ' hour ' : the ' hour ' is (say) 3,600 beats heard, plus the perception that the first beat and the last coincide with a certain position of the clock-hand. Now this is a very large experience of its kind ; we go through a great deal of auditory perception and attention in it ; and we express this by calling the hour very 'long,' because the per- ception in question happens to be the perception which has been chosen to measure * length of time ' (L e. it is the experience with which we compare and, in a certain respect, identify other experiences). Now suppose the hour is not passed in * waiting,' but in a very interesting talk. At the end we constantly say. 8 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS 1 How short the time seems ! I should not have thought it was an hour.' First, then, what does an ' interesting ' talk mean ? To be ' interested ' is simply to be ' in it,' and this means that we are attending a great deal. But what does a 'great deal' mean? To attend to 3,600 beats of a pendulum is to attend a ' great deal ' ; so is to watch a clock-hand passing through sixty points ; so is to take in a page of a hard book, or fifty pages of an exciting novel, or a scene in a good play ; so is to perform a delicate surgical operation, to draw a delicate line, to sing an exciting or difficult song, to have a row with any one when you are really angry, and so on. These different operations may 'take very different times'; i.e. the beginnings and endings of them may coincide with very different positions of the earth with regard to the sun. If at the end of them we are inclined to say, ' How quickly the time has gone ! ' it means that we should not have expected (if we had thought about it) to find the clock-hand where it is. And this again means that we carry about with us a sort of average feeling of how long the hand takes to get through a certain space, and this average feeling represents roughly how much we should feel between certain positions of the hand, if we were ' doing nothing in particular ' (i. e. partly watching the clock, partly doing a little of fifty other things). When, then, we feel that ' the time ' has been short, we really mean that we have been going through so much in other ways that we have gone through very little measurement of time, as ' time ' is usually understood (i. e. as the observation of certain changes of position in certain bodies). On the other hand, we are just as likely to say at the end of one of the experiences mentioned above, ' What an age it IMMORTALITY : PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 9 seems ! I seem to have lived through years.' This is very interesting, because it makes us see the complete relativity of time-measurement. What happens in these cases (when the ' time ' seems ' long ') is that we measure the motion of the clock-hand in terms (so to say) of what we have been experiencing. We have ' gone through a great deal,' ' lived a great deal,' ' put out a great deal of energy ' ; and just as the hour measured on the clock seems ' a great deal ' when we are 'waiting,' because we attend very much to the hands, so now we say it seems c a great deal ' because we have attended very much to the reading or looking or singing. Properly speaking, it is not the 'it' which seems a great deal (not the clock-measured hour), but it is the ' it ' filled with all that we have experienced. We are surprised that so much could be 'got into an hour,' because we mean by an 'hour' (as we said before) a rough average of what we expect generally to experi- ence when the clock-hand moves a certain distance. All this may not seem to have much to do with immortality. But it helps one to see that ' duration,' ' going on,' &c., have not the simple or definite meaning that we are apt to suppose. The truth seems to be that nobody ever wishes simply to ' go on ' ; what men really want, when they want at all, is to be or do more of what they are or are doing ; but what sort of ' more ' it is depends entirely on the particular circumstances. What is ' more ' or ' longer ' from one point of view, or on one principle of measurement, will be 'less' or ' shorter ' on another. We shall always find that, when we use the terms ' long ' and ' short ' in an apparently absolute way, we are applying a rough average sense, which is got at by unconsciously taking bits out of io MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS different experiences, and which does not really apply precisely to any. We may say, All that we call ' duration ' implies a comparison of two or more different experiences, any one of which may be chosen to measure the rest by. ' Absolute duration ' could only apply to a being which was all in all its experiences (not less in one and more in another). But then ' duration ' (in our sense) would not really apply to such a being ; and this is just what is expressed by saying, ' With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day.' PLEASURE (PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS) THE discussions of Greek philosophers about pleasure, the nature of it and the part which it plays for good and evil in human life, are full of interest and suggestion. Philosophy is only the concentrated and articulate expression of the experience of certain men, an ex- perience which all people have to some degree. And in the history of philosophy, accordingly, we may be said to get a sort of quintessence of what human nature has come to find in itself, so far as that admits of expression in language. The first, and also the last, question that can be asked about anything is, ' What is it ? ' It is all-important to be clear what exactly this question can and ought to mean. The understanding of this is the foundation of all clear thinking, as the misunderstanding of it is the source of all confusion. Observe, firstly, that the answer to the question, ' What is x ? ' is never simply ' x? Such an answer would universally be admitted to be no answer : the person giving it would, properly speaking, have said nothing. All answers that are really answers are of the form, ' x is y, z, &c.' 12 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS Now this is a very important fact. It compels us to realize that the ' being ' of anything, that which it ' is,' its 'x-hood,' is never adequately expressed by saying, ' It is just itself and nothing else.' Or, to put the same thing another way, if and so far as we insist that ' x is just x and nothing else,' we are merely insisting that it is zVzexpressible. The instinct which we all have at times to assert this has, indeed, if rightly understood, a truth in it, which it is important to consider. We stick to it, and rightly, that ' x is x ' ; that ' whatever may be said about it by way of explanation and interpretation, the fact to which we ultimately come back is the fact from which we start, the fact that x is not anything else in the world except itself.' This conviction has found expression in various forms ; e. g. ' the essence of anything does not admit of analysis ' ; ' no reason can be given why a thing is what it is ' ; ' the individuality (which = indivisibility or un- analyzableness) of anything is an ultimate fact, behind which we cannot go.' Consider in what sense these sayings are true ; and for this purpose take some simple fact of consciousness, e. g. the consciousness of the taste of a peach, or that of the roundness of a circle. In what sense can we, and in what sense can we not, say l what these are,' or express their ' being ' ? First take the assertion that we cannot. What does it mean ? It means, e. g., that the taste of a peach is not the taste of any other thing ; that it is unique ; that this is what is meant by calling it ' of a peach ' ; that, if a person had never had personal experience of it, we could never convey its nature to him at all adequately by any amount of description or analysis ; and that the PLEASURE ! PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 13 taste remains precisely the same fact of consciousness after our attempts to define it as it was before. All this is very true and very important to realize, for not realizing it leads to all sorts of delusions, and gives rise to the common feeling that, when people do what they call ' explaining ' a thing, they are usually merely ' explaining it away.' But now look at the question from another side. When we rightly assert that the peach-taste is absolutely unique and individual, what exactly is it that we are asserting (for we do undoubtedly mean to assert some- thing, not nothing) ? In other words, what is uniqueness and individuality? Or, what is it to be unique and individual ? In answering this, let us, as far as possible, put words out of our mind, and attend to that which we are con- scious of, that which we experience, in tasting the peach. Let us start by supposing that the experience comes without any premeditation (let us wake suddenly and find a peach in our mouth), and let us further suppose that we have never tasted or heard of a peach before. The first and least thing that we can say of the experience is that it is ' new ' ; i. e. it stands out, so to say, from and against a vague general background (our taste-experience). If it did not at least do this, there would, strictly speak- ing, be no ' it ' at all. This will be found to be equally true of every experience that we have ; however many times we may have had it, it is still absolutely distinct each time that we have it. It is true that what we call * habit ' tends to diminish its distinctness. But what does this really mean? ' Habit ' is not some mysterious force (as we are too apt to suppose) which ' acts upon us ' ; it is merely the word I 4 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS expressing one particular kind of limitation in our power of experiencing. There is no necessary connexion be- tween the repetition and the loss of an experience. On the contrary, the curious thing is that it is by repetition that we gain (as well as lose] experience. Let us go back to the peach, and illustrate this. We saw that, whatever the taste is when experienced, however much or however little there is in it, it is a distinct something, and that this distinctness is (necessarily) a distinctness in, or of, or against, a something else. This distinctness is not something separate from the individuality of the experience ; it is the individuality ; the ' self-hood ' of the experience is at the same time a ' not-something-else.' Now let us see how the experience may grow, or become an experience of more. Suppose us to wake a second and third time with a peach in our mouth. We shall be conscious of the taste, and we shall also be conscious that it is the same taste as we had before. Now in this simple statement there are three possibilities implied. We may feel inclined to say, either (i) This is the same taste, only to-day is Tuesday, and the day on which it occurred before was Monday; or (2) This is the same taste, but now I like it better or find more in it; or (3) This is merely the same taste over again, and it doesn't interest me so much as it did the first time. In case (i) we may say that the experience is (though not precisely, yet for practical purposes) ' the same ' ; in (2) it is ' more ' ; in (3) it is ' less.' Consider (2). We are apt to think that the ' more-ness ' means that, while the experience itself remains the same, something else has been added to it. But this is only an imperfect way of putting the fact. The experience in (2) is just as in- dividual, just as much ' itself and nothing else,' as the PLEASURE I PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 15 original experience, and its individuality consists in an unanalyzable consciousness. That is, though we describe it by saying, ' it is the same as the original one but also more,' we cannot by any device separate the two factors in it without making it cease to be ' it.' Suppose, e. g., the increase consists in what we call ' not only new but pleasant,' ' not only sweet but piquant,' ' not only peculiar but like some other taste,' ' not only nice to me but what would be nice for a certain invalid whom I am fond of ; the various elements thus combined by ' not only but also ' make up in each case a single experience ; the consciousness of the combination is not a combined consciousness ; if we took it to pieces, i. e. if we attended exclusively first to one, then to another of its elements, we should be experiencing, not it, but quite different its. More obvious illustrations of this truth are, e. g., such experiences as ' aesthetic impressions ' : the consciousness of a musical phrase, or of a combination of lines or colours, is one indivisible thing ; it is not made up of the several notes, lines, or colours, but it is these in combination. In this sense all experience is unanalyzable ; it can never be divided without becoming a different experience, any more than an organism can be divided into its organs without ceasing to be an organism. On the other hand, no experience is, strictly speaking, simple ; i. e. an experience is never of one thing merely, but always of a unity of two or more things. And in this sense it always admits of analysis, or rather, it always is an analysis ; i. e. it is always a consciousness of something as distinct from, a variety of, following on, connected with, but at the same time one with, something else. It does not matter whether its internal structure 16 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS can be put into words or not ; what we have to consider is the nature of the experience itself, and this will always be found to involve some, however little, ' structure.' Growth of experience, its becoming more, may thus be represented as growth of structure, or a process in which we come to be more ' constructive,' to put more together, to find more in things, to get more out of them. (All these are equivalent expressions, for our experience is ' we,' and it makes no difference whether we represent ourselves as making it or as finding it ; sometimes one and sometimes the other way of speaking comes more naturally.) Conversely, loss of experience, its becoming less, will mean that certain elements in our construction drop out and leave gaps. The less we 'get out of a thing/ or ' the less we put of ourselves into it,' the less we are, the less there is of us. If we could see right into the ex- periences of a number of persons who were all supposed to be experiencing the same thing (looking at the same picture, hearing the same tune, doing the same duty, receiving the same pleasure or pain), we should find that they all experienced different things, and that all had gaps, bigger or smaller, in different places. And it would be a mistake to single out the one place in them all (if there happened to be one) where there was no gap, where they all coincided, and call that the expe- rience of the thing. The thing is really all that can be possibly experienced under the given circumstances, and no human being can say beforehand what or how much this is. Different people differ in nothing more than in the different amounts which they experience under externally the same circumstances. To one, as Wordsworth puts it, PLEASURE : PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 17 'A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more ' ; to another, 'The meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' The experiences of both are perfectly real and indi- vidual ; they differ in the amount which they hold together or construct, or again in the amount of them- selves that they put into the experience. What is usually called ' taking interest ' illustrates the same thing. To be 'interested' literally means to be 'in it ' (curious that the slang * in it ' and ' out of it ' should have retained something of this original mean- ing). We experience a thing just in proportion as we are ' in it,' or (to use another graphic phrase) make it our own. In proportion as we 'lose interest' we cease to experience, and. so far as that thing is concerned, we cease to be. (' Interest ' at its highest power is ' love.' and if we could take interest in all things, we should be on the way to love all things, and this means to ' be in ' all things or make all things our own, which is God. If any one wants to have a healthy sense of his limita- tions, let him ask himself, (i) how many things he is interested in ; (2) how much he gets out of those in which he would say he was interested.) As a result of all this, we may say, the self, I, per- sonality, or whatever we like to call that which ex- periences things, is one in all that it experiences : one in seeing, hearing, smelling, and in every modification of these, one in every combination of these, and in all more complex experiences as well ; it is this oneness which makes the unanalyzable self-hood of any and ever}' K.E. C i8 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS experience. On the other hand, the self in all its expe- rience is one of or in many, an experience of distinct- ness in innumerable senses. In a word, it is always and everywhere a whole of parts, a combining and dividing activity, able to detach any part from any other part, and yet to be in them all. Another important point to clear up in any investiga- tion of pleasure is the proper meaning of the phrase ' pleasure of doing a thing.' It may mean two totally different things: (i) what would be described as, e.g., the pleasure of eating a peach apart from the act of eat- ing it. What we really do when we make this distinction is to separate mentally one part of the whole experience from another part. The pleasant part of the eating, e. g., can be separated from the consciousness of moving the teeth (which may not be pleasant). But it is very important to remember that, so far as this is done, the experience ceases to be one, and the pleasure ought not (quite strictly) to be called the pleasure of that ex- perience, but a pleasant experience in or along with a non-pleasant one. (2) Strictly speaking, the pleasure of doing or being anything is the pleasant consciousness of doing or being that thing ; not a consciousness along- side the doing or being, but the conscious doing or being itself. It is only after what we call ' reflexion,' i. e. when we are more or less ' out of ' the experience and ' in ' some other, that we come to analyse it into act and pleasure. Yet what most people mean by ' pleasures ' are the results of some such reflexion. They are, so to say, detached pieces of experience, retained and dwelt upon. The common maxim, ' If you want pleasure, do not think about it,' is based upon this fact ; for to ' think PLEASURE: PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS 19 about * pleasure to most people means to detach a certain element in some experience, and then perhaps to try to get it without the rest of the experience. The dis- appointment which so often follows arises from the fact that, having thus detached the pleasure, we expect to get it in some different experience, forgetting that there are very likely new elements present which disturb or prevent the pleasure. SPIRIT THE history of the word 'spirit,' and of its equivalents in Greek and German, would be the history of a great bit of the human mind, and of that bit of it where perhaps its most absorbing experiences are to be found. nvevp.a, ' wind,' ' breath,' ' moving air ' that is the thing to which it all goes back ; and the text which sums it all up the best is, ' The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth : so is every one who is born of the wind.' It seems as if the notion that lies at the root of all notions of spirit is that of freedom in some sense, whether in that of power to dispense with means usually necessary, or of power to produce something out of material usually unproductive. Hence the mystery, the unaccountableness, which always hangs about ' spirit ' in all its senses, when it is looked at from a less ' spiritual ' point of view. Take some absurdly different instances. A ' ghost,' when it means anything, means something which in some way transcends or does without certain conditions which the person who calls it a ghost cannot SPIRIT 21 do without. It comes through a door without having to open it, speaks without having to breathe, appears without having to occupy space, &c. A * spiritualist ' is a person who can communicate with other persons in ways unknown or unfamiliar to most people, and these ways imply the power of dispensing with certain usual means or organs. A person ' of spirit,' in English, is one who rises above certain circumstances which would depress other people. A person of Geist, in German, is a person who gets something out of things which to most people suggest nothing. And a person of esprit, in French, is one who does the same in the somewhat lighter things of life. The ' spirit,' as opposed to the ' letter,' is the meaning got out of a formula or principle by one who sees it in many bearings, one who is very much alive, as opposed to that which is got out of it by one who can see it in only one or two bearings and is dead to the rest. The ' spirit,' as opposed to the ' flesh,' is the activity of mind which is independent of actual touch or bodily presence, as opposed to that which is tied to these for its experiences. ' God is a spirit ';" he is not ' in this mountain ' or ' at Jerusalem ' ; wherever there is anything, there is he. He is absolutely free activity, able to ' make all things new,' and ' where the spirit of God is, there is liberty.' One great difficulty in the way of understanding spirit is the inveterate habit of supposing that ' spiritual ' activity is a single definite kind of activity, opposed to another definite kind called ' material ' or ' physical ' or * natural.' The latter is supposed to be known and understood, the former is supposed to be ' mysterious,' 1 supernatural,' and the like. 22 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS The truth seems to be that all activity or agency may truly be called spiritual, if by ' agency ' is understood that which gives rise to something which was not there before. All ' things ' whatever, and all the ' properties ' of things, are ultimately forms of agency, force, energy. Things are what they do, and what they do is themselves. Motion, heat, light, magnetism, electricity, &c., are different forms of agency, i. e. they are names for various sorts of change which occur under various conditions. They are better understood than many other forms of agency only in the sense that they admit of being more precisely described. They may be called ' physical,' if this merely means that they have certain properties in common, distinguishing them from, e. g., what are called ' personal ' agencies (' moral influence,' &c.). But the ' physical ' forms of agency can be no more ' explained ' than the ' moral,' nor can the ' moral ' be less ' explained ' than the ' physical.' (Explanation in the scientific sense means the expression of something in terms of some- thing else, with which we are more familiar or with which we can deal more easily.) Wherever there is agency, there something is being produced different from what was there before, i. e. certain conditions are being transcended, gone beyond, in a way which could not be predicted (except by a being which was the source of all agency, the universal agent). All agency is in this sense ' mysterious,' a continual ' miracle ' or ' wonder.' But it is generally called ' mysterious ' only when it is unfamiliar to the person in question. Gunpowder is miraculous to a savage, but he sees nothing miraculous in his bow and arrows. To SPIRIT 23 a being which was all stomach, the experiences of a being which had eyes or ears would be miraculous, just as again a person of exceptional knowledge or insight was regarded in the Middle Ages as having connexion with the devil. ' Spiritual ' and l physical.' Two of the most important and interesting illus- trations of the various ways in which this distinction has been understood are found in the facts of eating and of love. Hardly any subject has exercised and divided people more than the Eucharist It is worth considering how and why there has been so much controversy about it. Roughly speaking, there are two prevalent views: one, that eating the bread and drinking the wine are ' signs ' or * symbols ' of certain ' spiritual ' acts ; the other, that the bread and wine are in some way ' spiritual ' substances, the body and blood of Christ, in which the communicant in the act of eating and drinking partici- pates. Neither view seems to represent the deepest truth. In the first place, we must ask what is a sign or symboll To say that A is a symbol of B implies, of course, that A is something different from B, but (and this is often forgotten) it also implies that it is in some respect the same as B. The most remote, far-fetched symbol in the world must have something in common with that which it symbolizes : i. e. the person to whom it has the symbolic meaning must have some (however little it may be) of the same feeling or experience when he experiences the symbol, as he has when he experiences 24 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS that which it symbolizes. In other words, there are such things as symbols just because the most different things in the world have something in common. From this elementary fact spring all the controversies and complications about symbols. One party says, ' It is only a symbol, it is not the real thing ' ; and they are partly right, for in order to be a symbol a thing must be partly different from something else, and this something else which is symbolized must be more than the symbol. The other party says, < It is the real thing, this which you call a mere symbol ' ; and they too are partly right, for in order to be a symbol at all, a thing must be partly the same as that which it symbolizes. Take the case of the Eucharist. What is the act (the 'physical' act, as it is usually called) of eating? It is an act in virtue of which a certain material comes into contact with a certain other material, and thereupon arises another material endowed with fresh properties. It would be much better to speak of ' agencies ' through- out. Bread, for instance, is a certain agent, capable of acting and being acted on in various ways. The palate, tongue, throat, stomach, blood, &c., are other similar agents. Bread in the various processes of chewing, swallowing, digesting, &c., becomes a new agent, does new things, is an element in a new whole, contributes to new results ; some of these results have got names ; e. g. ' taste,' ' satisfaction of hunger,' c refreshment,' ' strength,'. ' health.' If we chose, we could follow the bread through a still wider circle of transformations ; e. g. we could see it becoming an element in an ' artistic ' or a ' moral ' or a ' spiritual ' result ; i. e. we could see the agency or force which it has (or, rather, which it is) becoming an agency or force in the production of a picture, the doing of SPIRIT 25 a brave act, the overcoming a temptation or difficulty. The great mistake which we usually make is that we follow the bread as far. say, as the digestive process, and then stop and draw a line ; on the one side of the line we put what we ca:l the ' physical ' agency of bread, on the other we put what we sometimes call the agency of a * mysterious ' moral or intellectual or spiritual agent (quite separate from bread). But the truth is (however absurd it may sound at first) that there is no one thing, ' bread,' beginning to be * bread ' at a certain point and ceasing to be 'bread* at a certain other point. The properties (L e. forces or agencies) which make * bread ' as it is in the loaf, become quite different when ' bread is in a stomach, and quite different again when it is blood and muscle and nerve, and quite different again when it is feeling and thought and emotion of various kinds. And there is absolute continmly in all these changes, though the agency at any given moment is quite different from what it is at any other given moment. Now it is what we may call this continuity of agency which makes symbolism possible. Bread, in all its various phases of existence, is an agent which enters into and contributes to the total agency which we may call human life. If we like to call it a symbol of life- producing agency,' we ought to mean that it has (really, not only fancifully) something in common with all life- giving agency. It (so to say) points beyond what it is in any given phase, to the infinite other phases into which it is capable of entering and into which it eventually does enter, just as, conversely, the agencies of those other phases point back to (because they are really continuous with) the elementary agency of bread. It is they pro- spectively, they are it retrospectively. 26 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS It might be asked, why then should we not call moral or artistic agency 'symbolic of digestive agency? I suppose to an omniscient mind everything would be equally symbolic of everything else ; or, more accu- rately, such a mind would see everything in everything ; whereas to us with our limited and unequally active minds one thing only ' suggests' or ' is like ' or ' recalls ' or ' contrasts with ' another. And the principle upon which we go is, apparently, to call A a ' symbol of ' B when, from the point of view at which we are at the moment, B means more of the same kind of thing that A means. Digestive agency is much, but the agency of growing is more, the agency of moving about is more still, the agency of making clothes, houses, machines, is more still, the agency of making schools, laws, govern- ment, art, science, religion, is more still, and so on. But in all there will be found certain identical features ; in all there is what we may call ' assimilation ' of one thing by another, the assimilation resulting in an agency different from either of the agents assimilated. In this way it is literally true to say that human society is an ' organism ' ; only it should be remembered that its organic life or agency is incomparably more complicated than that of an animal or plant, and there- fore incomparably more difficult to set out in detail. To return to the Eucharist. We saw that in reality * bread ' is an element or factor in a continuous agency. But the name ' bread ' (like all names) is intended to mark off a more or less definite bit of this continuous agency, and enable us to treat it as if it were a thing by itself. What particular bit is marked off by this or any other name, is impossible to say precisely, because different people mark off different bits according to their SPIRIT 27 different views and interests. Still there is a sort of average meaning for 'bread,' which it is the business of a dictionary-maker to ascertain and define. Starting from this (which he would call its ' proper ' meaning) the dictionary-maker goes on to notice various other meanings which he calls ' derivative,' ' metaphorical,' and the like (all of which arise from the same fact as that which gives rise to symbols). Taking ' bread,' then, in its average or dictionary sense, as that which is 'physically' assimilated and transformed in the Eucharist, it is obvious that it is not what is ordinarily understood as a spiritual agent, ' the body of Christ.' It is ' only ' a symbol. But now suppose a person to eat this bread, and in the act of eating it to realize (not of course completely, but very much more than is usually done) the immensity of the act ; to realize as one thing (for it really is one thing) the chewing and digesting, the increase of muscular strength, the doing of acts or making of things, in fact the whole of himself into which the bread is now enter- ing. Or suppose more than this ; suppose that not only once now and then, under special circumstances which help the act of realization, in church on Sunday, &c., but whenever he eats or drinks, he has this comparatively full consciousness of what he is doing. To such a person it would be true to say that ' every meal is a sacrament.' To such a person ' grace before meat ' would be no almost meaningless formula, but the true expression of a feeling that God, the omnipotent and omnipresent agent, was really present here and now, in this partial agent of bread or water. Such a person might properly be said to have a com- paratively ' spiritual ' mind, or to realize more than most 28 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS people the ' spiritual ' significance of the act of eating. But it is all-important to see that this ' spiritual ' con- sciousness of the nature of the act is not got at the expense of, or by leaving behind^ the consciousness of the ' physical ' nature of the act. The person in question, for instance, would not help himself to be spiritual in eating if he were to practise being indifferent to what his food tasted like, or to how it was cooked, or to whether it was digestible. On the contrary, these properties or agencies of food are part of its spiritual property or agency. Food does not become an agent in the highest life of man by giving up its niceness and digestibility, but by means of these. It is quite true that the niceness and digestibility of food may, under certain circumstances, have to be ignored in consideration of more important things. That is to say, the thing we call ' food ' may (so to say) be called upon to do a different thing, to contribute a different factor, in the total agency of life. This illus- trates from a new point of view what we said before about the relativity of things or agents. No agent stands alone or has its agency all to itself. It is always an element in a continuous larger agency. And to beings like ourselves, beings that are never the whole but that may always realize that there is a whole, this larger or largest agency must always present itself as an infinite possibility, a something of which we can never predict the demands it may make on us, a ' wind ' that may change its direction at any moment, and of which all that we can hope to feel or know is that its direction is good, that we are better in proportion as we can surrender ourselves to it, that it is a more of something which we already are. Thus, for instance, ' food ' cannot say, ' I am SPIRIT 29 food, with such and such powers and rights, which I will exercise and keep, but in my own way and at my own pleasure.' In proportion as it says this, it is lost. If it consistently said this and acted on it, it would not be food at all. It can only be food, even in the most elementary sense of the word, by entering into some- thing else, assimilating and being assimilated. The more it 'loses itself (what it begins by being) the more it ' finds itself.' This is no fancy, but a plain fact. The whole truth about ' selfishness ' hangs on this con- sideration. There is no act which may not be selfish, or which may not be unselfish. An agent or act is selfish in proportion as it tries to make itself the whole, instead of feeling that it is part of the whole. But it does not really save itself by trying to make itself the whole, nor does it really lose itself by realizing that it is only part of the whole. The pleasantness of wine is not made more by trying to concentrate all our powers upon the experience of // (meaning by this, we will say, a certain sensation in the palate); it would soon be made less, and the other powers would be made less too. On the other hand, it would not be less, but infinitely more, to a being which could feel it along with, or as an element in, all the delight to which it is capable of ministering. (By way of a simple illustration take, e. g., the enjoy- ment of wine by the solitary depressed drinker, its enjoyment in delightful company, its enjoyment by a person in whom it almost immediately became a poem, and its enjoyment by a so-called ' mystical ' person in the Eucharist. Some people would say it was ' blasphemous ' to put the last enjoyment along with the others; but it can only be so, if we allow ourselves to pull it down to a lower level. No doubt most of us are pretty sure 30 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS to do this, because we are so limited in our 'spiritual' capacity, and we are apt to help ourselves out of our limitations by giving what we call a ' tangible ' interpreta- tion to experiences which we cannot understand.) Agency, then, is not ' spiritualized ' by becoming less, but by becoming more. This gives us the right point of view from which to look at ' asceticism ' and everything of that kind. There is, e. g., no virtue in ' giving up ' wine, any more than there is any virtue in drinking wine without enjoying it. All true ' asceticism ' means simply the acquisition of some greater power by practice. Everybody who has any ambition of any kind whatever ' asceticizes ' a little, i. e. gives up something to get some- thing more. But a person who says 'wine in itself is bad ' is as wrong as one who says ' wine in itself is good.' The prejudice (sometimes right and sometimes wrong) against 'asceticism,' 'spirituality,' and the like, seems to arise mostly from the fact that men must recognize a sort of average experience and express it in a sort of average language and habits. The most really ' spiritual ' people are, I suppose, the people who talk least about it. A person to whom every meal was a sacrament would be the last to say it to his neighbours at a dinner-party, for he would know that his words would not convey what he meant, and would convey something that he did not mean. A person who really felt that he was 'training for an immortal prize ' would not go about saying so, for he would know that what is ordinarily understood by 'training' and 'prize' is only a fragment of what he understands. On the other hand, it must be insisted that the 'average' meaning of words (and this is the average level of ex- perience) has no right whatever to call itself the ' true ' SPIRIT 31 meaning. ' Philistinism ' in all its forms is the refusal to admit that things can mean more than I, the Philistine, choose that they shall mean. John the Baptist comes neither eating nor drinking, and the Philistines settle him by saying ' he has a devil.' Jesus comes eating and drinking, and the same Philistines settle him as a free liver, who keeps company with vulgar men and loose women. But ' wisdom is justified of all her children ' ; the world, if we would only open our eyes, wants them all, is the better for them all; and the publicans and harlots often go into the kingdom of heaven before the Pharisee. As the Philistine tends to interpret 'spirituality' by pulling it down, calling it ' cant ' or ' madness ' or ' eccen- tricity* or 'radicalism' or 'vapouring' (and he can always produce lots of instances where so-called spiritu- ality is not spirituality at all), so many well-meaning people interpret it by calling it ' miraculous/ which is really another way of pulling it down. Take the Eucharist again. The feeling (true and justifiable in itself) that every act has 'a spiritual meaning,' 'an eternal significance,' ' infinite consequences,' and the like, unable to maintain itself at its height, helps itself by saying, 'This bit of bread is being transformed into divine flesh ' ; and in saying this, it thinks, not of the real wonder (that bread is really an agency in the whole agency of human life, and so in the life of the world and God), but of a sort of nondescript process by which 'bread' (in the average sense) is somehow con- verted into * flesh' (not indeed 'flesh' in the average sense, but still in some similar sense). Then comes the angry 'man of science' and proves triumphantly that bread is bread and nothing else, while 32 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS the ' man of religion ' goes racking his brains to find a way by which the ' physical ' laws of bread may be superseded, and yet the bread may still be bread. The cure for a wrong or spurious ' mysticism ' is to realize ' the facts ' ; but ' the facts ' must not be taken to mean (as they generally are) either certain particular facts (of chemistry, for instance, or physiology), or certain particular aspects of facts to which I happen to be ac- customed. The fact is the whole fact, neither more nor less. True mysticism is the consciousness that everything which we experience, every ' fact/ is an element and only an element in ' the fact ' ; i. e. that, in being what it is, it is significant or symbolic of more. INDIVIDUALITY [Remarks on a pupil's essay which there was no opportunity of discussing orally. About 1889.] A STONE ' does not distinguish itself from its environ- ment.' Doesn't it, just so far as ' stone ' means anything ? Any of what are called its * properties ' seem to be exertions of force, actions and reactions. E. g. it occupies a certain space (keeps other things out and is kept in by them), has a certain weight (presses on other things and is pressed on by them). Of course a plant does and suffers a great many more things than a stone, but both, so far as they are anything distinct from anything else, are so because they act on and are acted on by an environment. The question is, What is environment ? Where does it begin ? What is it that is environed ? It is the old problem of ' circumstance ' (of which I suppose environ- ment is only a modern translation). If you say the environment of the stone is the adjacent spaces, then the it of the stone is occupation of a certain space- If you say its environment is the bodies upon which it presses, then it is pressure. So with the plant : where does ' it ' begin or end ? To what distance, for S.R. D 34 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS instance, is the surrounding air or soil affected by its absorbing surface ? At what point do they become part of it, and when ought ' they ' to be said to act upon ' it ' and ' it ' upon ' them ' ? One is inclined to say that the plant is what you could take away and put somewhere else without its being changed, and that you could do this without carrying the air and soil with it. But it couldn't be taken away without some air, or transplanted into no soil. An ' individual ' is properly ' something that cannot be , . divided.' This seems to give one some clue. The indi- /*! Ol/^*^ /viduality of a thing is just the amount of things which I make one from which none can be taken away without the unity ceasing. A heap of stones, we say, has little individuality, because we can take away a good many r t stones and still call it a heap. But it isn't the same heap, , and does not really retain its individuality. Any two things that can't do without each other seem to make an individual, and the more things there are in this condition the greater the individuality. A complete individual would therefore apparently have no ' environment ' ; or, environment begins where individuality ends. To any two contiguous stones in a heap the rest of the heap is environment ; to any two notes in a tune the rest of the tune is environment ; and when you add some more notes and make a phrase, what was before ' environment and individuality ' has become all individuality. Thus too it seems difficult to distinguish between ' taking in ' and ' giving out.' The two notes of a tune are exactly what they take in and what they give out : they are affected by the notes on each side of them exactly as much as they affect them : if you alter them you alter the tune, and if you alter the tune you alter them. INDIVIDUALITY 35 No doubt they have an individuality out of the tune, and one is inclined to call this their own. individuality. But it is no more their own than what they had in the tune ; or rather, ' their ' is now a different ' their ' and has a different environment (the particular circumstances under which they happen to be heard). If it be said they can exist and have individuality without any en- vironment, I suppose one would have to ask whether two notes could be one thing (have an individuality) except to a consciousness which was more than they. Anyhow, they could only be without environment if they were the universe (or fancied themselves such). Thus, for everything except the absolute, individuality implies limitation (i. e. environment), and the great differ- ence in the associations which the word has seems to come from the double fact that, while every individuality is measured by the amount which it holds together (i. e. by the amount of what would otherwise be environment that it converts into itself), it is also measured against what still remains environment, what it excludes, asserts itself against. ' Individualism ' and all that goes with it, isolation, selfishness, jealousy, fear, represent this side of the thing. A 'great individuality,' such as you say Shakespeare was, represents the other side. You say that the attempt to take in without giving out results in death. I suppose this is quite true, only it seems that one must say the same of the attempt to give out without taking in. The trouble is that each of these phrases ('taking in,' &c.) only expresses one mode of activity or being, and it is impossible not to be affected by the metaphor which is necessarily present in any such partial account of a thing. When a person makes a box, or a tune, or a law, does he take in or give out the most ? D a 36 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS It seems impossible to make any distinction. You say indifferently, 'he puts himself into the wood/ or 'he takes the wood into himself.' At any given point in the process you can analyse it into ' wood ' and ' him/ but it is only your analysis ; the fact is indivisible, and that fact is just individuality. If he says indignantly, ' / am not box/ that is only because he is aware that he is other things as well. Ultimately one seems to have to say, the greatest indi- viduality is that which produces most, or out of which the most is produced. It does not seem really to matter which you say, though it sounds as if it did. One might compare individuality to centre of gravity. Every material body has a centre of gravity, i. e. is an individual or indivisible system in respect of motion. On the other hand, each centre of gravity is determined by those about it, and ultimately by the centre of the earth (to go no further). If one thinks of other properties besides motion, it seems to be the same. E. g. any person has one centre of gravity at each moment regarded as a body merely, another regarded as an organic body, another regarded as a healthy body, another regarded as a legal 'person/ another regarded as a character, and so on. And as in the original sense the centre of gravity is continually changing, and the body is continually becom- ing a different individual and getting into different en- vironments, so with the other senses. And one can imagine a stone refusing to admit that it had any other centre of gravity than that which it had in a particular place and position, and being very much distressed or offended when it found itself topsy-turvy, and putting the blame upon its environment which would not conform or which it could not assimilate, whereas all the time the INDIVIDUALITY 37 environment was conforming beautifully, and in fact there was no environment at all, for the world of bodies was individual. A person who, as you put it, ' knows a great deal ' without being a great individuality, does not, I suppose, really know a great deal. What one means is that a great many pieces of information make a kind of unity in him (in what is called his memory), but that the unity that they make is not as close or organic as we can conceive it might be. We see, for instance, that there are other bits of the ' he ' which seem to stand quite apart from ' his knowledge.' It seems very important to recognize, as you do to- wards the end, that the problem of individuality is raised in different ways to different people. As you say, it may be ' people ' or it may be ' things ' that ' refuse to come right.' What one is perpetually doing is to stereo- type oneself to fix one or two experiences as the centres and try to keep these and make everything else into circumference. There are two lines of Goethe which always stick in my head about this : Nur wo du bist sei alles, immer kindlich, So bist du alles, bist uniiberwindlich. I suppose both self-depreciation and self-assertion are equally wrong kinds of this ' centralization.' In both one allows oneself to be divided into a more or less hostile self and not-self ; only in the one case one shrinks from the not-self, in the other one threatens it. The people who have, in various phraseology, represented love as the reality of things, have I suppose felt this, for love is the only thing that is perfectly fearless and yet/ perfectly kind. The difficulty is to keep between the two extremes, as 3 8 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS Aristotle might say, that of being nothing because one has only one centre, and that of being nothing because one has no centre ; death by stagnation and death by dissipation. The ideal would be to be the centre of every "4 circumference. Practically the important thing seems to be that one should try to be the growing centre of a growing circumference, so that while one is always ready to change one's individuality without fear of losing it, one should always carry the individuality that one has so far made into each new environment, so that the old should become young and the young old and thus death be impossible. THE ATONEMENT [The following rough notes, evidently written merely for himself, seem, from comparison with the ideas con- tained in Nettleship's letters, to belong to 1886.] THE ' Christian ' doctrine says, God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son to save it, i.e. to make it one with himself again. This assumes that the ' world ' is estranged from God ; that this estrangement is the fact of ' sin ' ; that the effect of sin is death perishableness ; that by 'atonement' the world regains ' life.' What is the relation of these conceptions to the patent facts of life? We see that everything perishes : vatrra pel. Yet we equally see that nothing perishes : everything becomes something else: life is only possible through consumption (death) : life is the process of transmutation. On what ground do we distinguish life from death, yeWtri? from Qdopd (for it would seem that we might indifferently call either the other)? We apparently call change ' life ' when it is change to something which we consider higher, better, more de- veloped, &/)a, saying that, if you examine, you find that in all cases it is the real end of achievement, and that even nature really works for the same end) : ' If one were to ask nature for what purpose she pro- duces, and if she chose to understand the question and speak, she would say : " You ought not to have asked, you ought to have understood and held your peace, as my wont is to hold my peace and say nothing. What then is it that you ought to have understood ? That all that is produced is a sight for me to look upon in silence, a vision produced by nature ; and that I, who am myself the child of such a vision, am by nature a lover of sights, and that which sees in me produces the object which it EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 67 looks on, as the geometrician draws that upon which his mind is active : I do not draw, but I look, and. as I look, the forms of the bodily world fell, as it were, from my gaze and take substance. [With me too it is as with my mother l and my begetters 2 : my begetters are the product of a mental vision ; / owe my life, not to any action, but simply to the being, of thoughts greater than I, contemplating themselves.]" What then does this mean? It means that what we call nature, being a soul, born of a soul prior to her and living a more potent life, stands quietly at gaze within herself, looking neither at what is above her nor at what is below, but steadfast in her own place and self-consciousness, and that with this intelligence and consciousness of herself she sees her own effects as far as it is given her to see. and is con- tent to do nothing more than perfect the vision, bright and fair. But the intelligence and sense which, if we like, we may attribute to her, are not like those of other sensible and intelligent beings ; compared with them they are as sleeping compared with waking ; for as she gazes on the vision of herself, she rests, and her gaze is unruffled but dim.' \Enn. iii. 8 (3).] I should like to have gone on about what you wrote about, but I ought to be getting to bed, as I start to- morrow morning. I believe the old business about the Mean in the Ethics becomes more significant if one works it in connexion with this notion of feeling taking form under the action of something which is not feeling. One can see that in a work of art proportion is the con- dition of beauty, i. e. of the aperfi of the work of art : destroy the proportion, make a leg too long and a thigh too short, and you make the leg so far cease to be a leg 1 [The ' world-soul'] * [The ' formal reasons.' Cf. EMH. ii. 3 (17).] F 2 68 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS and the thigh a thigh. So in morals ; only it is harder to see what gives the law of proportion here. In the work of art it is the whole which determines the true relation of the parts ; in an act I suppose it is the con- ception of the end which gives unity to the act. Then there comes the further question, how far can any act be taken by itself? or, what is the whole (ultimately) to which the constituent elements of any act are relative ? It seems at first as if in a work of art the standard were completely contained in the work itself ; but I am not at all sure that this is so really. I'm afraid this raises that awful question of the (absolute) whole being somehow or other present in every partial whole. (September, 1877.) 7- Your account of your work [at Harvard] interests me very much. I always hope that America may eventually help to show us old-fashioned people the way to reconcile classical education with modern life. The problem in England is appallingly difficult. So many elements other than purely educational ones enter into it that it is almost impossible to get people to look at it straight . . . I feel myself that it is only a question of time for Greek to cease to be a necessary part of the ordinary education of a gentleman ; but the difficulty seems to be to find methods for gradually diverting the enormous wealth and talent which are now spent on teaching it into other channels. And there is always a danger of playing into the hands of the mere fiavava-oi, if one is too much in a hurry to diminish the demands of classics. I quite believe myself that the real interests of classical literature are sufficient to guarantee that the most cultivated minds will always study it ; and I don't see why many of the EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 69 ideas which it contains should not come to be a real power in modern life ; there are certainly signs of this. But the more this is felt to be true, the less it seems to me will able men be ready to apply these literatures as mere mechanical contrivances for extracting a certain amount of effort out of the average boy. Nor can I think that it is natural for any boy to begin to get his first ideas from books which can have to him little more meaning than counters." (December t 1878.) 8. It is rather grisly when one thinks of fifteen years hence. In other professions, the longer one goes on the deeper one gets into the thing, at least if one ever gets into it at all ; but in our line one seems likely to work out of instead of into it. Yet I don't fency that I should better matters much by looking deliberately forward, for there is nothing to guide me that I can see, and the whole thing tends to become castle-building. I do believe that the ' eternal now ' is the thing to live for really, and then the future settles itself; but somehow or other it seems possible to live for the day without really living in it- I mean, to secure the disadvantages both of the star- gazer and of the earth-grubber. The point in which all these qualms seem to con- centrate themselves is death, which I have found myself thinking about more than usual lately. It is a strange thing, isn't it, that a thing which is one of the few quite certain and obvious facts, like death, should be a sort of centre for all the problems and uncertainties in the world. And I always have a dim feeling that, if one could once get a clear grip of a single feet of every-day life, death would clear itself at once, and vice versa, just 7 o MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS as it seems that to understand one's own nature would be to understand God, and vice versa. Certainly one always comes back to the feeling that the truth in these ultimate problems is not got by thinking in the ordinary sense, but by living, which is, I suppose, what Carlyle and others mean by saying, ' Doubt of any kind is not solved except by action.' But at first there seems to be the same contradiction here as in ' living for the moment ' ; you lose the fact as soon as you begin to ' think about ' it, and yet the less you think about it the less you are in it, and the less it is a fact. I suppose the fault lies in isolating one's activities, which is just what one never does do when one really lives. But I'm afraid we have said all this a good many times before. Yes, I have been reading Bacon, the Nov. Org. and parts of the De Augmentis. I do find a good deal in him, I think, though it seems very hard to know how to lecture on him. He is strangely medieval in many ways, but there is a sort of breath of the Elizabethan time all through him. Surely it would be much truer to call him the father of the practical English spirit than the father of empiricism. His empiricism is full of meta- physics in the crudest and worst sense of the word ; but in the idea that truth and power must ultimately coin- cide, and that philosophy has got to make man at home in the universe, he seems to have got the truest and most valuable part of the British aspiration. It is queer to find Plato and him so nearly coinciding in their notion of the function of philosophy ; and queer too that the way in which they both put the thing (that philosophy is to rule life, or to make it happy, directly) is just the most hopelessly impossible part of their theory. It is a pity EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 71 that Bacon is equally typical of the inferior English characteristics, a sort of swagger and ignorant inde- pendence. (January, 1880.) 9- Everything to me seems to come back perpetually to the idea of eternity in some form or other, and the form in which I want to get hold of it is not that of an infinite future but an ever-present ' now,' in which past and future should vanish or be absorbed. At rare moments the feeling seems to come, when distance in time and space literally vanishes or goes for nothing ; but it is so hard to work it into ordinary life. And another difficulty is that, in trying to realize the nothing- ness of ordinary limits and losses, one seems so easily to fall into a sort of blank or void in which all that we really care about evaporates. The truth must be (and I am sure this is what he [Green] used to teach) that we get to the higher life, not by thinking away the lower, but by carrying it with us ; in fact, that the highe the lower, only transfigured or lived at a higher pressure So that if it were possible to realize fully what one is, or what one is doing, at the most commonplace point of one's life, one would realize eternity in fact, I suppose, one would be God. (July, 1882.) Does it ever occur to you that the ' horrors of mortality,' rottenness, &c., are no different in kind from the horrors (if they are horrors) of all physical life ? I mean, that if one chose to fix one's attention on certain parts of one's bodily processes one would be almost as much revolted as by the actual decay of death. And ver, ure. 72 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS conversely, if it is the case that evil (in the form of what we call ugliness, bad smell, &c.) is only evil to imperfect organisms, then the process of death might seem to a central mind simply a continuation of that of life. Anyhow, does not the horror of death come from the almost irresistible feeling that one's soul or self is some- how present to the decaying body, whereas really the decaying body is a phenomenon with a life of its own, no more or less horrible than a yellow leaf? Or again, is not one's dread of death the dread either of annihilation or of loss of identity, both of which are impossible, for, whatever one is, one must be something, and one's identity is the identity of what one is conscious of, not a sort of hybrid of that and something else ? A bit of earth has its identity, and if I, i. e. a part of my body, become that bit of earth, I am not conscious of a painful transition, for I am at every moment exactly what I am, not a hanger-on to what went before. Or once more, why should it not be possible to some mind to see all bodily existence as we are now some- times able to see little bits of it ? Is not a body which seems to us beautiful or good as much transfigured, spiritual, compared with the same body if we look into its skin, as ever a ' resurrection of the body ' expected it to be ? Or rather, is not ' bodily existence ' a wrong phrase, if it means unspiritual ? But I can't get at what I want to say. Only I have a kind of feeling that the supposed ultimate antithesis between individual existence and existence in the absolute is not a real antithesis that all existence is and must be individual, whether in the form of what we know as feeling, or in the forms (to us inconceivable) which make earth earth, and an atom an atom, the difference lying EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 73 not in the fact of being, but in the amount of being in- volved in each moment of existence. As Emily Bronte said, ' There is no room for death.' I will stop. I daresay sometime the idea will come back in some perfectly clear and commonplace form. (January, 1883.) ii. Why is it that so many seemingly petty things stand between one's soul and the truth while a man is alive? For it does seem that in death one sees things more truly as well as more intensely. It always makes me think of Carlyle's notion of history and biography I mean, that the reality is the heroic and nothing else. And I suppose all the old ideas about ' dying to the body,' and ' philosophy being the practice of death,' come to much the same thing. The difficulty is that one does not realize the truth until it is too late to realize it effectively. Instead of making the physical life spiritual, one only spiritualizes it after it has ceased to be physical. It is like ceasing to eat and drink in order to be holy, instead of eating and drinking to the glory of God. (March, 1883.) 12. It is strange how differently trouble affects different people. I sometimes think it only makes them better if they are good already. Nothing at least has given me such a feeling of my own moral weakness as the way in which personal loss has demoralized me. Every now and then, and with regard to a few persons, I have better feelings than I ever had before ; but on the whole it seems only to have drawn away the life-blood from daily life, and left me dull and unsympathetic to the 74 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ordinary world. And this makes me feel sometimes that, even if I had what I want, I should not be able to use it rightly ; otherwise should I not be able to use the loss of it to more purpose? I suppose the personal feelings in which most of the best things in one's life are bound up ought to be perpetually expanding from their centre and returning to it again, until at last not only is one person worth the whole world to you, but the whole world also becomes transfused with your personal feeling. Because this is not so, or so far as it is not so, personal loss leaves the world empty and colourless. And most forms of consolation which talk about the love of God or of mankind are so very liable to sound vapid and watery. Or, even if they stir one up with momentary enthusiasm, it is so hard to throw oneself trustingly into the great sea without being paralyzed by that terrible longing which drags one back to the brook-side which had been all one's very own. But I am quite sure of one thing however far I may be at present from living up to it that the only strength for me is to be found in the sense of a personal presence everywhere, it scarcely matters whether it be called human or divine ; a presence which only makes itself felt at first in this and that particular form and feature, not because it is not itself personal and individual, but because our capacity of personal and individual feeling is so limited and weak. Into this presence we come, not by leaving behind what are usually called earthly things, or by loving them less, but by living more intensely in them, and loving more what is really lovable in them ; for it is literally true that this world is everything to us, if only we choose to make it so, if only we ' live in the present ' because it is eternity. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 75 I say this because I think you will understand me. I very seldom say these things, and it is better they should remain unsaid for the most part, for they only become phrases. But now and then I think one ought to express the things which at the time seem the best and the truest, even though one is conscious (as I am) that the next minute one will be behaving like a brute to the people who are nearest to one and who ought to be the easiest to treat well. (July, 1883.) 13- CORFU, Aug. 17, 1884. I wish you were here to talk to. I have been out for a morning walk along olive-covered cliffs in an unmitigated sun, with lizards running about and grass- hoppers talking incessantly (they always seem to me the very voice of the heat), and the sea and mountains one great blaze of blue : and now we have had the twelve o'clock dejeuner, and I feel in a delicious state of refined intoxication, in which the grosser particles seem to be purged away, and one desires nothing but sweet companionship. I have been kept here a long time, first by five days' quarantine, endured on board a tiny yacht in company with three Greeks and a Greek Jew, two of them middle- aged gross merchants, and two young commercial travellers. I was naturally an object of intense wonder and amusement to them. I always find the commercial class the hardest of all to chum with. Their world-view is so absolutely self-sufficing and unsympathetic, and, though they are not really a bit more sensual than one- self, their sensuality always makes me rather resent it. However I must say one doesn't often hope to find 76 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS young commercials in England capable (as these Greeks were) of singing part-songs in a way which, though a little extravagant, moved one's inside (though I had scarcely any idea of what the words were about) ; and I was quite touched when one of them tried afterwards in German to interpret one of the songs (a love-song) with many apologies, because, as he kept repeating, it was ' hoch, sehr hoch,' and singing it made him literally pant with excitement. We were let out of quarantine on Friday, and I had hoped to go across to the mainland at once and get to Janina, the capital of Albania, by to-day. But the English consul here said it wasn't safe to go without a guide, and the best guide is an old Albanian who goes across every Tuesday on business, so I am waiting for him. It is rather nice getting good food and beds after quarantine, but otherwise I wish I hadn't to stay here. A town, when one has nothing to do and knows nobody, is always a nuisance. However, the country is lovely to look at, and the people interesting to watch. What strikes me most is their tremendous sociableness. At night the whole population swarms out into the piazza and talks. I suppose love of solitude and reverie are almost confined to Teutonic people. I can't make out whether one is higher or lower for having it. Sometimes it seems as if it could only be a second-best thing to have communion with nature : and I do believe that, if the same sort of feelings which are now set going in me sometimes by simple natural life could be continuously set going by every human being I came across, I should be a much higher animal than I am. Nature does not stir desire, and the interest in nature seems perfectly dis- interested. But if one could get right through the desire EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 77 and the fear which clog one's intercourse with one's fellow-creatures it would be a diviner air still that one would emerge into. I suppose the truth is that what one calls nature is enormously 'generalized' to us. I mean that one violet is practically the same as another violet, one bird as another bird. This has its advantages and its disadvantages, as compared with the infinite differences of men. It enables one on the one hand to see all violets in this one to idealize : on the other hand, it makes one's idealization vague and wanting in flesh and blood, for one does not really know this violet The sad part of the business is that the incarnation of the divine in men and women more often serves to obscure than to reveal the divine itself except at rare moments. Or, to put it in the other way, that in oneself which responds to the divine seems only capable of responding to it when it is presented in either a very simple or a very exalted form in flowers and animals and waters and mountains, or in heroic men and their works. It seems to be part of the same difficulty when one longs (as I did this morning) to live not a mere animal life but a life combining a simple satisfaction of one's simple animality with the highest spiritual energy of which one is capable. Is it simply the longing for happiness for the sheer sense of freedom from pain and discomfort which makes one think like this? which makes one almost hate the intermediate filling-up of 'domestic, social, and political' activity, which to most people seems the whole of life? Would one gradually cease to dream at all, and become an uncomfortable animal ? Is there no way to the kingdom of heaven but that of the best English citizen, of which Green expressed the highest theory ? 7 8 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS I can't make out. I only know that when I get away from that life I feel as if I should some day never come back to it ; and yet there is the dreadful thought that nearly all of whatever good I may have done in the world has been done in connexion connexion often unwilling, but still connexion with it ; and that in my heart of hearts I believe that whatever in me does not somehow or other, however remotely or indirectly, serve humanity, might just as well not exist at all, and in fact does not exist at all. Perhaps by the time one comes to die, one may see how one might have been a divine animal without ceasing to be a man. 14- Athens is all that I had ever dreamt of I mean of course the ancient part of the town. It is strange, and almost revolting, to find tramways and steam- engines within a stone's-throw of temples and theatres of the age of Pericles. The contrast is more glaring even than in Rome, because the town is so much smaller. And yet what escape is there from such a state of things? The nineteenth century must live must make money and seek improvement ; and, if it has not the sense of beauty which can construct things beautiful as well as useful, we cannot expect it to sacrifice its comforts to what it would consider only an idea. We seem here to stand before the insoluble problem which troubled the soul of Leopardi ... I think I enjoy the nights even more than the day. The moon is magnifi- cent now, and it is not difficult to escape from the cafe's and find quiet under the shadow of the Acropolis or the temple of Olympian Zeus. But the sight of these things raises many questions. Suppose that they had EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 79 all perished ; suppose that the Turks had destroyed all, as they have already destroyed so much. What idea should we have ever had of Greek art and beauty ? And may it not be that there have been many races who have created things not less wonderful, and yet whose memory has perished for us for ever? It seems that we are driven to feel that human memory and human history are after all only a fragment in some greater mind and some vaster series of events ; and that we can only find peace and confidence in the thought of something which is eternal and cannot change. (September, 1884.) I sometimes feel inclined now to doubt whether what one commonly calls ' feeling ' a thing is any guarantee of being really in it or having a real hold on it. Or rather, must not one extend ' feeling ' from those states which seem (only 'seem/ I suppose) to connect directly with physical affections, to include all consciousness in which one is at one with an object? Has the feeling 'up the back ' when one hears certain music, the feeling of ' hot and cold' when one sees certain faces, the feeling of 1 ready to burst ' when one defies certain injustices, any more claim to be called feeling, and valued as ' real,' than the ' unfelt ' energy with which one does a piece of daily work? There clearly is a difference, and one fancies that saint-like and heroic people live a more ' feeling ' life have more thrill about them than ordinary mortals. Perhaps the state in which one does much of what seems to others one's best work or acts is neither one thing nor the other; it has not the physical exaltation or the spiritual intensity. But there does seem to be such a thing as the spiritual intensity, quite different from any 8o MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS localized feeling, and capable, I believe, of transfiguring any such feeling into something from which the physical element has entirely evaporated. Great artists must experience something of this sort. In fact it often seems as if life would be easy if one could make a poem or a song or a picture out of one's sensations ; and I sup- pose, if one could make a deed out of them, it would do as well. (December i 1884.) 16. ... If I ever said ' work ' is the cure for weakness and misery, I was not thinking of what is ordinarily called ' individual effort ' to the exclusion of an ' object,' which (as you say) is clearly a necessity. But it has been coming home to me a good deal of late that any work any putting out of energy does ipso facto take one out of oneself and bring one into contact with something not oneself. Isn't there a French saying of some states- man, ' On ne peut pas s'appuyer que sur ce qui resiste ' ? That is what I feel. As long as one is oneself merely, alone, it is like being in a vacuum. There is a feeling (which gets horrible at times) that one is groping out for something to touch, something to lean on, and that one can find nothing. This is the condition not of what is ordinarily called loneliness, but of the state of simple jelly-fish feeling ; it is the state of pain when it does not kill or rouse to action, the state of ennui, of ' nohow-in- particular,' the state in which one is conscious of oneself, and yet conscious of it as almost a nonentity. Then what happens ? You see something, or smell something, or touch something ; something comes against you ; you have to do something ; and, however simple or mechanical it may be, you feel yourself against something else and EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 81 yet in that something else. The same holds good in higher things. It is the delight of doing and making, the delight of tending a plant or an animal or a human being, of making a box or a picture or a steam-engine, of solving a problem, understanding a poem, of worship and of love. The opposite state, the state of self- conscious nonentity, when it gets beyond the mere embryonic stage, takes two forms, fear or desire. In both one is conscious of oneself against a not-self, but not of oneself as in it. Injear the not-self dominates, in desire the self. Love, in any true sense, from the simplest up to the most subtle forms of it, is just this going out of the self into something which is only not i the self because it is more than it. What one ordinarily calls the ' self,' as far as I see, is a particular sensibility or a group of them what par- ticular one depends on the circumstances. When one speaks of ' self in the bad or uncomfortable sense, one means some set of sensibilities which are feeling after something to feel, while the surrounding medium really requires certain other sensibilities to be in action. One wants one's dinner, or to talk to a certain person, when the particular point of the world of space and time in which one happens to be requires one to want something quite different. Then one is miserable, or talks of the bad self which thwarts the good one, &c. What we have got to do is to get out of our limitations ; and this means to be in contact with the world wherever we happen to be, or (which is the same thing) to be at the centre of things ; and, if we could be and do this entirely, we should be God. ' God is love ' because he is at one with everything, and yet he is none of the things he is at one with. Or, better, the divine life is the being this H.B. G 82 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS apparently self-contradictory thing. It is only apparently self-contradictory. I find even in the little things of life that the condition of enjoyment, of possession, of sym- pathy, is that I should in a sense be above or outside the thing enjoyed, possessed, sympathized with. Self-anni- hilation is damnation. You must be yourself, but to be means the consciousness of self in not-self. The bigger the self, the more things it stands outside, and yet the more things it enters into. This is equally true of what are called intellectual things, and of what are called emotional or moral things. Pantheism is wrong if it means that God is all things ; but it is right if it means that there is nothing in which you cannot touch God; i.e. nothing which you cannot love, nothing which you need fear, nothing out of which you cannot make something, nothing in which you cannot be something. Only in this sense is it true that ' doubt is solved by action ' by work. It is a lie, I think, to say that doubt, for instance, about God or beauty is solved by digging or being ' busy ' or ' doing good.' What is true is that doubt means the (intellectual) state of non-contact, the state in which I catch at something but keep falling back on myself (i.e. on some out-of-place sensibility). L Action is not moving the limbs, but living and being. I To ' do something ' is the way out of doubt or misery, '"/because in doing we are ; we assert, not some abstract proposition, but a bit of ourselves. We are the thing which we understand-; we are not the thing which we don't understand, and that is what makes real doubt miserable. There are two lines of Goethe which say it all: -si Nur wo du bist sei alles, immer kindlich, So bist du alles, bist unuberwindlich. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 83 I need not tell you that I feel all this so much the more because it is so hard for me to realize it ; because I am so frightfully liable not to be 'all there,' to be anywhere but there, to fear and to want instead of to love. (August, 1885.) *7- I do really believe more and more that the only rule of life for me is ' to be TTOITJTIKO'S, not ira^TtKo's.' I don't mean always to be ' busy ' far from it but to be always ' creative ' (God forgive the phrase). And I do begin to understand what Plato and others mean, when they say there is a state which is not one of pleasure or of thought, but higher than either a state in which there is the greatest amount of vitality, but the least amount both of 'feeling' and of 'reflexion.' After all it is only applying to all life the principle of the artist, which always seems to me so tremendously instructive. Of mere pleasure you can make nothing as little as of mere pain. And both, pleasure and pain, when they reach a certain degree of intensity (it would be truer to say, when they become as nearly as possible nothing but pleasure and pain), admit of no expression, and are next door to nothing we are not alive in them. It would come to the same thing if you made the rule of life, ' feel as much as ever you can,' if it were properly under- stood. The amount of feeling is its correlations, radia- tions, suggestions, 'form,' whatever you like to call it. It is not true that you have// a ' real ' feeling, and then express it away or act it away ; the expression or action is the feeling at a higher power. And if a man could honestly say that the consciousness of eating was to him the concentration of the universe, you must tell him logically to be a stomach. G 2 84 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS And as to the business about the ' self (I suppose it is Spinozism) it seems to me that what most people mean by their 'self is simply a particular consciousness localized in a particular part ; e. g. if they mean what they call their ' bad ' self, it is a sexual feeling, &c. In fact, what we call ' our ideas ' are ourselves. I don't mean that we are a string of onions, but that we are exactly what we are conscious of, what we live. There is no other life or living thing. It is another question what is the ultimate self. That (as far as I can see) can be nothing but the being or force which is the life of the world, of which motion and magnetism and life and imagination and morality are all forms. The sense that you are, as far as you are anything, the child of the larger life, is religion. Wherever you can lean on it, take hold of it, be in it, you are safe free from desire and fear, which are the two forms of the sense of isolation, disconnectedness. (August, I885.) 1 18. I have been dipping into a book about Gordon in Central Africa (1874-1879). It is just his diary and letters. There are things in it which make one shiver with admiration and delight. It is absolutely simple ' We are the clay and thou art the potter ' nothing but this in various forms. But it does make one realize what I always theoretically believe, that only here is peace and strength to be had. The wonderful thing is the combination not sense of repose only nor devour- ing energy only but the two naturally and inseparably [* A year later Nettleship writes : ' I get to feel that what we call the " individual life " is a merely arbitrary space round which we draw lines of our own : the only real individual seems to be the " absolute." '] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 85 combined. It is a form of love the highest form, I suppose the sense of absolute union with something not oneself, along with the continual desire to serve it, to do something for it. It is queer how what one mostly calls love seems to combine the two contradictory extremes, 1 the mere blind intensity of feeling in which self swallows / up the world, and the absolute open-armed surrender in / which there is no feeling but only life. (October, 1885.) 19. I didn't naturally get very deep into Natural Philo- sophy [Deschaners], but any little is better than nothing, and makes me want to know more. The difficulty is to get the right sort of book. It ought not to be elementary, and yet it ought to deal with the elements of the subjects. I must say the general impression that I always get from dipping into such things is. how very much alive what is ordinarily called 'dead matter' is. What bothers me most is the place of feeling in the whole concern. Sometimes it seems as if there would be nothing without it (for everything seems only ex- pressible in terms of actual or possible human experience, and this apparently implies feeling): sometimes as if everything would go on just the same, whether it were there or not, for the energy of which feeling is a mode or accompaniment does not seem to be feeling. {January. 1886.) 20. I sometimes think one might conceive of God as a being who might experience what we call the intensest pain and pleasure without being ' affected ' by it who made everything his own without becoming any of it. 86 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS I wonder whether this is at all what happens with human beings ; whether, for example, violent ' physical ' pleasures and pains are ever, to the people who are experiencing them, the actual material out of which poems could be made on the spot. If this is conceiv- able, then it would be conceivable conversely that what is ordinarily called ' thinking ' or ' imagining ' could in- clude and be the whole thing, without the help of what is ordinarily called sensible experience. And certainly there doesn't seem much sense in what one is told about Jesus, or again in what people like Hegel say about ' thought,' unless something of this sort is true l . (June, 1886.) 91. ... I am pretty sure that mere sorrow the mere sense of loss, however it may hurt one at the time with a sort of physical pain, has no power to do per- manent harm, unless it is poisoned with regret in some form or other. And for regret as such there is no cure, just because it is the sense of something irrevocable. It can only be done away with by the belief that really nothing is irrevocable, that, while it is true that the past cannot be undone, it is only true so long as you admit that there is a ' past ' ; once get rid of time, and the past is annihilated, except so far as it is an element in an eternal now. I suspect something of this kind is the real meaning of the ' doctrine ' of absolution. I do not believe in the least that growing physically older has any necessary connexion with loss of vitality. Of all the doctrines of modern science I suppose about [ l Cf. No. 15.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 87 the best established is that, in order that anything should come into being, something else must cease to be ; that is the true law of sacrifice. The only question is. what ceases to be and -what comes to be. All living means dying ; that is obvious ; it is a merely arbitrary con- vention which gives to certain processes the prerogative of being called ' life ' and * death.' I can honestly say for my own part that I feel more alive now than I did twenty years ago, although I am equally conscious of being much nearer to death. (October, 1886.) 22. I should think literature was maddening to lecture on, but I sometimes long to have a say about something of the sort. They are beginning to talk again about a modern literature school here [at Oxford]. I hope it won't be done in a hurry, but it does seem to me that if (as seems likely) fewer people are going to learn Greek and Latin, we ought to begin making preparations to supply their place- The discussions about it make one feel how very little the classics owe their present position in education to their being literatttre. for the first thing the ordinary person says is, ' For heaven's sake don't let us murder Shakespeare, &<^, by treating them as we treat Aeschylus and Sophocles.' I suppose the truth is very few people have much idea of what a ' literary * education means or ought to mean. If the essence of it is to hand on from generation to generation the finest human thoughts said in the finest way, with all the incidental training which the study of the outworks of the subject brings (attention, exactness, memory, reasoning, &c.), then surely it must be humbug to say that a literature in one's own language cannot be 88 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS made educational. Only one must acquiesce (as one acquiesces in the case of the classics) in the results being grotesquely small and disappointing in the majority of people, as ludicrous in fact (mutatis mutandis) as a bad Latin verse is, compared to Virgil. The one important thing seems to be that people should be clear as to whether they really believe that the nurture of the soul does require the ideas of other souls ; if they don't, the sooner they throw up literary education the better ; if they do, they must accept literature as the staple, for better or for worse. (December, 1886.) Many of the things you say in comparing poetry with other arts raise a great many questions, some of which I have been thinking about lately. The difficulty which seems to me to lie at the root of the whole subject of the philosophy of art is as to the nature of symbolism (in its widest sense). The ultimate fact seems to be that one idea (taking ' idea ' to mean any piece of consciousness) is related in various ways to another, or rather that the meaning of any one idea is another idea ; so that all lan- guage and all expression is a form of translation. And it sometimes strikes one that the ordinary language about metaphor, simile, analogy, Sec., is only one half the truth ; i. e. that instead of saying the metaphor is a transference from the proper sense of a word or object, one might just as truly say the ' proper ' sense is a transference from (or more probably a limitation of) the metaphorical sense. What is called the ' proper ' sense seems in most cases to mean little more than the customary or else the historically earlier. I can't help also doubting whether there is really much EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 89 point in contrasting the medium of poetical expression with that of other arts, as less 4 sensuous/ or as c ideas ' in contrast with sense. In the last resort all words are sounds or sights, actual or suggested. No doubt the sound or sight of them in itself is very insignificant ; but ' in itself merely means, ' if they are regarded not as words ' ; and then the same applies to music, which is unmeaning if you regard it merely as sound. All I mean is that the concrete fact which one has in each case is, not certain sensations on the one side and certain non- sensible ideas on the other, but (alike in all the arts) a whole of variously related or formed sensations, actual or possible. It is not that sensations suggest ideas, but that the ' ideas ' are the form of the sensations. Poetry is sound of such a nature that, to an organization of a certain kind, it means or is such and such an infinity of other things. The sound suggests these other things because it is an element in them. How far it is a ne- cessary element in them depends on the organization in contact with them, just as it apparently does in music, for there are people who say they get more pleasure (I believe) from reading a score than from hearing it played, because possibly the sound would jar on them, somewhat as a person's voice may jar and spoil the effect of poetry. And in the end it does not seem to matter much whether one conceives of a perfect imagination as one to which there was no ' sense,' or as one to which l sense ' was everything; for by calling an experience merely ' sensible/ we always appear to mean that it is (com- paratively) isolated ; the more it passes into and is passed into by other experiences, the more * spiritual ' it gets. But I suspect all this is too remote from the con- 90 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS sideration of poetry proper, in which one must start from the undoubted fact that the sensuous element gets its spiritual ization in different ways (sometimes to its advantage, sometimes to its disadvantage) from other arts. And no doubt too, however much one may believe that there is a point at which all ' expression ' meets, and that in that sense one form of it cannot be more spiritually capable than another, yet as a matter of human experience there is a great difference in the nature and capacities of the poetic, pictorial, musical organizations, and in what their products can and cannot do for average people. (January, 1887.) 24. I think I am getting to think less of the difference between educating and writing. I feel, more than I used to do, that the fact that men like Socrates and Christ wrote nothing does somehow go along with their unique greatness ; and, without considering oneself one of them, I do seem to see that, if one could literally live one's theories and beliefs, it would be something greater than any book one would be likely to write. No doubt the great bulk of teachers are unable, from various cir- cumstances, to put the best of themselves into their teaching ; but if they could, there remains the old fact, as Plato says in the Phaedrus^ that it is the only way in which one mind really comes into living contact with *r another. I suppose any one, even a genius, would feel to some extent hampered by an examination system, al- though it is impossible to say how far the hampering effects are due to one's own weakness. However, I do not at all mean that the attraction of writing is less strong to me than before ; but when I look round, and EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 91 see the crowds of men in a state of spiritual destitution, ( conscious or unconscious, and the poverty of the average educator, I do feel that no knowledge and no imagina- - tion arid no force of character would be enough to meet { ' the demands. (February r , 1887.) 25- The doctor must have a strange experience of human nature in these kinds of places ; so many of the people must be invalids, mental or moral, and yet not mad. Though indeed one gets to feel more and more what rot these distinctions are, and that the highest health is the highest spirituality, with the proviso that the highest health must involve the suffering or depression of some part of the organism. I have been reading a queer book called Sympneumata, edited by Laurence Oliphant, and apparently dictated by his wife. It is vilely written, and most people would put it down as humbug, but I believe it is a real experience and contains truth. It goes on the hypothesis that the deity is a bi-sexual being the eternal union of masculine and feminine and that the physical division of what we call man and woman is a degeneration, which humanity will slowly retrieve itself from. Of course the ideas are as old as the hills, and gain nothing by the sort of mock scientific language in which they are put out. But it fetches me because I can't help believing that somehow or other there is a real point of contact between the ' love of mankind,' as represented by Jesus and as con-Ai centra ted in the idea of ' God is love,' and the ' das ewig- 1 weibliche zieht uns hinan ' of Goethe : and that theAl world won't be happy till it finds this out. If it were' 92 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS not such a dreadfully difficult and dangerous subject to *? treat, a real investigation of the history of love in all its , forms would probably throw more light on human nature and life than any other. (August, 1887.) It seems as if for the complete thing [making a man not only forget his unpleasant self, but feel that he is living over again in something or somebody else] there must be both consciousness of acting and of being acted V upon, of ^lAao-flai as well as of . It may be that as long as one is conscious of the two as separable, one has never known what real love means, and I am quite ready to believe that it is so. But somehow .or other, human weakness and self-deception and egotism apart, it does seem as if self-realization must include something like the ' ewig-weibliche.' (November, 1888.) 26. I have come lately to understand dimly what Green meant (or might have meant) by the resurrection, and along with this what Plato and others have meant by , saying that life is a learning to die. The physiologists YJtell one that all our senses are differentiations of touch, land if one follows this out one gets to queer results : * e. g. our present visual experience may be, to that which .would be possible to a more perfect organization, what '/our present tactual experience is compared with our visual. Conceive what it would be if we got through our stomach material for poetry and music. What is usually called ' body ' really means a -very elementary and limited susceptibility ; the more ' bodily ' it is, the more limited it is. This is the only ground of distinction that I can see between ' higher ' and ' lower ' feelings and EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 93 perceptions. Fear of death, or clinging to life, is fear of, or clinging to, certain fragments of ourselves. If we could ' energize ' a great deal more continuously than most of us can, we might experience physical death literally without being aware of it. Or again, the coarser sort of pain would become what the sense of a slight discord is in music, or a bad piece of reasoning, while the coarser sorts of pleasure would become corresponding elements in a whole into which at present they are absolutely incapacitated from entering. I am getting more and more convinced that what is usually called ' having an idea of something,' or being ' conscious of something,' is just not the idea or the consciousness of that which we say it is, but of something else. It is the fringe, so to , say, of an alien matter, and means that we are not conscious fully. At any rate nothing can be more Opposite than what is ordinarily called ' thinking ' of a thing (which means the weakened reproduction of it in memory, and is rightly despised by ' practical ' people), and what most philosophers have meant by ; thinking ' (which is the productive energy of the discoverer and | the artist and the practical man alike). In the latter sense, the more productive one is, the less (in the ordinary sense) one is conscious of being productive ; for being conscious of being productive means being productive partly in one way and partly in another; in fact, divided (and therefore limited) consciousness. I am sure most people get into dreadful confusion about ' conscious ' and 'unconscious.' They have a right instinct that to do a thing unconsciously is to do /"/ and nothing else ; and when a philosopher tells them that self-conscious activity is the prerogative of man. they think it means that, whenever they do a right thing or enjoy life, they 94 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ought to divide themselves into two and be able to see themselves as others see them. If one applies this, it seems that what one calls ' bodily sensations,' &c., are no more sensations of body than the highest conceivable thoughts or aspirations. Of course there is nothing new in this ; but I am sure I used to think that the difference between, e. g., higher and lower pleasure lay in the fact that one was a consciousness of one's palate, while the other was not consciousness of, e.g., - one's brain. If one really wants to compare them locally ? so to say, one ought to compare a little piece of flesh surface, limited and comparatively monotonous, with (say) miles of country with infinite variety of shape and colour, or the solar system ; but in neither case is there any sense in saying that the consciousness is ' anywhere.' (February, 1888.) 27. I sometimes get glimpses of a state in which one would not be aware of what is ordinarily called one's ' body,' but they are only glimpses. I say ' ordinarily called,' for the more I think of it the harder I find it to say what ought to be called body. It seems quite a relative term, and the sense in which any given person uses it depends on where they happen to draw the circle round certain experiences. What you say of taking a more 'materialistic ' view of people is quite intelligible to me. I confess that to me it is almost a matter of indifference whether I talk of ' material ' or ' spiritual.' I mean that the continuity of life and existence is borne in on me more and more. A stomach-ache is a spiritual fact as much as an ecstatic vision, only an intensely limited one. I suppose it EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 95 wouldn't do to say simply that the difference in all cases is one of extent, but at present I find it hard to say any- thing more definite. And I am prepared to find that people of a very ' spiritual ' nature are not people whose stomachs (e.g.) play less part in their life, but more. What embarrasses one at every turn is, I find, that there is a certain conventional average of experience which sets the standard of what people call ' real,' &c. I believe that even this standard is far more fluctuating than we generally suppose, but it at least has fixed associations, and we seem to classify and divide the world according to it. I wonder whether the world will ever come to value people for what is really valuable in them. I suppose * moral ' worth ought simply to mean whatever contributes in any way to whatever the person who is talking thinks the best thing, or thing most worth having in the world. What I like in Greek philosophy is that it puts that point of view so simply. It sickens one to hear the ordinary enlightened man talk about morality, whether he talks for or against it. He almost never seems to realize that there can be only one standard of absolute value of things, and that ultimately the morally ' good ' must either mean that (and then everything that is really worth having or being has ' moral ' value), or else must describe some special form of such absolute value (in which case ' moral ' will be co-ordinate with, not supreme over, artistic, political, economical, &c.). (November, 1888.) 28. I don't see any way out of the up-and-down existence which you describe. I feel more and more the horrible I 96 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS contrast between rare moments and my average level of achievement. I know that it is only a man's self that realizes this : to the outsider you look much of a piece ... I do believe that the moments are the things that give one what is best, and that they don't really pass, however much one may fall away from them. In the greater part of life it seems as if one must consent to be wrapped round with custom ; but the naked touch of reality, when it does come, is like flame through the veins, and each time it comes it leaves the blood running a little quicker. (May, 1889.) 29. I sometimes begin to wonder whether it is any good trying to expound the relation of art to morality. And yet one knows that is just the thing where people are most apt to go wrong, and also just the thing about which they are most bothered if they think at all. I think what I should like to make people feel is that, so far as they are really in an ' artistic ' state of mind, they cannot be in an ' immoral ' state. That, for example, mere killing, or stealing, or fornicating, or lying, cannot be poetical or in any sense beautiful, or tragic, or humorous ; and that conversely, as soon as there is any beauty, or tragedy, or humour in the thing, it ceases to be 'mere killing, and so on. But I see this could only be shown if one could get people not to be afraid of admitting that there is no such thing as ' killing ' in the abstract, or as ' absolute ' good or evil. They do practi- cally admit it when (with whatever misgivings) they allow their ' better feelings ' to be exercised on things which, except for those better feelings, they would simply condemn or look away from. EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 97 If you take Antony and Cleopatra, for instance, I should have thought you could safely say to any one, ' By all means go and live like Antony, if you feel disposed to do so by reading Shakespeare ; only remember that you must be ready to die like him ; otherwise it is not Shakespeare's Antony that you are imitating.' And I should be inclined to point the moral, n6t by saying, ' You see what lust can bring a great man to/ but, ' You see what you must be prepared to face if you are going to make lust a grand thing, a thing to throw away an empire for.' What I feel very strongly is that most people, when they take what they call the artistic point of view, really do no such thing. They have no conception, as a rule, of the distance of their ordinary life from that which the artist represents. They are often just as bad, though in a different way, as the Philistine who sees in Cleopatra nothing but a common prostitute. I couldn't help thinking of this last Sunday when Bright preached in our chapel. It was about 'This is a hard saying,' and put very well, I thought, what an enormous way off the ordinary comfortable Christianity of decent people is from what Christ meant. It seems to me to apply to all great men. One is not, as a rule, fit company for them at all. How many people could really laugh with Aristophanes laugh without any drawback ? It sometimes seems as if any emotion, if sufficiently thorough-going, would take one to heaven. But of course the practical question is how to deal with ourselves as we are for most of the week. Still, even so, it seems to me that what one most wants is to be made to admit, not in words only, but in feeling, that in order to experience anything at all great we have got I 98 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS to lift ourselves up to it, not to pull it down to our- selves ; and that so far art is not a pastime any more than politics or religion, though it is a real recreation if we do succeed in lifting ourselves up to it. Another way to approach the thing would be to start by considering what are the conditions of 0ea>/na what it really means ' to look at ' anything. It seems to me that the only tenable antithesis between ' action ' and ' contemplation ' is that between the alternate periods of attaining and attainment, into which human life necessarily falls. But if so, one ought to be at least as careful of oneself in moments of attainment as in those of attaining. (December, 1889.) 30. I wish they had buried Browning at Florence as he wished. I used to fancy that Bello Sguardo would do for the scene of the Grammarian's Funeral. Have you seen his last volume ? It is wonderfully the right thing that he should have ended up with the utterance of eternal youth. The life of such a man is immortality, and one could say that he had realized as much as man can the precept on /udA.iora adavari^v. The more one thinks of the way in which the great men have spoken of life, the more one sees that by eternity they have meant the present fact. It is frightfully hard to realize, though I believe the hardness comes mainly from one's inability to take things simply, like a child. One is always ' striving and crying,' instead of letting the wind of the world carry one ' where it listeth.' l (December, 1889.) 1 [There is a reference to Browning in a letter written about five years before this. 'I do understand old Browning's unconquerable feeling EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 99 Would not it be worth while to try and set apart a little bit of every day for absolute rest, and to stick to \ it ? I believe it could be done by any one if they chose. Half an hour would be better than nothing. I am continually being struck by the truth that ' the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.' It sometimes seems as if the higher you go in the scale of activity, the less method there is. No doubt one reason is that it is so much easier to methodize a simple trade like money-making than one like writing books. And also that the more elementary the demands which life makes, the easier in a sense it is to respond to them : the ' worth-whileness ' of it is so obvious. Just as again a comparatively ordinary man can be got to train for 'a corruptible crown/ but only an extraordinary one for ' an incorruptible.' I am sure the principles of all methods of acquiring mastery over anything are substantially the same. One has got to begin with the alphabet to become a little child. Instead of which it seems to me one is perpetually beginning with the hardest things solving the existence of God before one has ever seen what it means to exist at all. If I had to begin over again I should like to try to master the elements of a few big things. Till I have done this the rest is all confusion, and talking about it is beating the air. And whenever I at all understand the elements, I seldom find much difficulty in finding ' appli- cations ' everywhere. Anything presents every kind of that there must be some more chances for him (or for something thatr somehow includes him) somewhere. I expect that about the time one 7 comes to die one will be beginning to know how to live.'] H 2 ioo MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS problem, and I can't help thinking that it would be much better for many metaphysically minded people if they would think about the things which they happen to feel and have real experience of, instead of taking their subjects and lines of thought from other people's systems. I had a curious illustration a little while ago of what I suppose is the ' infinity ' of difference. I was thinking about musical intervals, and suddenly realized that under certain conditions (when there happens to be no unit of measurement present in one's mind) the difference which turned out to be a semitone was felt to be as great as those which turned out to be much larger. So too in working at the Parmenides I have ' continually felt that if I could once get clear about these ^v^jJ elementary characteristics of ' being,' I should see my way through my own being or that of anybody else. And I sometimes try the experiment of extending the name ' being ' (as the Greeks did) from things like God and man to everything, and see what happens. I am trying in connexion with an elementary logic ,. lecture to come to some notion of the elementary nature of thinking, and to see how the traditional accounts of . the subject are half - understood or half -obliterated attempts to formulate it. Do you remember our talking about spiritualism in London ? After that I have found myself gravitating more and more to the subject as one for a big book ' Studies of the idea of spirit.' If one thinks, the three antitheses of ' spirit and letter,' ' spirit and flesh/ ' spirit and matter,' cover most of the big problems in art, morality, and science, as ' the holy spirit ' and ' spiritualism ' cover most of those in religion. I believe it would take one through many of the big people of the EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 101 world, and it would embrace most of the questions about ' personality,' which I used to think of as the most promising subject for me. The worst of it no doubt is that, as Milton said of the poet, a man who is to write well of spirit must be himself spiritual. Still I suppose one would find the same to be true in all subjects : you can only write of what you have been. Have you ever thought about the treatment of lan- guage from the point of view of what it does compared with other functions or activities ? The common con- trast of words and things, or words and acts or rather the division into words and things, &c., seems so to disguise the fact that words are just a form of action like any other, and a form which has its own specific properties. I mean that one could define more or less the various powers of words (rhetorical, poetic, logical), and compare them with the powers of acting on men in other ways (by example, by look, by gesture, by music, pictures, See.). It seems to me so enlightening to extend the physical notion of energy to everything (which is simply Aristotelianism), and to feel that all that we call things, properties. &c., are forms of action and reaction, and that this is ' being.' Language is an inviting subject, because nearly all people realize more or less both the gigantic power and also the utter impotence of words : and one wants to see where lies their power and where their impotence. Men will die for a word, and yet ' words, words, words/ is the expression of all futility. (January, 1890.) 32. Your last letter interested me very much especially what you said about 'sentiment.' I suppose one must acquiesce in the word's being used on the whole in a 102 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS depreciatory sense ; and in that case, though I can't define it, it seems to occupy a tolerably definite place in my mind. I think of it as one among those weakened forms or travesties of something great, by which human nature always seems to be haunted, or rather into which it seems to be always slipping. There are lots of them. Religion becomes ' cant ' or (an intermediate stage) ' self- righteousness,' or, again, ' sectarianism ' ; public spirit becomes ' party- feeling' ; originality becomes ' eccentricity,' sympathy ' weakness,' strength of character ' hardness,' imagination ' dreaming,' metaphysic ' playing with words,' eloquence ' rhetoric,' and passion becomes ' sentiment.' By passion I mean self-absorption or self- surrender the identification of one's whole self with any object. It seems to become 'sentiment' either when the object is not big enough to absorb the self, but yet the self talks about it as if it were big enough, or again when only a little bit of the self is really interested, but the talk is as if the whole of it were. But it always seems in these matters that one must leave infinite room for differences of individuality. It is passion to be able to feel, ' To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears ' : but to the huge majority of people the words would only express sentiment. So too, I suppose, a great deal of love poetry is to most people merely sentimental, especially that kind which works much with ' conceits ' : these to most people only engage a little bit of them- selves and so leave them cold. ' Morbid ' is always a dubious word, but to me the best way to get at it is to think of disease in bodily function. I suppose the only general thing one can say is that function is diseased when it takes up too much or EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 103 too little of the^whole function of the organism. So with imagination, feeling, &c., one tends to call it morbid in another person when one thinks that one could not experience it oneself without ' forcing ' one's soul making it all go into one hot-house growth. Personally, I am more and more convinced that the cure for sentiment, as for all the weakened forms of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it, but to get to feel more in it. This seems to me to make the whole difference between a true and a false 'asceticism.' The false goes for getting rid of what one is afraid of; the true goes for using it and making it serve. The one empties, the other fills ; the one abstracts, the other concentrates. Don't you think half the troubles of life come from being wrongly afraid of things especially afraid of oneself? (February, 1890.) 33- Have you heard I suppose so of George Wilson's death ? Ned wrote to tell us two days ago. As he said, one feels that a bit of sunshine is gone out of life. I don't think I ever knew a man who was so utterly un- pretentious and unadorned, and yet who was such a real force wherever he found himself. It made one realize what ape? properly is a quality as definite as that of a sweet air or a joyous face. I often wish all the ' virtues ' could be felt in this way, and ' morality ' too. One is obliged out of concession to one's own weakness to express them in terms of their ' results ' ; but it is good to feel occasionally that their results are not they that the quality of courage or generosity or chastity is not exhausted, or even necessarily expressed, in the acts of standing fire, or giving money, or sexual abstinence, 104 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS but is a vitalizing, health-giving force, for which men ought to feel the better, or else ought to admit that it is humbug to call it 'virtue' at all. I am so glad you are taking in the spring. How everything may be summed up as ' health ' ! Did it ever strike you that Christ was never ' ill/ and that he could go to sleep in a storm, as Skobeleff could do in a battle ? (April, 1890.) 34- ... It isn't a matter which can be settled by argument (in the ordinary sense of the word). I don't mean that it is all blind feeling, far from it ; but what most people call argument starts by begging all the vital questions and ends in mere sword-play. ... I hate controversy, and I would never willingly shake anybody's beliefs, if they are real beliefs if they in any way, however crude and however mixed up with wrong things, express their real experiences at those times in their life when they are face to face with themselves. But if one is to argue about doctrines, the matter seems to me to be very simple. Take the ' divinity of Christ.' What does any one mean by it ? Does he mean that a being was born of a woman without the help of a man ? Supposing such a thing to have happened by some abnormal physio- logical arrangement, has it anything whatever to do with anything that can be called ' divine ' ? Is a person more worthy of love, devotion, worship, because he was abnormally born ? Or, to put it the other way, is there anything -divine in being produced by a man and a woman ? Take the ' resurrection.' Suppose for the sake of EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 105 argument that there was good reason to think that some- body had appeared to die and then had come to life again. Would this have atiything to do with his being divinely great and good? What has bodily death or bodily birth to do with the nature, call it divine or what you will, which we feel to be the highest ? It seems to me that argument about miracles is idle beating the bush. Let them all have happened, i.e. let the physical facts have taken place, they remain physical facts, and have no more or less to do with God than eating and drinking and sleeping. Whatever eke ' God ' means, it means the highest we can think of something in which all that we love and adore in human beings and nature exists without any alloy. It is just blasphemy to suppose that the divinity of a man who comes nearer to God than other men consists in some abnormality of his physical organization. They tell one that St. Paul ' believed in the resurrec- tion.' Perhaps he did. The question is, What did it. mean to him ? It meant ' dying and living with Christ,'/ i.e. practically, living a life of perfect self-devotion to / what he thought best. If (as is likely) he mixed up this with the supposed bodily coming to life of Christ, it only shows that great men are liable to confusion or super- stition, but it is no reason why we should do the same. What has made Christianity an invincible power in the world has been the conviction that somehow or other the life of love is the best, the divinest, life we can conceive,' and that every one who even for moments knows what it is to lose himself in others is doing what God does eternally. It was because apparently Jesus made people feel that he was living this life that he made such an extraordinary impression. But, as always has happened io6 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS with great men, the world at large could only take him in through all sorts of distorting media. The wonder- fulness of him got coarsened into all kinds of 'miraculous' attributes, with which it really had nothing whatever to do. We all do the same in our various ways : we can only take things in with all kinds of associations which hang on to our own habits or natures ; we are all super- stitious somewhere ; we can't just see what is beautiful or good as it is ; we have to make a mystery of it as if it weren't quite ' mysterious ' enough already in its sheer beauty or goodness. Religious orthodoxy is one form of this general ten- dency. It says, you cannot have the spiritual without a lot of stuff which has nothing to do with spirituality. I don't think it at all follows that one should not join in so-called orthodox rites or forms, if it helps one. They are not the private property of a particular lot of people. If I choose to take the sacrament as a simple way of expressing that I have got to try to be one. body and soul, with Christ, i.e. with the best personality I can conceive, no one has a right to stop me. But of course the consciousness that other people may misunderstand one is worrying, and I confess myself that I don't seem to get at my best times in any of these ways as a rule. If an ' orthodox ' attacks me, I am perfectly prepared to admit that he lives better than I do, but what I can never admit is that his life is the expression of his orthodoxy. So far as it is good, unselfish, it is the sort of life that Jesus lived; but it isn't really the supposed miraculous birth or return to life of Jesus that gives the man the strength to live it. This sounds horribly preachy, and I hate writing it, for you know well enough that I don't live it. Still I EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 107 have a real conviction at times of something that is in*} and about me, in the consciousness of which I am free C from fear and desire, something which would make it \ easy to do the most otherwise difficult thing without * any other motive except that it was the one thing worth doing. I don't care what anybody calls it ' God ' does J^ as well as any other word it is just what one would give all the world to be, the thing one can say least about, and yet the thing that all one's best thoughts and acts seem to be a feeble expression of. And what angers me is the assumption of certain people that this ' God ' belongs to them and can only be bought at their shop. Heaven knows it is hard enough to get at any price, and , if they have got it. or any of it, they ought to be thankful, i and not try to bottle it up and label it as their patent. . . . Religion isnt worth talking about if it does not mean the simplest, most elementary, if you like most Sy 'primitive/ convictions that one finds in oneself when one is stripped of all conventional trappings. Most ' religious controversy ' seems to me to get nowhere near the real thing. I think that book l does do something to make one feel the human thing in religion, though I daresay it might be done much better. It reduces everything to certain ineradicable wants and experiences, and tries to * show how all the dogmas, &c., have grown up from n people's losing their hold on the real thing and thai r trying to get it again by feats of intellectual ingenuity. V . . . But after all no books will do the thing for one. One must ask oneself what it means, and cling to the rare times when it does mean something. (Probably the Spring of 1890.) 1 [Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity.] io8 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS 35- I had never been before on the sort of places we went up mostly rocks and found it as much as I could do l . But I got better as I went on, and am certainly glad to have had the experience. I don't think I can ever get along without occasionally doing something physically violent. It seems necessary to prevent $(Aooro$ia degene- rating into jAaAa/aa. Or rather perhaps it helps me to realize that the qualities wanted in what are called ' physical ' efforts are really just as much wanted in what are called ' mental.' I am coming to believe more and more that it is only a question of organization where a man draws the line between ' moral ' and ' non-moral.' To every one there is a point somewhere where the sense of a better and a worse comes home to him where he feels that it matters what he does. To one man it is in a game, to another in behaviour to women, to another in writing, to another in money-making, and so on. A *moraj_man' par excellence ought to mean a man who has this sense in a comparatively great number of circum- stances (instead of meaning, as it usually does, one who has it in one or two special classes of circumstances). The trouble is that so comparatively few things ' matter much ' to one : to the distinctions of most things one is morally blind. We had wonderful views from all the tops views mostly of the same kind, in which the Dent Blanche, Weisshorn, &c., were the prominent features. I always find it is the chance and exceptional appearances that impress me most : the effect of the mere panoramic view 1 [Nettleship was climbing in Switzerland with two friends more experienced in mountaineering than himself.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS 109 does not last very long. And I fancy the strongest aggregate impression that I get is that of the mere fact that these things exist at all, in absolute independence of anything ordinarily called ' human,' and yet ready to speak to one if one comes to them in the right way. Do you find the distinction between organic and inorganic things get less to you ? I certainly do. I can fancy a state of mind in which the pressure of a stone or the slope of a wave would be as living and personal, so to say, as a smile or a gesture. (August, 1890.) Of the many things which I cannot do, but can in a way imagine myself doing, [music] is that which always has the .first place; and my favourite dream is that of getting to the heart of the world by song. It will be a great pleasure to me if you find yourself able to stay in Oxford for a time, though about this you ought of course to consult your own interests. It certainly seems as if there were a great field of activity here for a musician who has an interest in men as well as in actual production. For production alone Oxford can hardly be the most favourable place, I should think, either in music or anything else. But there is a sort of middle-ground between the pure producer and the pure reproducer (though no doubt neither exists ' pure '), which wants filling well. And in music as in other arts I am sure that any amount of good work can be done in the way of putting people on the way to understand and enjoy. It strikes me very much how the world is kept out of most of the best things by misunderstanding or not knowing how to begin. Most of what is called 'criticism ' consists, it seems to me, in saying ' I A don't like you Bl or ' You no MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS B have not done or said what I A think you ought to have done or said.' Of an honest attempt to get inside a man and tell people what you have found in him, there is almost nothing. Many of the people who have the power of appreciation have not the power of expression, and even if they have, they seldom take the trouble to cultivate the two together. (July, 1891.) 37- I have read nothing almost except the shilling selection from Browning, which certainly gives one food enough. I find a good deal in him of a feeling which has grown on me lately the feeling how grateful one is (or rather / perhaps, ought to be) for the existence of the world. I suppose it is the preliminary to the love of the world, 1 which he is also of course very strong about. Why should a mountain mean to one mostly a dangerous, or, at best, awful thing ? Why can't one take that which it offers itself to one as, as a being doing all it can if only other beings would take it the right way ? It seems to me that most of what I call my ' ideas ' of things are ' associations ' derived from certain few and limited ways in which the things happen to have affected me. And these associations are what get dignified by the name of ' imagination ' ; though so far from being a symptom of productiveness, they are just the symptom of inability to '"f look things in the face and take them by the hand. It isn't that one 'personifies' things too much, but too little : or, to put it another way, the personal element with which one invests things is such a wretched shred of one's self the offspring of one's feeblest fears and desires. I haven't expressed what I mean, but I can't do it properly now. (Stalden, August^ 1891.) LECTURES ON LOGIC LECTURES ON LOGIC [The course on Logic was opened by an introductory lecture in which it was pointed out that c Logic.' in Oxford practice, bears a very wide sense, so that the subject, if fully treated, would involve a discussion of (i) the methods of science^ i. e. the forms of reasoning and discovery ; (a) the psychology of knowledge, con- sidered as something which differs from other kinds of consciousness and which has a traceable development in the individual and the race ; (3) certain metaphysical questions inevitably suggested by the feet of knowledge. It was shown that these subjects are connected by the fact that they are concerned in various ways with know- ledge; and Logic, therefore, in the widest sense was taken to be the Theory of Knowledge. It was suggested that the subject ought to be studied, on the one hand, in one or more of the best modern treatises, and on the other hand historically ; and the design of the course was explained to be, first, to give an explanation of some of the terms current in logical treatises, and to discuss a few of the chief problems of Logic ; secondly, to supplement this by reference to some of the philosophers of most importance in the history of Logic n 4 LECTURES ON LOGIC It was Nettleship's usual practice to devote the lectures of the October Term to the former of these objects. The course here reproduced is that of the October Term of 1888, this being the last time that he lectured on Logic. The matter of this course does not differ much from that of the courses of the preceding years, but the order was quite new, as Nettleship attempted to connect most of the subjects he discussed with the idea of the ' Concept.' This new arrangement led to a good deal of repetition, which was probably useful for educational purposes, and which I have not attempted altogether to remove. In Notes A, B, C, some passages from earlier courses are printed. The historical lectures are not reproduced.] SECTION I THOUGHT, SENSE, AND IMAGINATION As all writers on logic would agree that it has some- thing to do with ' thought ' or with right ' thinking/ we may begin by asking what is meant by these words. In English they are sometimes used as almost equi- valent to consciousness in general. Sometimes, again, in a rather narrower sense, to ' think ' means, like the Greek bogaCciv, to have an idea or opinion about a thing ; and so thought is contrasted with knowledge, as when we say, ' I don't know, but I think so.' But these uses of the words may be set aside as irrelevant to our present purpose : it is not thought, in these senses of the term, that we have to consider in dealing with logic. On the other hand, we have such a phrase as ' a great thinker ' ; and this at any rate means a man with more than ordinary power of getting at truth^ a man who does not live in mere opinions but reaches knowledge. Again, if we want a person to understand a thing more truly than he already does, we say, ' Think about it and you will see it.' So, too, German writers habitually use the equivalent verb denken for that activity of mind of which truth is the product ; and from the beginning of Greek philosophy voflv is contrasted with 5odeu; or tuo-flareotfeu, to describe a process issuing in truth, or a state of mind truer than other states. It is with 'thought' regarded as such a process that logic is concerned. I 1 n6 LECTURES ON LOGIC To get a clearer idea of this activity or process, we may best consider it in contrast with certain other activities, especially sense and imagination. The anti- thesis of thought and sense is immediately connected with the further contrast between science or philosophy and our habitual states of mind ; the antithesis of thought and imagination with the further contrast between science or philosophy on the one side, and poetry or art on the other. From the earliest times good thinking has been re- garded as implying, among other attributes, clearness and connectedness. In Plato, for example, there is a constant insistence on the clearness of the thinking state of mind, and the metaphor of light is frequently em- ployed ; the thjnker, again, to Plato is the man who can trace out connexions rightly, can combine and divide truly. In contrast with these attributes" stand the con- fusion and disconnectedness of our ordinary views of things. When we attempt to think about a thing in order to get a truer view of it, the first result probably is that we detach from it certain irrelevant concomitants, or separate it from certain associations with which we have wrongly mixed it up. This is technically called ' ab- straction,' and all clear thinking is in this sense abstract. As compared with this ' thought ' our ordinary idea of a thing is wanting in clearness. This does not mean that the idea is wanting in vividness (which is quite another matter), but that it is unanalyzed, that we are unable to part its constituents clearly from one another, and that some of them are really not relevant to the thing. Thus our first idea of a triangle will be found on reflexion to comprise elements which have nothing to do THOUGHT, SENSE, AND IMAGINATION 117 with the triangle qud triangle, such as its colour, size, material When we think the triangle we have to leave out, or abstract from, these irrelevant constituents of our idea, and to concentrate our minds on what is relevant. Abstraction is thus the other side of concentration, and a concentrated state of mind is also a very abstract state. But thinking has not only to abstract and distinguish ; it has also to combine and construct. Our ordinary- notions are disconnected as well as confused ; or rather ' they are mis-connected. We associate things which have / little to do with one another, and we are blind to con- nexions which are really of great importance. Hence when we learn anything new, i.e. when we think, we/ have to disunite what seems to us naturally conjoined.! and to form new and apparently unnatural combinations.} The results of thinking, therefore, appear, to people who have not thought about the matter in question, to be empty and unreal, or far-fetched and paradoxical. The former, because the conception leaves out what the objector is most familiar with, and gives him ' nothing to take hold of; the latter, because it brings together things which to the objector seem to have no connexion at all. Conversely; when we praise a man for thinking 'deeply,' we imply that he pierces through superficial associations ; and when we say that he has ' width ' or ' grasp ' of mind, we mean that, starting from ordinary words or objects, he is able to connect many more things with them than people commonly do. The reason why the antithesis between thought and sense has been one of the first to strike men is that in our ordinary view of things their sensible properties have an altogether disproportionate importance. If you take your conception of anything to which you have not given n8 LECTURES ON LOGIC much attention, you will generally find that the most prominent features in this conception are sensible pro- perties. These such properties as colour, shape, weight are the marks by which we generally know things, although we do not exactly believe that these attributes are the whole of the things. Hence thinking has from the first been described as a way of setting oneself free from the associations of sense. It is important to be clear about the meaning of this phrase, which may seem to suggest that the truest truth would be that which had least to do with the ordinary sense-experience of man- kind. But the phrase does not mean that thought involves no element of sense. To think means to be clearly and connectedly conscious, and we can ' think ' sensible things just as much as insensible. Nor have we, in thinking, to ignore the sensible properties of things or to think them away (except where, for a given purpose, they are irrelevant). What we have to do is to think them fully and clearly, to see what they are connected with, and how much they make of the thing in question. For example, in our idea of an acquaintance certain sensible characteristics are generally the most prominent feature. These serve, or ought to serve, as symbols for the rest of the person ; but they may gradually come to obscure the rest, so that we get a fixed idea of the person which is utterly inadequate. To realize our conception, then, to gain or recover the truth, is not, indeed, to omit these characteristics, but it is to give them their due place in our reconstructed idea. In passing on to imagination (in the most general sense, not poetic imagination) and the difference between ' imagining ' and ' conceiving,' we shall find that this same truth will hold. Our ordinary idea of a thing consists of THOUGHT, SENSE, AND IMAGINATION 119 ' images,' i. e. of sensations reproduced ; and the adequacy of the idea depends on how far these images express all the properties, the whole being of the thing. That they should actually express the whole is, of course, impossible ; for, as Leibnitz said, all thinking and conversing is essentially symbolic, and every word or idea we use stands for a great deal more than itself. But the danger is that we may allow the symbol to substitute itself for that which it symbolizes, so that a part of its meaning takes the place of the whole. This is what occurs when, as we say, words take the place of things, or language reacts mischievously upon the mind ; and it is a danger which can only be avoided by our perpetually rethinking the meanings of our words. Following the same line of thought, we may consider the difference between ' im- agining ' and ' conceiving,' from one point of view, as the difference between the consciousness of a part of the thing (usually certain visual properties) and the con- sciousness of something nearer to the whole of it. For example, we can imagine a centaur, if this means simply that we can call up a picture of something half-man and half-horse ; but a physiologist might say that he could not conceive or think a centaur. That is, he could not go beyond this picture: when he attempted to think out all that is involved in the idea of a creature half-man and half-horse, his knowledge of the conditions of animal life would forbid him to suppose that this creature actually existed. So that the difference here l between imagination 1 ['The difference here 1 ; for another difference is implicitly referred to in the preceding remarks on the confusion of sense and the clearness of thought The image of a triangle would differ from the thought of a triangle (i) in containing elements irrelevant to triangularity, and (a) in failing to contain elements that ought to be included in ' triangu- larity.' For the rest, as Nettleship seems to have added, the words 120 LECTURES ON LOGIC (thus understood) and thought, like the difference be- tween sense and thought, is one between a partial and a relatively complete consciousness of a thing. So far we have not considered imagination in the more special sense, as the activity which gives rise to poetry and other artistic products. We may now go on to look at the antithesis between thought and imagination as so understood. This antithesis has played a large part in the history of the human mind. Plato, who in his own genius reconciled thought and imagination in a sin- gular degree, gives expression to the antagonism of the two ; and the quarrel of poetry and philosophy, which he mentions in the Republic, still endures. Yet it is none the less true that there are many affinities between thought and imagination, the scientific and the artistic impulse, alike in their beginnings and in their highest results. They both begin in the indiscriminate desire to express or describe, to show what things are or what they look like. Plato's os is the man who has by nature an appetite for learning anything and everything ; and the child who shows this tendency may equally well turn out a philosopher or an artist. In their highest results, again, the two impulses tend to meet; and in spite of all the contrasts between science and philo- sophy on the one hand, and works of art on the other, they have points in common. Thus (a), in the first place, both imply a great effort of abstraction and reconstruction. To appreciate a work of high art we have to get rid of commonplace associa- ' image ' and ' imagination ' need not imply these defects, and there is no reason why we should not call the thought of a triangle an image, so long as we know what we mean by the word ; for the complete con- sciousness of a triangle would be a consciousness of visual properties, though not of these alone.] THOUGHT, SENSE, AND IMAGINATION 121 tions ; and if we fail to do this, we degrade or vulgarize the work of art : a poem becomes to us almost nonsense, and a fine piece of sculpture or music appears grotesque, absurd, or even disgusting. In the same way a train of difficult scientific reasoning requires us to rise above our- selves; and it is not itself but mere words to us if we cannot follow it. The great thinker and the great artist both abstract from experience, and they both reconstruct experience, in a manner which most of us only partly understand. And (6), in the second place, they both reconstruct not arbitrarily but according to certain laws. In the case of the thinker these are recognized as logical principles, which his readers acknowledge no less than himself. And in the case of the work of art, though it is more difficult is, indeed, impossible to fix the point where individual caprice begins, yet an open-minded person admits that there is a right and a wrong, and that, if he fails to understand the work of a great artist. the reason generally lies in his own incapacity to see the right. Alike in the work of thought and in the work of imagination there is the sense of rightness and necessary connexion ; of a line, a note or a word we ask, as we do of a step in reasoning, * Is it exactly right ? ' And in the work of thought there is the same danger of caprice as in the work of art. One reason why, in spite of these affinities, science and art diverge so widely, may be seen if we consider the ways in which they depart from ordinary experience and ordinary language. The poet, like the man of science or the philosopher, starts from common facts, and carries us an enormous distance beyond them. We should admit, for example, that there is a connexion between the skylark or the cloud and the images which Shelley associates 122 LECTURES ON LOGIC with each ; but these connexions are far removed from our ordinary experience. In establishing them the poet, like the philosopher, uses the medium of language. The words he employs have, for the most part, a familiar meaning, and in the first instance suggest familiar sense- images ; but he requires us to follow him in all sorts of unfamiliar remote applications of these words and images, and to form new associations between them ; just as the painter takes common colours or shapes but puts them in a new setting. At the same time, while the poet or artist enlarges and transforms our ordinary experience, he does not desert it, but still employs it as the medium of a new meaning. The difficulty and danger of art both arise from these facts. Its difficulty is that it requires us to make out of something sensible and familiar something new and beautiful. Its danger is that, as it uses familiar materials, the reader or spectator, instead of following it in the transformation of these materials, may remain in his own ordinary images and emotions ; so that the painter, for example, instead of revealing to the spectator what is beautiful, may merely suggest to him what is sensual. It is on this fact that much of Plato's antagonism to art is based. Philosophy and science, like poetry, have words for their medium ; and like poetry they start from common objects and range over the world. But while poetry ranges over a world of sense-images, the scientific man or the philosopher cannot show you his world ; you must think it. And while the images suggested by the words in poetry are, at least in some degree, familiar, science and philosophy move away from the familiar at once. They seem bent on eliminating from words all their ordinary significance, and treating them, as far THOUGHT, SENSE, AND IMAGINATION 123 as possible, as mere signs of a new meaning which may have but little obvious connexion with the old. Thus in studying any particular science we have almost to learn a new language, and to a certain extent every philosopher has a vocabulary of his own l . The result is that to the world at large the language of science and philosophy seems formal and pedantic, cold and unfeel- ing. And when either science or philosophy is ' popular- ized,' that is, when an attempt is made to bring its ideas nearer to the fancy of ordinary people, there is always a fear that these ideas may be made interesting at the cost of being falsified. Although there is a great difference between thought and imagination, there seems to be no necessary ant- agonism between logical and imaginative truth. Unless we are prepared to say that imagination is essentially irrational, there must be a common basis of logic or reason in both. Still what we commonly call logic has its own laws or principles, which are not to be confused with those of any other art. 1 It is true, of course, that philosophers differ greatly in this matter. Some, like Locke, use the ordinary language of the educated ; the advantage of which is that they appeal to a large number of readers, the disadvantage that they tend to share the inconsistency and looseness of ordinary language. Plato, again, is distinguished by his use of the language of imagination ; and therefore some readers complain that his philosophy is ' mere poetry,' while to others he conve3 T s more than any other philosopher. It is true, also, that no philosopher can wholly free himself from the ordinary associations of words. The line between scientific and imaginative language is a vanishing line. In the wildest poetry there is logic, and in the most abstract philosophy there is metaphor. SECTION II THE VALUE OF THEORY LOGIC may be called the theory of knowledge. Let us ask, then, what we mean (i) when we contrast the theory of a thing with the thing itself, and again (2) when we oppose 'theory' to ' fact.' (i) The phrase 'theory of is generally understood to imply that the theory, and that of which it is the theory, are two separate and independent things. And in a certain sense this is obviously true ; for, as we say, we can know the theory of a thing without being able to do it, and we can do a thing without knowing the theory of it. Yet, if we consider, we shall find that really, in the first of these cases, what we know is not the theory of the thing, but only the theory of part of it ; or, in other words, that our theory is imperfect. And, in the second case, we shall find that what we do is not the thing but only a part of it ; or, in other words, that our doing is imperfect doing. Thus the real fact indicated by the phrases in question is that we may know part of a thing without knowing it all, and may do a thing partly without doing it all. Action, in the fullest sense, would also be theory ; it would be doing with full consciousness of what we were doing. Theory, in the fullest sense, would also be action ; we could only fully understand counting in the act of count- ing. But in practice ' looking ' (0eo>pia) and ' doing ' fall / more or less apart, and more or less succeed one another, THE VALUE OF THEORY 125 and to a certain extent each can go on independently ; and it is to this imperfect understanding and this im- perfect action that we commonly appropriate the names of theory and action. We may illustrate this by considering, first, cases of manifestly imperfect action. For instance, a person who is said to be able to do a thing without understanding it generally does the thing, as we say, ' empirically ' or ' mechanically.' One sign that he does it ' empirically ' is that, if the circumstances are changed, he is at sea. He cannot do the thing, because his acquaintance with it is bound up with certain circumstances, and, these being changed, the ' thing ' is changed to him. But this really means that his doing of the thing is imperfect, or that what he does is not the thing but only a fragment of it, that this ' it ' in its truth involves the new circum- stances. In the same way the ' mechanical ' doing of a thing is not, in the full sense, the doing of that thing, but a partial doing of it, or (if one pleases) not the doing of it. For example, we should all admit that a man who does his duty mechanically does not, in the full sense, do his duty. Now, in the second place, take the other phrase, ' I know it theoretically, but I can't do it.' Here the e it ' in the first clause has not the same sense as the 'it' in the second. It is true that the man cannot do the whole thing, but no more does he know the whole thing : he really has the theory of a mere fragment of it. ' Theory ' in common parlance always means such partial j knowledge, though in the case of certain subjects the I ' theory ' spoken of is much more partial than in the \ case of others, and therefore is spoken of with contempt. It is curious that 0eia with Aristotle meant just the 126 LECTURES ON LOGIC opposite of this partial knowledge ; it meant the full consciousness of the object. Again, what is really meant by the phrase, ' That is true in theory, but it won't hold practically ' ? It seems to imply two different standards of truth, but in reality the ' theory ' here again is a merely partial knowledge. When it is said of a statement in Political Economy that it is true in theory, this means that it is true if certain conditions only are considered ; and when it is said that the statement will not hold in practice, this means that it would have to be modified if all the conditions were considered. (2) To come to the antithesis of theory and fact, let us consider the saying, ' All theory is based upon, and derived from, facts.' 1 This naturally suggests that there is something, called ' the facts/ which we are supposed to know at starting, and that by reflexion or thought we reproduce these facts in a weaker form. If so, it is natural to ask what the value of the theory can be, since it was already contained in the known facts and is only a feeble reproduction of them. The whole fabric of developed knowledge, on this view, would be based on facts more true than itself; and the more we thought, the further we should get from reality. Whereas, in truth, the thought or reflexion which is here mistaken for a continually weaker reproduction, is a progressive activity, advancing from the more limited and isolated to the more connected and full. It is, no doubt, the case that in English we often do give the name of ' thought ' or ' reflexion ' to something which does not deserve the name to the otiose re- production of parts of some previous experience ; just as 1 [See further, pp. 170, 171.] THE VALUE OF THEORY 127 we give the name of imagination to the retention or recovery of some part of a sense-perception. And this 1 thought ' or ' reflexion ' certainly has no value : it is the ' pale cast ' of this ' thought ' that 'sicklies o'er the native hue of resolution ' ; and it is this kind of thought that we have in mind when we say, * Don't think about the thing, but do it.' Yet we admit that imagination the ima- gination of a poet, for example is not mere!}' repro- ductive, but productive ; and in the same way genuine thought is productive, originative. It is the gradual discovery of the truth about a fact, the coming to realize the fact more and more. The fact at starting is hardly a fact to us at all ; it becomes more and more a fact as we think ; and it is this genuine ' thought ' that we have in mind when we say, ' Think about the thing, and you will do it.' To study the theory of a thing, then, ought to mean to rethink the thing, and in so doing to recreate it for our- selves ; which is the only way in which the fact can become really the fact for us. To study the theory of knowledge should mean, accordingly, to realize gradually what the fact called knowledge means. The use of lan- guage ; discovery, observation, experimentation ; reason- ing, judging, proof; force, space, time ; causation, subject, object these are all facts, parts (to speak roughly) of the great fact called knowledge. For a man to realize something of what is implied in this fact assuredly has its value or 'use.' It means that he is so far better off, has more in him, is more in contact with reality. And as reality is one, and all truths are ultimately connected, a person who is in a truer state of mind about one part of reality, is so far in a more favourable position for understanding any other part. 128 LECTURES ON LOGIC , c Philosophiren,' says Novalis, ' ist dephlegmatisiren, /vivificiren ' ; to philosophize is to get rid of one's phlegm, / to acquire a vivid consciousness of some aspect of reality. This is the value of theory or thinking ; but thinking which is not also producing, thinking which leaves experience what it was before, has no value l . 1 There is in our use of ' conscious ' and ' consciously ' an ambiguity somewhat similar to the ambiguity of the words ' thought ' or ' reflexion. ' It is said that the more unconsciously we do a thing, the better we do it. What is really meant is not that we do the thing better, the more . unconscious we are of it ; but that we do it better, the more unconscious I we are of certain other things which are not it, e. g. of certain feelings that accompany it, or of other persons looking at us. Or again : we do not do the thing worse for being conscious of it, but because we are only ;- partially conscious of it, exclusively conscious of some limited step in it \ or aspect of it. SECTION III LANGUAGE AND ITS FUNCTION IN KNOWLEDGE IN the widest sense of the term, language (of which word-language is only one form) is anything by which man expresses or ' means ' something. What then is im- *v u ^ plied in 'meaning'? That which 'means' (qrq/xcuWt) is. always a sign (<7M*^') 5 an d a sign is something which 1 stands for somethmgelse. If there is to be ' meaning,' one | thing must suggest, signify, be related to another thing. Man is a creature for whom things have meanings; his whole world is a world of meanings. No experience or sensation of his, we hear it said, is devoid of meaning. That is, no human experience is isolated, and all human experience is ultimately a kind of language or symbolism. This fact may be put in opposite ways. Man, on the one hand, is privileged to use symbols a privilege from which spring incalculable consequences, of which litera- ture is only one. He is, on the other hand, compelled to use symbols ; and this compulsion is a limitation. All that he is conscious of comes to him through certain ' media,' which are not what they mean. All his think- ing is ' representative ' or ' discursive ' ; one point leads to another ; he gets at everything through something else. While, then, the world to man is a world of language in which nothing is meaningless ; and while his experience 130 LECTURES ON LOGIC is the reading of this world, or the interpretation of this language ; he is yet obliged to approach the meaning by interpreting symbols, he never gets to the end of it, and (in a sense) he never sees things as they are. Language in the narrower sense, then, language pro- per being one kind of symbolism, we have to ask, what are its peculiar properties ? A word, as such, is simply a sound or a sight. It is a certain kind of sensation (of sound, colour, shape). To say, therefore, that words have a meaning is to say that certain sounds or sights have come to suggest, firstly, certain other sounds, sights, smells, and the like ; and, secondly, certain further images and thoughts, with ever-growing complexity. So far, a word is on the same level with a flag. Speech has its origin in an instinctive action, but, as soon as it can properly be called speech, it is a conscious action. In varying degrees we exert intelligence and will in using words. Language is thus always being made. We are unfortunately apt to speak as if it were a fixed set of symbols which we have simply to use ; but the use of language is really a recreating of it, and every one modifies his native language a little, or creates a little new meaning ; great authors create a great deal. The question sometimes asked, ' Is it possible to think without language ? ' may mean two very different things. It may mean, (i) ' Is it possible to think without symbols of any kind ? ' or (2) { What should we lose if we had not the particular form of symbolism called speech ? ' The answer to the first question must apparently be, No. To think without symbols would be to think directly, ' intuitively.' It would not be what we call thinking, and would imply that we were always and immediately one with things. All articulate human consciousness is LANGUAGE AND ITS FUNCTION IN KNOWLEDGE 131 consdousn?sg_gj:lH f ' th i n &. through something P!SPJ if our experience were literally unsymbolic, if it were what it means, it would not be what we call human consciousness. The second question is a difficult one, but admits of reasonable discussion. We should pro- bably find that people differ more than is supposed in the amount they do with different kinds of symbols. An individual highly organized in a certain direction may be habitually conscious through other symbols than speech, e. g. through music ; and, though we may quarrel as to the sense in which we can apply the word ' thought ' to music, man would be partially dumb without it. There is also the language of gesture, and the expression of thought in action. Speech is the most widely spread form of symbolism, and has the most important practical consequences ; but it does not follow that people who are deficient in the use of it are inarticulate. The Function of Language in Knowledge. Language may be conveniently considered as an in- strument (i) of expression, (a) of distinction, (3) of 4 communication. For example, we may regard the / elementary function of naming from these three points of view. (i) The phenomenon of expression may be observed in a very simple form in an interjection. Physiologically, this, like any other mode of speech, is describable as a reaction on a stimulus. A feeling affects certain nerves, and through them certain muscles, and so issues in a sound. This sound would generally be called the ' expression ' of the feeling. The phrase is however misleading, because it separates the feeling from its K a 132 LECTURES ON LOGIC expression in sound, and suggests that we first have the feeling and then express it. It would be truer to say that the expression is the completed feeling ; for the feeling is not fully felt till it is expressed, and in being expressed it is still felt, but in a different way. What the act of expression does is to fix and distinguish it finally ; it then, and then only, becomes a determinate feeling. In the same way the consciousness which we express when we have found the ' right word ' is not the same as our consciousness before we found it ; so that it is not strictly correct to call the word the expression of what we meant before we found it. This remains true of more developed forms of expression ; and, following it out, we may say that what is absolutely unexpressed and inexpressible is nothing. We can only describe it potentially and by anticipation. It cannot enter into human life until it has become articulate in some way, though not necessarily in words. What is meant, then, by the contrast between expres- sion and the unexpressed, and by our complaint that language is so imperfectly articulate, and that we mean much more than we can say? These phrases seem all to indicate the fact that thought is progressive. As soon as consciousness is expressed in a word, that word becomes a fixed sign and enters into the web of human experience. As it is used again and again, it acquires new meaning by entering as an element into new con- texts. Through this extension, by metaphor, simile, and the like, the original consciousness goes on becoming a consciousness of more : but still the word which expresses this enlarged consciousness has, at any given time, a meaning more or less fixed. When then we say that we cannot find words for our meaning, unless this implies LANGUAGE AND ITS FUNCTION IN KNOWLEDGE 133 that our consciousness is too undeveloped to be expressed, it indicates the fact that the words at our command are so fixed in meaning that they would have to be re- created to express our present consciousness, or (to vary the phrase) that this consciousness is potentially more than will go into the known forms of expression. In such a case a word may (very rarely) be invented, or a word may be used in a new sense, or a new combination of words may be found. Our inarticulateness, the in- adequacy of words, thus means here simply the pro- gressiveness of thought and of language, and it would be just as right to blame one's thought for it as to blame one's language 1 . (As there are persons who feel more than they can say, so there are others who say more than they feel, and use sham rhetoric and the like. That is, they use words which, if taken in their full sense, mean more than is present in the consciousness of the persons using them. This phenomenon, like the other, arises from the contrast between the fixity of language and the fluctuation of human consciousness.) We are sometimes told that language becomes less expressive as it becomes more civilized. This is true if it means that what primitive language expresses is very simple, elementary, and obvious, and that therefore primitive language bears its meaning on its face. But the language of a great writer is in reality infinitely more expressive than primitive language ; the amount ex- pressed by it is infinitely greater. Compare, for instance, the ' original ' meaning of ' spirit ' with the meaning of the word as it is used by a religious genius or a great philosopher. The true reason why ' civilized ' words 1 [For, as the preceding sentence implies, the extension of conscious- ness is expressible through a modification of language. ] 134 LECTURES ON LOGIC are inexpressive to us is, generally, that we are unable to realize the fullness of their complex meanings. It is often said, again, that the highest truths are in- expressible, or perhaps that they are unknowable, and inaccessible to reason, though not to ' faith.' Doubtless to every thoughtful man the consciousness is always present that his utmost reach of thought is limited ; and we may say in this sense that there is always a truth beyond us and inexpressible by us, at which we have to try to get. But we are apt to treat this truth as if it were expressible, and indeed actually expressed as a truth of ' faith,' and then to contrast it with some other expressed truth. This has often happened in the history of thought. It is dangerous to imply that there is some virtue in being inexpressible ; the corollary would be that the less we think definitely, the better. Inarticulateness often comes from indolence : we will not take the trouble to mean what we might. In so far as words are really expressive, they are con- sciousness in a certain form which we call articulate, and do not need to be contrasted with anything of which they are the expression. We are not definitely conscious till we use the words. But language is always ceasing to be expressive in various degrees, ceasing, that is, to mean all that it ought to mean. We should try to recover its expressiveness. The most civilized language should be as direct an expression of consciousness as the simplest interjection ; but it is only to great writers and speakers that it is so. (a) A second main function of language is that of distinction. To distinguish is to be distinctly conscious. We are apt to suppose that first there is a certain con- sciousness, and that then we distinguish it. But this LANGUAGE AND ITS FUNCTION IN KNOWLEDGE 135 is not so: in the act of distinguishing something we are for the first time distinctly conscious of it. The act of distinguishing has also been represented as the act of arresting the flux of consciousness, or as an act of attention; but, here again, we must not suppose that first there is x, and then we attend to it: x exists for the first time in the act of attention. If we say then that naming is distinguishing or attending (though it is of course possible to distinguish without naming), we must beware of thinking that we first have the consciousness and then name it. This is true, indeed, in the sense that any particular act of naming is preceded by un- named or differently named consciousnesses ; but the consciousness which is now named is this consciousness, which reaches its specific character in the act of being named. The man who first names a thing may be said, there- fore, to give that thing its first existence in the human world. Such first naming is found now in comparatively rare instances; for example, in science, when the new name implies that a new fact has been experienced. But to a certain extent we all make names in learning them. For, when we learn what a thing is called, what is it that we really do? We fix a certain consciousness in a certain other consciousness (a sound) ; and with this the con- sciousness has passed into a different stage. How is this stage different? What has happened to the consciousness, the thing, in being named ? In the first place we have given it a more permanent position in our experience, and have made it more easily recognizable. Secondly, each time it is recognized it takes a fresh meaning, gets more * distinct.' It stands out more dis- tinctly from a certain background of consciousness, of which it is a modification ; as, for instance, the distinct 136 LECTURES ON LOGIC consciousness of straightness implies a more general consciousness of direction, of which straightness is one distinct form. It is thus, again, more and more com- pared with and differentiated from other things. That is, thirdly, it gets more 'classified.' All classification is a development of the elementary act of distinction, and every name is the germ of a classification. For all classification is arranging experiences according as they exhibit a certain identity in various ways ; and to name is to identify. As in regard to expression, so in regard to the function of distinction, reproaches are constantly brought against language. On the one hand it is said, ' How poor lan- guage is ! How very few distinctions it recognizes ! ' On the other hand it is said, ' How superficial, needless, and merely verbal, are many of the distinctions expressed in language!' As to these complaints we may remark, first, that the poverty of language is our fault, not the fault of language. Words are symbols made by us, but we come to look upon them as mysterious agencies, under whose power we are. If a man says he is conscious of a thousand distinctions unrecognized by language, let him prove it by giving names to them. (Not that the number of words in a language or in a book is more than a very imperfect guide to the wealth or poverty of the nation's or the individual's experience.) Secondly, as to ' verbal distinctions,' it may be observed that these are not / mere distinctions of words, for the only distinctions of words as such are distinctions of sound or shape. By ' verbal ' or by ' mere words ' we mean really that the words are being used in partial meanings instead of in their full meanings. One should beware of the antithesis of words and things ; it really is a distinction between LANGUAGE AND ITS FUNCTION IN KNOWLEDGE 137 the less full and the more full meanings of words. If we all tend to become the ' victims of words,' the corollary is that we should mean something by our words, and know what we mean. We cannot get over the difficulty by blaming language or declining to use it. (3) Language, thirdly, is an instrument or medium of communication. ' Communication ' implies two beings, otherwise different, which meet or identify themselves in a certain respect (the ' medium ' of communication). Ap- plying this to language, we must observe that the two beings need not be two different people. There is no real difference between language, as a means of com- munication with self, and language as a means of communication with others. Plato's description of thought as a ' dialogue of the soul with itself ' is not fanciful The act of naming, for example, may be re- presented as a saying to oneself, ' This shall mean that,' 4 I understand that by this,' ' When this recurs, I (being then partly a different I) shall understand myself in using this word, or again shall find myself in what is different' If there is a mystery in two people under- standing one another, there is the same mystery in ' I ' being the same at two different times and understanding itself. And, if language is ' conventional ' or dependent on a mutual understanding (*cara v0i}icT}i>), this applies as much to the understanding between the self in one condition and the self in another as to the understanding between myself and another. Communication or understanding is the consciousness of self being at some point the same in difference, one in two. When two minds understand each other they meet in a certain medium ; they feel the same or mean the same ; and this is to say, in other words, that they are, so 138 LECTURES ON LOGIC far, literally one and the same mind. For ' one mind ' means ' what has one undivided experience.' Again, the old crux, ' How can I be sure that I mean the same as the other person ? ' is in principle the same as the difficulty, ' How can I know that anything cor- responds to my sensations ? ' All our sensations are of the nature of words, they are symbolic. I have certain sensations of hardness, shape, and so on. By a complex process of inference I interpret these and judge, ' This is a table.' The table then may be said to ' speak ' to me, and I have to interpret what it says. In like manner, when a person speaks to me, I have certain sensations of sound, and I infer from these what he means : I have again to interpret. The two processes are essentially the same ; and I can be no more sure that my sensations really mean a table than that I have interpreted rightly the words of the speaker. If I wish to tell whether I have done the latter, I do something to which I have reason to think that the speaker will respond in a certain way if I have understood him rightly. And I take a like course if I wish to tell whether I have rightly interpreted my sensations to mean a table. The only proof that language really is communication, and that there is a mutual understanding (a possible 146 LECTURES ON LOGIC element in a word than to define a word as a compound of letters. In this sense, then, the principia or a.p\ai to which any science goes back are also the oroixta or elements of its subject-matter, the raw material into which the fabric can be resolved. Geometrical science, for example, may be thus regarded as a construction built up out of certain ultimate elements, such as points, lines, and the like. It was in this way that Aristotle looked at science ; and hence also he called his account of the logic of science ' analytics.' He thought, that is, that the logic of science consisted in showing the elements out of which it is con- structed. In the same way now we may hear it said that the ideal of scientific explanation is to find the fewest laws from which some part of the universe may be explained. Sometimes, again, it is said that all science depends upon its definitions ; that is, upon statements re- garding the elements of its subject-matter ; and, although it is, of course, quite untrue that any one who understood the definitions could forthwith reconstruct the whole science, it is quite true in another sense that science, so far as it is complete and systematic, depends upon its definitions. Any discussion, for example, about its more complex statements depends upon agreement as to its elements, and a refusal to accept the definitions of these elements, e. g. the definition of a line, is fatal to the dis- cussion of the more complex constructions into which these elements enter. If this idea of analysis, then, is applied to knowledge, does it lead us to the traditional arrangement of con- ception, judgment, and reasoning? Are concepts, that is, the principia of the structure of knowledge ? This structure is a complex whole, ever growing and CONCEPTS AS THE PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 147 thus re-constituting itself. It may be described as a mind holding together certain facts, or as a certain coherent experience ; and analysis should show what are the simplest elements of which this experience is the development. So that the question of the ' principles ' of knowledge may be put indifferently in either of the forms, (a) What are the most elementary facts which are capable of growing into scientific facts ? or, (b) What are the most elementary experiences which can become scientific experiences? Now the whole body of knowledge, or the sum of reasoned truth, is obviously divided into parts. If we take any one of these parts, such as we call a special science, this again may be resolved into component parts bearing a necessary relation to one another. This process may be continued until we come finally to some simplest piece of reasoning or coherent fact But we can go further ; we can analyze this syllogism into judgments (though these, we must remember, are not the same in the syllogism as they are out of it). A judgment, again, is a synthesis of two elements, partly distinct ; and these elements are called, variously, concepts or ideas. Thus the ' principles ' 01 elements of the given division of knowledge would seem to be certain concepts ; and these, as expressed in definitions, would be the ap\al of that science. These concepts, naturally, would be concepts of a special subject-matter ; but, neglecting the particular properties of that subject-matter, we can go on to ask for something still more simple, the simplest elements into which the knowable world can be analyzed, or the most elementary concepts which enter into all knowledge, and of which all knowledge is the development. If we represent conception thus as the simplest act of L 2 148 LECTURES ON LOGIC thought, it is most important to remember (in accordance with what we have seen already) that all thought is con- tinuous, that the properties of the concept will be such as fit it to be a factor, and that it must be regarded as judgment and reasoning in germ. Because this has not been remembered, many logicians protest against con- cepts being taken as the elements of thought, and point out that all concepts are implicit judgments. And this is perfectly true. We talk of ideas or conceptions as if they were isolated things, occasionally brought into action and relation ; but if we attend to any conception in our minds we are at once aware that it is no such quiescent and self-contained thing. It is no more so than a word in a book. On the contrary, every one of my ideas is in a context which it colours and by which it is coloured. It is also true that, if we go back to the most elementary act of thought, we come to something which can be called indifferently an act of conception or an act of judgment; and thus we must undoubtedly say that all thinking is judging. But it is none the less true that we can treat any given piece of thought as a self-contained whole, and in this sense can speak of the concepts of identity, being, number, figure, life, virtue, humanity. We assume, and must assume, that in each of these cases there is a deter- minate nature with certain definite characters of its own. We know, indeed, that each of these natures has its reality in interaction with others which infinitely modify it ; any spatial fact is also numberless other things ; humanity, as we experience it, is never simply what we define as humanity. None of them is really determinate, com- plete, and self-contained ; each is progressive and ex- pansive, and is continually being modified ; and therefore the statements we make about them are made with CONCEPTS AS THE PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 149 a reservation. Still the truth, as so far ascertained, can be, and, for convenience, must be, treated as though it were complete and isolated ; and in this sense we may rightly speak of the concepts of space or of humanity, so long as we remember that each of them is not really dis- connected or complete, and also that each of them is the result of innumerable judgments that have preceded it. SECTION V FORMAL LOGIC AS THE SCIENCE OF THE PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE WE have seen in what sense knowledge may be regarded as a structure built up out of elements or ' principles ' ; and also in what sense concepts may be regarded as the elements of each special science, and again of knowledge as such. Dismissing now the special concepts of special sciences, and turning to inquire into the principles, or simplest elements, of all knowledge, we may state the question regarding these principles in various ways. Thus, first, since all knowledge is knowledge of something, of an object, we may ask, What is an object as such, in the simplest possible sense of the word ? Or again : all knowledge is of being ; particular sciences are knowledge of particular forms of being ; knowledge as such has to do with being as such ; what then is the simplest form of being"? Or, once more, from the subjective side, since all knowledge is an act of thought, what is thinking as such ? what are the most elementary laws of thought, as dis- tinguished, for example, from the special laws of spatial thought or economic thought ? The answers to these questions should give us something that is involved in all objects and all thought, that type of objectivity and of thinking which will be the same everywhere. And these questions will be equivalent to the question, What is a concept as such ? if we bear in mind that this is FORMAL LOGIC 151 to mean for us, What is the simplest form of experience regarded as a self-contained, independent unity ? To our question many answers have been given. (a) Greek philosophy answers, Everything is a one in many ; this is the simplest and most abstract formulation of being ; whatever else being may involve, it involves at least this, (b) It is much the same when a modern philosopher answers, The most elementary consciousness which can possibly become knowledge is a consciousness of identity in difference or of differentiated identity. It is difficult to realize a consciousness so abstract, but a concrete example may help us. If we take an act of attention, we shall agree that it involves a double con- sciousness, a consciousness of having changed from some- thing to something. The moment I am conscious of A I am conscious of it as a change from B, my previous consciousness (or unconsciousness, for it makes no dif- ference to the point) ; B has become A, or rather BA ; or I am conscious of A as the same as B with a difference. Definite consciousness is always a consciousness of change ; an absolutely uniform consciousness would be no con- sciousness ; all consciousness is consciousness of dif- ferentiated identity, or of a many in one. (c) Another way of formulating the activity of thought is to say that all thought implies synthesis. In the most elementary consciousness there is a holding together of two things at least of myself as I was then, and myself as I am now. It is evident that these three answers to our question are merely different ways of stating the same fact. And it is worth while to observe that a famous conclusion from the fact thus variously stated is the principle that everything is what it is in and through its difference from another ; that not-being or ' otherness ' (Plato's Sophist} is the 152 LECTURES ON LOGIC inseparable concomitant of being ; that ' omnis determi- natio est negatio,' or everything is determined by the exclusion of something else (Spinoza) ; that therefore everything is and is not at the same moment. These considerations will help us to see the true signifi- cance of Formal Logic ; and of those ' laws of thought' of which it speaks. Formal logic, as a science, has for its subject-matter being (or consciousness) where it is at its minimum. It takes account of things simply in so far as we can predicate of them ' being ' and ' not-being,' ' all ' and ' some.' Its question is : Suppose I know no more than that a thing is what it is and not something else, and that ' all ' is more than ' some/ what can I infer from this knowledge? Formal logic is therefore the most abstract of all sciences ; it is more abstract even than arithmetic, for arithmetic considers also the ' count- ability ' of things, while geometry goes further still. In the same way, the laws of thought considered in formal logic are the most abstract laws possible : they are the ways in which the mind must act if it is to think at all. For instance, the law of Identity means that, if I am to be definitely conscious of anything, I must at least be able to identify, to say that A is A. The law of Contradiction, which is only the other side of this law, means that human experience would fall to the ground, unless we could say, If A is A, A is not not-A. The law of Excluded Middle, which says that, if I have thought of the world simply as A and not-A, everything I am con- scious of is one or the other, is not a third law, but a corollary of these. By using the word ' laws ' we do not imply that they are something externally imposed on the mind ; but we imply that these are the ways in which the mind acts, and must act, if it is to be a mind. FORMAL LOGIC 153 These laws are usually called by formal logicians laws oipure thought ; but the expression is objectionable, for it suggests the false idea that there is some difference of kind between ' pure ' thought and thought as it enters, for example, into chemistry. In reality, ' pure ' thought differs from other thinking in being the most elementary thinking possible, and it differs in no other way ; all thinking is some kind of identification of differences or differentiation of identities. It is quite true that the results of this elementary thinking have extreme certitude, and the reason is that elementary thinking is extremely simple, while every fresh condition brings a fresh pos- sibility of error ; the reason is not that the elementary thinking is ' pure/ while other thinking involves an appeal to 'experience.' It is sometimes said that, as soon as a proposition is set forth which involves nothing but the laws of Identity and Contradiction, its truth is self-evident and does not depend on ' experience/ by which is meant something outside the particular pro- position. But every truth, so far as it is seen to be true, is so far self-evident ; and in another sense of experience/ the simplest truths imply an appeal to experience just as much as any others. A man who follows the reasoning of Euclid reasons, in one sense, without appealing to experience ; but he is, all the time, ' experiencing ' a certain thing called space, and each new step in the reasoning is a new experience of space. The experience of space is so simple and universal, and we get it so easily, that we are apt to speak as if it were different from other kinds of experience, and as if the truths of geometry had some different ground of belief from other truths. But, while the truths of geometry are not derived from any other experience than that of space, they 154 LECTURES ON LOGIC express the experience of space ; and this differs from certain other kinds of experience merely in its simplicity. In the same way the laws of Identity and Contradic- tion express an experience, though an experience of a still more simple kind ; and they are truths of ex- perience just as much as are the truths of chemistry. Certainly they are not ' derived from experience ' in the sense of being derived from some other experience ; for to say that is to say something quite unmeaning, since without experience of identity and difference there is no experience at all. To say, as some formal logicians do, that the results of formal logic involve no appeal to experience is either false or tautologous l . The subject-matter of formal logic, then, is experience, or the nature of things, at its minimum. Its thinking, therefore, is in the highest degree abstract, and for this reason formal logic is well fitted to be a mental gymnastic, and to hold a place like that of algebra in education. No doubt the text-books of formal logic are apt to speak of it as though it were ' mere ' thinking and not connected with things at all ; but it is really a statement of what is most elementary in objects, and therefore the laws of thought are, so far, also laws of things. 1 [On experience, see Note A.] SECTION VI THE CONCEPT AS UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL WE have seen that the analysis of knowledge brings us, if we consider the matter on the ' objective ' side, to being as such, and that this involves identity and difference ; and, again, that if we consider knowledge on the ' subjective ' side we reach an activity of thought which consists in identifying and distinguishing. In con- nexion with this account of the simplest experience, or of conception as such, we may enquire into the meaning of the terms universal, particular, and individual. The simplest conception we can possibly form may be described by the word ' something.' We should identify it by calling it ' this.' In identifying it thus we ipso facto distinguish it from ' that ' ; it is ' this not that.' The con- ception ' this not that ' further implies something in which both 'this' and 'that' partake, the medium in which they both are and of which they are different forms. Here we have the germs of universal, particular, and individual. The universal is the medium or common nature in which both ' this ' and ' that ' partake, and of which they are distinct forms. ' This ' is a particular ; it is this medium in a partial form ; partial, because it excludes 'that,' which is another partial form of the common element. Thirdly, if we wish to know fully what ' this ' is, we can only do so by discovering all 156 LECTURES ON LOGIC its differences from, and resemblances to, ' that ' : here we should have the individuality of ' this.' Such seems to be the simplest and truest meaning of the three words. Every concept, as a one of (or in) many, is universal, particular, and individual. For ex- ample, take the concept of triangle. It is universal \ for it may assume a number of different forms (equilateral, isosceles, &c.), or is capable of further specification. It is particular, for it is a specific form of something more general (figure) and excludes other specific forms of it. It is individual, for it is this unique form of figure re- garded as complete and self-contained, its individuality being its whole nature, or what would be described in a true definition of it. Thus the same thing is at once uni- versal, particular, and individual. Every concept admits of further specification, and therefore is universal ; every concept is the specification of something more general, and therefore is particular ; every concept is exactly what it is, and therefore is individual. These properties do not exclude each other, but each implies the others. Universal and Particular. We may now consider certain important ways in which the relations of the universal and particular have been regarded. i. The universal, or the concept as universal, has been regarded as the capability or potentiality of assuming certain particular forms. Thus Aristotle sometimes re- presents the universal as the potentiality or vKr\ of its particulars, the yeW as the ' matter ' of the species. This 1 'The universal triangle,' or, better, 'the triangle regarded univer- sally,' is not the same as 'the universal of triangle.' 'The universal of triangle' is figure, just as triangle is 'the universal of isosceles triangle. CONCEPT UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL 157 expresses the important truth that a universal is the universal of some particular, and a particular the par- ticular of some universal, i. e. that there must be a real continuity between the two. Thus a red triangle may be offered as an instance of a particular triangle, but in strictness it is not a particular triangle ; for redness is not a differentiation of triangularity, but of something else. The truth expressed in this phrase of Aristotle's is of special importance in regard to classification. 2. The universal has been called the KOIVOV of the particulars, that which is common to them all and enters into them all. This phrase suggests the idea that the universal is arrived at by leaving out the particularity of the particulars ; and with this idea is connected the doctrine that universal conceptions are obtained by abstraction. There is in this both truth and untruth. In what sense is it true that we leave out the particu- larities in order to arrive at the universal ? If we take our former instance, particular triangles will be equi- lateral, isosceles, scalene triangles. Now, in order to arrive at the concept of triangle as such, we cannot absolutely leave out the particular properties of equi- lateral, isosceles, and scalene triangles ; for if we did we should be left not with triangularity, but with nothing at all ; the equilaterality of an equilateral triangle is in- separable from its triangularity. But we can attend exclusively to the fact of triangularity, the fact of space contained in three straight lines ; a fact which may exist under various conditions (equilateral, &c.), and which never exists except under certain conditions. To this we can attend, and this we can retain as something ' com- mon ' to all particular triangles. Every triangle is par- ticular ; but triangularity, the ' common ' or universal, 158 LECTURES ON LOGIC is not a mere abstraction, it is something which exists in all particulars. Like ' our common humanity ' it is that in which all its particulars meet ; they are absolutely inseparable from it, and it from them. 3. The universal is said to express what is essential in the particulars. This again may be taken in a true sense or in a false. Mill protests against an ' exploded realism ' which insists on certain ' essences ' as the sole matter of importance, and opposes to them as unessential all the characteristic properties of things. And, if this doctrine was ever really held, Mill's protest would certainly be right. But, when the universal is said to be or to express the essential, what is regarded as unessential is that which is irrelevant, e. g. the redness of a triangle. So again with ' our common humanity ' : to realize this, one must disregard many things usually associated with humanity. For example, in discussions about slavery, it is rightly urged that it does not matter whether a man is black or white, but that the essential thing is, perhaps, the pos- session of reason, or the capacity of forming a society. This essence is the universal, compared with which certain differences are irrelevant ; and, although people will always differ more or less as to what is essential and what irrelevant, the distinction itself is a sound one. It is a misunderstanding of it that leads to that idea of an ' essence ' from which everything really characteristic is omitted. 4. The universal is said to contain or include its par- ticulars. This, of course, is a spatial metaphor, and we always have to guard against the influence of spatial associations. But the metaphor helps some minds to realize the truth, and it is convenient as bringing out the fact that particulars, while excluding one another, also CONCEPT UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL 159 make up, or are included in, one whole. To say, for example, that humanity includes all men may help one to realize the truth that, though men exclude one another, they still form a unity. This formula is connected with that which represents the universal as the whole, of which the particulars are parts. ' Universal ' is naff oAov, that which is true of something as a whole. To naff oAow is ' universum/ a thing taken in its totality. And so ' particular ' is TO Kara p*po j or iv f*^p, a thing taken in a partial sense. The whole is more than the part ; and so the universal (e. g. tri- angularity, or triangle as universal) is said to be more, or to have more in it, than the particular (e. g. isosceles triangle). This is so, or is not so, according as you understand ' triangle ' and ' isosceles triangle.' If you mean by ' triangle ' simply and solely the conception of a space included in three straight lines, clearly there is less in ' triangle ' than in ' isosceles triangle,' and every particularity assumed by ' triangle ' adds something to its concreteness. But, if you mean by ( triangle ' the conception, or holding together in the mind, of all the possibilities implied in a space included in three straight lines, there is more in 'tri- angle ' than in ' isosceles triangle,' for the latter is ' triangle ' under limitations, or in a partial sense. This is what Aristotle meant by e pfpfi ; and if we guard against quantitative associations this is an instructive point of view. To repeat, any whole may be regarded either in its full meaning as containing all its parts, or as a sort of outline waiting to be filled up. In the latter sense we speak of 'triangle* as a universal containing less than any of its particulars (an ' abstract universal '). So, again, 160 LECTURES ON LOGIC any part of a whole may be regarded either as implying all the other parts, and therefore implying, ultimately, the whole ; or, in an abstract way, as excluding the other parts. In the latter sense a particular triangle is only part of the -whole 'triangle/ or is triangle under limitations. General Concepts and Generalization. From the point of view we have taken, there would seem to be no reason for talking of universal or general concepts as if they were a separate class, and of particular and individual concepts as if they were two other separate classes. Every concept is general, particular, and in- dividual. Every concept is general because it may apply to other cases besides the one you happen to have in mind. Still, ' general concepts ' are constantly spoken of, in implied contrast with concepts that are not general. And, further, ' general ' and ' generality ' are often used in a bad sense, as when it is said, ' That is a mere generality,' or ' So and so deals in vague generalities.' This de- preciatory remark cannot mean merely that the person says what is true in a great variety of circumstances, and that his concept is very general in this sense. It means that he realizes the concept only to a small extent, that he does not realize nearly all of the circumstances to which it applies, but lumps together under it things which are quite distinct ; that he has not thought out the meaning of the concept. A concept being the result of an act or acts of thought, the generality of : a concept will be simply that in it which is due to the act of generalization. To generalize means, in the simplest sense, to see that A is true in other CONCEPT UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL 161 cases than the present case, in B, C, and D. To put it technically, all generalization is, ultimately, seeing a cer- tain identity running through certain differences ; and a concept is general in so far as it is the result of this generalization. A good generalizer is one who sees identities under differences which disguise them from most people ; he is Plato's O-WOTTTIKOS. But we may generalize badly. We may see, for instance, that A holds good in B, C, D, but may overlook important differences in B, C, D. In such a case our generalization will be rash ; though true as far as it goes, it will be false because, from the differences being overlooked, identities will be inferred where they do not exist. But it is impossible to think at all without generalizing ; merely to judge ' this is a case of that ' is to generalize ; and to generalize is to use a general concept, which is capable of particular varieties. Individual and Individuality. ' Individuum ' is the translation of arop-ov, ' indivisible/ a word habitually used in logic by Aristotle to express a certain point of view. Any generic nature anything considered universally may be regarded as admitting of particularization. This process of differentiating a uni- versal was represented by Plato and Aristotle as a dividing or cutting up (T^V^V], so that Plato in the Phaedrus compares the differentiation of a universal to the organization of a physical body, and a bad reasoner to an unskilful cook who divides the body across the joints. Supposing the process to be carried as far as it can be in a given direction, something will be reached which may be called TO arop.ov, that which admits of no 162 LECTURES ON LOGIC further division ; that which is not the possibility of several ; that of which there is only one. Where this point is reached where in the process something is arrived at which, for the purpose in question, is fully differentiated and therefore individual, depends upon the purpose in question ; and therefore the word individual is extremely ambiguous. Thus the universal ' figure ' may be differentiated into rectilinear and curvi- linear, and the triangle, as the simplest form of recti- linear figure, may be taken as individual. But this individual again for another purpose may be divided into equilateral, isosceles, and scalene. That is, you may ' in- dividualize ' any concept in various degrees. All we can say in the abstract is that a concept is individual when it is, or is regarded as being, incapable of further dif- ferentiation, or as the complete differentiation (for the purpose in question) of a certain universal. Thus, if we start with the idea of the universal as that which contains its differences merely implicitly, any individual of this abstract universal will contain more than it, and that which is most individual in the series will be the fully developed or realized universal. In this sense we often use ' individuality.' The ' indivi- duality ' of a thing is that which makes it what it is, its complete nature, that which you would state if you were able to define it. A ' great individuality ' is a person in whom the universal humanity has reached a very high degree of development or differentiation ; one who concentrates in himself a great deal of human nature ; a person therefore of many sides, who is very ' represen- tative ' and touches others at innumerable points. On the other hand the word ' individual ' has also associations of the very opposite kind. If we look at the CONCEPT UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL 163 universal as a whole formed by the composition of ele- ments, and if we break it up into these elements, we arrive at last -at elements incapable of further division, or aro/Lia. These ultimate atoms are, in this sense, in- dividuals ; but, instead of being the universal as most fully qualified, tJiese individuals contain the minimum of qualification or character. The individuality of an ' atom ' is the least individuality we can speak of. And so we say of a person who has no individuality, 'he is a mere atom ' ; and ' a mere individual ' is one whose personality is supposed to be reduced to the fact that he is just one in a crowd, only a unit, which is next to being a cipher. Thus the word ' individual ' is applied at opposite poles. and signifies both the greatest and the least amount of character or ' individuality.' The reason of this, and of the confusion that arises from it, is that the process of differentiating or individualizing may be conducted to any point we like, and may be considered to stop at any point we like. Different people individualize up to different stages, and the associations we connect with the word individual depend on the point at which the process is generally understood to stop. It may stop at the first differentiation of the simplest universal : ' something ' becomes ' this/ and attains a little individuality, the individuality of : this ' consisting in being ' not that.' Advance a step and localize ' this ' in space, and it be- comes ' this here ' ; it is somewhat more individualized, for it is ' not that there.' To express this low degree of individuality we might coin an Aristotelian formula robf ri TTOV Kal vvv ; and, again, the individuality implied by our English phrase ' mere individual ' is the smallest amount that will serve to distinguish one from another. M 2 164 LECTURES ON LOGIC Still this may be considered an individuality ; that is, we may stop the process of individualization at this point. Just as the process may be stopped at various points, so it may be conducted on various principles ; and thus again the individuality of an object will be said by different people to consist in different things. Human nature, for example, is so complicated that perhaps no two persons would exactly agree as to that in which the individuality of man consists. Still more would two of us differ about the individuality of some particular man whom we both happened to know, because each of us would consider a different thing in the man the most important and interesting thing about him. And in the same way ' the individual ' in logic books has various senses, according as various properties are regarded as constituting individuality. We may bring out still further in the following way the opposite senses which attach to the words ' individual ' and ' individuality.' If we insist on asking the question, What is the true individuality of a thing ? we must answer, All that the generic nature in question has in it to become in that particular form. The true individuality of man is everything of which human nature is capable. But no man, no ' individual,' is, in this sense of the word, truly individual. ' Individual ' accordingly comes to be used in the sense of ' particular.' In calling a man ' in- dividual ' we imply his limitations, and think as much of what he excludes as of what he includes. ' Individualism ' again has come to be the regular word to designate the attitude of men in their mutual exclusiveness ; an ' in- dividualistic ' theory is one which regards men as mutually exclusive atoms, and endeavours to explain society by showing it to result from a combination of such atoms. CONCEPT UNIVERSAL, PARTICULAR, INDIVIDUAL 165 No antithesis is more familiar than that between the community and the individual. Yet if it is true that the community is nothing but a collection of individuals, and that the individual is merely that which goes to make up a community, it seems strange that the antithesis should be able to arise, and that controversies should be waged regarding the respective rights of the two. The main reason is that, as we have seen, different people ' in- dividualize' up to such different stages and on such different principles. A person who upholds the ' rights of the individual ' probably does not mean the rights which attach to the merest individuality possible to man, but the rights of a considerably differentiated human being ; and a person who speaks of the community does not mean a collection or whole in the abstract, but a certain body of persons representing definite interests. There is no such thing as an abstract individual; a person with the minimum of qualification must mean a person who has some standing-ground common to himself and others. And a community, again, is not a com- munity unless it is a one in many, something in which there is a commune quid. So long as the controversy is debated in the abstract, it is a mere beating of the air. It ought always to be made concrete. That is, we ought always to ask what is meant by the ' individual ' spoken of, what amount of individuality he is taken to possess ; and what is the particular commune quid we mean when we talk of the community. It is possible then to com- pare this commune quid with the rights in question, and to ask whether it is of such value that it ought, or ought not, to be paramount To sum up : individuality, as such, is any determinate character which any generic nature has assumed, this i66 LECTURES ON LOGIC character being the point at which you choose to stop in the process of differentiation. Hence, in logic, indi- viduality may be, and has been, used in two chief ways, to express either (i) the minimum of differentiation, what is just enough to distinguish one from another ; or (2) the maximum of qualification, the most differentiated nature, what is contained in the full definition of a thing, the ro TL fjv e?rat, which is also the owia of a thing '. 1 [Compare the remarks entitled ' Individuality ' in the Miscellaneous Papers.] SECTION VII CONCEPTION AND PERCEPTION, MEDIATE AND IMMEDIATE APPREHENSION So far we have used ' concept ' to mean any definite matter of consciousness ; any consciousness of ' this ' as a form of 'that.' and as, therefore, partly the same as ' that.' But the terms ' conception,' ' concept,' c conceive,' are also used in specific senses and in contrast with other terms. Before we proceed with our discussion of con- ception in its wider meaning, it will be well to glance at some of these antitheses. Concept and Percept. What is the point of the distinction often made between conception and perception? Every act of perception is really also an act of conception, in the sense we have hitherto given to the latter word, for a perception is a holding together in the mind. But, if we wish to assign the two words to different modes of ' holding together,' the name perception may be given to any distinct con- sciousness of objects which involves the action of one or more of the senses, whereas conception would stand for that distinct consciousness of objects which excludes, or at least does not imply, any direct action of the senses. Thus, in the case of any object, part of the nature of which is to be sensible, we may talk of perception and con- ception as distinct. The perception of a tree, for example, 168 LECTURES ON LOGIC will be our consciousness of the tree when we are actually in its presence and see it. The conception of it will be our consciousness of the tree when we go away and think of it. This conception may be complete or .incomplete in various degrees. It is possible that a person;in thinking of a tree, might realize its sensible qualities as vividly as in actually looking at it ; and in that case there would be no assignable or ' practical ' difference between the con- ception and the perception of the tree. Doubtless in most cases where we are said to think of a thing we leave out elements which are present in perception. (We are of course aware of this ; if we are not aware of it, we are the victims of illusion.) Still a. full conception of a thing means realizing the whole thing ; and as, in the case of the tree, reflexion shows that the experience of it implies visibility, tangibility, and the like, a reflecting person includes in his conception of the tree the fact that under certain conditions he would see it and touch it. In the same way a man with unusual powers of conception is one who has a great power of realizing what he would experience under certain circumstances, while most of us have to refresh our conceptions constantly. Thus there is no absolute line between perception and conception. A full conception of a perceptible thing, in the sense of a thoroughly definite consciousness of it, would imply its perceptibility, as well as a great deal besides. This truth is obscured by the meaning often given to conception. Many people understand by the word a partial and faded idea of a thing, and this is what they contrast with perception. In the same way we find it stated that thoughts or conceptions are reproduced sensations ; sensations which have lost their original CONCEPTION AND PERCEPTION 169 freshness and force l , but have been retained by memory, reproduced by imagination, recombined by thought. There is obviously some truth in this account, but it is not an adequate or instructive account ; for to call con- ception a fainter or less clear reproduction of sensation or perception is to omit its differentia. It would be more instructive to say that an experience becomes more a con- ception, and less a mere perception, the wider, the more complex, and the more connected it becomes. In con- ception perceptions are not eliminated, but are carried on into ever-widening contexts. Conception, one may say, is perception connected with other perceptions. If this were not so, in passing from perception to conception we should be like a man who, in order to understand a 1 [Some remarks were made at this point on the idea that a concep- tion has less force or intensity^ than a sensation or sense-perception. These remarks seem to be rather of the nature of a note made in passing ; but their drift would appear to be somewhat as follows : There is no doubt of the fact that what I feel (my irafloy) when I see or hear something is often much more intense than what I feel when I realize an abstract truth. But we must not confuse intensity of sensitive affection with degree of reality or truth. Our impressibility is no gauge of truth (though doubtless it is important as far as possible to make ourselves impressionable by the truest truth). The man who sees an illuminated turnip and takes it for a ghost may die of fright ; and that proves the intensity of his wdOos, but it does not prove the truth of his perception. We might, indeed, if we chose, speak of an intensity of thought, conception, knowledge, just as we do of an intensity of feeling ; and there is this analogy between them, that the intensity in either case can only be measured by that which, in the one case, it enables a man to do, and in the other case moves him to do. But then the intensity of feeling and the intensity of thought may be in inverse ratio. A person may, and often does, realize a truth intensely without feeling at all intensely ; and, though a relatively simple sensation may move intensely at the moment, its intensity with respect to truth or knowledge is trifling ; i. e. the knowledge got through it would enable a man to do extremely little. Observe also that intensity of conviction is not intensity of thought nor any test of truth ; a madman's conviction may be most intense.] 170 LECTURES ON LOGIC chapter, forgets all the particular ideas in it. And no doubt what are often called our ' general conceptions ' are very much of the nature of that general meaning of a book which we say we retain, though we remember hardly any of the details. This general meaning is only a fragment of the meaning of the book, and to complete it we should have to retraverse the details. In like manner our 'general conceptions,' so called, are but fragmentary and sketchy pieces of experience, which have to be revivified by recourse to sensation. If we choose (as many writers do) to confine the word ' con- ception ' to such faded fragments, there is no objection to this use. In that case, however, we must remember that the word is not equivalent to * conception ' in the sense we attach to it in these lectures, as the holding together of many particulars of experience. (The antithesis of conception and perception, as generally used, corresponds to some extent with the wider antithesis of theory and fact, already touched on in an earlier lecture. In one sense there can be no antithesis of theory and fact. If a theory is the ex- pression of any truth, it corresponds to some fact ; and there is no fact which does not imply a theory, simple or complicated. In a certain sense, however, ' mere theory ' and ' mere fact,' a ' mere theorist ' and a ' mere empiricist,' may be contrasted. A ' mere theory ' is never the expression of a non- entity. The wildest theories express some facts, or they would not do the mischief they do. When any one speaks of a mere theory he will always be found to mean a par- tial statement of something which he knows more fully, or thinks capable of being known and treated more fully. It is a conception of a partial fact, awaiting further THEORY AND FACT 17 1 experience, like a hypothesis, which also is never abso- lutely baseless. A ' mere empiricist,' again, is never a person without any theory ; every one must connect his facts a little. A mere empiricist is a man who, comparatively, sees little connexion between the facts he knows. His facts, one may say, are like isolated words, which have little meaning ; and he is like a man who knows by heart a great many words out of a dictionary, but who cannot make a sentence. A ' mere fact ' then is one in which you assume there is more meaning, more ' conception,' than is seen in it by the person to whom it is a mere fact. A common way of attempting to express the difference between theory and fact is to say that a theory only exists in somebody's mind. The meaning intended is that facts are true independently of the whims and fancies of this or that person ; but the expression is most un- fortunate, since it suggests that a fact is a fact because it exists in nobody's mind. In that case it would be a fact for nobody. As a thing becomes more true, it does not withdraw itself from people's minds ; rather, the more it becomes an essential and inseparable part of people's minds, the more true it is. Between theory and fact one can make no distinction other than that of less and greater connectedness and completeness.) Intuition and Conception. Immediate and Mediate. Presentative and Representative. These are other forms of the antithesis which we have been considering. ' Intuition' means literally the act of looking at something. The word is used in two important 172 LECTURES ON LOGIC ways in philosophy. It is used (a) as the equivalent of Anschauung, as employed by Kant ; and in this sense it ought to mean a consciousness of which the form is either spatial or temporal or both, as contrasted with any consciousness of which the form is neither spatial nor temporal. Though ' intuition ' is the more literal trans- lation of Anschatmng, the meaning of the latter term is, on the whole, better rendered by ' perception.' (b] More generally, ' intuition ' is used to signify a direct or im- mediate apprehension. To see intuitively that a thing is true does not, indeed, mean as it is sometimes supposed to do that I see it instantaneously or by a mere glance of the mind ; but it means that I see its truth without being able to give any reason for it, or that my per- ception is ' immediate.' Let us consider more fully what ' immediate ' and ' mediate ' can signify. An immediate consciousness would be one that is not held through the medium of some other consciousness. If I think A is A because it is B, B is a medium between my mind and A : I get at A through B. Any reason for a truth is a medium, a /ueVoz/, between something and something else ; and, the more media are implied in a consciousness, the more mediate is it. Can any perception or other consciousness, then, be immediate in the sense of absolutely simple ? We must answer, No. However simple a sensation is, of however little it is the sensation, it is the sensation of something. If we call it A, it is felt through, or as, something else, B. Every sensation which is an element in experience refers to something else, from which it is distinct, or of which it is a particular form ; it is symbolic, it means something besides itself; and therefore it is mediate. There is, indeed, a sense in which we can speak of MEDIATE AND IMMEDIATE APPREHENSION 173 a sensation as though it had no meaning, no reference beyond itself. We can describe it as an occurrence which comes and goes, and we can speak of the mind as a series of such occurrences. But in speaking thus we do not speak of the sensation as an element in in- telligent experience. In experience, consciousnesses do not simply come and go, they come and go for me ; and it is impossible for them hi such experience to be dis- connected units. The moment a sensation is fixed, it has some connexion, some meaning, and is therefore to some extent mediate. There is then no absolutely immediate apprehension. The distinction of immediate and mediate is a relative one. A very immediate sensation should mean a sensa- tion very little mediate, one very little connected with anything else. As the sensation enters as an element into wider and wider wholes, it becomes more mediate. To the ignorant person who stands before the fire and says he feels hot, the consciousness of heat is very much more * immediate ' than it is to the man of science, to whom heat is an element in an immense body of con- nexions, and whose mind in grasping the conception of heat goes through a very large number of media. If we use the word 'intuition,' then, in contrast with con- ception, ' intuition ' should only mean to us a relatively immediate apprehension, a less mediate as compared with a more mediate. There is, however, one sense in which not simple sensa- tions only, but every definite piece of consciousness, may truly be called immediate or intuitive in the sense that it is what it is, and cannot be explained by, or analyzed into, anything which does not contain it. If, for example, a man is told that his perception or conception of * right ' I 7 4 LECTURES ON LOGIC is derivable from and analyzable into certain quite different conceptions, which have preceded it in the history of his mind or other people's minds, he may in that sense truly answer that his consciousness of right is intuitive. And this is true of any definite consciousness, e.g. his consciousness of ' red.' His consciousness of right or of red may be ' explained ' by tracing its history and showing (truly) that it would not be what it is if certain other consciousnesses had not preceded it ; but he will justly maintain that it is what it is, that it cannot be analyzed into those preceding consciousnesses, and that, after the 'explanation,' both they and it remain what they were before. In this sense his consciousness of right is intuitive ; but then this does not mean anything mysterious, or that everybody is born with this con- sciousness, or that it can be got without effort, practice, or experience. The antithesis of presentative and representative con- sciousness is only another way, and a metaphorical way, of putting the contrast of immediate and mediate; 3$y a presentative consciousness is meant one in which the object is actually present to me, by a representative consciousness one in which an object once present is reproduced. All reproduction implies a medium, and therefore all representative consciousness is mediate. This distinction, again, though convenient, is merely relative. There is no experience in which what is pre- sent is absolutely simple ; but, the further knowledge advances, the more representative consciousness becomes. These antitheses are parallel to those which were formulated by Locke and Hume respectively between sensation and reflexion, and between impression and idea. It would seem to be the case that these dis- SENSATION AND REFLEXION 175 tinctions cannot be absolute. It is incorrect to speak as if there were first a number of disconnected and simple feelings, and as if then thought or reflexion took these and combined them in various ways. There is really a continuous process going on, from the beginning of experience, in which sensation becomes more and more thought, and is more and more modified ; but at no point do we experience a sensation which is absolutely un- related, nor is there any thought of which the elements do not eventually imply a sensitive organism. Hume's language conveys the notion that the most simple ex- periences are somehow more real than what is derived from them ; and this idea, if pressed to its conclusion, implies that, the more we think, the further we get from truth. If, on the other hand, we get at truth more by thinking more, we must say that what is given in sensa- tion is less real, has less of reality in it, than the results of developed thinking. No doubt the prevalent idea that what are called conceptions are comparatively unreal arises from the true observation that most of our ' con- ceptions ' are not the results of developed thinking, but are what Hume represented all thought as being, weaker and more faded reminiscences of fuller ex- periences. But the right corollary of this truth is not that we should take refuge in the most meagre of our experiences and hope to find reality there, but that we should endeavour to realize, to think out, those empty forms which we carry about in our minds under the name of general conceptions. SECTION VIII CONCEIV ABILITY AND SENSATION AS TESTS OF TRUTH Conceiv ability. THE import of the word 'conceive' is that in all rational experience there is a holding together (concipere) of certain elements, a synthesis of elements in a unity ; and every object of experience implies such a synthesis. If we begin with the most elementary conception possible, ' being ' implies at least the synthesis, the distinguishing and holding together, of ' this ' and ' that' Space implies at least something outside something else, that is, a synthesis of the two ; and time implies the synthesis of ' before ' and ' after.' Leaving such elementary con- ceptions as these, and coming to more concrete things, we find objects commonly analyzed into their properties. A thing, we are told, is the sum of its properties ; at any rate it is the unity of a certain manifold. Now the condition of anything being a unity is that its elements should be compatible or consistent with one another ; and, following this out, we come to the much- disputed principle that conceivability, i. e. the capacity of being held together as a unity of elements, is a test of truth, that the true is the conceivable. To take simple instances, it would be agreed that it is inconceivable that ' before ' and ' after ' should be the same, and that there should be a time in which there was CONCEIVABILITY AS TEST OF TRUTH 177 no before and after ; or that two straight lines should enclose a space. In these cases it is implied that the thing conceived (time or space) has a definite nature, which includes certain things and excludes other things. Philosophers who have made conceivability a test of truth mean that, the conception of a thing being the clear apprehension of this definite nature, anything inconsistent with this nature, and therefore inconceivable, is impossible, just as anything that can be thought together with this is possible. Thus the question, Is this spatially possible ? must come back to the question, Can I think this con- sistently with what I know of space ? The same test is really applied in more concrete cases, e. g. in the question of the credibility of an asserted fact in history. After all our investigation of evidence we come to the question, Can I think this fact consistently with all that I know of the matter in hand ? The distrust of the idea that con- ceivability is a test of truth is largely due to misunder- standing, and to a failure to realize that the conceivability of a thing is ultimately equivalent to its consistency with the sum of experience. In order to discuss more fully whether the conceivable and the objective are to be identified, let us ask the question, What is the minimum concipibile, the least possible conceivable? and then let us enquire whether this is the same as the least possible object. If so, con- ceivability and objectivity will be found to coincide, at least in the simplest instance. Can we then conceive A to be both A and not- A ? No, we cannot ; and therefore the least conceivable pos- sible may be said to be something which is the same with itself and different from something else. Try to conceive something which does not submit to this condition, and N. R. N 178 LECTURES ON LOGIC you find that your mind is a blank, and that you are not performing an act of thought at all. If then this is the least conceivable, what is the least objectivity, the least that would make a thing a thing ? Would anything be anything if it were in no two consecutive moments the same with itself, and if it were not different from every- thing else? No, it would be nothing. (This is the germ of the conception of substance.) At this, stage, then, it would seem that the thinkable and the objective cannot be distinguished. They are subject to one and the same condition or law, and must conform to it. The law of Identity is the expression of this condition ; or rather it is the condition of there being any thought at all, and of there being any thing at all. Again, we cannot conceive or have an experience unless there is some continuity in our experiences ; we cannot conceive A as absolutely independent of B, and yet con- ceive A and B as both objects. And to say that an object that stood in no relation to anything else would be no object, would be nothing, is simply to say this in other words. The principle of causality is the developed ex- pression of this truth, and therefore there is no difference between saying that it is a law or condition of experience or conceivability, and saying that it is a law or con- dition of objectivity. Thus we must beware of supposing that first there are things identical in difference, and that then we conceive them ; to conceive or think is to identify in difference, and a thing is a determinate matter of consciousness or it is nothing. So with causality ; there are not first causes and effects, and then our conceptions of them ; to think causally is to connect things as somehow affecting one another and forming one world. All experience CONCEIVABILITY AS TEST OF TRUTH 179 conceivability at its least, and objectivity at its least implies a certain synthesis of diverse elements. Going further, taking thought or the world in more developed stages, we have seen that space and time also imply syntheses of parts. And it makes no difference whether we say that each of these objects has a certain nature of its own and therefore certain laws of its own, or whether we say that we cannot conceive of space or of time except in certain ways ; so that, instead of saying that we think or conceive of space or time, we might just as accurately talk of our thinking spatially or temporally. The conditions of space and time are not one thing for the world and another thing for our minds. To say that it is a law of space that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, is exactly the same as saying that we cannot think of two straight lines as enclosing a space. To say that the nature of space imposes this inability on our minds is only to restate the fact more metaphorically. The laws of space are equally laws of thought, though they are not commonly called so. The same thing is true when we advance to the objects with which the physicist, or the chemist, or the biologist, deals. These objects involve further syntheses beyond that of space, or certain laws in addition to the laws of space. These laws again are simply the expression of the natures of the objects ; but we might just as well call them the laws of thought as it is concerned with those objects, the laws of thinking physically or chemically or biologically. Going still further, we may take the world as it is for aesthetic or for moral science. Objects here are qualified in still more complex ways, or involve many new syntheses. Take a line as it enters first into a triangle, N a 180 LECTURES ON LOGIC then into a crystal, and then into a picture, and you see that at each stage it belongs to an object more complex than the last. Each of these objects, however, has a nature and laws of its own to which the line must con- form. And here again the laws of the aesthetic object are equally laws of our thinking aesthetically ; or there is, as we say, a logic of art, as also of morality. For instance, when we say that it is inconceivable that the same act should be perfectly honourable and perfectly dishonourable, i. e. that we cannot hold the two things together in the mind, we imply that morality has prin- ciples or laws which are alike laws of its nature and of conceivability. It may be answered that the inconceiv- ability would not be the same to a person who had not our moral experience, but it is equally true that it is only to a person who has our experience of space that our spatial conceivabilities and inconceivabilities would be conceivable and inconceivable. Or take the case of art : an artist might say, 'These two colours, or these two lines, cannot be thus combined, for they contradict one another ' ; and this expresses a principle the same in kind as that expressed in the statement that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. No doubt the principles in the two cases are extremely different ; and about the one there may be much controversy, whereas there is little about the other. But any one who assumes the existence of laws in anything, or who speaks of a ' right ' and a 'wrong' in regard to it, really commits himself to the principle that the right in that sphere is equivalent to the conceivable. To say that a combination of two tones is musically wrong is to say, ' I cannot, consistently with the laws or principles of musical thinking, conceive or hold together those two tones.' To sum up, then, each CONCEIVABILITY AS TEST OF TRUTH 181 sort of object has its own laws, and every such law is a law of conception. Every one admits some laws of conceivability and applies them to objects. Every one, in other words, admits in some cases that the conceivable is identical with the empirically possible. But different people draw the line differently. What is conceivable to one person or age may be inconceivable to another, and what is con- ceivable to a person at one time may be inconceivable to him at another. What can be conceived by a person is ultimately determined by his experience ; his con- ception of an object is proportionate to his experience of it (' experience ' being taken in the widest sense, as equivalent to what he has been, or thinks he might be, conscious of). And the same thing is true of any age. Take the case of the antipodes, which were once incon- ceivable. They were inconceivable at a time when certain conceptions of motion, &c., were held ; and the people of that time might justifiably deny that they existed. The facts from which those people argued were facts of observation, and they remain so ; but they were to those people more limited facts than they are to us, and what we call the same facts are the same with great additions. If we take the phrase 'the sun rises,' it means very different things at different times. It remains always true that the sun occupies a higher position relative to me at noon than at ten o'clock ; but some people have interpreted this fact by the idea that a chariot and horses were being driven up a steep road, and others by the conception of the body called the sun actually moving up the sky. The different conceptions which different people have expressed by the word ' sun ' depend on the other conceptions with which this conception ' sun ' is i82 LECTURES ON LOGIC connected in their minds, and on the ways in which it is connected. It remains at this day quite conceivable that the sun goes round the earth, if that means that one yellow body goes round another ; but an astronomer would say that it is inconceivable that the sun goes round the earth, i.e. that if you realized mentally all the conditions involved in the conception you would find it self-contradictory. In the same way, as we have seen, there is no difficulty in conceiving a centaur, so long as your conception is merely spatial ; but a biologist would say that if you saw all that is involved in a centaur you would pronounce it inconceivable. When, then, is a man justified in saying that a thing is inconceivable ? When, and in so far as, he has reason to believe that he has exhausted the conditions of the phenomenon in question. Otherwise his logical course is to suspend his judgment. And towards most things this is obviously our proper attitude ; they are neither conceivable nor inconceivable ; in regard to them we are aware of our limitations. There is no surer sign of a really educated mind than the power of pronouncing and of suspending judgment at the right times. The more educated we are, i. e. the wider our intelligent experience is, the more things are inconceivable to us, and (we must add) the more things are conceivable. It is not ignorance which has the widest possibilities. If by ' conceivable ' we mean ' able to be held together so as to be coherent,' the true is also the conceivable. But ' conceivable ' ought not to be understood in the narrow and superficial sense commonly attached to it ; it does not mean ' able to be pictured.' ' Can you conceive a thing ? ' ought to mean, ' Can you think it completely out?' Really to do this is, of course, TEST OF TRUTH 183 impossible ; but when a man comes to the point where he can conscientiously say, ' If this is true, or if that is not true, then the whole of the rest of my experience fells to the ground,' then he is justified in pronouncing the one thing to be inconceivable, and the other to be conceivable. Test of Truth. The point in speaking of conceivability as a test of truth is that everything is experienced as an element in or of something else, as something related in a more or less determinate way to something else in one world. The conceivable is that which admits of being thought along with certain other things according to certain prin- ciples of union or synthesis. To apply to anything the test of conceivability is to try whether it fulfils this con- dition. It will be worth while to look more closely at the meaning of ' test.' In the first place, ' testing ' clearly implies that the test we employ is something different from the thing tested ; we cannot in strictness speak of testing a thing by itself. To ask whether a thing is really what I take it to be, whether A is really A, is to ask whether A is related to other possible experiences B, C, as I suppose it to be. To test an experience A is to try to actualize some other possible experience B which we expect to accompany it, which we have reason to believe ought to be present if A is really A. For example, I go into a dark room, and, touching something, I ask if it is really a table. This question does not mean, Is the sensation of touch really a sensation of touch ? It means, If a candle were lighted, should I see something of a certain colour and shape ? If I lifted this something, should I have a certain i8 4 LECTURES ON LOGIC impression of weight ? and so on. Every question I ask about experience A, the sensation of touch, expects for its answer other experiences, B, C, D, which I have come to hold together with A in the conception of table. In other words, ' table ' stands for a synthesis or principle, according to which I expect certain experiences to be connected in certain ways. Again, even supposing I ask the question, Is A, the sensation of touch, really a sensa- tion of touch ? this question, if it means anything, requires for its answer a reference to something beyond A. It may mean, for instance, Am I interpreting the sensation rightly, or am I under an illusion such as is possible, in a morbid condition of the organism, regarding the simplest sensation ? And this means, in other words, Am I right in assuming that, along with the sensation, something else is present (a certain modification of the nerves of my skin, for example) which would be present if the sensation were a sensation of touch ? About a literally simple feeling there can be no question raised, for such a feeling is not a constituent of our experience. Every feeling we are conscious of is felt as a modification of another feeling, or in contrast with another, or in some way which compels us to regard it as a related feeling. By no possibility can we raise the question whether a feeling is real without going beyond the feeling itself, and, in effect, asking whether something else is there. Thus, to ' test ' any experience is, literally, to ' try' it, to experiment with it. And all experimentation, the most ignorant and the most scientific, means, ultimately, trying to experience the same thing over again in a different context. It means either trying whether something else which we expect to accompany the thing does accompany TEST OF TRUTH 185 it, or trying whether the thing remains the same when the circumstances are altered. I test my incipient judg- ment that this is a table by adding a fresh element, a visual sensation, or another sensation of touch. The experiment is very simple and comes to an end very soon ; but the most difficult and prolonged experimenta- tion is, in principle, the same process. All progress in knowledge is, in this wide sense, a gradual process of experimentation. Every judgment is the expression of a hypothesis which waits to be confirmed, or not, by experiment. Or, to put it otherwise, in every significant judgment we state that something of which we have had experience is now being experienced under different circumstances, that the thing in question is the same thing with a difference. And to test the judgment is to try whether the thing is the same. Every concept, in the same way, may be said to be a certain form of synthesis waiting to be filled up. The ultimate postulate of all experience is that of a self which is the centre and unity of all experiences, or (it is the same thing) of a world which is one through all its changes. This is the most elementary concept or form of synthesis, that which I bring to all experience, and which I expect every experience to fill up. Every specific concept is a specific form of synthesis ; and the question of what kind are the other elements B, C, D, which we expect to coexist with A, depends on the question what is the specific form of synthesis concerned. Space, for instance, is such a specific form, which we bring to the world, and under which the world shows itself to us in a certain aspect. If we take the judgment, ' That is two feet off/ a judgment of spatial distance, ' two feet ' is the concept which awaits experience, and the other element 186 LECTURES ON LOGIC in the synthesis by which I roughly test it may be a certain amount of the stretch of my arm. The concept of space is gradually filled up, the nature of space is gradually discovered, by all sorts of more elaborate experiments. A geometer in reasoning is perpetually constructing new cases of something of which he has already a general conception. Geometrical reasoning may be said to consist in wondering whether a thing is possible, and then trying it by experiment ; and the good experimenter in any science is the man who sees how to make a good test of the possibility he has in his mind. Every experiment, then, is governed by the conception we bring to it ; and every conception is a certain ex- pectancy or form of synthesis, waiting to be tested and filled up. The most elementary or general of these expectancies has been described above, but it is also often described as the conception or principle of the uniformity of nature. This means simply that there would be no experience, no world, for us unless we expected things to retain their identity or to behave in certain permanent ways. If this expectancy were not fulfilled there would be no things at all. The prin- ciple of the uniformity of nature is simply the principle of identity in difference. If you never had two ex- periences in some sense identical, you could have no experience ; and any two experiences in any way iden- tical are experiences of the uniformity of nature. The phrase does not mean that nature continually repeats herself ; in one sense nature never repeats herself ; every identity we observe is accompanied by difference. The phrase does not imply monotony or exclude variety. It means, 'A is always A, though it may occur with the SENSATION AS TEST OF TRUTH 187 differences B, C, D . . ' All problems of testing or verification resolve themselves into the question, Is this, which I suppose to be A, really A? Sensation as Test of Truth. We have seen that testing anything implies that some- thing else is in some way related to the thing in question, and related to it according to some determinate rule or principle. In ordinary practice we test only to a limited point ; and there are certain conventional tests agreed on. which differ according to the field of knowledge concerned. Such a conventional test, for example, is tangibility, which seems as a rule to have the prerogative even over visibility, probably because touch is the earliest vehicle of experience and the most continuously present. We may, however, raise the question, What is the ultimate test, and what is the point in which we should stop in the process of verification ? In the abstract we can only answer, The ultimate test is that about which there can be the least possible doubt ; that in which I am most directly conscious of being what I judge myself to be ; and verification should stop at the point at which I am obliged to say that, if this is not what I judge it to be, I am not at all. The question, however, would still remain, In what form then do I realize my own existence most fully? When, where, how, does the certainty of it most come home to me? And to this question most people would probably answer that some form of sense-perception is the mode in which we most directly realize our own existence. Hence it is sometimes said that the ultimate test of all truth is the possibility of sensation ; a statement which sounds like the opposite of the doctrine that the test i88 LECTURES ON LOGIC of truth is conceivability. What then does this state- ment mean ? It can hardly mean that the most real reality is visibility or tangibility. No one would assert that these properties of the world are more real than any others ; no one would say, to take a very crude instance, that the reality of God depends upon whether you can touch him or not. The statement must ultimately mean that, we being what we are, and getting all our experience, as we do, through sensitive organs, nothing is real which does not admit of affecting us at least in the way of sensation. As simple sensible qualities are the beginnings, the apxai, of all experience, the centre from which we perpetually advance, so, however far afield we go in discovery, they remain the limitations of human ex- perience. This is obviously the case with the physical world. It is, indeed, perfectly true that, in one sense, the solar system and its laws are not sensible objects ; that no one can touch the laws of motion ; that the conception of motion is one obtained by very great effort of thought, and that almost all statements made about moving bodies are complicated inferences. Still the truth of a theory of motion does include the pos- sibility of experiencing certain sensations ; and a man of science, like Newton, would admit that, unless under certain circumstances he could experience certain sensa- tions of sight, his theory of motion would fall to the ground. In this sense the possibility of experiencing such sensations is a test of theory ; or, to put it other- wise, suppose the theory to be absolutely verified, then among other elements in this verification one would be certain sensations. Certainly there would be no ground for saying that this element is more a test of truth than SENSATION AS TEST OF TRUTH 189 others. Visual and other sensations get their prominence merely from their simplicity, and because they are a test which every one can apply. But it remains true that in all human experience some relation to a sensitive or- ganism is a necessary element, and that a conception which ignores this is so far untrue. ' In all human experience ' ; for the statement holds good beyond physical experience. Duty, for example, is a human experience, an experience of beings with a sensitive organization. Duty is not sensible ; but we cannot ex- perience it, cannot do an act of duty, without at the same time having certain sensitive experiences. A con- ception of duty, therefore, which did not ultimately include the human body in it would be illusory ; there would be no object answering to it in human experience. If it is true in this sense that sensation is a necessary element in every conception, and is thus a test of truth, how is it that sensation is also spoken of as the most illusory thing in the world ? How is it that we find such opposite things said of it, and of its importance in knowledge ? When we say that any experience is illusory, we really mean that it is wrongly interpreted, we never mean that it has no existence. We often talk as though there were something of which we can speak and think, and which yet is unreal ; but an unreal thing is simply nothing, and what we call illusory is not unreal. If a person sees what he takes to be a ghost, while it is really a turnip with a candle in it, he is under an illusion. But his visual sensations are not unreal ; they are as real as his alarm ; his illusion consists in going beyond them and interpreting them into a supernatural phenomenon. All falsehood is of the nature of misinterpretation. Just as 190 LECTURES ON LOGIC a true experience means one that is rightly connected with others, so a false or illusory experience is one that is wrongly connected with others. And, as we have seen, there is no way of testing the truth or falsehood of an experience except by going beyond it, and seeing whether it is connected with certain other experiences in certain ways. * Accordingly, when we say that sensation is illusory, what we mean is not that it is unreal, but that it enables us to go with safety only a very little way beyond itself, and that it gives very wide opportunities for misinter- pretation. Visual sensation, for example, is extremely un- trustworthy, in the sense that, if we confined ourselves to what we can strictly be said to see, we should be confined within a very narrow circle, and should make all kinds of mistakes. The more nearly sensation approaches to mere sensation, the more isolated is it, the less extensive and connected is the experience of which it forms a part, and therefore the more opportunity is there for illusion ; it is likely to be taken to mean the wrong thing because it may mean so many things. Conversely, as we have already seen, the wider the context in which a thing becomes an element, the more conceivable it becomes ; and every fresh connexion makes it more conceivable or true. The truest and most tested truths are, therefore, those which express the widest uniformities, are the same in the greatest number of differences, hold good in the largest contexts ; and the truths least true, least tested, and most liable to misinterpretation, are the most limited, those that hold good in the narrowest contexts. Such are the judgments based most directly on sensation ; and this is the ground of the polemic against sensation. The old comparison of the process of acquiring know- SENSATION AS TEST OF TRUTH 191 ledge to the reading of a book may illustrate the truth about sensation. If we take a single word at random out of the book, how much truth or meaning has it? Apart from its sentence, paragraph, chapter, its meaning is reduced to a minimum. So it is with a simple sensation. Some meaning the word has (for it would not be itself if it did not suppose some context), but its meaning is as little as it can be ; and so it is again with a sensation, which would be nothing if it did not tell us of something else. Again, as long as you consider merely the isolated word, you may interpret it in many ways, and all of them may be wrong ; but with every extension of the context of the word its meaning becomes more certain ; and this also holds of a sensation. On the other hand, the whole meaning of the sentence, and, in a sense, the whole meaning of the book, may be said to depend on the understanding of a single word l ; and so it may be said that a given piece of truth is not true to me unless it comes home to me through some simple sensation, and unless I experience that element of it ; and its truth may be said to depend on the possibility of its being thus experienced. Hence the progress of knowledge and truth consists in the gradual widening of experience ; that is, in our con- tinually experiencing the same things in fresh contexts. And we must remember that every bit of truth, in being tested, also tests. I find out what this word means by comparing it with the same word in other passages ; and in the process it not only receives meaning, but gives it It is not merely the case that every new experience adds 1 Or rather, to interpret the book, you must know at least the min- imum of the meaning of the language, and, if the book does not at least mean that, it will mean nothing to you. 192 LECTURES ON LOGIC something to previous knowledge ; it affects and modifies that knowledge. Knowledge is not a process of mere accretion. This is seen in a startling way in the effect of a great discovery or a new idea ; it may revolutionize the whole mind of a generation ; it does not merely add to the circumference of knowledge, it penetrates to the centre and rearranges the whole body of ideas. Hence, again, it follows from the nature of the progress of experience that no concept, no ' meaning,' can be final. If you ask at a given time what is the conception of a certain thing, the answer may attempt to fix the experience of mankind for the moment, and to define it by drawing imaginary limits ; but this can be only for the moment. SECTION IX CONCEPT AND THING. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE. SELF AND NOT-SELF 1 WE have considered certain antitheses in which con- ception is contrasted with perception, or a mediate and representative mode of apprehension with an intuitive or presentative. We pass now to another set of antitheses. which appear to place conception or thought, as some- thing ' subjective,' in opposition to things, or reality, or what is ' objective.' I. What is meant by the antithesis of Concept and Thing? A concept is sometimes contrasted with a thing on the ground that it is merely something ' in my mind.' But, if ' concept ' has the meaning we have assigned to it, there can be no ultimate contrast of this kind. The thing ' tree ' is my various experiences of it in presence of it and in thinking of it ; and every word that I use in describing this thing expresses, and must express, my consciousness or experience. The tree ' outside ' my consciousness of it is simply nothing to me. In the same way a triangle, i. e. the space contained between three straight lines, is an object of consciousness, and there can be no ultimate contrast between this concept and the thing triangle or the fact of triangularity. What sense, then, can we give to the distinction? 1 [Compare Note C.] ... O i 9 4 LECTURES ON LOGIC (a) I can distinguish between the fact of triangularity and my concept of triangularity if I mean by the latter my experience of triangularity as accompanied by other experiences, feelings, &c. ; and if I mean by the former my experience of triangularity, regarded as disconnected from these other irrelevant experiences. Again (b), in another way my concept may be distinguished from the thing or fact. My concept of triangularity may well be an inadequate concept : it is so, for instance, if a triangle means to me nothing more than a space contained be- tween three straight lines. A man who knew more would say that my conception was a long way off the fact, and he would be right. But that which he calls the ' fact ' would not be different in kind from my conception ; it would be my conception very much extended. The contrast here, then, between concept and fact is really the contrast between a less complete and a more com- plete conception. In the same way a scientific conception is said to be much nearer to the ' fact ' than a popular conception, not because it is composed of elements dif- ferent in kind from those which form the popular con- ception, but because it contains more elements, and because these elements are better arranged. And though the most scientific conception falls short of the fact, and is only ' nearer ' to it, this ' fact ' is still nothing but an extension of the experience contained in the conception. If a man could experience the whole fact, he would not cease to conceive it, he would conceive it more. Concepts, then, are not mysterious somethings which intervene between us and things, the ' concepts ' to which Mill objects as misleading superfluities added to names and things. A concept is a certain experience held together in the mind. My experience of a thing is what SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE 195 I am conscious of about it, and this is my conception of it. II. Subjective and Objective. With the antithesis of concept and thing is connected that of subject and object, and that of subjective and objective. As to the usage of the words subjective and objective, it is curious that the sense they commonly bear now is just the opposite of their original meaning. ' Sub- jectivum/ in the writings of the Schoolmen, where it first appears, applies to the real subject of attributes, the viroicct/jOToir of which they are predicated. ' Objectivum ' is used of anything regarded as an object to us (ojriiceifieror) or * idealiter,' L e. from the point of view of our idea of it. Gradually * subjectum ' came to be appropriated to one particular subject of attributes, namely, the human mind or self In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the modern usage was becoming tolerably fixed ; but Berkeley still employs ' objective ' in the old sense ; for instance, when he says that, as the esse of things ispercipi, ' their real and objective nature is the same.' As used now, the words are strictly correlative terms, the one being taken to imply a contrast with the other. It is difficult to detach from the chaos of their meanings a few round which the rest may be grouped ; but the antithesis is used to convey the following principal contrasts : (1) Between the experience of this or that individual, and the experience of mankind, or of some group of individuals, or of scientific men. (2) Between human experience in general, and the world as it may be supposed to appear to some other being or beings. 03 196 LECTURES ON LOGIC (3) Between that which is in consciousness or exists for a mind, and that which is outside consciousness or un- related to a mind. There is, we must first observe, an implication com- mon to all three antitheses. When people contrast any experience, as ' subjective/ with something described as ' objective,' they mean to convey that the former is less true or real than the latter. For example, in think- ing of heat, we are told to put aside heat in the ' sub- jective ' sense, i. e. anybody's particular susceptibility to heat, the implication being that this has little to do with the real or objective nature of heat. And so in the sphere of art or of morality what is called ' subjective ' is understood to be less true than what is called ' ob- jective.' Now this distinction of degrees of truth or reality is one that we want to make and must make ; but it is unfortunate that the words ' subjective ' and ' objective ' should be chosen to convey it. For a ' merely subjective ' idea is just as much an ' object ' as anything else in the world, and my particular feeling of heat just as much an object as the ' objective ' heat of the physicist. And conversely the ' objective,' however true or real it may be, is just as much an object of mind as the merest whim or fancy. Unfortunately, however, ' subjective ' and ' objective ' are apt to suggest the antithesis of ' in the mind ' and ' outside the mind ' ; and therefore we must be on our guard against the influence of that antithesis if we choose to use ' subjective ' and ' objective ' to convey the perfectly justifiable distinction of degrees of truth or reality. i. Bearing this in mind, we may say that, in the first usage of the words which we have to consider, ' subjective ' generally means the experience of random SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE 197 individuals, ' objective ' the experience of mankind (or sometimes of educated mankind) ; the one is ro 18101;, the other TO KOLVOV. Now of course numbers, as such, can be no criterion of truth ; and yet on certain subjects (for in this matter there is a great difference between different subjects) TO -rraa-L OOKOVV, universal consent (which is never really universal), is important to ascertain, and the agree- ment of many minds in one view gives a certain prob- ability in favour of its truth. But the reason lies not in the number as such, but in the diversity of opinions, feelings, circumstances, through which the view persists. The LOLOV has, in comparison, the less probability of truth, because it belongs only to a limited area of human nature ; the KOLVOV has the greater probability, because it holds through a larger area of differences. We may observe that the truth is noiv6v> also, in the sense that it unites : different people are united in so far as they all see the same thing to be true ; it is ignorance and prejudice that isolate. The distinction of ' subjective ' and ' objective,' in this sense, is a relative distinction. Probably there is no truth which is merely true in one place, at one moment, and for one person. Nor is there any truth in which all the people in the world would agree. But the progress of knowledge, or the increase of truth, means that the irrelevant elements in each man, those which do not affect the thing in question, are more and more put aside, and the essential elements more and more recog- nized and agreed upon ; and we may, if we choose, call this an increase of the ' objective' at the expense of the ' subjective.' 2. Secondly, ' subjective ' may be extended to mean that which is true for man, and ' objective ' may be 198 LECTURES ON LOGIC taken to mean some truer truth the world as it may be conceived to be to some higher and fuller intelligence. If we use the words thus, we must remember that it is we men who use them and for whom the antithesis exists. To talk of anything outside human experience is, ipso facto, to bring it into human experience. How, then, can we men speak, with any sense, of the subjective as that which is for man, and of the objective as that which is for some higher intelligence ? We must answer that the contrast, whatever it means, cannot be one between a reality which implies consciousness, and a reality which implies none. If the 'objective' is to signify a more real world than the world as it is for us, we can only attach a meaning to the ' objective ' by thinking of the world as it is for us modified in some way. If I contrast my 'subjective' view with the ' objective ' view of a man who knows better than I, I do not suppose an absolute break between my mind and his ; the difference is one of degree, and the two views are connected. And in the same way, if I contrast the knowledge of mankind with a more perfect knowledge, this ' objective ' knowledge must be a continuation and completion of the ' sub- jective ' knowledge. Otherwise the ' objective ' is a mere blank, and it is idle to speak of it. In this sense, again, we may speak of an ' unknowable,' and may represent the unknowable as the objective ; only we must remember that in so speaking of the unknowable we are knowing it knowing it as the ' beyond ' of the known. If it be said that this is a contradiction in terms, we can only answer that it is the fact : man is conscious at one and the same time of knowing and not knowing 1 . If we 1 [Compare Note A.] SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE 199 like, then, to use ' subjective ' for the determinately known, and the correlative 'objective' for the 'beyond' of that the 'beyond' which is always present well and good ; only the distinction will not be one between that which is matter of conscious experience and that which is not. J It is well to insist on this because of the constant association of the word 'objective' with the idea of an existence out of relation with consciousness. There is a notion, for example, that we should come to such an ' objective reality ' if we could analyze the world back into its simplest constituents. Thus some popularized views of science convey the impression that, if every- thing could be shown to be some form of matter and motion, matter and motion would be the objectively real, compared with which everything else would have only a subjective reality. And this corresponds with the earliest formulation of the antithesis of subjective and objective in the saying of Democritus, v6p<* yXvKv nal von? eWt iraira), for what is gradually actualized by us must be eternally actualized somewhere. The doctrine of innate ideas, originated by Descartes and developed by his followers, was really an attempt to bring out the same fact. It did not imply that people are born in pos- session of fully developed ideas and ultimate truths. It meant that the very fact of our getting these ideas implies an activity which is not derivable from anything else, and which is always in advance of its experience. Kant's doctrine of a priori forms of perception and under- standing is substantially the same idea. The real point of the phrase a priori is that the modes of our experience, the ways in which we experience what we do experience, are always in advance of what at any given moment we have experienced. The truth pointed to by such theories as these, and by the misleading phrase about an element in experience which is not given by experience, is that all experience is a double fact. In experiencing anything, we are aware that we do not experience the whole of what we say we experience. In other words, experience itself, the concrete fact, is the union of two dis- tinguishable but inseparable elements, actual and possible. It is a yiyvofjLfvov, a coming to be. One ought not, in strictness, to say that experience suggests something beyond itself, for experience is the suggestion of something by something which is not yet it ; just as any growing thing does not merely suggest something beyond itself, but is at any moment beyond itself. For example, we say that we have experience of causal con- nexion ; but we never experience all that we mean by causal connexion. We never find a case where it is quite true that two things are absolutely and necessarily implied in each other, for we can never exclude the possibility of some unknown element. Causation remains an idea not fully realized in ex- perience, though it is of the essence of experience ; and it is just this that makes science advance. 3. If we still ask whether knowledge is derived from ex- perience, we are probably meaning by ' experience ' what is really simply a very elementary experience. We are taking a certain layer of experience and giving it the privilege of being called experience par excellence. But there is no reason for such a use of the term. LECTURES ON LOGIC NOTE B. Certitude, Law, Necessity, Uniformity^. THE progress of knowledge consists in the widening of elementary experiences of substance and cause. Suppose, for example, a simple sensation of colour, red. The least I could say about it would be a judgment expressing the fact* that when I saw it I recognized it. The amount of certitude here, the amount that I am certain of, is very small : how does it grow ? Suppose I say, ' Red is a sensation,' meaning by ' sen- sation ' at least something that I experience through my ears, eyes, &c. I have now established a connexion between red and certain other experiences, which modifies my knowledge both of it and of them. If I then say, ' Red is a colour,' I have connected it with other colours. If I say, ' Red is a modification of light,' or ' Red enters into this or that artistic effect,' I have connected it with an immense number of other things in my experience. Something of this kind is what is continually happening as knowledge grows. When we find an element in different contexts, it acquires new meanings for itself, and it gives new meanings to the elements in these contexts. The element remains in a sense the same, for it is clearly essential that I should be able to recognize it when I have it again ; but it is also continually changing with every new connexion into which it is brought. The progress of knowledge may therefore be represented as the pursuing of identities through ever- increasing differences. And just as the 'substance' red re- mains the same, and yet changes and increases, so do also the ' cause' and 'effect' red. The more I know of the connexions of red with other elements, the more I know of its causes and effects ; and the progress of knowledge is therefore a progress in the perception of the coherence of things. At each step in the expansion of experience we put a new interpretation on old data. It is quite true that we constantly 1 [This passage, condensed from the lectures of October, 1886, follows an account (similar to that on pp. 177 f.) of the minimum cognoscibile as expressed in the judgment, 'This is this, not that,' or, 'This is that as well as this.' The self-identity and relation to other implied here were pointed to as the germs of the conceptions of substance and cause.] NOTE B 231 'test' our inferences by going back to the original fact. But what this means is that we ascertain whether we have really got the original fact A e. g. the sensation ' red ' in the new context to which it gives, and from which it receives, a new meaning. Our ' going back ' does not mean that we simply repeat the original experience, or that this contained in it our later experience ; but at each step the ultimate ground of certitude is the identity of the phenomenon with itself: i. e. we argue, ' If this is really a ease of A, then B is true of it.' The expression of A's nature we call its laws. A universal law about A means, what is true of A as A, neither more nor less. It means that wherever A is found, and under whatever circumstances, A will behave in such and such a way. The universality of a law does not mean that the law ' holds ' in an enormous number of cases, or wherever we have observed A its universality depends not on the number of cases in which we have observed A, but on the degree to which we are able to be sure that we have observed A, and nothing but A, in those cases. And the impossibility of 'absolute certitude' is due to the impossibility of absolutely isolating any element from the rest of the world. Hence arises the contrast between theoretical and actual certi- tude, laws and facts. The law says, Wherever A is found, it will behave in such and such a way. The difficulty is to be sure that we have found A, neither more nor less. Hence any actual phenomenon, however simple it appears, presents an insoluble problem if we pursue it far enough ; for to isolate A absolutely would mean that we knew fully, not only A, but the whole context of which it is a part. Hence also all scientific truth is ' abstract ' or fragmentary ; or, that of which we are certain is always a very limited part of what we have ex- perienced. It is a certain truth that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, but any ' actual ' triangle is partly triangle and partly something else. The practical application of the law is therefore modified. We may say that, of the two ultimate sceptical questions, one, 'Is a triangle really a triangle? ' is no question, it is nonsense ; the other, ' Is this triangle really a triangle ? ' is always a question. The great difference between the sciences with regard to certitude depends on the comparative simplicity or complexity of their subject-matter. The simpler the conditions in any 232 LECTURES ON LOGIC matter, the surer we can be that we know what we have got, and nothing more nor less. The mathematical sciences are peculiarly exact, because the experiences called numerical and spatial are very simple (so that, if we had no others, we should know very little of the world). Sociology is as yet no science, because the simplest object here involves so many conditions. The exactness of a science depends on its abstractness, i. e. on the number of conditions it is able to ignore. The degrees of necessity correspond to the degrees of certi- tude. To say that logical necessity is higher than mathematical, and mathematical than physical, does not mean that one kind of existence is more 'subject to law' than another. Mathe- matics has a high degree of necessity because, its subject-matter being very simple, it is comparatively easy to see how one thing involves another. Logical necessity is higher because, for example, the experience expressed by the law of contradic- tion is still more simple and elementary. A contingent truth, again, does not mean a truth about something not subject to law, but a truth about something comparatively little known. 'Contingency' means dependence on conditions over and above the known conditions. ' Chance ' is a high degree of contin- gency. ' Necessity ' means that there is no such dependence, that the conditions are exhausted. The statement that 'all certitude is hypothetical ' is true if it means that all certitude is dependent upon our knowing the conditions of the problem in question ; i. e., if we are justified in saying that we have exhausted the conditions, the thing is certain. The principle of the uniformity of nature (which does not mean that the future will resemble the past) is a particular application of the logical principle of identity. It is implied as soon as anything is experienced as the same under different conditions, and it means that the same thing under the same conditions will always behave in the same way. The question ' How far does this uniformity reach ? ' does not mean, ' How many things are capricious ? ' but, ' How much of the world is not merely theoretically (in anticipation) but actually (in experience) uniform ? ' or, ' Over how much of the world are we able to realize uniformity? 1 The Greeks recognized the principle, but were able to realize it only over a comparatively narrow field ; and there are still enormous tracts over which we cannot realize it. But the imperfection of our knowledge does NOTE C 333 not, as people say, leave a loophole for 'chance' or the 'miracu- lous.' These words ought merely to mean, 'what we cannot yet explain.' NOTE C. Subjective and Objective*. THE antithesis of subjective and objective elements in ex- perience or knowledge has various senses. 1. ' Subjective ' denotes all the elements in ' me ' and ' you ' except the knowledge itself ; e. g. our feelings about it, and our ways of reaching it, are ' subjective.' ' It ' is independent of these elements; and it is for this reason that they are 'sub- jective,' and not because they are present in subjects. ' It,' the fact, is for us, for subjects ; to know it is to ' make it our o\vn ' : and when we are in the most perfect state of intelligence the distinction between ' us ' and ' it ' disappears, just as in a per- fect sympathy or ' understanding ' two persons become one. 'Subjective,' then, in this sense means everything up to the point of intelligence. 2. 'Subjective' denotes part of the fact as contrasted with the whole : e, g. a subjective visual experience is one in which the whole fact of sight is not present ; certain conditions are absent. If these conditions are judged to be present, there is ' illusion ' ; i.e. misinterpretation. In such a case the absent conditions alone are sometimes called ' objective.' What these particular conditions are, depends on the person who is speaking : one means solidity, another physiological concomitants, another conformity to some law or principle, and so on. That is, there is in each case a certain form of existence which has a ' pre- rogative ' of objectivity or reality ; and the question to be asked always is, What are the characteristics, or tests, of that particular form of being ? It is in this connexion that so many people identify ' objective ' with what they call ' external ' reality ; but of course the objective is no more outside the 1 [The following is an abstract of the lectures on this subject given in October, 1886. It covers nearly the same ground as Section IX. printed above. Much is omitted as needless to the reader of that section, but what is given is almost entirely in the words of Nettleship's notes, or of the reports of the lectures.] 234 LECTURES ON LOGIC mind than the subjective ; we understand the objective con- ditions of sensation as well as the sensation itself. So far, 'subjective' and 'objective' denote different sets of elements in experience, of which the second are understood to be the more important or universal. They are not corre- lative ; they co-exist, but they may exist separately. 3. We now come, however, to a third distinction, and in this the two terms subjective and objective, or subject and object, are strictly correlative. And this distinction, which amounts to saying that all experience is presented (objectum), is one inherent in consciousness. This distinction is one particular form of a universal law or principle, which may be called the principle of relativity. That principle holds good for all being whatever : in self-conscious- ness 1 it assumes a special form, that in which the related elements are self or subject, and not-self or object. The fact of relativity means that everything is what it is through its relation to other things ; or that, as Plato says, being implies not-being or ' otherness.' For example, every number is one of a series, and its nature or meaning is determined by its place in the series, i. e. ultimately by all the other numbers (and so with any series). Any figure, or piece of space, is determined by the surrounding spaces. So with force ; there is no action without re-action ; the fact may be analyzed into these two, but they are not separable. Again, the attributes of a thing are its modes of acting on, and being acted on by, other things ; and you cannot separate the thing from them ; if you try to, you leave nothing. Then we come to the mode of existence called consciousness (in the widest sense 2 ) ; we find that, as we say, certain bodies feel. Here again every feeling is determined, either by other definite feelings, or by the general surrounding medium of feeling. Lastly, in self- consciousness, the related elements are self and not-self, or subject and object. Here then the object in general is the ' other' of self, but its special meaning will depend on the special kind of self, and will differ according as the self is, for example, sensitive, per- ceptive, intelligent, appetitive, willing. And the distinction of 1 [Apparently = ' consciousness' in the preceding paragraph.] 1 [A wider sense than that of ' consciousness ' in the last paragraph but one.] NOTE C 235 self and other is perpetually being done away with, and per- petually reappearing. Thus (a) in desire we have to distin- guish between the desiring subject and the desired object. But each is only in relation to the other; the object is an object only so far as desired, the subject a subject only so far as it conceives of itself as possibly obtaining the object. And in the attainment of desire, when the distinction disappears or becomes implicit, the object, which is s^/-satisfaction, ceases to be an 'other,' and the subject, which goes out of itself in desiring, identifies itself with the object. So again (b) in sympathy a person is said to feel himself one with another, or the sense of separation is said to disappear ; and what is implied in these phrases is that the concrete fact, analyzable into two selves, is really the unity of the two. And so (c) with knowledge. In all perceptive consciousness there is one fact analyzable into two aspects. We can only separate subject and object in this sense if we mean by subject the possible percipient, and by object the possible perceivable ; and we must do so, because we are aware that our knowledge is imperfect. In truth the dis- tinction disappears (so that truth may be described indifferently as an object or a subject), but it disappears only to re-appear. Finally, pursuing the enquiry, we come to the proposition that ' in the absolute all distinction between subject and object vanishes.' That is, if we start with the idea that everything is in relation to another, and follow this out to the whole of being, we see that, if the 'thing 1 were fully determined, its relativity would cease. The sum of relativities would be that which has no 'other' beyond it, or is self-related. Hence Aristotle's description of the divine mind, the ideal of know- ledge, as thought which is its own object (6r\ai Pkilebus, and Republic ; and these are the dialogues dis- cussed in the Essay. In revising it the author determined to prefix a 'general account of Plato's ideas about morality.' The first paragraph, as it now stands, is evidently a mere list of headings for this ' general account,' which does not appear to have been written.] SOME of the characteristic ideas of Plato's moral philosophy may be stated in the following proposi- tions : (j) Goodness is a state of soul, or of the inner man; it means good life. (2) To live well is to live for the right end : the soul is its own end : the end of life is to live well : the best life is that in which the soul is at its best. (3) The condition of living well is clear insight into what the good of the soul means and requires. It is best to have this insight oneself; next best, to follow or be ruled by some one else who has it. (4) The soul of man is so constituted that he can only live well in community with other souls. The perfect life would be a life of perfect communion with, other souls and with the soul which animates the universe. These ideas are seldom entirely absent from any of the ethical dialogues, but they are present in very different proportions, and are developed with different degrees of emphasis. They are moreover usually de- veloped in contrast with other prevalent ideas which to Plato seemed mistaken ; the idea, for instance, that virtue PLATO'S CRITICISM OF CURRENT IDEAS 241 is an external accomplishment, the idea that the end of life is an external possession, the idea that living well is a matter of chance or inspiration or custom, or the idea that individual self-assertion is the glory of life. Thus Plato's enquiries are concerned with two main objects. The first is to show what the best life is ; that is to say, what is its true essence and definition, irre- spectively of the tendencies in actual human nature which prevent or impede its attainment. This is a question for logical analysis. The second is to show how, human nature being what it is, that life is to be attained. This is a question of social and political construction. Any critical enquiry into the nature of moral quali- ties or principles must be primarily an enquiry into the meaning of certain words and phrases. Every civilized society has a current phraseology, in which its feelings about right and wrong, about what it admires and what it dislikes, are embodied. Under the apparent fixity of this current language is concealed an indefinite variety and inconsistency of meaning, according to the character, education, and circumstances of those who employ it. Such a fluid mass of opinion, solidified at the surface into words, was the material with which Plato started in his ethical enquiries ; and the questions with which at various points he probed the mind of Greek society were practically two : What do you really mean by this or that expression ? and, What do you think you ought to mean by it ? The Greek word aptr^, the most comprehensive term for admirable qualities of character, is usually rendered by 'virtue.' It is unfortunate that the English word has undergone the process of attenuation and decay, so ji ^. 242 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS familiar in the history of language, by which any special meaning which it had has shrunk into equivalence with chastity, while the general approbation which it expresses has evaporated into a praise so faint that it almost damns. Under these circumstances, ' goodness ' is often a better translation of dper?? : for we too can speak of a good dog or a good ship, a good painter or a good citizen, a good friend or a good man, with many various shades of meaning, but with the common implication that the object which we call 'good' has an intrinsic worth, and that we admire it. The Greek word dper?? has at least as wide a range, and as welcome associa- tions ; the English word ' virtue ' has neither the one nor the other. The difficulty felt in rendering the Greek term for excellence of character in general is increased when we come to specific forms of excellence. We still sum up our admiration of a man in the word ' good,' but we do not so naturally speak of the 'justice,' the 'tem- perance,' the ' wisdom,' the ' piety,' or even the 'courage,' of our friends, when we wish to note the qualities which most strike or attract us. We use the words, indeed, but in senses sometimes more narrow or more shallow, sometimes more emphatic or more remote, than the Greeks of Plato's time, seldom with the same associations or under the same circumstances. Their place has been taken by a new list, of mixed extraction, Jewish, Greek, Latin, and Teutonic. Humility and purity, duty and honour, Christian and gentleman, honesty and consistency such are some of the words which a modern Plato would have to examine if he wished to sift the moral consciousness of English society. The above reflexion upon the greater comprehensive- PLATO'S CRITICISM OF CURRENT IDEAS 243 ness, and, if we may say so, 'solidarity,' of the Greek conception of virtue suggests another which is of equal importance for the understanding of Plato. It has become a commonplace of modern criticism that the Greeks 'confounded ethics and politics.' The remark expresses about as much of the truth as would be ex- pressed by saying that to the modern world the ideas of legal, moral, and religious obligation are absolutely separate. It is doubtless true that, so far as there has been progress in the theory of human conduct, it has been marked by growing ' differentiation ' of ideas ; but the progress has not been progress unless it has also brought with it a corresponding ' integration.' The synthesis which the rudimentary organization of Greek life made comparatively easy now requires a grasp and a penetration of mind as much greater as a modern nation is greater than a Greek town. But it has equally to be made, and we have only to look below the sur- face to see that modern thought is in labour with its execution. Plato's method of examining the moral ideas which he found in vogue may be described as that of making the ideas criticize themselves. This he does by pressing them to their logical consequences, by assuming given words to have at least some definite moral meaning, and by asking what follows if that meaning be strictly adhered to. The ultimate appeal is to the conscience of ordinary people ; if you grant that one thing is better than another, if you recognize a distinction between some- thing right and something wrong, if you feel this conduct to be admirable and that repulsive, then you must also grant that such and such is an inadequate or false or confused account of what is good, right, or admirable. R a 244 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS This is the critical side of the enquiry. But the enquiry is not only critical ; it is conducted, as all such enquiries must be, in tacit accordance with certain positive and constructive ideas in the mind of the writer, which, though often indicated rather than expressed, grow increasingly clear and prominent with the growth of his own moral experience and purpose. In asking, What is virtue? or What is this or that virtue ? Plato was asking for a definition ; and the significance of the question depends first upon the formal requirements which he expected the definition to satisfy in a word, on the import which he attached to ' is.' This import will best be brought out by considering what kind of answers he thought formally or logically unsatisfactory, and on what grounds. The tolerably well-defined group of such answers which we meet with in ~~the dialogues called Protagoras, Meno, Laches, Charmides, ^ and Euthydemus, represents a comparatively rudimentary stage of experience and reflexion. They are put in the mouths of a brave but uncultivated soldier, an honest but ignorant and pretentious prophet, an indolently curious young nobleman, a modest and ingenuous schoolboy. That which naturally occurs first to an unreflecting mind, when asked to give an account of its morality, is to mention some obvious instance of what it considers to be moral. The soldier, asked what courage is, replies, ' Not to run away in battle ' ; but it is easily shown that it may be an act of courage to run away as one fights (like the Scythians), or to run away in order to fight at an advantage (as the Lacedaemonians at Plataea) ; so that, running away and not running away are not, in themselves, of the essence of courage. A similar criticism applies if, substituting for a single act or circumstance PLATO'S CRITICISM OF CURRENT IDEAS 245 a single general quality, we define courage as 'endurance,' or temperance as 'quietness in behaviour '; for by courage and temperance we mean something admirable, and there are many cases in which to yield is more admirable than to endure, and where quickness and energy are more admirable than quietness. A second and equally common form in which we hold and express our moral conceptions is illustrated by Meno, when to the question, What is virtue ? he answers, ' Virtue in a man is to be able in the conduct of public affairs, virtue in a woman is to manage her house well and obey her husband; and so on with the various actions and times of life there is a virtue proper to each.' This, as Socrates objects, is to tell us, not what virtue is, but how it differs in different circumstances. If we want to know what a bee is, it is of no use to be told that there are all sorts of bees ; one bee may be bigger or handsomer than another, but, in so far as they are all bees, they are all the same. A strong or a healthy man is different from a strong or a healthy woman, but strength is strength, and health is health, wherever they are found. What we want to know is, what makes virtue to be virtue and nothing else. A third error to which in our ordinary state of mind we are liable is that of confusing a principle with its results or accidents, as when, for instance, we define holiness as ' that which the gods love ' ; for, though this may be true of holiness, it appears that it is not the being loved by the gods which makes holiness holy, but the fact of its being holiness which makes them love it. This is part of the general principle that, whenever a thing takes place or is affected in a certain way, the cause is found, not in the fact of its so taking place or f|J j which in whole or in part we have now to consider, this double-faced antagonism, the antagonism to society at large and the antagonism to its accredited leaders, begins to show itself. Prota- The Protagoras is a humorous apotheosis of the goras. sophists. In Athens, ' the hearth and home of wisdom,' THE PROTAGORAS 253 in the house of the Athenian who has spent more money upon wisdom than any other living man, the wisest of the Greeks are met together, Hippias, Prodicus, and, greatest of all, Protagoras. Each of the distinguished strangers has brought his circle of admirers ; the elite of Athenian society also is there ; the whole house is possessed with culture, and the porter has lost his temper at the number of callers. Round a bed extemporized in the counting-house Prodicus is holding a literary stance ; in one of the vestibules Hippias is lecturing on physics and astronomy; in another, Protagoras walks up and down discoursing to a chorus of disciples, who follow the movements of their master with a reverential dexterity which Socrates cannot sufficiently admire 1 . He has called to introduce his young friend Hippocrates to the great sophist ; the youth had come to wake him before it was light with the news that Protagoras was in Athens ; so eager is he to be made wise 2 . Protagoras receives them with the air of a man who is conscious of having been a leader of thought for forty years. Unlike some members of his profession, he is not ashamed of being a sophist, though fully aware of the invidiousness of the title. He knows that many other men distinguished in letters, art, and science, who are practically sophists, have tried to veil the fact for fear of what the political world might think of them ; but they are always found out sooner or later, and the best policy is to be quite outspoken : as to the opinion of the general public, he makes no account of that ; the general public takes its cue from its leaders 3 . Such is the tone of the great teacher. 1 Protag. 314 -316 A, 337 D ; cp. Afol. ao A. 5 76.309A-3i 4 C. * Ib. 316 B-3I7 C ; cp. 353 A-B. 254 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS In the manner in which Socrates is made to behave to him there is the deference of a younger to an older and more distinguished man, touched with the irony of one who has seen through and beyond him. The discussion is conducted without bitterness, and the two disputants part with expressions of mutual respect. Protagoras undertakes to teach a young man, who wishes to become distinguished, ' how best to manage his own affairs, and how to speak and act with the greatest effect in public life ' in a word, to teach ' the art of politics ' and to ' make a man a good citizen.' But can these things be taught ? Socrates is inclined to doubt it, and public opinion seems to go with him ; for in the popular assembly at Athens, when any technical question, arises, about building, for instance, or ships, nobody is listened to but the architects and shipwrights ; but on a political question any one who likes may get up and speak, and no one asks where he got his knowledge. The Athenian people, then, at any rate, do not consider that politics can be taught or learnt. And apparently the great statesmen themselves feel the same ; for, though they get their children taught everything for which they can find a master, they do not teach them their own virtue of statesmanship 1 . Protagoras does not agree that these facts prove, either that political virtue cannot be taught, or that it is not taught. For, firstly, the art of good citizenship is not, like other arts, the property of a few professional men ; it is present, and is assumed to be present, in a greater or less degree in everybody who is capable of living in a civilized community. This explains and justifies the conduct of the public assembly. Secondly, the fact 1 Protag. 317 -320 B. THE PROTAGORAS 255 that society punishes us for doing wrong shows that it regards morality, not as a gift of chance or nature, but as a thing which can be acquired and learnt ; for the true purpose of punishment is not to avenge what is past, but to deter for the future. Thirdly, so far from morality not being taught as a matter of fact, we are learning it all our lives. The lesson begins with our nurses and parents ; it goes on at school, where even more attention is given to discipline than to accomplishments, and where the poetry and music taught are specially selected with the view of inculcating virtue ; and, when we leave school, the state takes us in hand, and makes us learn the laws and live by them, and if we transgress them it punishes us. What is all this but teaching virtue ? Lastly, we need not wonder if the sons of great and good men are not always great and good. Ever}' civilized man has some morality (a great deal, indeed, if you compare him with a savage) ; it is like speaking our own language; we think that nobody learns or teaches it, just because to a certain extent everybody does so ; but some people are born with better natural capacities than others, and some people (Protagoras himself, for instance) are better teachers than others *. Such is the position of the professed instructor of public opinion, as regards the nature of his instruction. It is really the position of public opinion itself, put at its best. Society assumes a certain amount of moral knowledge in all its members, and it is right to do so. Society makes every one responsible for his morality up to a certain point, thus implying that it can be acquired and taught. And society itself teaches it in a variety of ways, but of course nature goes for a good deal. All, 1 Protag. 320 -328 D. 256 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS then, that the professed teacher can be expected to do is to teach a little better than the rest of the world. But Plato expects more from him than this, and in the person of Socrates continues to examine him, not as to the fact of his teaching, but as to what it is that he teaches. If virtue can be taught, what is it? Protagoras had spoken of justice, temperance, piety, courage, wisdom, indiscriminately as virtue : are they five different names for one thing, or five different parts of the same thing? Suppose we say with Protagoras that they are parts, and heterogeneous parts, as the mouth, eyes, and nose are parts of the face ; yet is it not hard to maintain that piety, for instance, has not something of the quality of justice ? And how can wisdom and temperance be both opposites of foolishness, without being in some sense one ? Or, once more, if temperance may be combined with injustice, will not this imply that injustice is something good l ? If it be still maintained that, however much the other virtues may have in common, courage at any rate is quite distinct (for we find men who are very unjust, licentious, irreligious, and unwise, who are yet very brave), we must ask, Can a man who is a fool be really brave ? Is not confidence an element in all courage, and is it not just the addition of intelligence that makes confidence into something better than mere confidence, which may be the result of rage or madness ? This, it may be said, only shows that wisdom makes confidence into courage, but not that wisdom makes courage what it is. We must then again ask, What is it which constitutes the excellence, the virtuousness, of courage ? 1 Protag. 329 B-334 C. Then follows a long interlude (334 -348 C), after which the question is taken up again where it had been left. THE PROTAGORAS 257 In a word, what is the meaning of the distinction between good and evil in human life ? Are they identical with pleasure and pain? If, with Protagoras, we decline to admit this, and equally decline to identify good with knowledge, how are we to conceive the relation between pleasure and knowledge? Is knowledge the strongest and ruling principle in man, so that, when we know what is good, it is impossible to do what is bad ? Or is the common opinion true, that knowledge is the mere slave of pleasure and pain, passion and fear ; so that we may know what is good, and yet do what is bad * ? Now, though Socrates and Protagoras may disagree with and despise common opinion, it is worth while to examine it. When then people say that a thing is bad but pleasant, or good but painful, what do they mean by bad and good? They do not mean that the thing is bad because it is pleasant, or good because it is painful, but that it is bad or good because, though pleasant or painful now, it deprives them of greater pleasure or pain in the future. Pleasure and pain, then, are the real objects of pursuit and avoidance, the things which people have in view when they call one thing good and another bad. But, if this is so, the common saying that we do what is bad, knowing it to be bad, under the influence of pleasure, is absurd ; it is like saying, we do what is bad, knowing it to be so, under the influence of what is good ; or again, we do what is less pleasant, knowing it to be so, under the influence of what is more pleasant. It may be said, indeed, that there is a great difference between pleasure or pain in the present and in the future ; but it still remains that the difference is only one of pleasure or pain, for we have agreed that these are the only standard 1 Protag. 349 A- 35 aD. 258 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS of comparison ; it is a question of weighing one amount against the other. Now we know that the same objects appear larger or more numerous when seen near than when seen far off. Suppose then that human welfare had depended upon our choosing the larger magnitudes or numbers, and avoiding the smaller ; in that case we should not have allowed ourselves to be governed by appearances, but by the sciences of measure and number. Similarly with pleasures and pains: human welfare lies in the right choice of them, and this can mean nothing but right measurement, and this means art and science. What the science is, is a further question ; all that we now assert is that it is a science, and that it is the want of it, that is, ignorance, which produces the evil supposed to come from the victory of pleasure over knowledge. And from this it follows that it is not in human nature to do what is bad, that is, what is really less pleasant, knowingly or voluntarily ; every one goes into evil through not knowing what is good l . Let us now return to our former subject, the rela- tion of courage to the rest of virtue. Fear may be defined as expectation of evil, and danger as coming evil. The brave man, then, when he faces danger, does so because he knows that it is not really evil, but good, noble, pleasant ; and the coward does not face it, because he does not know this. And again, when the brave man is afraid of a thing, he is so because he knows that it is really evil, while the fool and the madman are not afraid of it because they do not know this. Courage, therefore, so far from being compatible with the greatest ignorance, would seem to be a kind of knowledge, knowledge of what is not, to be feared -. Protag. 352 -358 D. * Ib. 358 D-s6o E. THE PROTAGORAS 259 Such is the conclusion of our argument; and, as Socrates remarks, it may well ' laugh at us.' For here is Socrates, who denied that virtue could be taught, now trying all he can to prove that it is knowledge ; and, if knowledge cannot be taught, what can be? And here is Protagoras, who assumed that it was teachable, now anxious to show that it is anything rather than know- ledge. One thing is plain to Socrates, that they must try to clear up this confusion, and enquire what virtue is before they ask whether it can be taught l . None of Plato's dialogues has more of the character of a philosophical drama than the Protagoras. This applies not only to the form and setting, but also in a great measure to the substance, of the work. The treatment of the main question is inlaid with more than the usual wealth of subordinate incident and illustration ; and the centre of unity lies, not in any single moral problem or principle, but in the development of the far-reaching opposition between two modes of thought, between the spirits of speculative and popular philosophy, the critical and the professional, the uncompromising and the accommodating, the self-examining and the self- satisfied. We are made to feel throughout the dialogue that the professor of social and political enlightenment has not reckoned with his subject. Much that he says is true, and its truth is not questioned by Socrates ; but he has not thought out what is involved in the phrase ' to teach morality. 1 With all his contempt for popular opinion, and profession that he has something better to offer, he has really accepted the popular moral distinctions without enquiring into their meaning and justification. 1 Prolog. 360 -362 A. S 2 260 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS He sees that the various virtues must have something in common, but he cannot say what it is. He feels that all pleasant things are not good, but he has not asked himself why. He believes that knowledge is moral power, but he has not tried to explain the wide-spread belief in its impotence, or considered what sort of knowledge he is thinking of. Plato's criticism does more to clear the ground for advance than to make the advance itself. It shows that, if morality is to be put upon an enlightened basis, we must begin with an analysis of what morality really is, for as ordinarily practised and understood it is certainly not enlightened. It further suggests the direction that analysis must take, that, namely, of discovering the central and essential point from which the confused distinctions of the popular code can be explained, justified, or rejected. And, lastly, it indicates that this point will be found in a true conception or knowledge of man's real good or interest, by which the illusory appearances of feeling and emotion may be measured and reduced to their true proportions. The Protagoras^ starting with the assumption that morality can be taught, shows that neither its professed teachers nor society at large are in a position to teach it, and yet that it is in its very essence knowledge. The contribution of the Meno to the question of the nature of morality is in many respects the same as that of the Protagoras, but the conception of knowledge is made more definite by contrast, and the various aspects of the antagonism latent in the latter dialogue have assumed a more emphatic expression. On the one hand Anytus, the representative of the successful politicians and men of the world, gives utterance with unmitigated violence to the prejudice against the sophists which Protagoras THE MENO 261 had thought to meet by out-spokenness * ; and Socrates, though he suspects the quarter from which the prejudice comes, hardly conceals his sympathy with it 2 . On the other hand, the hostility felt by Anytus to the sophists is extended by him, though less openly, to Socrates himself 3 , and we already see the beginning of that breach between philosophy and the world which Plato, when he wrote the Gorgias, felt to be impassable. The primary object of criticism in the Protagoras was the pretension of the professed teacher; only through him, and secondarily, was reference made to the actual morality of public life, which he undertook to instruct. But in the Meno the professed teachers are dismissed summarily, and the main interest centres in the great citizens and statesmen who are appealed to as the practical illustrations of virtue. Meno is a young Thessalian nobleman, a disciple of Gorgias, with enough intellectual curiosity to make him raise questions, but with too little mind to appreciate their real difficulties and too little seriousness to face them. The question which he has asked Socrates con- cerns the acquisition of virtue ; is it got by teaching, or by practice, or does it come by nature 4 ? And, though, as Socrates is so fond of pointing out 5 , it is impossible really to discuss the attributes of a thing until we know what the thing is, he yields to Meno's indolence so far as to put the question in this hypothetical form : What sort of thing must virtue be, supposing that it is got by teaching? It is clear that in that case it must be knowledge ; for knowledge is the only thing that is 1 Meno, 91 C-93 C. * Ib. 92 D, ml MTWS n Ac'-ytis : cp. 96 A. 3 Ib. 94 -95 A, 99 E, 100 B. * Ib. 70 A. 9 It. 71 B, 86 D-E, 100 B. 262 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS taught. Is it, then, knowledge ? Virtue, we shall admit, is something good ; is there, then, any good thing which is not embraced by knowledge? All good things are useful ; and the utility of a thing depends on whether it is used rightly, and rightly means wisely. This is true of things of the body, such as health, strength, beauty, and wealth. And the same is the case with things of the soul; moral and intellectual gifts, if guided by intelligence, are useful ; if not, they do harm. Such things, then, are in themselves neither good nor bad ; they are made good or bad by the way in which they are used ; the things of the body depend for their goodness on the soul, and the things of the soul upon wisdom. If then virtue is something good and useful, it must be, in whole or in part, wisdom. And from this it follows that it cannot come by nature : indeed, if it did, we should certainly have taken steps to find out the naturally good amongst us, and shut them up out of reach of corruption until they were of age to serve the state. It would seem, then, that virtue is got by teaching 1 . But here a difficulty presents itself. When we say that a thing is got by teaching", we imply that there are persons who teach and persons who learn it. Now Socrates, with all his efforts, has never yet been able to find any one who could teach virtue. Let us consult Anytus: he ought to be able to help us, for his father was both rich and wise, and gave him a good education ; so at least the Athenians seem to think, for they elect him to the most important offices of state. Supposing then that we wanted to make Meno a shoemaker or a doctor or a flute-player, we should of course send him to the persons who professed to teach those crafts and 1 Meno, 86 -89 C. THE MENO 263 were paid for so doing. Meno wants to learn the duties of a citizen, the best way of administering public and domestic affairs, of behaving to parents, of entertaining fellow-citizens and strangers ; to whom is he to go to learn this virtue ? The persons who profess to teach it, and are paid for doing so, are the sophists. But Anytus declares that the sophists are the ruin of all who go near them ; and, though it is hard to understand, if this be so, how men like Protagoras should have made such fortunes, perhaps Anytus is right. But to whom then are we to go? 'Go to any Athenian gentleman,' says Anytus. And who, we ask, taught the Athenian gentlemen ? ' The gentlemen before them. Surely there have been plenty of them.' Yes, there have been plenty, and there are still ; but the question is this. Have these excellent men been able to impart their excellences to others? What are the facts about Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, or Thucydides ? Is it not notorious that, while they had their sons taught all sorts of accom- plishments, such as riding, shooting, wrestling, playing, they never taught them their own virtues? And yet surely they would have done so, if they had been able. So much, in any case, is clear, that if the professed teachers of virtue are admitted to know nothing about it, while those who possess it cannot agree whether it can be taught or not, there cannot be said to be any teachers of it in the proper sense of the word, nor therefore any learners. Virtue, therefore, cannot be taught x . Are there, then, no good men? And, if there are, how do they become good ? The truth is that we made an absurd mistake before. We said before that nothing is good without right guidance, and this is true. But we 1 Meno, 89 C-96 C. 264 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS also said that right guidance implies knowledge, and this is not true ; for in particular cases right opinion will serve as well as knowledge ; a man whose opinion about a road is right is as good a guide as a man who knows the road. This is the case with our good statesmen ; their virtue is that of opinion, not of knowledge. Is there, then, no difference between the two ? Certainly ; a difference in point of permanence. Right opinions are excellent things as long as they remain in the soul, but they soon run away unless they are made fast ; and the way to make them fast is to see the reason of them : this converts them into knowledge. It is in this permanence that the superior value of knowledge lies ; but, for this or that particular act, true opinion serves the purpose just as well 1 . Now neither knowledge nor right opinion comes by nature: goodness, therefore, is not natural. But neither does it come by teaching, for, as we have seen, there are no teachers of it. Yet we allow that it is something good and useful, and that the condition of goodness and usefulness is right guidance, and that the only right guides for man are knowledge and right opinion ; and, as virtue is not taught, it cannot be knowledge; it remains, then, that it is right opinion. This is why our good statesmen are not able to make others like themselves ; their goodness comes from opinion, not from knowledge. Their intelligence is thus on the same level with that of prophets and poets, who say many true and great things, but do not understand what they say. Their success is due to a sort of inspiration ; as women and Lacedaemonians say of people whom they admire, they are 'divine' men. If we have been right 1 Meno, 96 D-g8 C. THE MENO 265 in our reasoning, then, the conclusion is this: virtue would seem to come neither by nature nor by teaching, but by the grace of heaven, and reason has nothing to do with it. Unless indeed there were found a statesman who could 1 make others statesmen; the virtue of such a man would be to that of the rest of the world as the substance to a shadow l . The Protagoras had shown the want of depth and consistency in the moral theory of society and its pro- fessed instructors, and had indicated that the remedy was to be found in a knowledge which should give unity to the virtues and supply a standard of moral measurement. The knowledge similarly required in the Meno is conceived as a principle, not of measurement but of guidance, and it is further characterized by a formal contrast with opinion. The guiding or ruling function here assigned to reason connects closely with the idea (afterwards more fully developed by Plato) of an ultimate end, to which alone it 'profits' to attain, and the reference to which alone makes all means and instruments 'good.' The distinction between knowledge and opinion plays a vital part in Plato's general theory of knowledge. But what is of importance here to observe is Plato's growing feeling of the imperative necessity of principle or a reasoned morality in private, and still more in public, life. He has not yet reached the point of accusing the great statesmen of actual failure, as he does in the Gorgias. He admits their success, such as it is ; but it is a success of guess-work, unable to give an account of itself, incommunicable to others, forming no permanent element in the intelligence of mankind. There is something 'divine' in it, just because it is 1 Meno, gSC-iooA. 266 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS unaccountable ; but it would be better if a man could possess it instead of being possessed by it, and share it with humanity instead of letting it die with him. The definition of goodness as knowledge, as examined in the Protagoras and the Meno, had the result of drawing attention to defects in existing moral theory and practice, which must be remedied if the definition is to answer to facts. The same definition in the Laches and the Charmides is made to lead to the conclusion that the knowledge in question must be further specified as to its nature and object if it is to hold as an account of goodness. Each of these dialogues deals, not with virtue, but with a particular virtue, courage in the one case, temperance in the other. Laches. The point of departure in the Laches is a definition of courage almost identical with that arrived at in the Protagoras l , as knowledge of what is to be feared and what is not to be feared. This is interpreted to mean, not what is to be feared under certain special circum- stances (in disease, for instance, or in agriculture, where the knowledge in question would be that of the doctor or the farmer), but what is to be feared or not to be feared altogether and as such ; in fact, ' what it is better or not better for a man to experience.' This clearly makes courage a rare and difficult thing ; it must be quite different from mere confidence, rashness, daring, and the like, and must be denied, not only to brutes, but to a great many human beings to whom it is usually ascribed 2 . But here a difficulty arises. Fear may be defined as expectation of coming evil. Now a man who has knowledge of coming evil must also have 1 See above, p. 258. 2 Laches, 194 D- THE LACHES AND THE CHARMIDES 267 knowledge of evil present and past ; in fact, of evil as such or ' under all circumstances ' ; for the time in which the object of knowledge exists makes no difference to knowledge ; a thing once known is known whenever it may happen to occur. Courage, then, on this view would be co-extensive with all virtue, for what more can be wanting to a perfectly good man than that he should have knowledge of all good and evil ? And yet it has been assumed from the first that courage is one among many parts of virtue J . The subject of the Charmides is 'temperance.' 'Tern- Char- perance ' is the accepted, and perhaps the least mis- leading, translation of o-uHppoavvr], of which the primary meaning is sanity of mind. Perhaps ' sobriety,' though no longer much used, would be as good an equivalent as any. The central idea conveyed by the word seems to be that of the law-abiding spirit, whether the law be that of the state, of conscience, or of God. Self-control, modesty, humility, are all aspects of it ; its opposites are licentiousness, insolence, pride, and, most comprehensively perhaps, the ' folly ' of the English version of some books of the Old Testament. In the Charmides temperance is defined by Critias as self-knowledge, which he explains to mean, not a specific knowledge with a specific object, but a know- ledge of that which we or others know and do not know, a consciousness of knowledge and ignorance in general 2 . This definition, however, raises many questions. In the first place, in what sense is self-knowledge possible? Other mental operations, such as perception, desire, opinion, always relate to objects other than themselves, and we should expect the same to be true of knowledge. 1 Laches, igQA-iggE. 2 Charmides, 165 -167 A. 268 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS In any case we must allow that knowledge implies a relation, and it is a difficult and unsolved question whether a relative thing can be self -related l . But secondly, admitting the possibility of such a thing as self-knowledge, in the sense in which Critias under- stands it, it would not involve knowledge of that which we know and that which we do not know ; it would only mean knowledge of the fact, not of the matter, of knowledge. The knowledge of the matter is always a particular knowledge with a particular object ; the doctor and the musician owe what they know to their respective sciences ; all that the virtue of self-knowledge would add to this would be the consciousness that they know it. Such a consciousness could not prevent us from attempting things which we did not understand, or enable us to prevent others from doing the same. Its value seems to be reduced to that of giving us a better idea of what knowledge in general means, and this may make it easier for us to acquire a new branch of knowledge, and to criticize other people's pretensions to a knowledge which we already possess ; that is all 2 . And again, even supposing the existence of a knowledge of knowledge and ignorance in the wider sense, and that our lives were regulated by it, what would be the result? Certainly we should never try to do anything which we did not know how to do ; charlatanry would disappear ; we should never be taken in by an incompetent doctor or pilot or general ; our clothes and furniture would all be made by honest workmen. But would the human race fare better and be happier? It may be true that to live according to knowledge is to live well, but we must ask, according 1 Charntides, 1676-1698. 2 Ib. 1690-1720. THE LACHES AND THE CHARMIDES 269 to what knowledge ? Clearly the knowledge of all the trades, arts, and even all the events, in the world would not make us happy ; the only knowledge that can do this is that which tells us whether all the other kinds of knowledge are for our real interest or not ; in a word, the knowledge of good and evil. So that temperance, if it be self-knowledge in the sense in which we have understood it, would seem to be but an unprofitable thing after all 1 . Thus both the LacJies and the Charmides result in a dilemma, a dilemma which suggests that, if morality is to be a matter of knowledge, it can only be know- ledge of the true end of life, of human good and evil. The former dialogue shows that a particular virtue, if fully understood, leads to its identification with such a knowledge ; the latter shows that another particular virtue is only of any real value in human life if it be so identified. The argument of the Charmides reminds us of one somewhat similar, though conducted in a lighter vein and with a less explicit result, in the first book of the Republic 2 . Justice having been there defined as the power or art of rendering to every one his due, it is shown by a gradual process of elimination that, in that case, it will serve no purpose, because the perception when a particular thing is due under par- ticular circumstances will always be found to belong to some particular branch of knowledge ; so that all dues could apparently be rendered equally well without the help of justice. The link which is left out in the Republic is supplied in the Ckarmides* t when it is said that, though the various arts and sciences can go on performing their 1 Charmides, 172 -175 D. * Rep. i, 331 -334 B. 3 Cliarmides, 1740. 270 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS several functions without the knowledge of good and evil, it depends upon this latter knowledge whether they perform them well and in the real interest of mankind. A result which partially combines those of the Charmides and the Meno is arrived at by a different method from that of either in the Euthydemus, This dialogue is, like the Protagoras, primarily concerned with education, but more from its intellectual than its moral and political side. In the Protagoras we are asked, How are our young men to get right principles of conduct? in the Euthydemus, How are their minds to be turned to true culture ? The former dialogue, starting with the sporadic ideas of popular morality, ends by pointing to their unification in some form of knowledge ; the latter, beginning with the commendation of knowledge in general, concludes with the dilemma that knowledge is useless without a conception of the moral end of man. As regards tone and form, the Euthydemus might be described as the satirical farce which accompanies the stately drama of the Protagoras. In the latter the weak points in the popular teacher are unmistakably though delicately touched, but the balance between philosopher and sophist is evenly held, and we leave them with the feeling that they may both be fellow- workers in the cause of truth. In the former, the mercenary filibusters of culture are gibbeted with a satire which never relents, and the wretched rags of a philosophy which has sunk into verbal sword-play are set side by side in unrelieved contrast with the pure outlines of the science of human welfare. It is only a part of the dialogue which directly bears upon the question before us ; the rest of it is occupied with the humorous exposure of a number of logical sophisms ; THE EUTHYDEMUS 271 but as the latter part is inseparably connected with the former, and its motive is to bring out in strong relief the bearing of knowledge and philosophy upon life, rather than to illustrate particular fallacies of reasoning, it seems well not to attempt to separate the two. The brother sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, are described by Socrates as two veritable pancratiasts ; they teach and practise the art of fighting in all its branches with arms, with rhetorfc, and with logic ; this last and greatest accomplishment they have only learnt within the last year or two. They undertake to turn out a ' good man ' better and quicker than anybody else in Greece, and it is a matter of perfect indifference to them whether or no the pupil believes in the possi- bility of ' teaching ' goodness. Socrates had introduced to them the boy Cleinias, whose education is a matter of concern to all his friends, and requested them to awaken his interest in knowledge and virtue l . The brothers set to work at once. First Euthydemus asked Cleinias a question, and proved to him that his answer was wrong ; and then Dionysodorus ' took the ball from his brother,' and proved that the answer was right. The way in which they did it was by using the same word in a double sense, of which Cleinias was not aware. They had tripped up the poor boy twice in this way, and were going to give him a third fall, when Socrates came to the rescue 2 . He explained the trick to Cleinias, and assured him that these logical antics were only the preliminary play of the brothers ; the real mysteries of their wisdom were yet to come. Philosophy must, indeed, begin with the right understanding of the use of words, but it is not philosophy to go about pulling 1 Euth. 271 A-275 B. * Ib. 275 -277 C. 272 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS people's chairs from under them and laughing at them as they lie on their backs. So he would ask the brothers now to begin their work in earnest, and, to show the sort of way in which he wished them to set about it, he would himself (if they would promise not to laugh) extemporize a conversation with Cleinias 1 . Having shown, in the same way and by the same illustrations as in the Meno, that the so-called good things of life, in possession of which welfare is agreed to consist, are only good so far as they are well, i. e. wisely, used, and that wisdom is therefore the one really good and desirable thing in the world 2 , Socrates, with an apology for his amateur attempt at philosophy, begged the brothers to go on, and to show Cleinias what particular sort of wisdom it is which will make a man happy and good. Dionysodorus, accordingly, having first ascertained that Cleinias' friends were in earnest in wishing him to become wise, proved to them that they were wishing his annihilation, for they wished him to cease being what he was. Cleinias' friend Ctesippus was naturally angry at this imputation, and said Dionyso- dorus lied, and contradicted him. But Dionysodorus demonstrated to him that lying and contradiction are impossible ; the former, because it is impossible to say the thing that is not ; the latter, because, if two persons speak about the same thing, either they say it, and then they agree, or they do not say it, and then they cannot disagree, or one says it and the other does not, and then their words have no relation to each other at all 3 . Socrates, who recognized an old friend in this argu- ment, pointed out that it not only upsets all other 1 Euth. 277 D-2 7 8E. 2 Ib. 278 -282 D. s Ib. 282 D-286 B. THE EUTHYDEMUS 273 arguments, but itself too. If false speech and false thought and error are all impossible, it is impossible to teach anything and impossible to refute anything, and the professions of the brothers come to nothing. He however was persuaded that they were still playing with their audience, and, like Proteus, concealing their real shapes. The only thing was to hold tight to them until they revealed what they really meant. Meantime he would again give them a sample of what he would wish their revelation to be l . We got so far before as to admit the necessity of knowledge to happiness. \Yhat knowledge is it to be? It would be no good, for example, to know where to find and how to make gold, or even to know how to make ourselves immortal, unless we also knew how to use gold and immortality. What, then, is the knowledge that both makes and uses? Is it rhetoric ? No ; for, admirable as our rhetoricians are, they often cannot deliver the speeches which they com- pose. Indeed their art is a somewhat inferior branch of the charmer's art ; the charmer charms vipers and spiders and scorpions, and the rhetorician charms courts of law and popular assemblies and mobs. Is it general- ship ? No ; for the general, like others of the hunter class, does not deal with his conquests himself, but hands them over to the statesman, just as the fisherman hands over his fish to the cook, and the mathematician his discoveries to the dialectician. Perhaps statesman- ship or kingship is the art for which we are looking. It is this which sits at the helm of the state, and all the other arts hand over their products to it to be utilized. But then the question arises, What is the good which this sovereign art itself produces ? It produces, we may 1 Enth. 286 B-288 D. . S.R. T 274 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS say, wealth, peace, freedom ; but we agreed before that such things are not good in themselves apart from wisdom. If then the sovereign art is to do any real good, it must make men wise. But wise in what ? Wise, we are compelled to say, in making others wise. And then the same question recurs again, and we are brought round once more to the point with which we started, What is the knowledge which will make men happy 1 ? In this sea of difficulty Socrates called upon the Dioscuri to come to the rescue. Euthydemus heard the prayer and came. He offered either to teach Socrates the knowledge for which he was looking, or to prove to him that he had already got it. Socrates chose the latter, and the proof was as follows. ' You know something : therefore you know : therefore you know everything ; for, if there were anything that you did not know, you would not know.' Socrates humbly asked the brothers whether they too knew everything, and they said that they did. ' What ! Everything ? ' asked Ctesippus. 'Yes,' they said, 'everything.' The harder they were pressed, and the more outrageous the questions, the more daringly they answered, like wild boars at bay, and when they could not find answers they retorted with questions of their own. By insisting on having unqualified answers to qualified questions, they proved the most miraculous things ; that, for instance, as once a father is always a father, everybody's father is everybody else's father ; that, as gold is good and you cannot have too much of a good thing, perfect happiness would be to have gold in your stomach, your brain, and your eyes ; and that, as the presence of beauty makes things beautiful, the presence of Dionysodorus makes 1 Euth. 288 0-292 E. THE EUTHYDEMUS 275 Socrates into Dionysodorus. The climax was reached when Ctesippus, who was getting more and more excited in the game, exclaimed at one of their proofs, ' Bravo ! Hercules ! That is a beauty ! ' When Dionysodorus asked whether bravo was Hercules, or Hercules bravo, it was too much, and Ctesippus acknowledged that the brothers were invincible. A storm of applause followed from the audience, and the very pillars of the building shook with delight 1 . Before parting, Socrates said a few complimentary words to the brothers. He envied them, he said, the genius which could make such an acquisition in so short a time. Three points in it particularly excited his admiration. One was the magnificent disregard which they showed for the opinion of every one except the few who were like themselves ; setting these aside, the rest of the world would be more ashamed of victory than of defeat with such weapons. Then again he was charmed with the thoroughly liberal spirit of their method ; when they had proved that black was white, and sewed up everybody's mouth, they were kind enough to do the same for themselves, so that nobody could complain. But the greatest proof of the scientific character of their discovery was the rapidity with which it could be learnt, as Ctesippus had shown. This was a great advantage to them as teachers, but on the other hand it should make them careful how they displayed their knowledge, or they might lose the monopoly. ' Water/ as Pindar says, ' is the best thing in the world ' ; but it is very cheap 2 . Socrates told the story to his old friend Crito, who had already heard an account of the meeting, and who 1 Euth. 293 A-303 B. 2 Ib. 303 6-304 B. T 2 276 PLATO S CONCEPTION OF GOODNESS wondered that Socrates was not ashamed to take part in such an exhibition. No doubt education is the one thing needful, but, if these are the professors of it and this is ' philosophy,' how can we urge our sons to apply themselves to it ? Socrates would say to Crito : ' Do not throw over philosophy because many or most of those who pursue it are good for nothing ; this is the case with many walks of life. The only way is, not to think about the persons, but to examine the thing itself: if it is bad, have nothing to do with it ; if it is what I believe it to be, follow it and practise it, yourself and your children.' l The conception of the knowledge necessary to human welfare in the Euthydemus resembles that of the Meno in the using and guiding function which it implies ; and the attempt to identify it with the science of kingship or statesmanship anticipates the leading idea of the Republic. On the other hand the difficulty of assigning a precise product to this knowledge recalls the final dilemma of the Charmides. There it is asked, What would the fullest consciousness of the nature and limits of all knowledge profit us, unless it involved the consciousness of ' the good ' of knowledge ? Here it is asked, What would a science to which all other sciences were sub- ordinate profit us, unless it added to them the knowledge how to use them ? We have thus far been dealing with dialogues, the subjects of which are formulated in the question, What is goodness, and how is it got ? The investigation of the question has led to two principal results. It has shown, firstly, that the meaning or essence of a moral principle 1 Euth. 304 B-307 C. THE GORGIAS, PHILEBUS, AND REPUBLIC 277 is not realized or known so long as it is confused, either with the various extraneous elements with which it is combined in experience, or with the accidental circum- stances in which it is manifested or to which it gives rise: it must be understood as what it is and nothing else, if it is to be really understood. Secondly, it has shown that the conception of goodness as knowledge, that is, as rational insight and conviction, while it is one to which we are led by converging lines of thought, points beyond itself to the further conception of an ultimate good, which is the one thing worth living for ; a conception which would supply a standard of measure- ment for pleasure and pain, would give unity to the diversity of moral qualities and a principle to moral practice, and would assign to the sciences and arts their several places in the economy of human life. We have now to pass to dialogues in which this further conception is itself the central object of enquiry. 'What we really want to know/ says Socrates in the Gorgias J , ' is, who is happy and who is not,' or, ' what sort of men we ought to be and how we ought to live.' ' What we want to find,' we are told in the Philebus 2 . ' is a condition of soul which can make the life of all mankind happy,' or ' what is the best thing that a man can possess.' And, in the Republic, the first formulation of the question. ' What is justice ? ' is soon exchanged for the second, ' How is a man to live his life so as to live it most profitably?' 3 Besides this similarity in the questions which these dialogues propound, they also resemble one another in developing their answers 1 Gorg. 472 C and 500 B-C ; cp. ib. 487 E, 492 D. * Phil, ii D and 19 C. 278 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD polemically, though the objects of the polemic, and the method and tone in which it is conducted, differ widely. In the Gorgias the antithesis is between the claims of power and pleasure, on the one side, and those of truth and goodness on the other, to be the true end of life ; and the method employed is to show that the consistent denial of all moral distinctions makes any such end in- conceivable. In the Philebus the rival claims are those of pleasure and reason to be respectively the whole or chief constituents of human well-being, and a meta- physical and psychological analysis leads to the con- clusion that feeling as such is the mere negation of what is real, and only gets substance and meaning through the formative energy of mind. The Republic, starting from the opposition between the worth of morality as an inward principle and its external results or concomitants, shows that virtue, so far from being another name for material advantages, is the very principle of the soul's life and health ; that the right external organization of society is the expression of that life and health ; and that such organization is only possible so far as society is ruled by knowledge of the laws of the world and of man's position in it. Indications of this idea, by which human life is brought into connexion with a universal order, are found in the Gorgias and still more in the Philebus \ it receives a further development in the Pkaedo, where the good is identified with the sustaining cause of nature, and again in the Timaeus, where it is personified in the creative God. Gorgias. We come now to the several dialogues in detail. The Gorgias opens with the question, What is rhetoric ? and closes with a picture of the last judgment. What is the order of ideas which connects points apparently so THE GORGIAS 279 remote? Plato has made rhetoric the special subject of two dialogues, the Gorgias and the Phaedrus ; in the latter he treats it from its literary and logical, in the former from its ethical and political, side. In the former dialogue it is brought before us as the typical instrument of human power, the art of swaying men and so doing what we please. On this ground it is maintained by the rhetorician to be the greatest of all arts. Thus the issue is raised, Is the mere power to satisfy desire, and the mere pleasure accompanying such satisfaction, the greatest good ? Socrates denies it, and denies it on the ground that neither power in itself nor pleasure in itself con- stitutes a good or end at all, and that we only make them such by introducing into them a quite different principle, which is already the germ of morality ; in other words, that a consistently non-moral theory of life is logically self-destructive. We here come upon the most fundamental and characteristic idea in Plato's philosophy of life, and the one also which, to the modern mind, it is most difficult to seize, the idea which may be most shortly expressed by saying that the moral is the rational. The constant appeal to the arts and sciences which we are struck with in the Gorgias and other ethical dialogues is not merely illustrative ; it expresses Plato's conviction that all life exhibits reason, and that morality is simply the recognition of this reason in a particular sphere. It is the more important to insist upon this feature in the Gorgias, because of all Plato's dialogues it is that in which he most combines the tone of the prophet and the preacher with that of the philo- sopher. Nowhere else are we so vividly reminded of the Biblical antithesis between sin and righteousness, the flesh and the spirit ; nowhere else does the * love of 28o PLATO S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD wisdom ' seem to come so near to the ' love of God.' Yet nowhere else is Plato more himself. The opposition of his enemy is not drowned in denunciatory thunders, or absorbed in a personal assurance of salvation ; the concentrated eloquence and relentless logic with which he upholds the cause of right and truth are met by the champion of pleasure and power with language as forcible and conviction as unbending ; and under their expressions of irony or contempt there are not wanting gleams of mutual admiration and pity. And while the philosopher defiantly proclaims his isolation from the world, while he refuses to count heads or to admit witnesses, and relies only upon consistency with himself and the evidence of his own soul, it is still the unquench- able desire for the good of men which sustains him ; the same Socrates who will not allow that any Athenian politician has realized his own ideal is proud to claim for himself the almost solitary glory of truly serving the state. The problem of the Gorgias is developed in three stages, in which the antithesis, implicit from the first, becomes gradually more explicit, and the rival solutions more radical. Gorgias, the famous master of rhetoric, with whom in the first part of the dialogue Socrates is confronted, is represented as a man of honesty and prin- ciple, but quite unaware of the inconsistency which is latent in the theory of his art. He is treated by Socrates with elaborate but unyielding courtesy, and retires from his untenable position to make room for Polus 1 , the wild ' colt ' of his school, who prances into the field to the defence of his master. Polus sees that the inconsistency proved against Gorgias arose from his making a certain 1 nti ov5* tmOvnti ocxpos ffrtoticu, ttm yo.p. 336 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD There are however various degrees of this imperfection in the being of pleasure. Man is a creature of change ; this is his limitation ; but, short of perfection, there is no limit to the degree of being which he may attain \ The question is, in what kinds of pleasure does he attain most being ; in other words, what kinds of pleasure are the most real. Plato answers, pleasures are real in pro- portion as the satisfaction which the soul has, or the height to which it rises, in them, is permanent. Suppose a man, so far as it is possible, to live solely for the pleasure of eating. Eating sums up his life ; his being is the consciousness of eating. How much being does he realize ? From Plato's point of view, very little : he is perpetually coming to be, and ceasing to be, the same thing ; he sinks and rises, wants and is satisfied, but he gets no further ; each rise is the beginning of the old fall, each satisfaction passes into the old want. He never remains at his highest point ; he is never a really satisfied being. He is emotionally what a man would be intellectually who was always learning and always forgetting the same thing ; and so, when Plato in the Gorgias a compares the soul of the unwise to a ' sieve,' he explains it as the sieve not only of unassimilated knowledge but also of unsatisfied desire. ' Those who have no experience of wisdom and excellence,' as he says in the Republic 3 , ' but live continually in feasting and the like, are always going down and halfway back again ; and in this interval they spend their lives, wander- ing to and fro ; but they never see or reach the true summit, nor do they ever fill themselves with real being, or taste of lasting and pure pleasure.' 1 Cp. what is said, Sympos. 207 -208 B, about immortality. 3 493 B-C. ' ix. 586 A. THE PHILEBUS 337 The last words recall the second way in which the Phikbus characterizes the inferior pleasures ; their ' un- truth' goes along with their 'impurity.' They start from a sense of want, varying in degree from half- pleasant irritation to positive pain ; in the very act of satisfaction they die away, and at each moment in it they are felt by contrast with the sense of want, and, as Plato expresses it, are ' coloured by it.' l Compare with them the aesthetic and intellectual pleasures. Here too there must be, to begin with, some unfulfilled capacity, but the sense of it is one of receptivity and expansive- ness, not of a want to be got rid of. Nor does the pleasure cease with the satisfaction. It is not indeed permanent, for continuous being is impossible to man ; in Aristotle's words, ' he gets tired ' ; but the satisfaction does not at once begin lapsing into dissatisfaction ; it becomes a part of himself; he is more than he was, and permanently more ; he does not have to go backwards again, but starts next time from a higher level. As Plato naively says 2 , ' Things like true opinion and know- ledge and intelligence have much more of pure being and immortality in them than things like meat and drink.' Truth, beauty, and goodness, as we may put it, are inexhaustible ; they do not perish in the attain- ment ; the soul that has the capacity can live on them and in them, without the pangs of want or the sadness of satiety. The third characteristic of the truer and purer plea- sures is their greater * determinateness.' The ' inde- terminateness ' of the inferior pleasures does not mean, as it might at first suggest, that the soul has a sense of infinite capacity in them ; on the contrary, it indicates 1 Rep. ix. 586 B. Ib. ix. 585 B. .R. Z 338 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD that the feeling, just in proportion to its intensity, is inarticulate and smothered. It is an indeterminate feeling in the same way that intense pain is l ; in both our whole being is absorbed ; sense, imagination, reason, are concentrated in a single point of consciousness ; yet the absorption is not in fullness of existence but in a blank intensity. On the other hand, in listening to a beautiful tone or looking at a fine curve or appreciating a striking truth, still more in moving through the measured mazes of a symphony, a picture, a book, the soul puts itself out, diffuses itself into its limits, and is buoyed upon a resistant element. And as the man who is to be an artist must be able not merely to feel, but to express what he feels, not only to melt but also to mould his materials, so in all life the determining reason, which distinguishes and connects, which formulates and calcu- lates and infers, must dominate and transfuse the in- determinate emotion, if the latter is not to be a mere seething mass, dangerous in proportion to its heat. To sum up the theory of the Phikbus as regards the sensual pleasures in the simplest and at the same time the most Platonic way, we may say they are bad because there is so little in them. The most fatal consequence of in- dulging them, as Plato tells us elsewhere 2 , is not that it causes loss of health or loss of money, but that ' it makes us believe that the objects of our appetites are the clearest and truest of things, when they are not.' The soul that lives for them seeks its own annihilation ; its life leaks away in the sand, instead of rising from level to level of an all-embracing reality. Republic. The identity of morality with order and measure, 1 See Philebus, ,27 -28 A. 2 Phaedo, 83 B-D. THE REPUBLIC 339 logically implied and polemically maintained in the Gorgias and Pkilebus, is exhibited in the calmer air and ampler outlines of the Republic as a constructive principle which explains and justifies the facts of poli- tical and personal life. The Republic, just because it is the greatest monument of Plato's genius, must suffer the most in any succinct account of his writings. Its name does little to indicate its scope and character : it is in reality a dramatized philosophy of human life. It shows us in a series of logically connected pictures the nature, nurture, and development of the soul ; the life which it makes for itself in religion, art, morality, politics, science, philosophy ; its rise to the height at which it is almost one with the divine, its fall to the depth at which it almost ceases to be human ; what it is and what it is capable of being upon earth, what it may hope and what it may fear to be after death. At the expense of de- stroying the effect of the work by dismemberment, we must here disengage those parts of it which illustrate most directly Plato's conception of goodness and the good, putting aside those parts which would illustrate his view of knowledge, art, psychology, and politics. The Republic starts with the question, What is justice ? and, as the Greek word which we translate 'justice' practically covered the whole duty of a good citizen, this question easily passes into another, How is a man to live so as to live best? A series of representative solutions, none of which is found to be satisfactory, forms a sort of critical introduction to the main body of the work. The series begins with the old man Cephalus, who represents the generation which is passing away, and sums up the experience of a long and good life. Socrates has come to have a chat with him, for he za 340 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD ' delights in talking to old men ' ; they have gone before him on the road by which he may have to go, and he likes to hear whether they have found it rough or smooth. Whether old age proves agreeable or the reverse, depends, it seems to Cephalus, mostly upon a man's character ; no doubt it is a consolation in old age to have plenty of money, but on the whole the chief good of money is that it makes it easier to be just, so that when a man comes to die he can feel that he has deceived no one, voluntarily or involuntarily, and has paid his debts to God and man l . Socrates is going on to ask him more particularly what he means by justice, when his son Polemarchus breaks in with a definition of it borrowed from Simonides, and Cephalus retires. According to Polemarchus, justice is ' to render to every one his due.' When questioned by Socrates, however, he finds that he is not master enough of his formula to save it from ludicrous misinterpretation 2 , and falls back in his perplexity upon the familiar principle of the popular morality, ' do good to your friends, and harm to your enemies ': this is what he really means by justice. But, as he has to admit to Socrates, to ' do harm ' to a thing is to ' make it worse/ that is, to diminish its intrinsic virtue or goodness ; and to do harm to a man, therefore, is to make him less good, and therefore less just (for justice is human goodness). To say, then, that it is the function of justice to do harm is like saying that it is the function of music to make a man unmusical, or of heat to produce cold 3 . 1 Rep. i. 327 A-33I B. 2 This first section of the argument between Socrates and Polemarchus (331 C-334 B) has already been briefly characterized above, p. 269. 3 Rep. i. 33: -336 A. THE REPUBLIC 341 This ' feeble nonsense,' as he considers it, rouses the indignation of the sophist and rhetorician Thrasymachus, in whom Plato has drawn (with what justice we cannot tell) a blustering bully, who discharges, with mock pro- fundity, cynical effrontery, and coarse wit, the sounding theories of political selfishness which might sway an Athenian law-court or drown opposition in the popular assembly. Thrasymachus proclaims that justice is ' the interest of the stronger.' Justice, he explains to Socrates, is what is enacted by law, and kw is made by the government ; each government legislates in its own interest, a democracy in the democratic interest, an aristocracy in the aristocratic; and the government is the stronger. By ' government,' as he further explains, he understands government ' in the strict sense,' that is, the government so far as it really knows its business and does not make mistakes ; in fact, the government which understands the art of governing. The question then arises, in what sense an art can be said to have an interest. The interest of a doctor, as such it is urged by Socrates is to cure disease ; that of a steersman, as such, is to steer his ship : the fact that the one makes money and the other gets the benefit of the voyage must not be allowed to count if we are speaking strictly. The interest of an art, then, is no other than its own per- fection ; it attains its end in its exercise ; it wants nothing more than this to make it perfect. It is the material on which the art works that is imperfect, and it is just to remedy this imperfection that the art exists. Thus any interest which the art has, other than its own perfection, is the interest of its material ; medicine seeks to remedy the deficiencies of the body, and in so doing secures the interest of the body. To the art of 342 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD government the governed are the material ; and the government, so far as it is really a government, will seek the interest, not of itself, but of the governed l . Thrasymachus pities the simplicity of Socrates in supposing that any governments worth the name regard any but their own interests ; they look at the governed as the shepherd looks at his sheep. Justice, which is the interest of the stronger, is the interest of no one else ; it is the bane of the weaker. The really best thing for every one is injustice, provided it be successful. When practised on a small scale it gets called bad names, theft, burglary, sacrilege ; but in the most perfect form, that of a tyranny, it is greeted with universal applause 2 . Socrates observes that Thrasymachus has abandoned the strictness upon which he had insisted in definition ; for the shepherd, so far as he is a shepherd, regards only the good of the sheep. Each art does a specific good, and the good which is done is independent of the pay which the artist receives for doing it. The pay is the subject of another art, the art of wages, which secures the interest of all wage-receiving arts. It is just because the artist derives no advantage from his art, as such, that he has to be otherwise remunerated 3 . It seems however to Socrates that, in asserting injustice to be altogether better than justice, Thrasymachus has raised a new and much more important issue, and one from which we must not shrink. By injustice Thrasymachus means self-aggrandisement, getting the most of everything for oneself : this he holds to be wiser, stronger, and happier than justice to be, in fact, the true ' virtue ' of life 4 . Firstly, then, as regards the wisdom of injustice. If 1 Rep. i. 338 C-342 E. 2 Ib. i. 3 43 A-344C. Ib. i. 344 D-347 E. * Ib. i. 347 E 349 A. THE REPUBLIC 343 we observe other men who are 'wise' and 'good' in their crafts, we see that they do not try to get the better of other wise and good men. but only of the unwise and bad. The good doctor, in prescribing a diet, does not try to outdo another doctor, nor the good musician, in tuning an instrument, to outdo another musician ; it is only men who are not doctors or not musicians whom they try to outdo ; no one but the ignorant artist thinks of outdoing all other people, competent and incompetent alike. Now injustice makes a man wish to go beyond everybody, just and unjust alike ; while justice makes him wish to go beyond the unjust, not the just. Justice, therefore, seems to resemble wisdom and goodness, in- justice to resemble unwisdom and badness *. Next, as to strength : if any body of men, a state, an army, or a band of robbers, want to act together unjustly, they cannot do so unless they are just to one another ; injustice produces disunion, justice union. And, if they have these effects in large bodies, they will have them also in small ones, and in individuals ; and injustice will make a man incapable of action, and set him at enmity with himself and with all just beings, men and gods. When unjust men are said to act together effectively, the truth must be that they are only half demoralized ; if they were utterly unjust, they could not act at all 2 . Lastly, as to happiness or well-being. The function of a thing is what that thing alone can do, or can do better than anything else can ; and to everything which has a function there is a corresponding virtue, without which it cannot perform its function well. Life is one of the functions of the soul, and the soul cannot live well if it be deprived of its proper virtue, and such 1 Rep. \. 349 B-350 C. * Ib. i. 350 D-ssa D. 344 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD a virtue is justice: the unjust soul, therefore, lives ill, and to live ill is to be miserable l . Two points are specially noticeable in these early sections of the Republic. One is the insistence on the idea, continually implied or expressed, that, if morality is to be discussed at all, its terms must be understood to have some minimum of definite meaning, and this mean- ing must be adhered to. If justice is in any real sense ' good,' it cannot be the cause of evil ; if it is in any real sense a ' virtue,' it cannot help bettering the state of its possessor ; if it is a real 'art' or principle of government at all, it cannot be explained away as injustice looked at from the side of the stronger. The conclusions drawn from these and similar premisses are often stigmatized by a modern reader as ' verbal ' or ' sophistical,' partly because exact thinking about partially familiar ideas is always irksome and irritating, but partly also because the ideas which Plato is trying to fix are often expressed in terms that have become insignificant or commonplace, and no longer arrest either our moral sympathies or our moral antipathies. The other point to be noticed is the recurrence, though in a cruder form than in the Gorgias or the Philebus, of the argument based upon the analogy between the art of conduct and other arts. The language in which the bad artist is described in the Republic, as the man who is ready to go beyond all other men, artists or not artists, is peculiarly liable to mislead, suggesting as it does at first that the bad artist is just the one who tries to reach perfection, while the good artist rests satisfied at a lower level. Reflexion shows that Plato has here embodied in a concrete form what he describes in the Philebus under the abstract name of ' the in- 1 Rtp. i. 352D-354A. THE REPUBLIC 345 determinate/ that which is always a ' more ' or a ' less ' and never a ' so much.' * The artist whom no other good artist tries to go beyond represents the standard of goodness or perfection in his art at the time being ; and the distinction is between a man who recognizes the existence of such a standard, and knows when it has been reached, and a man who does neither the one nor the other. Light is thrown upon Plato's phraseology here by a passage in the Politicus* where he is investigating the nature of ' excess ' and '' defect ' hi general, and dis- tinguishes between two kinds of measurement, that which measures the greater against the less, and that which measures them both against the nature and requirements of a given thing which has to be made or done. From the first point of view the greater is what is in excess of the less ; from the second, it is that which is in excess of the proportionate, the fitting, the opportune, the right, whatever in fact occupies the place of a mean between extremes. It is measure hi the second sense which is of the essence of all the arts ; their existence stands and falls with that of the proportionate. It is clear that the ' outdoing ' or ' going beyond ' of the Republic has refer- ence to measure in the second of these senses : it is not the doing of a ' more than less,' but of a ' more than the proportionate, that is, the right, amount.' The position of Thrasymachus led to the following results. The one right thing is self-interest, that is, what is traditionally called injustice, the denial of all prin- ciple. If successful (that is, if it be the self-interest of the stronger), it is called justice ; if not, it is punished as injustice. What is traditionally called justice, the 1 Above, p. 315. * 283 C-a8s A. 246 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD recognition of a principle applying to others as well as to oneself, is a mistake, though one may be driven to it by fear of worse consequences. This position has been shown to be logically untenable : on all analogy, the recognition of some such principle, in life as in other things, would seem to be the condition of excellence, strength, happiness. But, though logically Thrasymachus is silenced by Socrates, a feeling of dissatisfaction re- mains, of which the two brothers, Glaucon and Adei- mantus, are now made the exponents. Young men of talent and promise, with high moral enthusiasm and minds open to all the speculative influences of the time, they are eager to hear the question discussed upon a deeper basis. The difficulties which they feel, concern the relation of the real and the apparent, the inward and the outward, the essential nature of morality and its ex- ternal results or accompaniments. If justice is really good and the highest good, it must be good not merely like pleasure, which is good independently of its results ; nor merely like medicine, which is good only for its results ; but good in the fullest sense, like sight, knowledge, health, both for its own sake and for its results. Now this is just what has never been properly shown. Morality has been preached to us from time immemorial, but only because in various ways, in money, honour, reputa- tion, it pays to be moral. What we want to be shown is, 'what are the effects for good and evil of justice and injustice themselves in the soul of man, whether they are seen or whether they are not' : no one would be unjust if he knew that in being so he was ' harbouring his own greatest enemy.' Glaucon and Adeimantus accordingly propose to restate the case between justice and injustice, in the form of certain current theories, which, though THE REPUBLIC 347 differing in motive, agree in emphasising the external side of morality, and so practically destroying its essence. They do this, not because they believe in the theories (for they do not), but because they wish to get from Socrates a solution of their difficulties ; and with this view they state them as forcibly as they possibly can *. The theory which Glaucon begins by expounding asserts, firstly, that justice is a conventional compromise ; secondly, that those who practise it do so unwillingly from inability to do the opposite; thirdly, that their unwillingness is only natural, for injustice is really much better than justice. Firstly, then : in the nature of things it is good to do injustice, evil to suffer it ; experience showed men that the evil of the latter exceeded the good of the former; and so, as they could not have the good without the evil, they made a compact with one another to give up both. This was the origin of law and contract, and the enactment of law was named justice, which is thus a mean between the best thing, doing injustice with impunity, and the worst, suffering it with- out power of retaliation. If a man had the power to be unjust, he would never dream of entering into the compact ; it would be madness to do so. Again, if we would see that those who do justice do it under the constraint of law and against the impulses of nature, let us imagine two rings like that of Gyges in the fable, which enabled its wearer to make himself invisible at will, and let us give one to the just man and the other to the unjust. Who would be so 'adamantine' as to abide in his justice, when he could go about satisfying all his desires freely, like a god among men ? The truth is that every one privately thinks injustice the best, and 1 Rgf. fi. 357 A-358 B. 348 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD rightly ; a man who had such a power, and did not use it, would be thought a miserable fool by all who saw him, though they would praise him in public for fear of suffer- ing injustice themselves. Lastly, let us put the two lives side by side in naked and unrelieved contrast. The unjust man must be supposed to be a perfect master of his craft ; he must give the appearance of the greatest justice, and, if he ever makes a false step, he must be able to recover himself. Then set beside him the 'simple, genuine ' man, one who ' wishes to be good, not to seem '; strip him of everything except his justice, and let him give the appearance of the greatest injustice. What sort of life may each expect ? The one will be scourged, racked, imprisoned, blinded, impaled, and will be taught that the right thing is to seem just, not to be so. The other will reap the fruits of being, for he seems just, but he is unjust : he will have a place in the government, and marry whom he pleases, and make all the profits of unscrupulousness ; he will win in the struggle of life, become rich, help his friends and harm his foes, make splendid offerings to the gods, and have a better chance than the just man of winning their favour. Such is one theory of the superiority of injustice to justice 1 . Adeimantus has heard an opposite view to this, which he thinks still more worth stating : it will make Glaucon's point clearer. It is the view which prefers justice to injustice, not however for its own sake, but for the worldly advantages which it secures. These advantages are extended to include the blessings of the gods ; ' for the god-fearing man,' as Homer says, 'the earth bears wheat and barley, the trees are heavy with fruit, his flocks bring forth without fail, and the sea supplies him 1 Rep. ii. 359 C- 3 6a C. THE REPUBLIC 349 with fish.' Even more splendid is the picture which Musaeus and Eumolpus draw of the banquet of the saints in Hades, where they lie on couches with crowns on their heads and drink to all eternity. Other poets prolong the wages of the righteous man to his children's children and the generations after them. But the unrighteous man in the other world they bury in mud, or make him carry water in a sieve, while in this world he suffers all the penalties which Glaucon assigned to the just 1 . Another view of justice and injustice is this. Many people are never tired of saying what a beautiful thing justice is ; but, they add, it is difficult and laborious, while injustice is easy and pleasant, and is only conventionally disgraceful. And they are not afraid to honour bad men who are successful, and to treat the good and weak with contempt, though they confess that these are better men than the others. And what is most astonishing of all, they say that the gods often send misfortune to the good and prosperity to the wicked ; and begging priests and soothsayers come to the rich man and persuade him that, if he or his ancestors have committed any crime, they have power from the gods to atone for it ; or, if he wants to injure an enemy, they have spells by which they will do it for him at a trifling cost. They support themselves by quotations from the poets, and produce books of ritual by Orpheus and Musaeus, the children, as they say, of the Moon and the Muses. Their rites, which combine entertainment with worship, they call mysteries, and they persuade not individuals only, but whole cities, that these can absolve sinners from punishment both in this world and the next, while an awful fate awaits those who reject them. When a young man hears all this, a man who 1 Rep. ii. 362 -363 E. 350 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD has the ability to put together what he hears and to draw practical inferences from it, what is he likely to say to himself? Will he not conclude that the 'fortress' of life must be scaled by guile, not by justice ; that ' seeming is stronger than truth, and master of happiness,' and that the arts of seeming are what he has to cultivate ; that, as for the gods (if indeed there are any), we only know of them what we are told by the poets, who tell us that they can be bribed by sacrifice ? Why not, then, do injustice, and sacrifice from the proceeds of it ? If anybody talks of punishment in a future life, we are assured that there is great efficacy in the mysteries. On what conceivable grounds, then, should any one who has any advantages of mind or body, property or family, continue to prefer justice? Even if a man has convinced himself that all that we have been saying is untrue, and that justice is really the best, he will be very ready to ex- cuse those who do wrong ; for he knows that nothing but a divine instinct or exceptional knowledge makes a man abstain from injustice voluntarily. We have seen what are the consequences of praising not justice itself, but the appearance and results of it. Socrates has spent all his life in asking what the real nature of things is ; surely he will tell us what is the power of justice for good, and of injustice for evil, in the soul, whether they be seen by gods and men or whether they be not 1 . The grim nakedness of the contrast drawn here between the two lives reminds us of the Gorgias. There the contrast was defiantly accepted by Socrates, and the bare principle of right upheld, in the confidence of invincible logic and in scorn of consequences, against the combined splendours and terrors of the world. The way in which 1 Rep. ii. 363 -367 E. THE REPUBLIC 351 it is dealt with in the Republic is very different. Instead of exhibiting justice as an abstract principle, or investi- gating the soul in which he had been challenged to show its working, Socrates proceeds to analyze human society. But it is only in appearance that the ground is shifted. The state, as Socrates explains, is larger than the indi- vidual, and we shall find justice ' written in it in larger letters ' and more easy to read *. And as we follow him in his delineation of an ideal society we see that he has only begun on the outside and is working inwards, tracing the external organization of the community back to its hidden source in human nature, and showing ultimately how the principles which regulate industry, war, and government are only the more superficial expression of those which regulate the moral life of man. Thus the question, How does justice work for good in the soul independently of visible results ? is answered by showing that the whole visible structure of civic life depends upon invisible forces and principles, and that what is called justice, so far from being an arbitrary convention, is that condition of the soul itself without which society would dissolve. Plato's method is first to sketch a society such as it would be if human nature were allowed and compelled to follow what he believed to be its ' natural,' that is, its highest, bent. The details of his conception of such a society, and of the human nature from which it springs, belong to other parts of his philosophy. It is enough here to notice that he finds the state to have three main functions, that of producing the material commodities of life, that of protecting itself against external aggression and internal faction, and that of government ; these 1 Rep. ii. 368 -369 A ; cp. viii. 545 B. 352 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD functions having their ground in the triple nature of the human soul, which makes their exercise both necessary and possible. Men are made by nature, and ought to be trained by education and law, to take a place in the industrial, military, or governing class. The perfect state would be that in which every born artisan was an artisan, every born soldier a soldier, every born ruler a ruler ; and existing states are imperfect in proportion as this is not the case. We have now to see how Plato fits into this conception of society the current ideas of morality, and thus gives them a new meaning and foundation. Every nation and age embodies its ideas of human excellence and the reverse in certain leading words. The Greek words which we translate ' justice,' ' wisdom,' ' courage,' and ' temperance/ had obtained such prevalence in Plato's time that it is usual now to call them the names of the Greek ' cardinal virtues,' and in the Republic they are assumed to be an exhaustive account of good- ness. If, then, as Plato held, the goodness of a state is in principle the same as that of an individual, only exercised on a larger scale and on different occasions, these terms will apply to men in their public and political, as well as in their private and moral, characters. The state, of course, does not act except through its citizens ; and, in speaking (as he habitually does) of ' the virtues of the state,' Plato is not thinking of qualities inhering in some abstract entity, but simply (as his illustrations show) of qualities exhibited by the citizens in various public capacities, as representatives of the community. What he is at pains to point out is that these qualities, though differently exhibited, are in essence the same, and depend upon the same psychological conditions, as those exhibited in the private life of individuals ; so that, when we say THE REPUBLIC 353 a state acts justly, wisely, bravely or temperately, we ought to mean that the minds of the men who represent the state in these several actions are in a condition, and swayed by principles, which would make them just, wise, brave, or temperate, in their own personal affairs. 1 Beginning, then, with the community, as that in which virtue is exhibited in larger outlines, we have to ask, What is it which makes a state just ? or, What is political justice ? Justice, Plato answers, is the fundamental virtue which sustains society, which makes all other virtues possible, and which we only find it hard to see because it meets us at every step that we take -. Society exists for two reasons because no individual can do everything for himself, and because every individual can do some- thing for others. Society exists well in proportion as this double fact is recognized and acted upon ; when each member of it fills the position which by nature and edu- cation he is best fitted to fill ; when, in Plato's formula, ' every man does what belongs to him.' This is political justice. It is a principle which holds good in every stratum of society, from the lowest to the highest. In industry, under the form of proper division of labour, it secures the greatest quantity and the best quality of pro- duction ; and in higher spheres it determines that the soldier, the administrator, the senator, shall be the right men in the right places. The more important the func- tion, the more important becomes the principle. ' That a carpenter should try to be a shoemaker, or a shoemaker to be a carpenter, or the same man to be both, does no 1 It is not possible in so limited a space to follow so long a work as the Republic in its actual method. I have therefore,- while still using much of the language of the work, combined its results in the way which seems best to secure brevity and clearness. 1 Rep. iv. 432 D. N . R . A a 354 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD serious harm to a state. But that a man who is a me- chanic or anything of that sort by nature, should be excited by wealth or numbers or strength to try to get into the military class, or a military man to get into the governing class when he is not capable of it, or that the same man should try to do all these things at once, this is ruin to a state.' l Plato's principle must not be understood as merely, or primarily, one of limitation. It does not say in the first instance, ' Do not try to do what you are not fitted for,' but, ' Do what you are fitted for, and in so doing you will do the best both for yourself and the community.' To put an agricultural labourer into fine clothes and tell him to work the land at his leisure is only to make him into something which is neither an agricultural labourer nor any other useful member of society 2 . And con- versely, a man who ought to find his highest happiness in governing, but allows himself to find it in farming or commerce, will lose what was his own without really gaining what is another's, and will learn the truth of the old saying, c the half is more than the whole.' 3 The pauper who cannot or will not work is admitted to be no true part of the community ; but the member of the government who is spending his fortune in a way which will end by making him a pauper is really performing no truer function in the community, and has no more right to stay there *. Plato does not ignore the possibility of men born in a lower position being qualified for a higher, and vice versa ; he expressly provides for such contingencies 5 ; but it is characteristic of him to dwell 1 Rep. iv/434A-B; cp. 421 A. 3 Ib. iv. 420 -421 A. s Ib. v. 466 B-C. * Ib. viii. 552 A-B. 5 Ib. iii. 415 B-C. THE REPUBLIC 355 more upon the principle which he would wish to see realized than upon the ways of working it, upon the ideal limit than upon the approaches to it. The just state, then, is that in which each man in his public character, as member of a class or institution, fulfils his capacity and acts up to his position. Justice is the diffused ' power ' or ' virtue ' in men which makes them able and willing to do this. It is also the principle upcn which the social balance is restored when it has been upset, when one member of society has encroached upon the position of another : ' in the administration of the law the thing to be aimed at is that no one should either have what is another's, or be deprived of what is his own.' l Thus it is in a sense the cardinal of the cardinal virtues, for it expresses a general and essential condition. of which the other virtues admit of being represented as special aspects: 'it makes it possible for them to exist, and it maintains them in existence.' 2 Next, what is political 'wisdom,' the wisdom of the state ? Wisdom is obviously a kind of knowledge, but what kind? Good farmers or good wood-workers do not make a state wise; they make it good at wood- working and farming, and this is not to be wise as a state. The only knowledge which answers the requirement is knowledge of the state as a whole, which can regulate its relations with itself and with other states. Few men in any community are capable of such knowledge, but when we call a state wise we mean that those few men are in it 3 . What, again, is courage in a state? Clearly, when we call a particular state brave, we are thinking of its 1 Rep. iv. 433 E. * Ib. hr. 433 B. Ib. hr. 4286-429 A. A a 2 356 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD soldiers ; they are the persons who ' have its character for courage or cowardice in their hands.' And what is it which makes a citizen serve his country bravely ? Not the mere blind instinct of the brute or the slave, but the intelligent conviction, implanted by the state through education, as to what he ought to fear and what he ought not. The man whose soul is ' dyed ' so fast with such a conviction that he can hold to it through all trials trials of pain, pleasure, and appetite, as well as those of fear is the brave citizen, and the state which is repre- sented on the battle-field by such men is the brave state l . It remains to characterize political temperance, and we may take a hint from the common phrase ' self-control,' which is often substituted for ' temperance.' ' Self-control ' in the literal sense is absurd, for how can a man be both stronger and weaker than himself? But what the phrase points to is the existence in the soul of two elements, a higher and a lower, of which the former ought naturally to control the latter. The lower element in a state is represented by the motley desires of the inferior classes, who are the numerical majority, while the higher is found in the simple and rationalized desires of the superior minority. Where the superior control the inferior, and where the control is felt to be right through all classes, there we have political temperance. Thus the temperance of a state is not exhibited in a particular part of the community, as was the case with wisdom and courage ; rather it is a sort of harmony which pervades the whole social scale, producing unanimity as to who ought to rule ; and the temperate state is that in which the various claims of intelligence, wealth, strength, and numbers, are felt by all to be duly recognized 2 . 1 Rep. iv. 429A-43oC. 2 Ib. iv. 430 -4333. THE REPUBLIC 357 The conception of the state which determines Plato's account of its goodness is that of a whole of parts, an organic unity ; its virtues are simply the right modes of action of those parts, severally and in relation to each other. But the particular form in which he conceives the social organism depends upon his conception of the psychical organism. It is because the individual soul is a complex of elements, of which the functions are not interchangeable, and which exist hi different proportions in different men. that society is necessary and possible. According as the individual is dominated by one or other of the primary impulses of human nature, the im- pulse to physical satisfaction, the impulse to self-assertion and personal distinction, and the impulse to communion with man, nature, and truth, he can supply to others something which they want, and take from them in re- turn something which he wants himself. And, as the external organization of society is thus the result and expression of the internal organization of its members, so the virtues and vices of the state, as displayed by its citizens in the outer sphere of public life, result from and express the virtues and vices of their inner life. If the governing class governs in the true sense of the word, it is because the governing faculties of its members are neither being exercised upon alien objects nor having their functions usurped by alien faculties ; and so on with the other classes. The principle of virtue, or, in Platonic phraseology, its ' form,' is the same in the state and in the individual ; the various virtues are explained in both cases by being shown to be conditions of that harmonious specialization of functions without which successful vital activity, whether in public or private life, is impossible. 358 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD The just soul, accordingly, is that in which reason, the natural ruler, rules, and 'spirit' obeys and serves it, while both together combine to regulate the unquiet and in- satiate appetites which form the largest part of every man, and to resist by counsel and action external aggres- sions upon personal independence. The brave soul is that in which spirit retains and carries out unflinchingly through all temptations the dictates of reason. To be wise is to understand the true interest of the whole self and its several parts ; and temperance is the unanimity between the higher and lower natures as to which should rule and which obey l . Thus the principle of political justice, that the man who is by nature a shoemaker should make shoes, and so on with the members of the other classes of the community, turns out to be only the visible ' image ' of justice. What gives its value to the image is the fact that it expresses the inward condition of soul which is ' the truth of justice/ the condition in which there is no usurpation of functions by the various elements, but each does its own work, and the man feels himself at one with himself, 'tempered and tuned,' through the whole scale of his nature 2 . Virtue, then, may best be described as ' the health and beauty and good condition of the soul,' vice as its ' disease, ugliness, and weakness ' ; and, if all the meats and drinks and money and power in the world cannot make life worth living to a corrupt body, much less can it be worth living at the price of dis- organizing and corrupting the very principle of vitality, the soul itself 3 . In the foregoing account of virtue, or the moral con- dition of life, the other half of the problem of Greek 1 Rep. iv. 441 C-442 D. 2 Ib. iv. 443 B-E. 3 Ib. iv. 444 D- 445 D. THE REPUBLIC 359 ethics, the moral end, is already practically determined. If goodness means the highest state of the soul's being, the end of life must be to be good ; nothing else can really profit a man, for anything else means the surrender of something which he might have been. But it still remains to ask, In what concrete forms is the good ap- prehended ? How is a man to present it to himself as a thing to be done or attained ? In what relation does it stand to the 'good things' of life as ordinarily under- stood ? The general character of Plato's answer to these questions follows naturally from his conception of virtue. If man can only exist normally as a member of a com- munity, and if his virtue consists in recognizing and acting up to his position as such a member, his aim in life must be relative to the aim of the community. And we find accordingly that Plato makes the proof of virtue and the qualification for high position depend upon the degree in which a man is able to identify his own with the public weal. The ' dogma ' or conviction which he is to learn to oppose to the illusions of pleasure and fear, to the violence of pain, to the persuasiveness of argument, is the simple one, that what is best for the state is best for him 1 . And, when it is urged against Socrates that in asking the best men in the community to give them- selves up, body and soul, to its service, and to renounce the luxuries and privileges of property, and most of what is commonly esteemed necessary to the enjoyment of life, he is asking them to be miserable, he replies that he should not be surprised if these very men turned out to be the happiest of all, but that the first question is, how the whole state is to be made happy. To begin by trying to make a part happy is as illogical as it 1 Rep. in. 4120-414 A. 360 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD would be to paint the eyes of a portrait purple, because purple is the most beautiful of colours, and the eye the most beautiful part of the face. The first thing to keep in view is the welfare of the whole community : let every one in it do his own work as well as he can, and trust to nature to determine what share of the general happiness shall fall to his lot J . The point of this passage is not to deny the right of classes and individuals to happiness, nor to assert the existence of some abstract happiness of the whole which is not that of the parts. The point is that happiness is not a determinate thing, so much money, so much enjoyment, which we can attach at pleasure to this person or that. Happiness is in what a man is and does, and this must be determined by his position, as the beauty of a colour is determined by its relation to other colours. When Plato returns to the objection which he here only half answers, he boldly declares that the men who are able to devote themselves to the highest service of the state, so far from sacrificing themselves thereby, attain a happiness higher than that of the Olympic victors ; ' their victory is more glorious, and their nurture at the public cost more complete ; the salvation of the whole state is the victory which they win, and the supply of all that is necessary to nurture and life is the crown with which they are crowned.' 2 It is doubtless an inconsistency in Plato (due to the conflict of reforming zeal with a philosophical idea) that, while asserting in the strongest way the priority of the soul in the determination of human well-being, and the entirely secondary and instrumental character of material circumstances, he still attributes to the latter an originative efficacy for evil, and thinks to make 1 Rep. iv. 419-421 C. 2 Ib. v. 465 D- 4 66 C. THE REPUBLIC 361 spiritual energy more spiritual by denuding it of con- ditions like property and the family, which it, and it alone, makes either good or bad. But if we look, not at the machinery by which he proposes to carry out his ideas, but at the ideas themselves, they lead to the following conclusions. A man must keep constantly before himself the fact that his own life is an element in a larger life, from which he can only escape by a sort of moral suicide. The more intensely he can realize this fact, the more he can draw all that he is and does into the circle of this idea, the more he can identify his own aims with those in which he participates, the higher is the life which he leads, and the fuller the being which he attains. Every one capable of belonging to a com- munity can feel to some extent the ties by which he is connected with others; a perfect community would be one in which every one felt them in their full extent and significance. ' That state is in the highest condition in which the greatest number of people apply the words " mine " and " not mine " to the same things in the same sense ; that state, in fact, which most nearly resembles a single man. For instance, when one's finger receives a blow, the whole community which reaches through the body up to the soul, forming a single order under the ruling principle in it, feels pain simultaneously with the pain of the part, and so we say, " the man has a pain in his finger." . . . The more a state is of this character, the more will it call the experiences of each individual citizen its own, and will rejoice and sorrow with him.' * In such a community the good of the whole would be felt by every member to be identical with his own good ; and, though no human society is conceivable in which 1 Rep. v. 462 C-E. 362 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD this would be absolutely the case, and in which there would not be aims of varying elevation and scope, Plato conceived that one society is better than another just in proportion as each individual, however limited his position, rises above his limitations to the consciousness of contributing to, and sharing in, a common and un- limited good. And this brings us to the culminating point of the Republic. We have already seen that it is a fundamental principle with Plato that the lower nature secures its own truest interests by trying to follow the higher, not by trying to take its place ; in other words, that the good of all the parts, and therefore the ideal of human life, can only be realized through the rule of the highest. ' When the whole soul follows the philosophic element and there is no faction in it, the result is that each part not only does its own work and is just, but also reaps its own pleasures in the best and truest form which they admit of; but, when any other element rules, the result to that element is that it loses its own pleasures, besides compelling the other elements to pursue a pleasure alien and untrue.' 1 This is the psychological expression of the idea which is better known in the form of the famous paradox that ' evil will not cease in the world, nor the ideal of society be realized, until philosophers are kings or kings philosophers.' 2 The idea, like most others in the Republic, has a double aspect. It may be regarded either as a practical suggestion for reforming human life by a sort of tour de force, or as a theoretical principle, never literally realizable, but containing an in- exhaustible truth and capable of infinite application. In 1 Rep. ix. 586 -587 A. * Ib. v. 473 D-E. THE REPUBLIC 363 the former aspect it belongs more to the Platonic politics ; it is in the latter that we have to consider it here. What then does Plato mean by demanding the sovereignty of philosophy as the condition of human perfection ? We have seen already, and shall see again, that he conceives of ' being ' in its ultimate nature as an order or system, of which ' the good ' is the pervading and sustaining principle. What is true of being as a whole is true of that part of it which is human society. Human nature is such that the individual can only attain well-being by participating in a common life, that is. by recognizing and utilizing his individual limitations. The more a man can realize this fact, the higher and the truer is his life. To realize it completely would be to com- prehend fully his position in the world, his relations to man, nature, and the universe : and this again would be to see the supreme Good, or principle, upon which those relations depend ; to see, in fact, into the ultimate reason of things. Now the element in man in virtue of which he is capable of common life is what Plato calls ' the philosophic.' The kinds and degrees of communion into which it enables him to enter are very various, and will seem at first to have little connexion. It is this element which counterbalances the centrifugal element of self- assertion and aggression, giving rise to different forms of sympathy, from the merest attraction to what is familiar, up to the fellow-feeling of family, country, and humanity. It is this, again, which makes man susceptible to the influences of literature and art, drawing his soul out of itself to meet its better self in the uttered thoughts of other souls. It is this, lastly, which issues in the desire for truth and gives birth to knowledge ; for here too, as Plato conceives, the operative impulse is to be at one 364 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD with something other than, and yet akin to, ourselves, to feel ourselves in our surroundings, to live with the life of the world. Supposing, then, that the ' philosophic ' element in all its forms were allowed full sway, that the capacity for communion were fully tended and developed, that every man up to his measure realized his place in the whole of which he is a part, human life would reach its highest point, and those who had most of the ' philo- sophic' nature, that is, who realized the truth most profoundly, would be the utmost which it is given to man to be. Thus it is that the requirement of the sovereignty of philosophy, and the requirement of the knowledge of the Good, go hand in hand in the Republic. ' Philosophy ' to Plato means love of truth ; and its sovereignty would mean that the discovery of truth was recognized as the highest object of mankind, and obedience to it as their highest duty. To discover the truth of things is to discover their reason, that is, to see them in their true order -and relations. And that which determines their order and relations is always some form of 'good.' Thus the sovereignty of ' philosophy ' and the know- ledge of the ultimate ' good ' are only different aspects of the ideal of human life, conceived as perfect con- formity to its true laws. This double requirement is enforced by Plato from two points of view, as giving satisfaction to a certain impulse in human nature, and as giving logical completion to the theory of human life. On the one hand, there is in man an irrepressible desire to get at the truth of things, through the appearance to the reality, through the fact to the principle ; and this desire, while it is the divinest thing in him and may be the most potent for good, is also the most dangerous THE REPUBLIC 365 and may be the most potent for harm. The highest function of education is to train it aright, to concentrate its restlessness, to discipline its versatility, to supply it with an object adequate to it. Such an object is the ultimate Good or reason of the world, in the growing realization of which the utmost powers of the soul find their exercise, and its deepest longings their satisfaction \ On the other hand, the dictates of law and morality, if pressed for their final justification, lead to the conception of the same ultimate Good. It is this conception which fills up the broken outlines of the moral life, sheds the light of a fuller day upon the twilight of ordinary duties, and lifts a man for moments out of the limitations of time and country into a world of eternal law, of which in spirit he may already be a citizen 2 . The central section of the Republic is thus almost equally occupied with an account of the ' philosophic nature,' and a description of the steps by which the soul may rise to an understanding of ' the Good.' In his theory of knowledge Plato con- ceives philosophy as the ideal science ; we have here to consider his conception of it as the ideal life. To resume our analysis : the popular associations of the word ' philosophy ' in Plato's time were not more favourable than they are in our own. The proposal that philosophers shall be kings will, he is well aware, be ' drowned in a wave of laughter and dishonour ' ; 'all kinds of distinguished persons will throw off their coats, seize the first weapon that comes to hand, and rush to do frightful execution' upon the man who has dared to utter such words. The only way to meet the onslaught 1 Cp. Rep. vi. 490 B, 495 B, 497 D, 503 6-504 D ; vii. 532. a Cp. Rep. vi. 504 6-505 A ; vii. 520 B-E ; vi. 500 B-C, 501 B ; ix. 592 A-B. 366 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD is to explain what a ' philosopher ' really means. ' Philo- sopher ' means ' lover of wisdom,' and, when a person is really fond of, really loves, a thing, he loves all of it. A man therefore cannot be a philosopher unless he has, to begin with, an indiscriminate appetite for knowledge wherever it is to be found. In this respect he is like a person in love ; there is no feature in the face of truth which he cannot, on some pretext or other, find beautiful. This characteristic, however, though essential to the philosophic nature, is shared by it with other natures, and does not of itself make a man a philosopher. To be that, he must desire, not merely to know things in general, but to know the truth of things ; he must be always trying to get through appearances to the reality, through the many to the one, through what changes to what is permanent *. It is just this which makes him objectionable to ordinary people. Things which they treat as fixed and palpable certainties, he is always showing to be only relatively true, while in his search for what he calls a higher reality he seems only to lose his eye for facts, or to upset accepted beliefs 2 . And indeed it is a similar speculative impulse which leads both to philosophy and to scepticism. Both begin with asking the ( reason why ' about received beliefs ; the difference is that the latter stops short when it has shown that what was believed to be absolutely true is only conditionally true, while the former goes on to ask, What are the conditions of its conditional truth ? The genuine philosopher speculates, not in order to over- throw or confuse, not in order to frame neat-looking theories, but because he cannot help it. He cannot rest 1 Rep. v. 473 -480 A, 8 76. v. 476 C-E, 479 A-B; vii. 516 -517 E. THE REPUBLIC 367 in the limits of ordinary opinion and appearance ; he longs like a lover to get at reality, to embrace it, to be one with it *. And this passion for truth, when unalloyed by indolence or vanity, besides implying the intellectual gifts of quickness, retentiveness, and versatility, brings in its train all the qualities which make a noble character. It is incompatible w-ith sensuality and avarice, for it diverts all the forces of desire into another channel. It banishes little-mindedness and cowardice, for it carries a man out of himself into contact with mankind and God, and gives him a vision of all time and all being, in which human life looks but a little thing. It makes him just and easy to deal with, for it is not touched by motives of desire or greed, vanity or fear 2 . ' He whose mind is truly set upon reality has no time to look down at Ihe concerns of men, and fight, and fill himself with jealousy and rancour : his eyes are turned to a world that is set fast and ever the same, a world where nothing does or suffers wrong, but all is reasonable and in order ; and, looking on this, he imitates and becomes like it.' 3 If all this is true, if philosophy is more than the impulse and power to get at the real principles of things if it carries with it all the great moral qualities as well, the philosophic life, harmonizing word and deed, theory and practice, must be the embodiment of human per- fection, and those who live it are marked out to be the natural leaders of mankind. But is all this true? 'Is not the fact rather that, of those who study philosophy further than as a branch of education, the greater number are very eccentric, not to say utterly disreputable, while for the best all that it does is to make them useless 1 Cp. Rep. vii. 537 0-539 D ; vi. 498 0-499 A J 490 A-B. 3 Ib. vi. 48sA-487 A. Ib. vi. sooB-C. 368 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD members of society ? ' This is the truth ; it cannot be denied ; but what are the reasons of it ? Philosophers, the few good ones who exist, are useless : but why ? Only because the world will not use them. The ship of the state is sailed by ignorant and dissolute sailors, who not only have never learnt navigation, but who deny that it can be learnt. The owner and master of the ship is big and strong and well-meaning, but his eyes and ears and brain are not of the best, and he is easily drugged into indifference ; while the one man who really knows how to steer is set aside as a star-gazing theorist. This is why the philosopher is useless. We cannot expect him to go and ask men to let him rule them : they must come to him, not he to them *. The prejudice against philosophy, however, is due much less to the uselessness of the few who pursue it worthily than to the demoralization of most of its pro- fessed votaries. And here again it is not philosophy, but society, that is really to blame. We have seen what the philosophic nature is, the most gifted, the most powerful, the most aspiring, of all natures. Now it is a law of living beings, whether plants or animals, that the stronger they are the more they need the right nourishment, and the more they suffer from the wrong. Weak natures do nothing great, either good or evil ; it is genius spoilt which makes the great criminals of the world. What then is the nourishment which awaits the philosophic soul in the present state of things? Society talks a great deal about 'sophists/ who demoralize our youth ; but the fact is that society itself is the greatest sophist, and fashions young and old, men and women, according to its will. It is the voice of society, in the 1 Rep. vi. 487 0-489 C. THE REPUBLIC 369 assembly, the law-courts, the theatres, the army, loud, exaggerated, and irresistible, and backed by the penalties of law and public opinion, which is our real educator. No individual teacher can possibly compete with it : the grace of God alone can save a soul against such odds. As for these poor paid amateurs, whom society stigma- tizes as 'sophists' and regards as its rivals, they do nothing but retail what they have been taught. Society is a great beast of which they are the keepers ; they study its tempers and appetites, how to come near it and where to touch it, what irritates and what soothes it. how it speaks and likes to be spoken to ; and when they have learnt all this by long experience they" put it together into an art, and call it wisdom, and teach it. They know nothing about what is right or wrong, good or bad, in it ; what the beast likes is ' good,' what it dislikes is ' bad ' ; that is all the account they can give of them. And what does society like and dislike? It likes what it calls facts, and it dislikes principles; it believes in what is necessary, and disbelieves in anything ideal ; it is not philosophical itself, and it is intolerant of those who are ; and, as it is, so must those be who wish to please it. What fate, then, is likely to await the philosophical genius who is born in such surroundings ? His very gifts are his ruin, especially if they be combined with the external advantages of birth, beauty, wealth, and posi- tion. Always first in everything, always surrounded by flatterers who want to use him for their own interests, he will be filled with gigantic hopes, and think that he can rule the world. And if some friend tells him gently that he is a fool, and that to get wisdom he must become her slave, is he likely to listen ? Or if he does listen, and feels drawn by his better nature to philosophy, what . R. Bb 370 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD will not his flatterers do to keep him in their power and to stop the mouth of his adviser ? So it is that the noblest natures, rare in any case, are lost to philosophy, and lost in a sense through their own gifts and ad- vantages l . But this is not all. Philosophy is deserted by those who ought to be her true followers, but even in her humiliation the splendour of her name and place remains, and is too good to lose. Little men of little arts, their mechanic souls stunted and crippled and awry, seeing this goodly land unoccupied, come running out of their prisons, and jump into the sacred precincts. To what shall we compare them ? To a little bald-headed tinker lately let out of gaol, who has had a bath and got a new coat, and is going to marry his master's daughter, so poor is she and forlorn. And what sort of children are they likely to produce ? What but the bastard sophisms which circulate under the name of philosophy, and fasten shame upon their mother 2 ? For these reasons it is that but a poor remnant is left of the true followers of philo- sophy. And these few, having tasted of her blessedness, and seen the madness of the world, finding public life corrupt to the core, and no one to help in the cause of justice, like men fallen among wild beasts, unwilling to join the evil-doers, and unable to do any good by resisting them, can only stand aside out of the driving storm, content, if they may, to live their life purely, and, when death comes, to die in hope 3 . We cannot, indeed, say that such men achieve nothing ; but they would achieve much more, for themselves as well as for mankind, if they could find a proper state to live in. As it is, the 1 Rep. vi. 489 0-495 B. a Ib. vi. 495 6-496 A. Ib. vi. 496 A-E. THE REPUBLIC yji philosophic nature is like a seed sown in an alien soil, under the influence of which it degenerates. If it had a society as good as itself in which to grow, it would show the world that it is the really divine nature, and that all else is human in comparison l . The question then is, How is this force, so potent for good or for evil, to be dealt with ? How is it to be made an agent of salvation instead of destruction ? We found before that a man's virtue is summed up in love of the community of which he is a member, and in the power to recognize his position and act up to it : what then must be added to this virtue if it is to employ and absorb all the eager promptings and all the high aspira- tions which we have seen to be characteristic of the greatest minds if it is to be, in a word, the virtue of a philosopher 2 ? There can be only one answer to these questions. It is ' the Good ' which a man must learn and know, if he is to have a really complete theory of life. It is this which gives to everything else its value ; for what are all the possessions and all the knowledge in the world, if they are not good ? It is this which every one really aims at and is dimly feeling after, this which every one demands to have and for which he will take no substitute. And yet it is just this about which every one is most in the dark. Some people say knowledge is the Good, others pleasure ; but the former, when pressed as to what knowledge they mean, have to say ' knowledge of the good,' thus implying the very thing which they profess to explain ; while the latter are obliged to admit the existence of bad pleasures, and thus to identify good and evil. And this want of clearness and consistency in their ultimate aims reacts upon their subordinate aims, 1 Rep. vi. 497 A-C. * Ib, vi. 497 D, 502 0-504 A. Bb 2 372 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD and makes them lose what they would otherwise gain there. A man cannot have a very firm hold upon justice and honour if he does not know what makes them good. Until he knows that, his knowledge of them is dim, sketchy, incomplete. He is like a blind man walking straight along a road. He has no pattern, no ideal truth, in his soul, to which to look and refer all that he does : his grasp of morality is that of opinion, not of knowledge, and he goes through life like a man in a dream 1 . What, then, is the Good ? To realize what it is in itself would be a ' flight above us ' at present, but we may help ourselves by looking at the visible universe which the Good creates, and in which we may see its image and analogue. As the sun in the visible world, so is the Good in the spiritual. The sun is the source of light, without which the eye cannot see nor objects be seen: the Good is the source of reason, the presence of which makes the soul intelligent and objects intelligible. Where the light of truth and being shines, there the soul sees and understands ; where the twilight of change pre- vails, its vision is clouded and inconstant. Thus we may speak of knowledge and truth as like the Good, but we must not identify them with it ; it is their condition, and higher than they. Nor is it the condition of knowledge only, but of being also ; it not only makes things in- telligible, it makes them what they are ; it is not being, but higher than being 2 . True education is the method of turning the eye of the soul gradually from the darkness in which it was born, to this creative sun with which it has an inherent affinity. At each fresh step in knowledge a new light is shed upon the world ; the last and crown- 1 Rep. vi. 504 A-so6 C. Cp. vi. 484 C-D ; vii. 540 A, 534 C. 2 Ib. vi. 506 6-509 B. THE REPUBLIC 373 ing step is taken when the soul becomes able to look upon the Good itself, not only as it is reflected in the order of nature and the forms of human life, but in its own place and essence, and to see that whatever is right and beautiful in the whole world, visible and invisible, is in some sense due to it. That those who have once had a glimpse of it should not care to return to the darkness of everyday life is but natural ; they desire to dwell in the fruition of the heavenly vision. And when they are forced to come down to earth, and to discuss the dim and shadowy conceptions of right and wrong held by men who have never seen the reality, it is not strange if at first, while their eyes are yet unaccustomed to the dark, they cut a sorry figure. But only fools will laugh at them ; the wise man must pity them. It is the duty of society to give them education, and make them feel that they owe it their services as the price of their nurture ; then they may fairly be called upon to come down from their paradise, and take their part in the business of life. When they get accustomed to the dark- ness, they will see the things in it a thousand times better than do the people who have never been out of it ; for, having known the realities, they will understand their reflexions and shadows 1 . Philosophy, then, is the ascent of the soul from the day of darkness to the true day, from Hades to the gods in heaven 2 . It is the liberation of the soul, gifted with the indestructible spark of divine intelligence, from ' the leaden weights which the pleasures of gluttony and the like attach to it.' 3 It is the impulse which, if it had full sway, would carry the soul out of the sea which encrusts 1 Rep. vii. 517 A-520 C. 3 Ib. vii. 521 C. 3 Ib. vii. 518 -519 B. 374 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD it with the ' shells and stones and tangle ' of earthly appetites, into communion with ' the divine, immortal, and eternal ' to which it is akin l . It is the awakening from the dream-life in which men fight about shadows of power and grasp at phantoms of good, to the reality which lies around them if they would only open their eyes to see 2 . And, if the philosophic nature is justly called the divinest thing in us, it is also in a sense the most truly human. To the outward view man is one, but inwardly he is a complex creature, in which the many-headed monster of appetite and the lion of spirit far exceed in bulk the human element of reason. Yet it is this last, the impulse to seek and be at one with truth, which makes him what he is, and in living for this he lives for his true self. ' Whatever is best for a thing, that is most its own ' ; the lower nature does not lose by sub- mitting to the higher ; on the contrary, it is only by following the lead of the highest, by living, as far as they are able, the life of the whole and making its good their good, that the inferior impulses and desires find their most real satisfaction. The rule of any but the true ruler disorganizes the whole, and in so doing unmakes and falsifies both it and its parts. All vice, then, is a crime against what is nearest and dearest to us, against that human nature within us which is also the divine. To say that injustice is profitable is to say that it is profitable to let loose the animal elements to fight and tear and devour one another, instead of enlisting their nobler instincts, taming their serviceable appetites, and crushing out their bestiality. Is it ' profitable ' to sell one's own son or daughter into slavery to savages ; and shall we have no pity on the most godlike thing within 1 Rep. x. 6n C-6ra A. " Ib. vii. 520 C, 534 C ; v. 476 C-D. THE REPUBLIC 375 us, but enslave it to the most godless for the price of unrighteous gold ? What is licentiousness but a hydra let loose in the soul, or what are self-will and effeminacy but the sinews of spirit too tightly or too loosely strung? What is the meanness which fawns for money but the lion cowed into a monkey, and why does trade vulgarize but because it teaches the sovereign reason to be the toady of avarice ? To be ruled by divine wisdom is the best thing that can happen to 'a man, best of all if he have it in himself, next best if it be set over him from without. It is thus, under the guidance of one and the same principle, that we may all be made friends. The law of the state is the recognition of such a principle, and the end of education is to enable men to be a law to themselves. The wise man, then, will make it the aim of his life to tend the divine nature within him, and to let it rule in the commonwealth of his soul. He will honour all knowledge which helps to this end, and he will manage his body with the same view, making not pleasure only but even health subordinate to it. In the acquisition of wealth he will observe the same principle, trying not to get so much or so little as will disturb the balance of his soul. And so with honours, he will accept some and decline others, according as they will or will not make him a better man. As to politics, in the ideal state, of which he is really a citizen, he will take part in them, but not perhaps in the actual state in which he lives, unless by some divine favour of fortune. Whether the ideal is realized on earth, or not, makes no difference ; it is laid up in heaven as a pattern for him to look at and to dwell in, and the life which he lives will be the life of it and no other 1 . 1 Rep. ix. 586 A-593 B. 376 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD Plato has supplemented and illustrated his conception of human good and perfection in the Republic by an account of human imperfection and evil. The results thus far arrived at may be recapitulated as follows. The perfect life would be the life of complete com- munity, the life in which a man fully realized the truth that he is what he is by participation in a larger being. The element in man in virtue of which he can approach the realization of this truth is the philosophic element, and the perfect life would therefore be the life which is ruled by philosophy. And as the ground of this truth is the further and ultimate truth that the universe is an ordered whole, created and sustained by the absolute Good, the perfect life would be the life lived in the ever- present vision of the Good. But man is by no means wholly ' philosophical/ and the actual life of man is therefore by no means perfect. Even those few who deserve the name of ' philosophers ' only deserve it because the philosophic nature in them is dominant ; but the spirited and appetitive elements over which it dominates are still present in them, and form quantita- tively the largest part of them. In most men some other element is dominant : their power of living in communion and realizing the good is perhaps only enough to enable them to serve a cause which they believe, without fully understanding it, to represent their better self; perhaps it does not enable them to do so much as this, but only to obey a power which they feel has a right to rule. Hence the need of society. The utmost that can be expected of a society is that there should be a felt reciprocity of interests between all its members. The forms in which this reciprocity comes home to different natures will be very different. To THE REPUBLIC 377 some it will appear in the results of industry which has been both patriotic and successful ; to others in personal distinction won in the service of the government; to others in the simple consciousness of living for the true good of the whole community. And these three forms represent roughly the great divisions into which mankind seemed to Plato naturally to fall, those to whom wealth, those to whom honour, and those to whom truth, embody respectively the chief good or end of life. A society or an individual is perfect in proportion as the lower ends are pursued in subordination to the higher: imperfect, in proportion as they are substituted for the higher. As virtue does not mean the elimination of the inferior nature, but its elevation, so vice does not mean the elimination of the higher nature, but its debasement. From Plato's point of view this debasement may be indifferently represented as disorganization and loss of the sense of community, or as the substitution of a partial and therefore false end for an adequate and true one. In the eighth and ninth books of the Republic he has illustrated its double character in a series of pictures, each exhibiting a typical form of decline from the ideal life. The order of the series is logical, not historical : it represents the progress of the evil principle in human nature, not as it has taken place in any particular time or country, but as it might be supposed to take place if there were no counteracting influences. In delineating it Plato has ransacked the whole field of political history and social life over which his experience or his informa- tion extended, gathering from every quarter whatever seemed to him characteristic of the particular form of evil which he was describing, and combining it so as to illustrate that form most effectively. He has placed the 378 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD pictures of individuals and states, of personal and political life, side by side, in accordance with the theory which underlies the whole Republic, the theory that political and social phenomena must be interpreted as the ex- pression of psychological and moral forces. What he calls the ' oligarchic ' or the ' democratic ' man is not merely a fanciful miniature of the state of the same name ; he is the man who embodies those principles and tendencies which, if developed in sufficient strength, produce oligarchic or democratic constitutions or move- ments. Nowhere else has Plato shown so much know- ledge of human nature, combined with so much pictorial power, as in this section of the Republic. It is only possible here, omitting most of the details which give colour to his pictures, and reserving the more special political aspects for later consideration J , to notice how the leading features of the description illustrate his con- ception of moral imperfection and evil. Next in worth to the philosophic impulse Plato sets the impulse to personal distinction the impulse to which honour, the recognition of distinction by others, is the dominant object of desire. The first step in decline from the ideal life, therefore, is the substitution of honour for truth as the end of life. Honour depends for its worth upon the worth of those who bestow it ; and we have seen that Plato finds the highest life of * spirit ' or the honour-loving element, not in mere successful achievement, but in achievement in the service of a cause or principle which it feels to be higher than itself. This ' service ' is just what it loses when it becomes itself the ruling principle of life, and the want of such a higher guide and stimulus narrows its aspirations, and coarsens 1 [In another chapter of the unfinished book.] THE REPUBLIC 379 its temper. The typical character which results from its dominion is that of the ' timocratic ' l man. He is ' self-willed, and something of a Philistine, yet fond of art and literature, though no speaker ; rough to slaves (whom he is not educated enough to despise), but courteous to equals ; full of respect for authority, and fond of exercising it himself; ambitious of nothing but military distinction, and much given to athletics and hunting. When he is young he despises money ; but the older he gets, the more he cares about it : there is a touch of alloy in his character, for he has neglected the education of reason and beauty, and nothing else can guard a man's virtue through life.' 2 The timocratic character issues in a generalized form in the constitu- tion which Plato calls ' timocracy,' of which he regards Sparta as a type, with its depreciation of culture, suspicion of intellect, contempt for trade and agriculture, sharp division of governing and governed, passion for military glory, and repressed avarice 3 . It is this repressed avarice which breaks out in the next stage, when the reign of spirit is succeeded by that of appetite, and the motive of honour by that of wealth. Wealth, as being the great instrument of enjoyment, is often represented by Plato as the typical object of appetite in general, but in describing the progress of evil he is careful to distinguish between the ' necessary,' or * productive,' and the ' unnecessary,' ' spendthrift,' or ' drone-like ' appetites. The former are those which are indispensable to life and beneficial, the latter those which can be got rid of by effort and contribute nothing to the good of the organism. It is of the former that wealth is 1 ' Timocratic ' means ' in whom honour rules.' 3 Ref. viiL 548 -549 B. s Ib. viii. 547 8-548 C. 380 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD the object, and the character or the constitution which seeks the end of life in wealth, as such, is called by Plato the ' oligarchic.' The vice of the oligarchic principle lies in the fact that, whereas the desire for wealth only justifies its place in human nature by submitting to be limited by the desire for the good of the whole man 1 , it is here ' set upon a throne, while reason and spirit sit like slaves on either side.' 2 This new elevation of a secondary into a primary end goes along with an increase of disorganization and consequently of weakness. The oligarchic man is ' sparing and industrious ; he satisfies only the necessary appetites ; on the others, which he considers frivolous, he will spend nothing, but represses them. He is a dry sort of person, who saves on every- thing and is always making a purse, and the world speaks well of him. If you want to see his bad side, watch him when he is made a guardian of orphans, and can do wrong with impunity ; then you will see that the self-control which he shows in ordinary business, where credit is to be got by honesty, is not the result of reason and principle, but of the forcible repression of his bad by his respectable desires ; it is his property that he trembles for. . . . Thus he is not really one man but two ; and, though his life is more orderly than that of many, he is far from having the true virtue of a soul at unity with itself. In the honourable competition of public life he is not a formidable antagonist ; he does not want to spend money on such things, and he is afraid to wake his expensive appetites and enlist them on his side ; and so he goes into battle with a fraction of his forces, and gets beaten and rich.' 3 1 Rep. ix. 591 D-E ; cp. iv. 421 D-E. 2 Ib. viii. 553 C. 3 Ib. viii. 554 A- 55 5 A. THE REPUBLIC 381 The dominion of appetite having now begun, the further phases of decline will be the lower phases of the appetitive nature itself. The first is that in which the desire for wealth has given way to the desire for freedom, the ' oligarchic ' to the ' democratic ' spirit. The essence of the latter, as understood by Plato, is that it asserts the principle of absolute liberty and equality : of liberty, in the sense that every one is free to do what he pleases; of equality, in the sense that every one is equal to every one else in every thing. Negatively, it is the spirit which repudiates all law, order, and rule as a restraint upon free human nature, and all distinctions of better and worse as an infringement of the abstract equality of rights. The phase which it represents in the progress of evil is that of an equilibrium of conflicting appetites. The decent but uninteresting order due to the concentrated pursuit of wealth has broken up, but no new dominion has as yet asserted itself, and there intervenes a stage of brilliant anarchy. Its principle is to have no principle, to deny all dis- tinctions of good and bad, necessary and unnecessary, to abandon oneself to the pleasure which the * lot' of circum- stance brings. The * democratic ' man ' passes his life in satisfying the appetite of the moment; one day he drenches himself in wine and music, the next he pines on cold water; sometimes he is athletic, sometimes he is lazy and will do nothing, sometimes he takes a spell of philosophy ; often he turns politician, and jumps up with the first idea that comes to his hand ; if soldiering happen to strike his fancy, he takes to that ; if commerce, to that. His life is under no order or necessity, but he calls it pleasant, free, and delightful, and he lives no other.' 1 1 Rep. viii. 561 C-D. 382 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD The development of evil is completed when, from the rule of the few respectable appetites and the anarchy of the many indiscriminate, we pass to the autocracy of one. As Plato found in the love of wealth the core of the oligarchic spirit, and in the love of abstract freedom that of the democratic, so in sheer selfishness, the simple craving for the pleasures of satisfied desire, he finds the moral embryo of the tyrant. And as the ' oligarchic ' and ' democratic ' men tend, under favourable circum- stances, to produce oligarchies and democracies, because the theory of those constitutions is already the theory of their own lives, so the ' tyrannical ' man has in him the making of a political tyrant, because he is already ' tyrannized over ' by one of his own passions. Plato had before divided appetites into ' necessary ' and ' un- necessary ' ; he now further distinguishes in the latter a class of 'lawless' appetites, which are born in every one, but may be got rid of or repressed. These are the 'wild-beast' element in human nature, which cannot be 'tamed' or made serviceable for life, but is essentially inorganic and destructive. They make themselves felt in dreams, when the higher nature is asleep, and shame and reason have lost their sway over the imagination. Plato represents the possession by them as a sort of madness, akin to other forms of morbid self-conscious- ness 1 . It is one of these appetites, lust, whose sole dominion makes the ' tyrannical ' man. As the dominant passion grows, it breeds new wants, which clamour for food ; they have to be satisfied at any cost ; first the family property is attacked, and when that source is drained crime begins. If there are only a few such men 1 Rep. ix. 571 A-572 B ; cp. ix. 587 C, 589 B-D, and 573 B-C, 577 D, 578 A. THE REPUBLIC 383 in a state, they take service with some foreign despot or become common criminals ; if they are numerous, the most ' tyrannical ' of them becomes a tyrant, and realizes the ideal of evil by converting into a waking truth the bestiality of dreams. Instead of being one with his fellow-men, he is now their natural enemy ; instead of being his own best friend, he has enslaved what is highest in him to what is lowest ; he seems to be an autocrat, but. if you think of his whole soul, no one does less what he wishes ; he lives for the satisfaction of desire, and yet he is always in the pangs of longing and remorse. Thus does Plato conceive that, as the noblest powers in the soul do not find their fullest exercise except in a com- munity which they can serve by ruling, and as a man attains the summit of his being when he can feel that ' nothing but his body is his own ' and yet that he is the happiest of men, so, conversely, the lowest depth is not reached until he who is tyrannized over by his own vilest passions is placed in a position where he can ruin thousands to satisfy them, and can feel that he is absolutely friendless and alone in the moment when he is saying, ' I am the state.' The combinations of circumstances under which Plato represents these various characters as developing are all typical and full of interest, but it is only possible here to notice one or two of their characteristic features. The first thing which strikes us is the prominence given to the law of reaction : ' it is the tendency of any excess to produce a change in the opposite direction ; this is true of seasons, of plants, of animal bodies, and not least of political constitutions.' l Thus the father who abstains from politics because of their bad tone has a son who 1 Rep. viii. 563 E. 384 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD throws himself headlong into the competition for power '. The self-contained and timid money-maker is the heir of a man who has wrecked his all upon a political rock 2 . The 'democratic' man, who is 'everything by turns and nothing long,' is the sobered result of a reaction against the niggard monotony in which he has been brought up 3 ; and the same reaction, not sobered down, but intensified, produces the ' tyrannical ' man, the slave of a single passion 4 . Another noticeable point is the way in which, as the soul loses its inner unity, it becomes more the prey of external circumstances. The oligarchy falls by faction aided by another state 5 ; the soul of the democratic man is fought over by rival claimants 6 ; and the passion which seals the fate of the tyrannical man is manufactured for him by a society which is afraid that he is slipping out of its hands 7 . As the intrinsic goodness of a thing, body or soul, plant, animal, or work of art, is tested by its power of resisting external influences 8 , so ' the unhealthy body or state wants but a slight impulse from without to make it ill, and sometimes even falls ill of itself.' 9 Lastly, it is characteristic of Plato to represent evil as beginning at the top and working downwards. As long as the highest elements in a man or a community are at their best, there is no fear of faction or weakness below them 10 ; but as soon as they begin to lose their singleness of purpose, and to let their work pass to other and inferior agents, the disturbance of function is felt through the whole organism, and not only do the higher 1 Rep. viii. 549 -550 B. 2 Ib. viii. 553 A-C. 3 Ib. viii. 559 D, 561 A. 4 Ib. ix. 572 C ff. " Ib. viii. 556 E. 6 Ib. viii. 559 -560 B, 561 B. 7 Ib. ix. 572 E-573 A. 8 Ib. ii. 380 E ff. 9 Ib. viii. 556 E. 10 Ib. viii. 545 D ; cp. iv. 442 A ; v. 465 B. THE REPUBLIC 385 elements themselves sink to a lower level, but the lower ones which take their place, deprived of their natural guidance and support, lose force and unity at the very time that they seem to be gaining them. Thus it is that, at almost every fresh step in decline, Plato notices as one of the prime causes of this decline ' want of education, 1 meaning by ' education ' all those spiritual influences by which the higher nature is nourished and quickened, and without which it grows ' weak and deaf and blind.' 1 It is this want which allows the spirited element to usurp the rule of reason, and personal dis- tinction to take the place of truth and good as the object of life 2 ; it is owing to this that a man falls under the ex- ternal law of force instead of being a law to himself 3 ; it is this which tends to brutalize chivalry, and lets the taint of avarice fasten on it and grow with age 4 . At a lower stage the same neglect of true culture, blinding the soul to higher things, leaves it to be led by the ' blind god ' of wealth, while it allows the 'drone-like ' passions to grow in secret under the cover of rich respectability, and then, in the absence of any higher motive to appeal to, necessitates their repression by force and fear 5 . Then, when the man who has never learnt to look at anything but the ground is introduced to the flashy brilliancy of fast society, the dull vacancy of his swept and garnished soul, where no true or noble idea has ever dwelt, becomes a home for the cynicism of the ' initiated ' man of the world, and a breeding-place for ' lotus-eating ' desire 6 . Having now followed to its conclusion Plato's con- ception of moral good and evil in the Republic, we have 1 Rep. iii. 411 C-E. * Ib. viii. 546 D. 3 Ib. viii. 548 B. * Ib. viii. 549 A-B. * Ib. viii. 554 B-D. Ib. viii 559 D-s6o E. H. R. C C 386 PLATO S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD shortly to notice its most characteristic features, and to supplement it here and there from other dialogues. The account of ideal goodness and the ideal good is the expansion and culmination of that view of life which, as we have already seen, unites what are often distinguished as its moral and scientific aspects. The ' philosophic ' life is represented as the highest because it is the most reasonable, because it is inspired by the desire to be at one with truth and fact, because it is lived in the ever- present sense of man's place in the eternal order of the world. And the 'idea of Good,' the apprehension of which is the summit of human attainment and well- being, is the principle of that eternal order, the condition of truth and fact, the ultimate postulate to which a rational interpretation of the world leads. It might seem accordingly that Plato's conception of moral per- fection is fairly summed up in such words as ' enlighten- ment ' or ' culture.' But when we turn to his own statements we find them transfused with an element which recalls Isaiah or St. Paul, rather than the cool light of the eighteenth century or the tempered en- thusiasm of the nineteenth. The ' dialectical ' impulse is described by him in the language of religious rapture ; the ' unconditioned first principle ' of knowledge is clothed in the attributes of a divine personality ; and the practice and aims of the votary of science are distinguished from those of ordinary men by that indefinable quality which we can only call spiritual. In a word, philosophy is here religion. Four centuries later the windy subtleties of a bastard Greek ' wisdom ' could be held up in contrast with the ' foolishness ' which is the ' power of God ' l ; but here, in the heart and on the lips of Plato, the ' love of 1 i Cor. i. 22-25. PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 387 wisdom ' is itself that divine foolishness, that strength in weakness, before which the cunning of the world and the pageantry of power fade and are discomfited. It is necessary to dwell a little upon this fact, and to see how Plato conceived the ' philosophy ' which could thus transfigure life and raise morality to its highest power. When we speak now of 'love of truth.' we usually think of it as one among the other qualities proper to the scientific or historical investigator, but hardly as the pregnant source of all virtue. Only now and then, when some one lives and dies for a theory or a discovery, and in the simple absorption in one object seems to be lifted above the reach of ordinary weaknesses and temptations, do we catch something of Plato's meaning. To him it seemed as if the desire for truth was the only basis of a perfectly disinterested morality. The philosopher is untroubled by sensuality or avarice, not because he represses them for fear of consequences, but because he desires something better than they can give, and the other channels of his appetites run dry 1 . He alone can afford to despise the profits of political power, because he alone is rich in the real wealth, the ' divine gold.' 2 The idea thus suggested in the Republic is more fully expressed in the Phaedo*. The life of the true philosopher, we are there told, is a dying to the body that he may live to the soul ; a concentration of himself upon truth and reality ; a disengagement, as far as is practicable, from the hindrances, the illusions, the distractions, which physical wants bring with them ; it is, in fact, a foretaste of that freedom to which he looks forward after death, 1 Rep. vi. 485 D. * Ib. vii. 521 A-B ; iii. 416 E. 3 64 A-69 F. C C 2 388 PLATO S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD when he hopes to see with purified eyes the truth in its purity. Death, therefore, which is terrible to others, is to him the release from bondage, and the entrance to communion with the truth which he had loved on earth. It is this love alone which can make virtue quite genuine. Ordinary people face certain dangers to avoid some worse evil, or abstain from certain pleasures to gain other pleasures ; their courage is a kind of fear, their continence a kind of incontinence. But it is a ' shallow and slavish' morality which thus barters pleasure for pleasure, pain for pain ; wisdom is the only true ' coin ' of virtue, and, unless we get that, we get nothing for what we give. Passages like this naturally suggest the word 'asceticism,' and, if asceticism means the disciplined effort to attain an end which cannot be attained without giving up many things often considered desirable, the philo- sophic life is ascetic ; but, if it means giving up for the sake of giving up, there is no asceticism in Plato. It is natural that in the Phaedo the negative result of the desire for truth, indifference to much which goes to make up ordinary life, should be prominent ; but the ground of the indifference, both there and in the Republic^ is represented as devotion to an object which fills and absorbs the soul. But it may be asked, how does this object differ from other objects of absorbing interest ? Do not the miser and the athlete also forgo much of what is usually esteemed enjoyment ? What is ' truth ' that it should be placed in this unique position, as the one thing in- trinsically worth living for ; or ' wisdom,' that it should claim to be the only genuine 'coin' of virtue? It is clear that when Plato spoke of wisdom and truth in this way he was not thinking of the mere acquisition PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 389 of knowledge, in the ordinary sense of scientific or historical information. He explicitly dismisses the theory that knowledge can be the end of life, unless it be know- ledge of the Good. Yet it is insisted on as characteristic of the philosophic nature to welcome every fragment of knowledge, great or small, high or low, ' which reveals in any way the eternal being of things.' l Knowledge, as we have seen, is to Plato the apprehension of things in their true relations ; each fact is what it is from its place in the whole ; truth is one and coherent, though man has to learn it as a manifold which he can never fully piece together. In this unity he and his life are an element, and to know the truth is to see himself as he really is ; to see, in modern phraseology, the ultimate conditions and bearings of his life and actions. All knowledge has an intrinsic value which contributes to this end ; and, as no part of truth is absolutely isolated, there is no real knowledge which cannot be made to contribute to it, which may not help to fill in the outline of life, and which is not therefore, if rightly looked at, a knowledge of the Good. And this brings us to the second way in which Plato represents the influence of philosophy upon character and conduct. It not only concentrates desire, it also widens the view of the issues of life. Because each point of reality is a centre with an infinite circumference, the philosopher is perpetually being carried beyond the apparent fact, and ignoring the conventional proportions of things. In the ' vision of all time and all being ' he sees human life shrink into nothingness, and cannot be afraid to die. His soul ' reaches out after all that is divine and human,' and he is lifted above the pettinesses of everyday life. He dwells in spirit in a world of eternal 1 Rep. vi. 485 B. 390 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD order, where nothing does or suffers wrong, and human litigation seems to him a fighting about shadows l . It is just this sense of the infinite conditions which make up any fact, of the infinite issues involved in any action, which gives the philosopher that appearance of unpracticalness which was as notable in Plato's time as in our own. The very penetration of vision which makes ordinary minds seem to him only half awake makes him seem to them a dreamer. In the Republic Plato has emphasized the evils of this mutual misunder- standing, and has pointed the way to a reconciliation 2 . In the Gorgias* we saw philosophy described by the man of the world as a useful part of every gentleman's education, but the ruin of practical capacity and success if seriously pursued ; while to the philosopher himself it is the living spirit of truth and principle, in the strength of which he defies the ' political ' spirit which can only gloze and flatter, and appeals from the judge who can kill the body to the divine judge before whom politician and philosopher alike must give account of their lives. In the Theaetetus* an analogous antithesis is drawn in a somewhat lighter vein. The practical incapacity of the philosopher is triumphantly admitted, and his life is contrasted with that of the habitut of the law-courts as the life of freedom with that of slavery. The former desires only to get at the truth ; if he can do this, he does not care whether he has to use few words or many. The latter always speaks under pressure ; he is cramped by time, by the terms of the indictment, by the absolutism of the judge, perhaps by fear for his own life. And so he becomes eager and sharp, and in self-defence he 1 Rep. vi. 486 A-B, 500 B-C ; vii. 517 D-E. Ib. vi. 498 -500 E. 3 Above, p. 292 ff. * 172 C-I77 C. PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 391 learns the arts of flattery, deception, and revenge, and this stops the free growth of his soul, which becomes dwarfed and crooked and crumpled. As for the philosopher, 'from boyhood he has never known the way to the market-place, or where the court or council-room or other public buildings are. Laws and decrees he neither hears nor reads. Political meetings and cabals, dinner-parties and revels with flute-girls, never occur to him even in a dream. He is as un- conscious of the family affairs of people in his town as of the number of gallons in the sea. He does not even know that he does not know these things, for it is not to gain credit that he keeps out of them ; but the truth is that only his body stays at home in the city, while his mind, despising such trifles, is u all over the world," as Pindar says, *' measuring the depths and surface of the earth and the stars in heaven above." searching into the whole nature of everything everywhere, and not con- descending to what is near. It is like the story of Thales, how he was looking at the stars and fell into a well and a charming and witty Thracian maid-servant jeered at him and said he wanted to know what was up in the sky, and could not see what was on the ground in front of him. This joke will serve for all who spend their lives in philosophy. They really not only do not know what their neighbours are doing, they hardly know whether they are human creatures or not ; all their attention is taken up with such questions as what man is, and what are the specific properties of his nature. And so when one of them goes into society or public life, and has to speak about things which are " at his feet and before his eyes," he is the laughing-stock, not only of Thracian maid-servants, but of anybody and everybody ; 392 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD he tumbles into wells and all sorts of dilemmas in his inexperience ; his awkwardness is frightful, and gives the impression that he is an idiot. But the tables are turned when he has dragged you up into his own world, and got you to leave such questions as, What wrong have I done you, or you me ? or, Does much money make a king happy ? and to turn to the investigation of justice and injustice in themselves, and their difference from other things and each other, or of kingship and of human happiness and misery in general, what they are and how human nature must get the one and escape the other. Then the man of the little, keen, legal soul gives the philosopher his revenge ; as he hangs aloft and looks down through mid-air from the unaccustomed height, he grows dizzy and distressed, he falters and stammers, and is a laughing-stock, not to Thracian maids or any other uneducated persons, for they have not the eyes to see, but to every one who has not been brought up like a slave.' The moral effects of the philosophic spirit, thus far considered, may be summed up as a disinterested con- centration of purpose, and a vivid realization of the ultimate bearings of action. A third effect, equally characteristic of Plato's conception, is the unconscious imitation of the object which the philosopher pursues, and in the presence of which he lives. True knowledge to Plato is, as has been seen, one, and the highest one, of the activities in which the soul goes out into com- munion with its own higher self, with the divine soul which animates the world. ' It is in the nature of the true lover of learning,' we are told 1 , 'to be ever 1 Rep. vi. 490 A-B. PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 393 struggling up to being, and not to abide amongst the manifold and particular objects of opinion. He will go on his way, and the edge of his love will not grow dull or its force abate, until he has got hold of the essential nature of the thing with that part of his soul to which it belongs so to do ; and that is the part which is akin to being. With this he will draw near, and mingle being with being, and beget intelligence and truth, and find knowledge and true life and nourishment, and then and not till then he will cease from his travail.' In this communion with the reality or divine order the soul grows into likeness with it, and becomes itself, ' as far as man can, orderly and divine ' ; for ' he who lives in fellowship with that which he admires cannot help imitating it.' l A similar idea is applied in the Timaeus 2 . in connexion with some crude physiology, to give a spiritual motive to the study of the laws of nature. ' The highest element in the soul is given to each man by God to be his guardian spirit. It dwells at the top of the body, lifting us up from the earth to our kindred in heaven ; for we are heavenly, not earthly, plants ; and the divine element within us attaches our head and root to the place from which the soul originally sprang, and keeps the whole body upright. When therefore a man devotes himself to his appetites or his ambitions, all his beliefs must be mortal, and he himself will succeed in making himself as mortal as possible by thus developing his mortality. But if a man care most about his love of knowledge and his true thoughts, and practise these the most, he cannot fail of having immortal and divine ideas 1 Rep. vi. 500 C. '90 A-D. 394 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD so far as he gets hold of the truth, and he will attain that measure of immortality of which human nature is capable, while his constant tending of the divine element, and the order and harmony of his indwelling spirit, will give him exceeding happiness. There is only one way of tending a thing, to give it its proper nurture and motions ; and motions akin to the divine in us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. Every man therefore should follow these, correcting the perverted motions in his head by studying the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring his mind, according to its original nature, into likeness with its object. To attain that likeness is to attain in its fulness, both now and hereafter, the best life which the gods have set before men.' The divine perfection, assimilation to which is the height of human happiness, is conceived by Plato in the passages just referred to as the being or order of the world, which is also its life or soul. It is this living order or constitution of things which he speaks of in the Republic * as the ' pattern ' or ideal ' polity,' ' laid up in heaven,' to which a man may look for guidance, and of which he may make himself a citizen. And, as Plato conceives the universal order or ' cosmos ' to be the creation and expression of the divine nature, we shall not be surprised to find him in the Theaetetus* describing the ideal human life as the imitation of God. ' Evil can never perish ; there must always be something opposed to good ; nor can it have its seat amongst the gods, but it must needs haunt human nature and this world of ours. Therefore we must endeavour to fly away to 1 ix. 592 B. - 176 A-I77 A. PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 395 the other world as quickly as we can ; and to fly away is to become like God as far as this is possible ; and to become like him is to become wise in justice and righteousness. It is very hard to make people believe that the motive for flying from vice and pursuing virtue is not, as is generally said, that we may be thought good and not be thought bad ; that is all an " old wives' tale " ; the truth is this. God is not unjust in any way, but absolutely just, and there is nothing more like him than one of us who is perfectly just. It is here that a man shows whether he is really able, or whether he is an imbecile. To know this is wisdom and true virtue ; not to know it is ignorance and palpable vice. All other so- called ability and wisdom is common and base ; common in politics, base in art. If then a man is unjust and unrighteous in word or deed he had much better not admit that his knavery makes him an able man ; for, as it is, men glory in their shame, and fancy that people are saying of them that they are no fools "cumbering the earth," but the sort of men whom the state ought not to let die. They must therefore be told the truth, that they are the very opposite of what they suppose, just because they suppose it. They are ignorant of the real punishment of injustice the last thing a man should be ignorant of. That punishment is not, as they fancy, stripes and death, which may be inflicted on the inno- cent ; it is one which they cannot possibly escape. They do not see that there are two patterns set in the world, the godlike ideal of bliss, and the godless ideal of misery ; and in their folly and madness they become, without knowing it, like the one and unlike the other by doing injustice. Thus their condemnation is to live a life like that which they resemble. And yet, if we tell 396 PLATO S CONCEPTION OF THE GOOD them that, unless they give up being so clever, the other world, which is unpolluted by evil, will not receive them, while in this world they will walk for ever with their own likeness, evil with evil, we shall seem to them to be simpletons talking to experienced men of the world.' INDEX Absolute, The, 10, 17, 26, 35, 39 ft, 65 ff., 81 L, 84, 107, 136, 331 ff., Abstraction, 116, 120, 157, 221 ff. Action, Activity, 22, 52, 55, 63. 70, 8off.,ioi. Adennantiis,346ff. Angelo,llfchad,43ff- Anjtns, 260 ff. Art, 44ff. ; and philosophy, 62 ff., 122 1; and poetry, 88 ff. ; and morality, 67 .96 ft, 344 Asceticism, 30 , 103, 388. 46 ft, 78. Bacon, 70. Being, n , 82, 100. Body, 72, 92 ff., 321 : see Spiritual. Cafficks, 281, 291 ff. Cephalus, 340. Certitude, 230 ff. Ciarmuks, The, 267-70. Christianity, in England and Italy, 57 t, 97, 105. 136, 2148". 137 ff. Community and indmdnal, 165. ConcenabOity, 175 flL Concept, as element of knowledge, 144 ff. ; mmcfsal, fartirnl- and indmdnal, 155 ., 221 ff.; and percept, 167 ff. ; intensity of, 179 ; and thing, 193 flL, 200 ff.; and dassificatioa, 2i 4 ff.; and defini- tion, 217 .; extension and inten- sion of, 219 ff. ; general, 221 ff. Co^scwosness, 93, 115, 128, 205, *34- Continuity, 4 ff., 11 ff., 2?. 28, 33 ff., 45 * Corfu, 75. Courage, 103, 256, 266 1, 355 Dante, 57. Death, 38, 39^ 69, 71 ff., 87, 92, 304, 387 ff- Definition, 217 ; in Plato's ethical dialogues, 2445. Democratic state and man, 381. Desire and fear, 62, ~6 , 81 , 84, 235. Dendoproent, 1448! Distinction, 134 ff. DirinHj of Christ, 1048". Doubt, 80. Duration, 6ff. Education, literary, 68 f, 87 . 90, *7o ff, 372, 375, 385- EnTironment, 338! Ihrhnitf, The, 13-32. 398 INDEX Euthydemus, The, 270-6. Evil, development of, 376 ff. Experience, 13 ff., 153 f., 189, 227 ff. Explanation, 22, I73f. Expression, 83, 89 f., 131 ff. Extension and intension, 219 f. Fact : see Theory, and Concept. Fear, 103 : see Desire. Feeling, 54 ff., 6iff., 79 f., 83, 85 : and see Pleasure, Sensation. Florence, 43 ff., 56 ff. Formal Logic, 152 ff. Future life, 304 ff., 348 ff. Generalization, i6of., 221 ff. Ghiberti, 45 f. Glancon, 346 ff. God : see Absolute. Goethe, 37, 82. Good, and pleasure, 257 f., 284 ff., 3i4ff., 371 ; and knowledge, 3149., 324 ff., 371, 389; account of, in Republic, 371 ff., 386 ff.: and see Philosophic life. Goodness, its relation to knowledge, 248 ff. ; and see analyses of Prota- goras, Meno, Laches, Charmides, Euthydemus; of state, 351 ff. Gordon, 84. Gorgias, The, 278-309. Grammar and Logic, 141 ff. Greek moral ideas, 241 ff. ; supposed confusion of ethics and politics, 243 : and see Limit. Habit, 13. Happiness, 286 ff., 359 ff., 394. Health, 91, 104. Honour : see Timocratic. Idea, Plato's use of the word, 246 ; of good, 364, 372 ff., 386 ff. : and see Concept. Identity, 151 ff. Imagination, religious, 57 ff. ; and thought, n8ff. Immediate and mediate, 172 ff. Immortality, 3 ff., 394 : and see Death, Eternity, Future life. Individual, Individuality, 3ff., I2ff., 17, 33 ff., 42, 53, 72, 8iff., no, 161 ff., 226 ; and state, 351 ff. Infinity : see Limit. Injustice, doing and suffering, 287 ff., 299 ff. : and see analyses of Gorgias and Republic, passim.' Innate ideas, 229. Interest, 17 ; of the stronger, 341 ; of an art, 341. Intuition, 171 f. Justice : see analyses of Gorgias and Republic, passim. Kant, 229. Knowledge, 113, 141, 146, 191 f., 235 ; and opinion, 264 : and see Good. Laches, The, 266-270. Language, 26 ff., 30 ff., 54 ff., 88 ff., 101, I23f., 129-43. Law, 23 iff. Life, 39, 64, 87, 92; the perfect, 240 : and see Philosophy. Limit, 310 ff.; and measure, 67 ff., 327ff., 337 f- Literature, 87. Logic, as science of knowledge, 113, 141 ; and language, 139; Formal, 152 ff. Loss, personal, 73 f., 86 f. Lve, 37, 39, 81, 85, 91 f., no. Marathon, 48. Meaning, 63, 129. Measure : see Limit. INDEX 399 Afeno, The, 260-6. Milan Cathedral, 43. Miraculous, 22 ff., 31, 104 ff., 233. Morality, 95 ft, 103, 108 : and see Goodness, Justice. ' Morbid,' 102. Music, 89, 109. Mysteries, The, 349. Names, 135 ff. Nature, 67, 76 f., 85, 108, 1 10. Necessity, 232. Objective, 195 ff., 233 ff. Old, growing, 86, 340. Oligarchic state and man, 379 Oliphant, Laurence, 91. Pantheism. 82. Particular : see Concept. Personality : see Individual. Phileous, The, 309-338. Philistinism, 31. Philosophic element in soul, 362-3. Philosophy and philosophic life, 307 ff., 362-75, 385-96- Physical : see Body, Spiritual. Plato, 120; dydfunjats, 228; main moral ideas of, 240 ; his criticism of current ideas, 241 ff. ; ' idea,' 246. Pleasure, 18, 29, 83; false and true, 318 ff., 334 ff.; pure and impure, 3 2 3 337 : and see Good. Plotinus, 64 ff. Poetry and other arts, 88 ff.; and philosophy, 1 20 ff. Polemarchus, 340. Polus, 280 ff. Power, pleasure and goodness: see analysis of Gorgias, passim. Presentation and representation, I 74 f. Progress, 40. Protagoras, The, 252-60. Punishment, 287, 305, 395. Relativity, 234 ff.: and see Con- tinuity. Republic, The, 338-385. Resurrection, The, 92, 104 f. Rhetoric, 279?., 2976! Sculpture, 44. Self, not-self, self-consciousness, 205 ff., 234 ff. : and see Individual. Selfishness, 29. Self-sacrifice, 41. Sensation, Sense, 115?., 174 ; as test of truth, 187 ff. : and see Feel- ing, Thought. Sentiment, 101 ff. Simple and complex, 144 ff. Society, the educator, 369. Socrates, 249. Sophists, 250, 252, 341, 369 : and see analyses of Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus. Spirit, Spiritual, 20-32, 72 f., 91, 94!, 100 f.; 0vfios, 358, 378. State, 351 ff. ; virtues of, 353 ff. Statesman, 264, 273, 280 ff., 301 ff., 362 ff. Subjective: see Objective. Survival of fittest, 41. Switzerland, 51, 108. Symbol, 23 ff., 32, 58, 88 ff., 119, Symmetry, 331. Sympathy, 235. Temperance, 267, 356. Test of Truth, 183 ff. Theory, 1248!; and fact, 126 ff., I7off. Thing : see Concept, Fact. 4 oo INDEX Thought, 64, 86, 93, 116 ff., 126 ff., 142, 174 f.; laws of, 153-4, 178 ff.: see Feeling, Reason, Sense. Thrasymachus, 341 f. Time : see Duration. Timocratic state and man, 378 f. Tyrannical state and man, 382 f. Unconscious : see Consciousness. Uniformity of Nature, 232, 236. Universal : see Concept. Unknowable, 198. Virtue : see Goodness. Wisdom, 251, 355. Words : see Language. Work, 80. Writing, 90. OXFORD: HORACE HART UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. OCT281366 Form L9-Series 444 REGIONAL UBR/WYFAOUTY A 000028769 8