The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Essays On Philosophy and the Classics
• Whately’s Elements of Logic 1828
• Notes On Some of the More Popular Dialogues of Plato 1834–35
• Editor’s Note
• The Protagoras
• The Phædrus
• The Gorgias
• The Apology of Socrates
• The Charmides
• The Euthyphron
• The Laches
• The Lysis
• The Parmenides
• Two Publications On Plato 1840
• Bailey On Berkeley’s Theory of Vision 1842, 1843
• Grote’s History of Greece [i] 1846
• Grote’s History of Greece [ii] 1853
• Bain’s Psychology 1859
• Grote’s Plato 1866
• Taine’s De L’intelligence 1870
• Berkeley’s Life and Writings 1871
• Grote’s Aristotle 1873
• Appendix: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited In the Essays, With Variants and Notes

The Parmenides

In this dialogue, Socrates is not the principal interlocutor. The narrator is Cephalus, who professes to repeat what had been told him by Antiphon, who himself did but repeat what had been told him by Pythodorus, respecting a conversation carried on in the presence of this last, between Parmenides, a Pythagorean philosopher; his disciple Zeno of Elea, also a philosopher of reputation, said to have been the first person who employed the dialectic method of exposition and controversy; & Socrates, then in early youth.

The first part of this dialogue is on the subject of what Plato termed εἴδη or ἰδέαι, which may be translated species, or sorts, or, if you please, universals, which it appears from this & various other dialogues of Plato, that he considered to have an objective existence. His notions (for that they were fixed opinions in his mind is more than can be affirmed, all that is certain being that his speculations tended that way) were, that whenever a number of things were with propriety ranked together under one name, in other words, formed into a class, it was on account of some one thing, which was common to all the many things included under the class, & which existed in them, or was in some manner united with them all: This he called the ἰδέα, or εἰ̑δος of the class, & supposed it to be a totally different thing from any or all of the individual things, composing the class. Had this been all, there would not have been much difference between his notions and those of Locke, or any of those thinkers who have received the name of Conceptualists in modern times,—the believers in abstract ideas. But Plato did not consider his ἰδέα or εἰ̑δος, to be a mere thought, or mental phenomenon, or in any way the creation of the mind. He conceived that it had an independent existence, that it was a thing in itself, not perceptible by the senses, but cognizable by the intellect, & which being mysteriously united with every individual object in the class, gave to those objects a participation of its nature which entitled them to be ranked under the class.

The existence or non-existence of these εἴδη, appears to have been a vexata quæstio among the philosophers anterior to Plato, and Parmenides would seem to have maintained the negative: At least, that is the part which he performs in this dialogue, the occasion of which is furnished by a discourse of Zeno, read by him to the assembled company. The subject of this discourse affords an amusing example of the unmeaning mysticism which, in the first stage of philosophy, appears in all nations to have been dignified with the name of wisdom. Parmenides, it seems, had written a discourse to prove ὅτι ἕν ἐστι τὸ πα̑ν, that the Whole, or the universe, is one. It is evident, that no one would have supposed this proposition to convey a scientific truth, who did not imagine, that there was some mysterious virtue in the word one. A person who knew that general names are only, as particular names are, a mode, tho’ a different mode, of marking individual things, would have seen, that the word one was ambiguous, and might be applied to any number of things collected together, for the purpose of speaking of them as distinct from other things not included in the collection; that the same thing, consequently, might be at the same time one, with respect to all things external to it, and many, as respected the parts of which it was itself composed. But to those who supposed that a thing was called a stone because it participated of the abstract essence of a stone, that a thing was called round, or large, or heavy because it possessed the abstract essence of rotundity, or magnitude, or weight, & that a thing was called one or many because it was in mysterious union with the abstract essences of unity or of multitude, no distinction being made in this respect between relative & absolute terms, it was not an unnatural mistake to imagine that as one & many were opposites, the abstract essence of unity must be incompatible with the abstract essence of multitude, & that the same thing could not participate of both, & be, accordingly, both one & many: by denying the possibility of which, they were driven of course into a thousand absurdities and contradictions, which instead of convincing them of the absurdity of the psychological theory from which these absurdities proceeded, appear to have been regarded by them as containing the quintessence of wisdom, and affording a sublime exemplification of the tendency of philosophy to exalt its votaries above the delusions of sense, & the vulgar, confined modes of thinking of the ignorant multitude. Such at least, whether it was or was not the opinion of Plato’s predecessors, was very firmly that of his later followers, the Alexandrine & other Platonists, who have composed many voluminous commentaries upon the Parmenides, in which the self-contradictory assertions & verbal quibbles that fill the latter part of this dialogue, & which were evidently never intended by Plato himself to be taken seriously, are unfolded at much length & set forth with the utmost gravity, as the deepest & most occult truths of Ontology and Cosmology.

The work which Zeno had been reading to the company on this occasion, was composed for the purpose of upholding the tenet of Parmenides, that the universe is One, by shewing, that numerous contradictions would arise if it were many. The principal of these contradictions was, that if there were many existences, they must be at the same time like & unlike, which he said was impossible, for what is like cannot be unlike, nor what is unlike, like. This involves, it is easy to see, the same want of perception of the difference between absolute & relative terms, to which most of the absurdities which will meet us in the remainder of this dialogue are to be ascribed. What is white cannot be black, what is round, cannot be square, & so forth: Great & Small, Equal & Unequal, Like & Unlike, &c. are contraries, just as much as white & black, or round & square are; indeed much more so: Therefore, thought these philosophers, as the same thing cannot be, at the same time, white & black, or round & square, so it cannot be, at the same time, great & small, equal & unequal, like & unlike: the thought never having occurred to them that these were relative terms, & that the same thing might therefore be great compared with a molehill, small compared with a mountain; that the same thing might be equal to an acre, & unequal to a square inch or mile; like to a cloud, & yet extremely unlike a whale.^[*] These obvious thoughts, as they appear to us, the notion of εἵδη which was floating in the minds of all these philosophers, whether they admitted it or not, precluded. That notion led them to suppose that if a thing was great, equal, or like, it was rendered so by participating in the nature of Magnitude, Equality, or Likeness: which being the contraries of Smallness, Inequality, and Unlikeness, the thing in question could not also participate in these latter essences, nor, therefore, could it be small, unequal, or unlike. The contradictions to which they were driven by this strange mistake will be exemplified copiously in the sequel of the dialogue before us. From these premisses indeed they could avowedly prove both sides, the affirmative & the negative, of every question which they thought of discussing: & it was in the power of demonstrating, & of believing both at once, that the excellence of philosophy seemed to them to be peculiarly manifested.

Zeno, however, having maintained that what was like could not be unlike, nor what was unlike, like, & that as this consequence could not be avoided if it were allowed that there were many existences, it followed there could be no more than one; Socrates attempted, although modestly, & in the way of inquiry alone, to combat this ratiocination by arguments drawn from the same notion of εἴδη, or specific essences, more clearly expressed. He asked, “Do you not think that there is an εἰ̑δος, or abstract essence, of likeness, & that there is another abstract essence, that of unlikeness, which is the contrary of it; & that you & I, & all other things, which we call Many, participate in these; & that those things which participate of Likeness, become in so far as they participate, Like, & those which participate of Unlikeness, Unlike; and if all things partake of both these essences, what wonder is it if all things are at once like & unlike? If Likeness itself had been affirmed to be Unlikeness, or Unlikeness to be Likeness, it would no doubt, have been absurd; but not if we say, that the things which partake of both essences, are both like & unlike: Nor is it wonderful, if All things^* are One, by participating of Unity, and Many, by participating likewise of Multitude: The absurdity would be, if Unity itself were said to be Multitude, or Multitude to be Unity. The same may be said of all other things: If the genera & species were affirmed to unite in themselves contrary affections, I should be surprised: but what wonder is it if the individual I be said to be at once One & Many? Many, in the sense that my right side is different from my left, my anterior from my hinder parts, my upper, from my lower: for I participate in Multitude: One, in the sense, that of us seven, I am one man, participating in Unity: so that both are true. If, therefore, any one attempts to shew that Many & One are the same, we will say, that he proves stones & trees & so forth to be both One & Many, which we should all admit: not One itself to be Many, or Many One. But if any one should take the εἴδη or specific essences by themselves, such as Likeness & Unlikeness, Unity & Multitude, Motion & Rest, & so forth, & could shew that these are capable of participating in the nature of each other, I should be greatly astonished. What you have done is very well; but I should admire much more any one who should expound the same puzzles & difficulties in the specific essences, in the objects of intellection, which you have expounded in those of sense.”

Parmenides hereupon called in question the whole doctrine of specific essences, or εἴδη. “Do you think,” asked he, “that it is possible to distinguish, as you say, the species, from the things which participate in it? Do you suppose that there is such a thing as Likeness, distinct from the Likenesses which exist among us; & so of Unity & Multitude, & the like?”—“I do,” replied Socrates.—“And do you think that there are self-existent essences or εἴδη of the Just, the Beautiful, the Good, & so forth?”—“Yes.”—“And is there a self-existent essence of Man, distinct from us & all other individual men? or of Fire, or Water?”—“I have often been puzzled,” answered Socrates, “to determine whether the same thing can be affirmed of these last, as of the preceding.”—“And what do you say of things, which it may seem ludicrous to allude to; hair, & mud, & filth, & every thing that is ignoble & worthless? Do you doubt whether there is or is not a specific self-existent essence of each of these things, distinct from what we handle?”—“Not at all,” answered Socrates: “These things are merely what we see them; it would perhaps be absurd to suppose that there were εἴδη of these. I have been puzzled before now with doubts whether the assertion is true of all things: When I come to this point, I stop short, & run away, being afraid that I may fall into some abyss of absurdity; I return to those things which we affirmed some time ago to have εἴδη, & occupy myself with the consideration of them.”—“You are young as yet,” answered Parmenides, “& philosophy has not yet possessed you as I predict that it one day will; you will not then despise any object as being trivial: But now, being young, you regard the opinions of men.

“Tell me, then: You think that there are Specific Essences, which other things participating in, are called by the specific names, e.g. those which participate in Likeness, are like, in Magnitude, large, in Beauty or Justice, beautiful & just.”—“Certainly.”—“Then, that which participates in the Specific Essence, must participate either in the whole of the Essence, or in a part of it: no third case is possible.”—“True.”—“Does it seem to you, that the whole of the Specific Essence, being One, exists in each of the many individuals?”—“Why should it not be One?”—“Then, being One & the same, the whole of it exists in many individuals separate from, & external to, one another: It must therefore be separate and external to itself.”—“Not so,” replied Socrates. “A day, remaining one & the same day, is in many places at once, & yet it is not separate from & external to itself. The same may be the case with a Specific Essence.”—“You make one & the same thing exist in many places at once, in the same manner as if you were to spread a sail cloth over the heads of a crowd of people, & say that One cloth is over many men.”—“Perhaps so.”—“Would the whole cloth be over every man, or part over one & part over another?”—“Part only.”—“Then the Specific Essences consist of parts, & those things which participate in them participate in a part only, & the whole of the Essence does not exist in each individual, but only a part in each.”—“So it seems.”—“Can you, however, say, that the One Specific Essence has parts? Having parts, can it still be One?”—“No.”—“If you divide Magnitude, & say that each of the many Large things which exist, is large by being endowed with a part of Magnitude, less than Magnitude itself, will it not be absurd?”—“It will.”—“If, again, any thing is endowed with a part, some small part, of Equality, will it, by possessing some thing which is less than Equality, become Equal to any thing?”—“It is impossible.”—“And if any thing is endowed with a part of Smallness: Smallness itself, must be larger than this part of itself: Smallness, therefore, will be larger, & yet the thing which participates in it, thereby becomes smaller.”—“This cannot be.”—“In what manner, then, will things participate in the Specific Essences, since they neither participate in the whole of them nor in their parts?”—“It is not easy to determine.”

“Consider this likewise. What leads you to conclude that there is one single Specific Essence of every thing, is, I suppose, this. When you see a great number of things which are large, it seems to you, looking at them, that there is something common to them all, a single Idea (ἰδέα) & you therefore think that Magnitude is One.”—“Very true,” answered Socrates.—“What do you say then, of Magnitude itself, & the individual Great things? If you contemplate them together, does it not seem to you that as there was something common to all the individuals, on account of which they were called Great, which you term the Specific Essence, so there must be something common to the Specific Essence itself and the Individuals, on account of which they are called by the same name?”—“So it seems.”—“Then there must be another Specific Essence of Magnitude, besides Magnitude itself & the things which participate in it: & still another which is common to all these, & so on: So that each Species has not one Specific Essence only but multitudes of Specific Essences.”—“But,” answered Socrates, “may not each of these Specific Essences be a mere Thought, which does not exist any where but in the mind? If so, each of them would be only One, & the consequences now mentioned would not follow.”—“What?” answered Parmenides. “Is each of them a Thought, & at the same time the Thought of nothing?”^* —Socrates answered, “It is impossible.”—“It is the thought of something, then.”—“It is.”—“Of something existing, or not existing?”—“Existing.”—“Is it not, then, the thought of some one thing which this thought thinks about, viz. a single Idea (ἰδέα)?”—“Yes.”—“Then this thing, common to the many individual things, which is thought to be One, is the Specific Essence?”—“It must be.”—“Do you not see, then, that if you affirm other things to participate in the Specific Essences, you either suppose every thing to be made up of thoughts, or that there can be thoughts which are thoughts about nothing?”

“This,” replied Socrates, “is impossible. But what occurs to me is this. These specific essences are as it were exemplars in nature, & all other things resemble & are copies of them: And what is called participating in the specific essences, is neither more nor less than resembling them.”

“If, then,” answered Parmenides, “the thing is like the specific essence, the specific essence must be like the thing.”—“It must.”—“But things which are alike, must participate in some one εἰ̑δος, species, or specific essence, common to them both?”—“Certainly.”—“That, by participating in which, things are made to resemble one another, must be a specific essence?”—“It must.”—“The thing cannot then be like the specific essence, nor the specific essence like the thing: Otherwise, besides the specific essence there will be another specific essence, & if that be like any thing, another still, & so on to infinity.”—“True.”—“Things do not, then, participate in specific essences by being like them; it is necessary to find some other mode of participation.”—“It appears so.”

“You see, then,” continued Parmenides, “what difficulties arise if we admit any self-existent essences. But these are not the greatest difficulties which follow from that supposition. If we suppose that every thing has one single specific essence, it would not be easy to refute any person who might affirm that these essences were not knowable.”—“How?”—“You, & any one who supposes self-existent specific essences of things, would admit that none of these essences exists among us.”—“How else could it be self-existent?”—“Then, those specific essences which are, what they are, to each other, (or, which are essentially relative) are relative to other specific essences, & not to those copies of them (or whatever name we call them by) by participation in which, the things which we perceive, are denominated, what they are. And conversely, the things which are perceived by us, & which bear the same name with these specific essences, are relative not to the essences but to one another.”—“What do you mean?”—“For instance, if one of us be a master, or a servant, he is not the servant of the specific essence Dominion, nor the master of the specific essence servitude, but he is a man, & the servant of a man, or a man, & the master of a man: Dominion in itself, however, is what it is, of servitude in itself; & servitude in itself, of dominion in itself.”—“I understand.”—“Then knowledge in itself, is the knowledge of truth in itself; and every particular knowledge is the knowledge of some particular thing in itself.”—“Yes.”—“Our knowledge, however, is the knowledge of our truth; & each of our knowledges, is the knowledge of some one of the things which are among us.”—“True.”—“But the specific essences, you admitted, do not & cannot be among us.”—“I did.”—“The different classes of things in themselves are known by the specific essence of knowledge?”—“Yes.”—“Which we have not.”—“No.”—“Then we cannot know any of the specific essences, not being possessed of knowledge in itself.”—“So it seems.”—“Then the Beautiful in itself, & the Good in itself, & all the other specific essences are unknown to us.”—“I fear so.”

“There is something still worse than this.”—“What?”—“If there is a specific essence, of knowledge, or Knowledge in itself, must it not be far more certain than the knowledge which we possess?”—“Yes.”—“Then if this Knowledge can be possessed by any being, the Deity, most of all, may be pronounced to possess it.”—“He may.”—“Then will the Deity be able to know the things which exist among us?”—“Why not?”—“Because we admitted that the specific essences, are referred not to the things among us, but to each other.”—“We did.”—“Then, if the Deity has that most exalted Dominion, & that most certain Knowledge, he does not by that Dominion become our master, nor does he by that knowledge know us, or any thing which is among us, nor do we by our knowledge know any thing of the deity. The Gods, therefore, are not our masters, nor know any thing of human affairs.”—“But it would be too strange a conclusion, to deprive the Deity of knowledge.”—“Yet,” answered Parmenides, “all these things must follow, if there are independent specific essences of things, one for each species.”—“I allow it,” replied Socrates.—“But yet,” resumed Parmenides, “if we deny that there are specific essences of things, & that each species has one unchangeable essence, we shall have nothing to rest upon, there will be nothing fixed, & no possibility of discussion. This you seem to me to be still more aware of.”—“True.”—“What then shall you do for philosophy?”—“I do not very clearly see at present.”—“Because you begin too early to define & distinguish the Beautiful in itself, the Just in itself, the Good in itself, & the other species, before having sufficiently exercised your intellect. The impulse which urges you to speculation is noble & divine, but you should while you are young, strengthen your faculties by what is thought to be worthless, & is called by the multitude disputation,^* otherwise the truth will escape you.”—“What is this exercise which you recommend?”—“That which you have heard from Zeno. I however approve of what you said before, that the subject proposed in these exercises should not be visible or perceptible things, but those which are most comprehensive & most to be considered as specific essences.”—“For it seems to me,” answered Socrates, “to be not difficult to shew in this manner, that things are either like or unlike, or any thing else.”—“True,” answered Parmenides. “And it is right not only to suppose that a thing is true, & see what consequences flow from that hypothesis, but also to suppose the same thing to be false, & see the consequences of that supposition also, for better exercise.”—“How?”—“For instance, if you make this supposition which Zeno made, that there are many existences, & see what will in that case follow with regard to these many, as respects themselves & as respects Unity, & to Unity as respects itself & as respects the many: Then again, if there are not many existences, see again what will follow with respect to Unity & to the many, as respects themselves & each other: And then again, suppose that Likeness exists, or does not exist, & see what follows in either case: & the same of motion & rest, generation & corruption, & even existence itself & non-existence. In a word, whatever you suppose to exist or not to exist, or to be affected in any other way, you must observe what happens to it as respects itself & other things, & other things as respects themselves & as respects it, if you wish to go through a complete course of mental gymnastics, & be capable of discovering the truth.”

The whole party now joined in requesting Parmenides to give them a specimen of the intellectual gymnastics which he recommended, & he being at last induced to comply, & determining to take Unity, the subject of his own dissertation, for the subject also of his discourse, presented them, in the way of question and answer, with the following series of verbal quibbles.

“The first supposition is, that Unity exists. If it exists, it cannot be Many. Therefore it cannot have parts, nor consequently be a whole: for a whole, is that of which none of the parts are wanting, consequently what has no parts is not a whole; & what has parts, is many & not one. Unity therefore is not a whole, & has no parts. But a beginning, middle & end are parts, therefore it has no beginning, middle, or end. But the beginning & the end of a thing are its bounds; therefore it is boundless. And it has no shape. For it can neither be round nor straight; since the meaning of round, is having its extremes in all directions equally distant from the middle: & the meaning of straight, is, having the middle directly between the two extremes: whether therefore Unity were round or straight, it must have parts, & be not one but many. It therefore has no shape. Nor is it in any place. For it is neither in itself nor in any thing else. If it were in any thing else, it would be surrounded by that in which it is, & would touch it in many directions: which that which is one, & indivisible, & not circular, cannot do. And if it were in itself it would surround itself; for it is not possible for a thing to be in any thing which does not surround it. But the thing which surrounds & that which is surrounded must be different; for one & the same thing cannot all of it do both these things. So that unity by this account would be not one but two. It therefore is neither in itself nor in any thing else, & consequently is nowhere. And it neither moves nor is at rest. For the only kinds of motion, are, locomotion & change. If it were changed, it would no longer be itself, and therefore no longer unity. If it underwent locomotion it must either revolve about itself in the same place, or change its place: That which revolves about itself must have a centre & parts which move round the centre; but Unity has no parts: That which changes its place, comes from one thing into another. Now we have seen that Unity cannot be in any thing. It consequently can still less come into it. For that which is coming into a thing, must be not yet entirely in it, nor entirely out of it: that is, it is partly in, & partly out; therefore it must have parts. That which has no parts, & is not a whole, can neither be partly, nor wholly in a thing, therefore it cannot be coming into it, nor, therefore, can it change its place. In every way, therefore, Unity is immovable. But we said, that it cannot be in any place. Therefore it cannot be in the same place. For it if was in the same place, that place must be some place, & it would be in a place. Therefore Unity is never in the same place. But what is never in the same place is not at rest. Therefore Unity is neither in motion nor at rest. Moreover, it is not the same with itself nor with any thing else, nor different from itself or from any thing else. For if it were different from itself, it would be different from Unity, & would not be Unity: If it were the same with any thing else, it would be that something else, & would not be itself, Unity: It cannot be different from any thing else: for it is Unity; & it is not by Unity, but by Difference, that one thing differs from another: It is not, therefore, different from any thing else by being Unity; but if not by being Unity, not by being itself: & if not by being itself, not at all. Neither can it be the same with itself: for the nature of Unity, is not the nature of Sameness: A thing which becomes the same with any thing, does not thereby become One; for if it became the same with many, it would become many, not one: If however Unity & Same did not differ from each other, whenever any thing became the same, it would become one, & when it became one, it would become the same. If therefore Unity were the same with itself, it would not be one with itself, it would be Unity & not Unity, which is absurd. Unity therefore is neither the same with itself nor with any thing else, nor different from itself nor from any thing else. Neither is it like nor unlike to itself or to any thing else. For like, means, having the same attributes: but Unity, & Same, we found, were distinct: And if Unity had any attributes besides that of being One, it would be more things than one, which is impossible: It has not therefore the same attributes with itself nor with any thing else, & consequently is not like itself nor any thing else. Neither however can Unity have different attributes: for so likewise it would be more things than one; But that which is unlike any thing, is that which has different attributes from it: Consequently Unity is not unlike itself nor any thing else: therefore it is neither like nor unlike. Further, it is neither equal nor unequal to itself nor to any thing else. For that is equal to another thing, which contains the same measure the same number of times. That is greater or less, among commensurables, which contains the same measure a greater or a less number of times; among incommensurables, which contains a greater or a less measure, the same number of times. Now, that which does not in any way participate in Sameness, cannot contain the same measure; it therefore cannot be equal to itself or to any thing else: That which contains any measure a greater or a less number of times, has that number of parts, & therefore is not Unity, but that particular number: If it contains the measure only once, it is equal to its measure; which we have seen to be impossible. Unity therefore not only is not equal, but it is not greater or less than itself, or than any thing else. Again, it cannot be older, or younger, or of the same age. For that which is of the same age either with itself or with any thing else, participates of equality (viz. equality of time), and of likeness; which unity does not. But we also said, that Unity does not participate of unlikeness or inequality: how therefore can it be older, or younger, than any thing? Unity therefore cannot be in time. For that which is in time, is perpetually becoming older than itself. But that which is older, is older than something which is younger: Therefore, becoming older than itself it becomes younger than itself, or it would not have any thing to become older than: For as that which is the one, of any two correlatives, is it of something which is the other, so that which has been, or is about to be, or comes to be, i.e. becomes the one, has been or is about to be or becomes it of something which has been or is about to be or becomes the other. Whatever, therefore, is in time, has always, (as of course it must have,) the same age with itself, & is always becoming older & younger than itself. But Unity has none of these attributes. Therefore it does not participate in time, nor is in any time. But was, & came to be, & has come to be, & was coming to be, & will be, & will come to be, & is, & comes to be, all express participation of past, future, or present time. Since therefore Unity does not participate of time, it never came to be, nor ever was, nor now is, nor comes to be, nor ever will be or come to be. It therefore in no way participates of existence, nor in any way can it be said to be. It cannot therefore even be said to be Unity: for that would be, to be. Unity therefore is not Unity, & is not at all. But there cannot be any thing of or concerning that which is not. There is therefore no name of it, nor discourse of it, nor knowledge, nor perception, nor opinion. Unity therefore is neither named, nor spoken of, nor thought of, nor known, nor does any creature perceive it.”

Parmenides here recommences, & proceeds to demonstrate by equally cogent arguments the direct contraries of these assertions. Having here shewn that if there is such a thing as Unity it neither is the one nor the other of a variety of contradictories, he now shews that if there is such a thing it is both.

“If there be such a thing as Unity, it must participate of Existence. There must be therefore an Existence of Unity, existence not being the same thing with unity. For, if it were the same thing there could not be an Existence of Unity, nor could Unity participate of Existence; to say Unity exists, & Unity is Unity, would have been the same thing: But we are not deducing the consequences of the supposition that Unity is Unity, but that Unity exists. Existence, & Unity, therefore are different. Now, from this, if we suppose that Unity exists, we shall find that it has parts. For it follows that there is such a thing as One Being; of which Unity, & Existence are two attributes, not being identical with each other: One Being, therefore, must be a whole, Unity & Existence its parts. But each of these parts is predicable of the other part: for Unity Exists, & existence is one. Each of the parts therefore is again divisible with the same parts, & so on for ever, since Unity has always the attribute of Existence & Existence that of Unity; wherefore, becoming always two, it is never one. Unity therefore is infinite in multitude. But even if we consider Unity by itself, without that of which we have said that it participates, we shall find that it is many. For if it participates of existence, without being existence, its existence must be one thing, & itself, another. But if existence, & Unity, are different, Unity is different from Existence not by being Unity, nor Existence from Unity by being Existence, but by being Other, & Different. Difference is not the same thing with Unity, or Existence. We may use the term both, in speaking of Difference & Unity, or of Difference & Existence, or of Unity & Existence; we may therefore use the word two. But when there are two, each of them must be one. Each of these therefore is one, & all together consequently they make three. But if there is two, & three, there is twice, & thrice, since two is twice one, & three, thrice one. If there is two, & twice, there is twice two, & in short there are all numbers, & all numbers are. But if number is, multitude is, & participates of existence. But if number in the aggregate participates in existence, each part of it does so. Existence, therefore, may be predicated of all things, great & small, forming a multitude. Existence therefore is divided into great & small parts, infinite in number. But each of these parts, as it cannot be no part, must be one part. Unity, therefore, is predicable of every part, great or small, of existence. It, therefore, being one, is in many places. But it cannot be wholly in each of these places. It therefore is divisible, & into an infinite number of parts. Not only, therefore One Being is many, but One, or Unity without the Being, is so. But as the parts are parts of a whole, Unity must be bounded by that whole: for the whole must comprehend all the parts. Unity, therefore, is one, & many, a whole & parts, bounded & infinite. But if it is bounded, it has extremities: if it is a whole, it has a beginning, middle, & end; for if any of these are taken away, it would no longer be whole. But the middle must be at an equal distance from the extremes, or it would not be the middle. Unity therefore has some kind of shape. It also is both in itself & in something else. For all the parts must be in the whole, & none of them out of it: But all the parts taken together, are Unity, & the whole is Unity: it therefore is in itself. But the whole cannot be in the parts, either in all of them or in any one: for if it is in all, it must be in one, else how could it be in all? but it cannot be in one or any number, else the greater would be in the less: but if it is neither in one nor in several nor in all of its parts, it must be in something else, or not be any where. But if it were not any where it would not be any thing. In so far, therefore, as it is a whole, it is in something else: In so far as it is the aggregate of its parts, it is in itself. Again, it is both in motion & at rest. For if it is in itself, it must be at rest; for being in One, & never going out of it, it is always in the same place, & therefore is at rest: But as it is always in a different thing, it can never be in the same thing & consequently is not at rest, but in motion; As therefore it is always in itself & always in a different thing, it is always both in motion & at rest. Further, it is the same with itself, & different from itself, & the same with other things, & different from them: For every thing must be to another in one of four ways: it must be the same; or different; or if it be neither the same nor different, it is either a part of the other or the other is a part of it. Now Unity is not a part of itself; neither therefore is itself, a part of it. And it is not different from itself. Therefore it must be the same with itself. But that which is in a different place from itself, must be different from itself: now this is the case with Unity which, as we have seen, is both in itself & in something else; Unity, therefore, is different from itself. But whatever is different, is so from something which is different from it. Those things therefore which are not Unity, are different from Unity, & Unity is different from them. Unity, therefore, is different from other things. But Sameness & Difference are contraries: Sameness therefore cannot ever reside in what is Different, nor Difference, in what is the Same: If however Difference cannot reside in what is the same, it cannot be in any thing for any time; for if it were, it would, during that time, be in the Same. Difference therefore never is in any thing, consequently neither in Unity nor in other things: Unity therefore cannot be different from Other things nor other things from Unity, by Difference; & if not by Difference, certainly not by themselves; therefore not at all. Unity, therefore, is not different from other things. But other things do not participate in Unity, otherwise there would be a sort of Unity in them, & they would not be Other things: Nor are Other things a number; for having number, they could not be entirely without participation in Unity. And other things are not parts of Unity; for so too they would participate in it; nor is Unity, a part of them; for the same reason. But that which is neither different from another, nor is to it as a part to the whole or as a whole to a part, must be the same. Unity, therefore, is the same with other things. It is therefore the same with itself & with other things, & different from itself & other things.”

It is unnecessary to adduce more than a specimen of this mode of enquiry. By similar processes of reasoning to the foregoing it is proved, that Unity is both like & unlike, to itself & to other things; that it touches itself & other things, & does not touch them; that it is equal to itself & to other things, & likewise greater than itself & than other things, & likewise less; that it participates in time, & is & is always becoming older than itself & other things, & younger, & of the same age; & finally, that since it participates in time, it is capable of pastness, presentness, & futurity, it is, has been, & will be, it does come, has come, & will come to be, & there consequently may be knowledge, opinion, perception, naming, & discourse of it: in short, the contradictories of all the propositions which were proved before.

It would not seem very easy to find still another way of applying these same predicates to this same subject: this however is done: “If Unity is neither one nor many, and participates in time, it must, since it is unity, participate sometimes of existence, & since it is not, sometimes not participate in it. It is impossible that it should at the same time participate & not participate. Therefore, it must participate in existence at one time, & not participate in it, at another. There must therefore be a time at which it comes into existence, & another at which it goes out of existence. But the one of these is to be generated, the latter to be destroyed. Unity therefore is capable of generation & destruction. Again, being both One & Many, when it becomes One it ceases to be Many, when Many it ceases to be One; it is therefore divided & reunited. When it becomes like it ceases to be unlike, when unlike to be like: It therefore is assimilated & unassimilated. When it becomes greater, equal or less, it is increased, equalized, & lessened. In the same manner it is shewn, that since it moves & is at rest, & cannot do both at once, it changes from motion to rest. But in this case it is for an instant neither in motion nor at rest, but between both.” This happy idea throws light upon the previous examples, & it may be said with equal reason, that while changing from One to Many it is neither one nor many, & therefore is neither divided nor reunited; & in the same manner, the contradictories of the assertions previously made, may be proved: that in the transition from one of its attributes to another, it is not assimilated nor unassimilated, increased, equalized or diminished, as the case may be. “All this,” Parmenides resumed, “will be true of Unity, if there be such a thing as Unity.”

He then proceeds to enquire, “If there be such a thing as Unity, what will happen to Other things. Since they are Other than Unity, Unity cannot be Other things. But neither are they entirely deprived of Unity, but participate of it in some sort: for they must have parts, otherwise they would be only one, or Unity: These parts, must be parts of a whole: That whole, must be one: for if a thing was a part of many of which itself was one, it must be a part of itself, which is impossible, & also a part of each of the rest; since if there was one which it was not a part of, it would be a part not of all of them but of all except that one. A part, therefore, must be a part of some one thing, composed of all the parts which we term a whole. If Other things, therefore, have parts, they partake of unity & of totality, & are One complete whole having parts. The same must be the case with each of the parts: it too must participate in Unity. For when we say each, we denote some one thing, distinguished from the rest, & standing by itself. But it will participate in Unity, without being Unity, for nothing but Unity itself can be Unity. Both the whole, therefore, & the part, participate in Unity, being different from Unity. But what are different from Unity, must be many, for if they were neither one nor more than one, they would be nothing. They must, even, be infinite in number. For, when they come to participate in unity, they do so, not being unity nor yet participating in it. They are therefore a multitude, in which there is no unity. Take therefore the smallest part of this multitude, & even this part, as unity is not in it, is multitude & not unity. Other things, therefore, are infinite in multitude. But when each part of this multitude becomes a part, & therefore participates in unity, it becomes bounded by the whole & by the other parts, & the whole becomes bounded by the parts. Other things, therefore, when they come to participate in Unity, become bounded—but in their own nature they are boundless. They are therefore bounded, & boundless. They are also like & unlike, to themselves & to one another: Like, inasmuch as they are all boundless in their nature, & all participate in limitation: but in so far as they are bounded & boundless, they are contrarily affected, & therefore unlike to themselves & to each other. In like manner they may be shewn to be the same with, & different from each other, to be in motion & at rest, & in short in every respect contrarily affected.

“Again, to recommence. When we have said, Unity & Other things, we have said all. There is no third thing, in which both Unity & Other things may be. Unity, & Other things, therefore, are never in the same thing, they are consequently apart. Unity moreover has no parts. It therefore is not in Other things, nor is it the whole of which they are parts; since it is completely apart from them, & is indivisible. Other things therefore can in no respect participate in Unity, neither wholly or partially. Other things therefore are not one: neither are they many: for if so, each of them would be a part of the whole, which would be one. Not having unity in them, they cannot be two, nor three, nor any other number. Neither are other things like nor unlike to Unity, nor have they in themselves, Likeness or Unlikeness; for if they had, here would already be two; & that cannot participate in two, which does not participate in one. In like manner, Other things are neither the same nor different, in motion nor at rest, Generated or Destroyed, Greater, Equal, or Less. For if they are any of these, they would participate in One, two, & three. If, therefore,” (concludes Parmenides) “there is such a thing as Unity, all things are, & are not, One.”

He now puts the contrary hypothesis, that there is no such thing as Unity, or that Unity is not. He concludes, first, that if it is not, it must be a subject of knowledge, otherwise it would not be known what is meant when we say that it is not. Next, Other things must be different from it & it from them: It consequently has the attribute of difference; & (as he continues to shew) that of unlikeness (to other things) & of likeness (to itself) and of inequality (for if it were equal to other things, it must exist) & therefore of greatness and smallness, since inequality consists of these parts: But if it has these two things, it must have what is between them, viz. equality. It must even have existence in some sort, since we affirm that it is a non-entity, in which the affirmation that it is, is contained. And since it has, both existence and non-existence, it must change: & change is motion: it therefore moves. But it likewise does not move. For as it does not exist, it is in no place; it therefore cannot change one place for another, & is not susceptible of progressive locomotion: Nor of rotatory locomotion; for that is to move in the same place: But the same, is something which exists, & Unity, we suppose, does not exist, & therefore cannot be in any thing which does exist. Nor is it capable of change; for if it were changed, it would no longer be the thing we are talking of, viz. unity. It therefore does not move; & is consequently at rest. It therefore is both in motion & at rest. He proceeds to shew, that it is changed & not changed, generated & destroyed, & not generated or destroyed: All this on the supposition that it does not exist.

He then recommences, & proves the contradictories of these propositions: That if Unity is not, it does not in any way partake of existence, nor of generation & destruction, nor of change, nor of motion nor rest, nor of greatness, littleness or equality, nor of likeness or unlikeness, nor of sameness or difference, nor of pastness, presentness nor futurity, & that there can be no knowledge or opinion or perception or naming or discourse of it, & finally that it can have no attributes: All which follows clearly enough from its non-existence.

He next enquires, if Unity does not exist, what becomes of Other Things. If they are other, they are different: if different, different from something: Not from unity, since that does not exist: from each other therefore. But they cannot differ from each other one by one, since there is no one: but multitude by multitude; each cluster being really infinite in multitude, however small it may appear; but each of them seems to be one, though it is not. From this he concludes, that the clusters will seem to have number, that there will seem to be a smallest cluster, that each larger cluster will seem to be equal to the sum of several smaller ones, so that there will be an apparent equality among the clusters, & an apparent beginning, middle, & end, but looking closer we shall see that there is another beginning before the beginning, an end after the end, & a middle more middle than the middle, so that they will seem bounded on a hasty, boundless on a closer view. In like manner he shews that Other things would appear both One, & Many, both Like & Unlike, both the same with, & different from each other, separate & in contact, in motion & at rest, generated & destroyed, & so forth.

He then recommences, & says, “Other things are not Unity: neither are they Many, for to constitute many there must be one. There is therefore neither Unity nor Multitude; & as both are non-entities, there can be no semblance or opinion of them, for we cannot think of a non-entity: If therefore Unity is not, no Other thing can be thought to be either one or many. In like manner,” says he, “Other things cannot either be, or seem to be like or unlike, the same or different, separate or in contact, nor any of the things just enumerated, unless Unity exists. And finally if Unity do not exist, nothing exists.”

He sums up the results by saying, “It therefore appears, that whether Unity exists or not, Unity & Other Things are & are not, & seem & seem not, as respects themselves & each other, in every way whatever.”

Thus ends this singular dialogue: on the purpose of which, much difference of opinion has existed and does exist. The first, or controversial part of it, may be considered as a tolerably fair statement of the arguments for and against the existence of εἴδη or abstract essences of species, as they occurred to Plato. The concluding part, in which Parmenides exhibits the specimen of his mental gymnastics, as he terms it, may perhaps have been seriously designed for that end, to which it is scarcely necessary to observe that it is not at all adapted, since it accustoms the mind not to detract & discard, but to cherish & be led, by the ambiguities of language. If, on the other hand, it be intended as a jeu d’esprit, to ridicule the subtleties of the sophists, it is certainly very well suited to that purpose. The chief argument against this view of the intention of the dialogue, is that we occasionally find subtleties of the same kind in works of Plato which cannot possibly have been written with any purpose of ridicule: though nowhere do we find them in the singular shape or to the remarkable extent which is the character of the Parmenides.

TWO PUBLICATIONS ON PLATO

1840

EDITOR’S NOTE

London and Westminster Review, XXXIV (Sept., 1840), 489-91, where it appears under “Classical Literature” in the section devoted to “Critical and Miscellaneous Notices”; headed: “Plato: The Apology of Socrates, the Crito, and part of the Phædo; with Notes from Stallbaum, and Schleiermacher’s Introductions [Ed. William Smith].—A Life of Socrates, by Dr. G. Wiggers. Translated from the German, with Notes. Both published by Taylor and Walton. [London,] 1840.” Not republished: signed “A.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A short notice of two publications on Plato, in the Miscellaneous Notices of the Westminster Review for Sept. 1840. (No 67)” (MacMinn, 52). No copy in the Somerville College Library.

For comment on the essay, see the Textual Introduction, lxxxiii above.

Two Publications on Plato

the youth of this country, who are accustomed to devote so large a portion of the time employed in education to the partial and imperfect acquisition of the learned languages, have hitherto received little encouragement to attend to any but the least useful parts of ancient literature; and school-books intended to facilitate the study of even the easier parts of the writings of Plato are still almost a desideratum among us. This deficiency the little publications now under review, so far as they go, are a laudable attempt to supply. The portions of Plato which are selected are those which are, on reasonable grounds, believed to contain the authentic particulars of the trial, last days, and dying moments of Plato’s great master, Socrates. To these the editor has not only added the introductions which that great scholar and divine, Schleiermacher, prefixed to them in his translation of Plato’s works, but has also published in a separate volume a short life of Socrates, by a Dr. Wiggers, of Rostock. This piece of biography is interesting, because whatever relates to Socrates must be so; but Dr. Wiggers cannot be denied to be somewhat of a “Philistine,” as well as (what was less to be expected) occasionally at fault in his knowledge of Athenian institutions. Thus he represents the Council of Five Hundred as the product of popular election, whereas it was really chosen by lot. This oversight leads Dr. Wiggers to undervalue the undeviating consistency of purpose, characteristic of Socrates. To have held any office which was the result of election would have been inconsistent with his avowed principle of abstinence from public affairs; while to accept and discharge functions which devolved upon him by lot, and were therefore compulsory, was the necessary consequence of that other principle no less rigidly adhered to by him, of inflexible obedience to the laws; a principle of which his refusal to make his escape from prison (the subject of the Crito) was so noble an example. Whoever knows what Grecian society was (or indeed any society consisting of an active and spirited people, in an imperfect state of the social union) is well aware that lawlessness, in such a society, is the prevailing mischief, the great moral and political danger to be combated against; and that the duty of obedience to lawful authority, even when unjustly exercised, is a principle to the assertion of which the best of men might not unworthily make the voluntary sacrifice of that life, which he had already perilled in opposition to the very same power when illegally exerted, and which he was so often called upon to lay down at the same bidding for the comparatively petty interest of some frontier dispute.

To Dr. Wiggers’s rather meagre and by no means philosophical performance, the editor has added the life of Socrates by Diogenes Laertius, in the original Greek, and a reprint of Schleiermacher’s excellent dissertation “On the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher,” translated (and originally published in the Philological Museum)^[*] by the Rev. Connop Thirlwall, whom we may now with exultation designate as Bishop Thirlwall. The editor’s own notes, though sparing in number and for the most part only quotations, are not the least valuable part of the book. We cannot help quoting from one of them a noble passage of the great historian Niebuhr, in vindication of the Athenian Demos. For the translation of this passage the English public are also indebted to Bishop Thirlwall, whose History of Greece^[†] is throughout conceived in a kindred spirit:

BAILEY ON BERKELEY’S THEORY OF VISION

1842, 1843

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, II (1867), 84-119, which reprints two articles from the Westminster Review, XXXVIII (Oct., 1842), 318-36, and XXXIX (May, 1843), 491-4, both signed “A.” The first, which has “Bailey / On Berkeley’s Theory of Vision” as running-titles, is headed: “Art. II.—A Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, designed to show the Unsoundness of that Celebrated Speculation. By Samuel Bailey, Author of ‘Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions.’ &c. [London:] Ridgway, 1842.” The second, which has “Mr. Bailey’s Reply to / The Westminster Review” as running-titles, is headed: “Art. IX.—A Letter to a Philosopher, in Reply to some recent Attempts to vindicate ‘Berkeley’s Theory of Vision,’ and in further Elucidation of its Unsoundness. By the Author of ‘A Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision,’ ‘Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions,’ &c. [London:] Ridgway, 1843.” In reprinting them in D&D, JSM gives, in footnotes to the titles, reference to the original publication of the reviews, and repeats (minus publisher and dates) the information of the original headings; he also gives the second the title here used, “Rejoinder to Mr. Bailey’s Reply.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Bailey’s ‘Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision’ in the Westminster Review for October 1842 (No. 75),” and “A review of Bailey’s ‘Letter to a Philosopher respecting Berkeley’s Theory of Vision’; in the Westminster Review for May 1843 (No. 77).” (MacMinn, 55, 56.) There are no alterations or corrections in the copy of the first article in the Somerville College Library; in the copy of the second, an inked correction of “an” to “our” is made (see 267^n-n).

In the footnoted variants (all of which derive from the two articles in the Westminster), “67” indicates D&D, II (2nd ed., 1867), “59” indicates D&D, II (1st ed., 1859), “43” indicates the second Westminster article, and “42” the first. For comment on the composition of the essays and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, xlv-lvii and lxxxiii-lxxxv above.

Bailey on Berkeley’s Theory of Vision

the doctrine concerning the original and derivative functions of the sense of sight, which, from the name of its author, is known as “Berkeley’s Theory of Vision,”^[*] has remained, almost from its first promulgation, one of the least disputed doctrines in the most disputed and most disputable of all sciences, the Science of Man. This is the more remarkable, as no doctrine in mental philosophy is more at variance with first appearances, more contradictory to the natural prejudices of mankind. Yet this apparent paradox was no sooner published, than it took its place, almost without contestation, among established opinions; the warfare which has since distracted the world of metaphysics, has swept past this insulated position without disturbing it; and while so many of the other conclusions of the analytical school of mental philosophy, the school of Hobbes and Locke, have been repudiated with violence by the antagonist school, that of Common Sense or innate principles, this one doctrine has been recognised and upheld by the leading thinkers of both schools alike. Adam Smith, Reid, Stewart, and Whewell (not to go beyond our own island) have made the doctrine as much their own, and have taken as much pains to enforce and illustrate it, as Hartley, Brown, or James Mill.

This general consent of the most contrary schools of thinkers in support of a doctrine which conflicts alike with the natural tendencies of the mind, and with the peculiar ones of the larger half of the speculative world, certainly does not prove the doctrine true. But it proves that the reasons capable of being urged in behalf of the doctrine, are such as a mind accustomed to any sort of psychological inquiry must find it very difficult to resist. If the doctrine be false, there must be something radically wrong in the received modes of studying mental phenomena. It is difficult to imagine that so many minds of the highest powers, so little accustomed to agree with one another, should have been led (the majority in opposition to the whole leaning and direction of their scientific habits) into this rare and difficult unanimity, by reasonings which are a mere tissue of paralogisms and ignorationes elenchi.

Such, however, is the thesis which Mr. Bailey, in the volume before us, has undertaken to defend; and Mr. Bailey is one who, on any subject on which he thinks fit to write, is entitled to a respectful hearing. He is entitled on this occasion to something more—to the thanks which are due to whoever, in the style and spirit of sober and scientific inquiry, calls in question a received opinion. The good which follows from such public questioning is not indeed without alloy. It fosters scepticism as to the worth of science, and by creating difference where there previously was agreement, enfeebles the authority of cultivated intellects over the ignorant. But, on the other hand, such a break in the line of scientific prescription applies a wholesome stimulus to the activity of thinkers; it counteracts the tendency of speculation to grow torpid on the points on which general agreement has apparently been attained; and by not permitting philosophers to take opinions upon trust from their predecessors or from their former selves, constrains them to recal their attention to the substantial grounds on which those opinions were first adopted, and must still be received.

If the result of this re-examination be unfavourable to the received opinion, science is happily weeded of a prevailing error; if favourable, it is of no less importance that this too should be shown, and the dissentient, if not convinced, at least prevented from making converts. It is for the interest of philosophy, therefore, that a bold assault, by a champion whom no one can despise, upon one of the few doctrines of analytical psychology which were supposed to be out of the reach of doubt, should not be let pass without a minute examination and deliberate judgment.

It is necessary to begin by a clear statement of the doctrine which Mr. Bailey denies; especially as we think that an indistinct mode of conceiving and expressing the doctrine is the source of most of his apparent victories over it.

The theory of vision, commonly designated as Berkeley’s, but in fact the received doctrine of modern metaphysicians, may be stated, then, as follows.

Of the information which we appear to receive, and which we really do, in the maturity of our faculties, receive through the eye, a part only is originally and intuitively furnished by that sense; the remainder is the result of experience, and of an acquired power. The sense of sight informs us of nothing originally, except light and colours, and a certain arrangement of coloured lines and points. This arrangement constitutes what are called by opticians and astronomers apparent figure, apparent position, and apparent magnitude. Of real figure, position, and magnitude, the eye teaches us nothing; these are facts revealed exclusively by the sense of touch; but since differences in the reality are commonly accompanied by differences also in the appearance, the mind infers the real from the apparent in consequence of experience, and with a degree of accuracy proportioned to the correctness and completeness of the data which experience affords.

Further, those coloured appearances which are called visual or apparent position, figure, and magnitude, have existence only in two dimensions; or, to speak more properly, in as many directions as are capable of being traced on a plane surface. A line drawn from an object to the eye, or, in other words, the distance of an object from us, is not a visible thing. When we judge by the eye of the remoteness of any object, we judge by signs; the signs being no other than those which painters use when they wish to represent the difference between a near and a remote object. We judge an object to be more distant from us by the diminution of its apparent magnitude, that is, by linear perspective; or by that dimness or faintness of colour^aand outline^a which generally increases with the distance,^b in other words by aërial perspective.

Thus, then, the powers of the eyesight are of two classes, its original and its acquired powers; but the things which it discovers by its acquired powers seem to be perceived as directly as what it sees by its original capacities as a sense. Though the distance of an object from us is really a matter of judgment and inference, we cannot help fancying that we see it directly with our eyes; and though our sight can of itself inform us only of apparent magnitudes and figures, while it is our mind which from these infers the real, we believe that we see the real magnitudes and figures, or what we suppose to be so, not the apparent ones. A mistake occasioned by that law of the human mind (a consequence and corollary of the law of association) whereby a process of reasoning, which from habit is very rapidly performed, resembles, so closely as to be mistaken for, an act of intuition.

But although opposed to first impressions and common apprehension, the doctrine in question is confirmed by a great mass of common experience. Visible objects, seen through a clear atmosphere, as travellers in southern countries never fail to remark, seem much nearer to us; because they are seen with less diminution of their customary brightness, than has generally been the case at that distance in our previous experience. A known object, seen through a mist, seems not only farther off, but also larger than usual—a most convincing instance; for in this case the visual magnitude of the object, depending on the size of its picture on the retina, remains exactly the same; but from the same apparent size we infer a larger real size, because we have first been led by the dimness of the object to imagine it farther off, and at this greater distance there is need of a larger object to produce the same visual magnitude. So powerful, however, is the law of mind, by virtue of which a rapid inference seems to be an intuition, that when we look through a mist we cannot hinder ourselves from fancying that we actually see things larger; although their visual magnitude, which alone even Mr. Bailey contends that we see, remains, and must remain, precisely the same.

Again, where we have no experience, our eyesight gives us no information either of distance or of real magnitude. We cannot judge by the eye, of the distance of the heavenly bodies from us, nor does any one of them appear nearer or farther off than another; because we have no means of comparing their brightness or their apparent magnitude as it is, with what it would be at some known distance. As little do we fancy we can judge by the eye of the magnitudes of those bodies; or if a child fancies the moon to be no larger than a cheese, it is because he forgets that it is farther off, and draws from the visual appearance an inference, which would be well grounded if the moon and the cheese were really at an equal distance from him.

Our purpose, however, in this place, was not to illustrate or prove the theory, but to state it. In a few words, then, it is this: That the information obtained through the eye consists of two things—sensations, and inferences from those sensations: that the sensations are merely colours variously arranged, and changes of colour; that all else is inference, the work of the intellect, not of the eye; or if, in compliance with common usage, we ascribe it to the eye, we must say that the eye does it not by an original, but by an acquired power—a power which the eye exercises, through, and by means of, the reasoning or inferring faculty.

This is the “Berkeleian Theory of Vision,” accurately stated; and this statement of it comprises the essence of that to which the subsequent schools of psychology have unanimously assented.

But with the doctrine in this simple form we cannot find that Mr. Bailey has in any one instance really grappled. He has gone back to the primitive phraseology in which the theory was propounded by Berkeley and his immediate successors; men to whom the glory belongs of originating many important discoveries, but who seldom added to this the easier, yet still rarer, merit, of expressing those discoveries in language logically unexceptionable. No one can read the metaphysicians of the last two centuries, especially those of our own country, without acknowledging that (with one or two exceptions, among whom the great name of Hobbes stands preeminent) the very best of them are often wanting either in the determinateness of thought, or the command over language, which would make their words express shortly, precisely, and unambiguously, the very thing they mean. Accordingly, there are few of the great truths of psychology which are not, in almost all writings antecedent to the present century, wrapped up in phrases more or less equivocal and vague, through which one^cperson^c may clearly see what is really within, but another, of perhaps equal powers, will, in the words of Locke, instead of “seizing the scope” of the speculation, “stick in the incidents.”^[*]

Upon such vague phrases Mr. Bailey has wasted his strength, never placing the truth which they represented plainly and unambiguously before his mind; and he imagines himself to have triumphed over the doctrine, while he has been kept from contact with it by a rampart of words which he himself has helped to raise.

One of the principal of these phrases is Perception, a word which has wrought almost as notable mischief in metaphysics as the word Idea. The writer who first made Perception a word of mark and likelihood in mental philosophy was Reid, who made use of it as a means of begging several of the questions in dispute between himself and his antagonists. Mr. Bailey, with, we admit, good warrant from precedent, has throughout his book darkened the discussion, by stating the question, not thus:—What information do we gain, or what facts do we learn, by the sense of sight? but thus:—What do we perceive by the eye, or what are our perceptions of sight? The word seems made on purpose to confuse the distinction between what the eye tells us directly, and what it teaches by way of inference; and we shall presently see how completely, in our author’s case, the cause has produced its effect.

It is in the first section of his second chapter that the author enters upon his argument; and in this he inquires whether “outness” (as it is termed by Berkeley) is “immediately of itself perceived by sight?”^[†] —in other words, whether we naturally, and antecedently to experience, see things to be external to ourselves.

Berkeley alleged that to a person born blind, and suddenly^denabled^d to see, all objects would seem to be in his eye, or rather, in his mind. It would be a more correct^eversion^e , however, of the theory, to say that such a person would at first have no conception of in or out, and would only be conscious of colours, but not of objects. When by his sense of touch he became acquainted with objects, and had time to associate mentally the objects he touched with the colours he saw, then, and not till then, would he begin to see objects. Or, adopting Mr. Bailey’s summary statement of Berkeley’s views,

To this Mr. Bailey replies, that the law of mind by which one thing suggests another, cannot produce any such effect as the one here ascribed to it. If we have had an internal feeling A, at the same time with an external sensation B, and this conjunction has occurred often, the two will in time suggest one another: when the internal feeling occurs, it will bring to mind the external one, and vice versâ. But Berkeley’s theory, he says, demands more than this. Berkeley maintains that because the internal feeling has been found to be accompanied by the external one, it will, when experienced alone, not only suggest the external sensation, “but absolutely be regarded as external itself, or rather, be converted into the perception of an external object;”^[†] —just as if one were to assert that the sound “rose,” by suggesting the visible flower, became itself visible. “It may be asserted,” says Mr. Bailey, “without hesitation, that there is nothing in the whole operations of the human mind analogous to such a process:”^[‡] and it may be asserted as unhesitatingly that Berkeley’s theory implies no such absurdity.

The internal feeling which, when received by sight, becomes a sign of the presence of an external object, is a sensation of colour. Does Berkeley pretend, or is it a fact, that this sensation is ever regarded as external? Certainly not. What we regard as external is not the sensation, but the cause of the sensation—the thing which by its presence is supposed to give rise to the sensation: the coloured object, or the quality residing in that object, which we term its colour. Berkeley is not, as Mr. Bailey supposes, bound to show that the sensation of colour is “converted into the perception of an external object,” since nobody is bound to prove a proposition which nobody can understand. Expressed in unequivocal language, what Mr. Bailey calls the perception of an object is simply a judgment of the intellect that an object is present. Berkeley is not called upon to show that the sensation of colour can be “converted” into this judgment, because his theory requires no such conversion. It requires that the judgment should follow as an inference from the sensation, and Berkeley is bound to show that this is possible. And this he can do, since there is no law of mind more familiar than that by which, when two things have constantly been experienced together, we infer from the presence of the one the presence of the other.

Thus it is, that from using the obscure word “perception” instead of the intelligible words “sensation” and “judgment” or “inference,” our author leaves his antagonist unanswered, and triumphs over a shadow. It is true that Berkeley and Berkeley’s adherents have set him the example of this misleading phraseology. But Mr. Bailey lives in a more accurate age, and should use language more accurately.

In the second section (we pass over some observations in the first, to which the answer is obvious) the author proceeds to inquire whether we naturally see things at different distances, or whether our perception by the eye of distance from us, results (as Berkeley contends) from an association, formed by experience, between the usual signs of distance, and ideas of space originally derived from the touch.

And here Mr. Bailey has to confute an assertion of Berkeley, that “Distance of itself and immediately cannot be seen. For distance being a line directed endwise to the eye, it projects only one point in the fund of the eye, which point remains invariably the same, whether the distance be longer or shorter;”^[*] or, as Adam Smith has completed the expression of the idea, the distance of an object from the eye “must appear to it but as one point.”^[†]

It is not easy to comprehend how the meaning of this argument can be unintelligible, we do not say to a person of Mr. Bailey’s acquirements, but to any one who knows as much of optics as is now commonly taught in children’s books. Our author, however, professes himself unable to understand it, but surmises that it proceeds on the fallacy of supposing that we “see the rays of light”^[‡]fthat^f come from the object,^gwhich^g it is evident we do not.

The argument supposes no such thing. The argument is this. We cannot see anything which is not painted on our retina; and we see things alike or unlike, according as they are painted on the retina alike or unlike. The distance between an object to our right and an object to our left is a line presented sideways, and is therefore painted on our retina as a line; the distance of an object from us is a line presented^hendways^h , and is represented on the retina by a point. It seems obvious, therefore, that we must be able, by the eye alone, to discriminate between unequal distances of the former kind, but not of the latter. Unequal lines drawn across our sphere of vision, we can see to be unequal, because the lines which image them in the eye are also unequal. But the distances of objects from us are represented on our retina in all cases by single points; and all points being equal, all such distances must appear equal, or rather, we are unable to see them in the character of distances at all.

This argument, which involves no premises but what all admit, does positively prove that distance from us cannot be seen in the way in which we see the distances (or rather apparent distances) of objects from one another, namely, by the original powers of the sense of sight. Berkeley’s argumentⁱ proves conclusively that distance from the eye is not seen, but inferred. It cannot be seen as other things are seen, because it projects no image on the retina; it must be seen indirectly, that is, not seen, but judged of from signs,—namely, from those differences in the appearance of an object, whether in respect of magnitude or colour, which are physically consequent upon its being at a greater or^j a smaller distance.

And here, so far as concerns one principal part of the question at issue, the argument might close. It is demonstrated that the distance of an object is not “perceived” directly, but by means of intermediate signs; not seen by the eye, but inferred by the mind. And this is not only the most essential, but the only paradoxical part of Berkeley’s theory.

It is true, there remains a supposition which our author may adopt, and which, from occasional expressions, it^kmight^k be concluded that he is willing to adopt. He may give up the point of actually seeing distance, and admitting that we do not see it, but judge of it from evidence, he may maintain that the interpretation of that evidence is intuitive, and not the result of experience. He may say that we do not see an object to be^lfarther^l off, but infer it to be so from its looking smaller; not, however, because we have heretofore observed that such is the case, but by a natural instinct, which precedes experience, and anticipates its results.

There are thus two possible forms of our author’s doctrine. He may affirm that we are apprised of distance through the eye, by actually seeing it; or he may say with Berkeley,^[*] that remoteness is not seen, but inferred from paleness of colour and diminution of apparent magnitude,—but may differ from him by asserting that the inference is instinctive, instead of the slow result of gradual experience. The former doctrine is demonstrably false; the latter not so; it may perhaps be refuted, but cannot be taxed with absurdity.

^mThe^m author, however, from the imperfect way in which he has conceived the question, seems never to have finally made his choice between these two suppositions.^* When he draws near to close quarters (he never comes quite close), and is compelled to express himself with a nearer than usual approach to precision, his language^pseems to imply^p that the perception of distance from us is not a process of sense, but an instinctive inference of the mind. But he cannot have consciously elected this doctrine, to the exclusion of the other, or he would scarcely make the large use he does, for confirming his theory, of its supposed conformity to the “universal impressions of mankind.”^[*] To those natural impressions his doctrine, thus understood, is as repugnant as Berkeley’s. Mankind, when they use their eyesight to estimate the distance of an object, do not fancy themselves to be interpreting signs; they are not conscious that they are judging by the apparent smallness of the object, and by the loss of brilliancy which it sustains from the intervening atmosphere. If their unreflecting opinion goes for anything, it goes to prove that we actually see distance; for they are unaware of any difference between the process of seeing the distance of the tree from the house, and seeing the distance of the house from their eye.

If the author, abandoning his claim to^qhave^q common prejudices on his side, should finally acquiesce in the opinion that what he calls our perception of nearness and remoteness by the eye, is an instinctive interpretation of those variations in colour and apparent magnitude which really do accompany varieties of distance; his doctrine will then lie open to only one objection—the superfluousness of assuming an instinct to account for that, which knowledge derived from experience will so well explain. Long before a child gives evidence of distinguishing distances by the eye with any approach to accuracy, he has had time more than enough to learn from experience the correspondence between greater distance to the outstretched arm, and smaller magnitude to the eye. At any age at which a child is capable of forming expectations from past experience, he must have had experience of this correspondence, and must have learnt to ground expectations upon it.^r

Mr. Bailey next takes notice of the argument which Berkeley’s followers have drawn from the effect of pictures; from the fact that things may be so represented on a flat surface as to deceive the sight. They conclude from this, that though we appear to see solidity, we in truth only infer it from signs; because we equally appear to see it when the solidity is no longer present, provided the signs are. This argument, therefore, aims at proving no more than that what we call seeing solidity is inferring solidity, a proposition which, as we have already observed, our author could afford to admit. Nevertheless, he understands this argument no better than he understood the one which preceded it. He says it is “Virtually arguing that because planes can be made to look solid, solid objects are originally seen plane. . . . Solid objects, they say, must be originally seen as plane, because they may be delineated on a plane surface so as to look^ssolid:”^[*] which^s, as he justly says, would be an unwarranted inference.

But Mr. Bailey misconceives the scope of the argument to which he fancies that he is replying. The fact that a plane may be mistaken for a solid, is not urged to show that a solid must, but only that it may, be seen originally as a plane. Since even a plane, so coloured as to make the same image on the retina which a solid would^tmake^t , is mistaken for a solid, without doubt an actual solid will be^urecognised as^u such, even if it be seen in no other manner than as the plane is. The fact that we recognise a solid as a solid, is no proof that so far as the mere eye is concerned we do not see it as a plane; since a picture, which is^vcertainly^v seen only as a plane, is yet^wtaken for^w a solid, and appears to the person himself to be seen as such.

We proceed to another of our author’s arguments.^[†] If it were true, he says, that we originally see all objects in a party-coloured plane, but afterwards find by experience that this visual appearance is uniformly connected with a tangible object, we should indeed associate the two ideas, but this subsequent association would not alter the original perception. If we before saw a party-coloured plane, we should continue to see it. Though the idea of a tangible object would be uniformly suggested, the impression of sight which suggested it would in no wise be changed. As no touching or handling can make us see the images in a mirror to be on the surface, but we cannot help seeing them beyond it, so if all objects, near and remote, appeared to the sight to be at the same distance, all the touching or feeling in the world could not make us see them to be at various distances.

Here, again, the author has permitted a set of indefinite phrases to intercept his view of the position which he has undertaken to subvert. It is quite true that no association between the sight and the touch will ever make us see anything that the eyesight has not the power of showing us. If we originally see only a party-coloured plane, no touching or handling will ever make us see anything more. But touching and handling may well make us infer something more; and, according to Berkeley’s theory, this is all it needs to do. The very pith and marrow of the theory is, that what Mr. Bailey calls seeing things at various distances is, in truth, inferring them to be so, and that neither at first nor at last do we actually see anything but the colours.^x Berkeley, therefore, is under no necessity of affirming that experience or association alters the nature of our perceptions of sense. All that belongs to sense, according to him, remains the same; what experience does is to superadd to the impression of sense an instantaneous act of judgment.

In what we have already written we have answered the essential part of so much of our author’s argument, that we may forbear to follow him into the various modes of statement by which he endeavours to adapt his refutation to the varieties of Berkeley’s language. The same radical misconception pervades them all—that of representing Berkeley as pretending that a conception derived from touch is actually transmuted into a perception of sight. It is still, as before, the word perception which disguises from our author the point in issue. He cannot see that what he calls a perception of sight is simply a judgment of the intellect, inferring from a sensation of sight the presence of an object. The idea of an object, being an idea derived from touch, ideas of touch are the foundation of this judgment of the intellect; but it is not therefore necessary to consider them as being, in any sense whatever of the term, “transmuted,” either into a judgment or into a perception.

Mr. Bailey’s next argument is the statement of a psychological fact, which, as a fact, is correct, and a necessary completion and explanation of the theory with which he imagines it to conflict. According to Berkeley’s doctrine, says Mr. Bailey,^[*] what takes place when we appear to ourselves to see distance, is merely a close and rapid suggestion of tangible distance, called up by certain visual appearances or signs; and the mind (as is its custom) does not dwell upon the sign, nor remember even the next minute that precise appearance of the object, which indicated the distance, but rushes at once from the sign to the thing signified. And accordingly, a person learning to draw, finds it very difficult to recall accurately the visual appearance, or, even when the scene is before his eyes, to imitate on paper the apparent positions and figures, without ever altering them by the substitution of the real ones. So inveterate is the habit of neglecting the sign and attending only to the thing signified, that it is a hard and difficult task to delineate objects as we see them; our tendency is always to delineate them as we know them to be.

Now, if these doctrines be true, argues our author—if visible appearances are mere signs, which the mind rapidly glides over, and hurries to the tactual perceptions with which they are associated, we ought surely to be very distinctly conscious of the tactual reminiscences supposed to be thus suggested. Yet the fact is, that when we look at objects, and judge of their positions and distances, we have so little consciousness of any tactual ideas, that it is almost questionable whether any are suggested at all. It is, in fact, with great difficulty that we recall this particular class of tactual impressions. Our ideas of tangible distance, form, and magnitude, instead of being peculiarly distinct, are peculiarly vague and shadowy; for the simple reason, that we are not in the habit of attending to those particular sensations of touch. And accordingly, our consciousness testifies that when we correct an erroneous visual impression of distance, we do so by comparing and collating it, not with tactual impressions, but with visual impressions received under different circumstances. When, in looking along an avenue of trees, the more remote of the trees appear to my eye to be close together, and when I correct this impression, and judge them to be farther apart than they appear, the thought which I recall is not the idea of a tangible space, but the recollection of the visible space which I saw intervening between them on some nearer view, or which I have seen to lie between the adjacent trees of other similar avenues.

In this argument, to which we have endeavoured to do no injustice in the mode of stating it, the facts alleged are indisputable. It is true that our ordinary processes of thought and judgment respecting outward objects are carried on, not by means of tactual ideas, but of visual ideas which have acquired a tactual signification; and that this extensive supersession of the function of tactual ideas renders many of them dim, confused, and difficult to be recalled. But these facts, in themselves interesting and worthy of notice, are of no avail to prove that the visual ideas, which thus become our main symbols of tangible objects, have their tactual signification naturally, or obtain it from any other source than experience. At the age at which a child first learns that a diminution in brightness and in apparent magnitude implies increase of distance, the child’s ideas of tangible extension and magnitude are not faint and faded, but fresh and^yvigorous^y . As for the subsequent fact, that when the suggesting power of the sign has been often exercised, our consciousness not only of the sign itself, but of much of what is signified by the sign, becomes much less acute, so accomplished a metaphysician as Mr. Bailey cannot be ignorant that this is the nature of all signs. It will not, for example, be asserted that the words of any language are significant by nature, or derive their power of suggesting ideas from any cause but association alone; yet nothing can be more notorious than that a word with which we are very familiar, is heard or uttered, and does its work as a sign, with the faintest possible suggestion of most of the sensible ideas which compose its meaning. For example, the word “country:” a politician may reason, or an orator may expatiate, with the utmost cogency and effect, on the interests of the country, the prospects of the country; but in doing this have they distinctly present to the mind’s eye the cornfields and meadows, the workshops and farmhouses, the thronged manufactories and family circles, which are the real concrete signification of the word? Assuredly not: words, as used on common occasions, suggest no more of the ideas habitually associated with them, than the smallest portion that will enable the mind to do what those common occasions require; and it is only to persons of more than ordinary vividness of imagination, that the names of things ever recall more than the meagrest outline of even their own conceptions of^zthe^z things.

Now if this be true of words, which are conventional signs, it is not less true of natural signs, such as our sensations of sight, which derive their power of suggestion not from convention, but from always occurring in conjunction with the things which they suggest. When once the visual appearances, from long experience, suggest the tactual impressions with extreme readiness and familiarity, it would be contrary to all we know of association to suppose that they will continue to suggest them with the original vivacity and force. As the mind, without attending to the sign, runs on to the thing signified, so does it also, without attending to the thing signified, run on to whatever else that thing suggests. Those vivid sensations of the touch and of the muscular frame from which the infant learned his first ideas of distance, would, when the necessity has ceased for actively attending to them, be more and more dimly recalled, while enough only would be distinctly suggested to enable the mind to go on to what it has next to do. The amount of distinct suggestion, and its precise nature, probably differ in different individuals; and in each the visual sign suggests, not so much the tangible distance, as the measure by which, with that person, tangible distances are accustomed to be estimated. In our own experience we should say, that when we look at an object to judge of its distance from us, the idea suggested is commonly that of the length of time, or the quantity of motion, which would be requisite for reaching^ato^a the object if near to us, or walking up to it if at a distance.

The indistinctness, therefore, of our ideas of tactual extension and magnitude, and the fact of our carrying on most of our mental processes by means of their visual signs, without distinctly recalling the tactual impressions upon which our ideas of extension and magnitude were originally grounded, is no argument against Berkeley’s theory, but is exactly what, from the laws of association, we should expect to happen supposing that theory to be true. And our author has failed, by this as much as by his other arguments, to strike an effective blow at the theory.

We may here close our examination of the controversial, and properly argumentative part of the book. The remainder of it is an attempt to show, by actual observation, that distances are distinguished by the eye before there has been time to form any association between the sight and the touch, and even before the sense of touch has been sufficiently exercised to be capable of yielding accurate ideas.

The facts adduced are of three kinds: relating^beither^b to human infants, to the young of the lower animals, or to persons born blind, and afterwards^crendered capable of^c sight.

Our author’s facts relating to human infants are singularly inconclusive. They are chiefly intended to show that the sense of sight in a child is developed earlier than the sense of touch, because a child recognises persons and objects by the sight, when his expertness in using his hands so as to acquire tactual ideas is still of the very lowest order. From this Mr. Bailey infers, or seems to infer, that the infant judges of objects by the sense of sight, before he has sensations of touch whereby to judge of them. It is singular that so able a thinker should not have adverted to the fact, that the child may experience sensations of touch from two sources, namely, either from the objects which he touches, or from those which touch him. A child^d six months old is not very skilful in handling objects so as to acquire an accurate notion of their distance and shape; but persons and things are continually touching the child, and seldom without his experiencing simultaneously some peculiar visual appearance. It cannot, therefore, be long before he associates at least those contacts which are pleasurable or painful, with the corresponding visual sensations; and when this association is formed, he will, on seeing the visual appearances, give signs of intelligence; not from recognising the object, for as an object there is not a shadow of proof that he yet recognises it, but simply because the sensation of sight excites the expectation of the accustomed pleasure or pain. That anything beyond this takes place in an infant’s mind at an age at which it has not yet acquired tactual notions of distance and magnitude, Mr. Bailey has not proved, and would find it difficult to prove.

The facts relating to the young of the lower animals are more to the point, and have been long felt to be a real stumbling-block in the way of the theory.

Again,

It is asserted, and we know of no reason to doubt the fact, that chickens will pick up corn without difficulty as soon as they are hatched.

These are strong facts, and though we cannot confirm them from our own knowledge, still, as they are denied by no one, we presume they must be received as unquestionable. Some of the strongest adherents of Berkeley’s doctrine, particularly Dugald Stewart and Brown,^[‡] have felt compelled by these facts to allow, that, in many of the lower animals, the perception of distance by the eye is connate and instinctive. In this admission these philosophers saw no inconsistency, it being an acknowledged truth that brutes have many instincts, of which man is reduced to supply the place by acquired knowledge. Mr. Bailey, however, goes further, and says, here is proof that the eye is at least an organ capable of a direct and intuitive perception of distance.^[§] Here, therefore, is at all events a complete refutation of Berkeley, who asserts that such a direct perception is organically impossible.^[∥]

This is one of the passages which^elook as if our author had^e never quite settled with himself whether the “perception of distance” by the eye is a real function of that organ, or is that very process of interpreting visible signs which Berkeley contends for, except that it is instinctive instead of being the result of experience. It is against the former hypothesis only that^fthe argument of Berkeley, which Mr. Bailey refers to,^f is directed. To refute him, therefore, it would be necessary to show, not only that animals can distinguish distance as soon as they are born, but that they distinguish it by the sight itself, and not by interpretation of signs. Yet the other hypothesis is the one which, in order to treat our author fairly, we^gwere^g obliged to suppose him to adopt.

If the eye of a brute is a different kind of organ from a human eye, there is no reasoning from one to the other; brutes may be capable of seeing distance and solidity, and yet this will be no reason for supposing that men are capable. But if in a brute, as in a man, it be a necessary condition of vision that an image corresponding to the object^hshould^h be formed on the retina, then in a brute, as in a man, it is impossible that two lines should seem of unequal length, which are both alike represented on the retina by points. There will be no resource either in man or beast for judging of remoteness, except from difference in the degrees of brightness and of visible magnitude; and the only doubt will be whether these natural signs are interpreted instinctively, or by virtue of previous experience.

Now if brutes have really an instinct for interpreting these appearances,—if they are intuitively capable of drawing, without experience, the inferences which experience would warrant—we allow it is physiologically probable that some vestige of a similar instinct exists in human beings; although, as in many other cases, the instinctive property, which might perhaps be observable in idiots, is overruled and superseded by the superior force of that rational faculty which grounds its judgments upon experience. But in truth, our knowledge of the mental operations of animals is too imperfect to enable us to affirm positively that they have this instinct. We know to a certain extent the external acts of animals, but know not from what inward promptings, or on what outward indications, those acts are performed. For example, as a judicious critic in the Spectator newspaper has remarked, some of the motions which are supposed to show that young animals can see distance immediately after birth, are performed equally by those which are born blind; kittens and puppies seek the teat as well as calves and lambs.^[*] We are not aware if the experiment was ever tried whether a blind duckling will run to the water; it would not be more surprising than many facts in the history of the lower animals which are well known to be true. Those animals have to us an inexplicable facility both of finding and of selecting the objects which their wants require, without, as far as we can perceive, any sufficient opportunities of experience. But it is a question which we should like to see examined by a good observer, to what extent it is their eyesight which guides them to the performance of theseⁱwonders.ⁱ At all events, man has not these same facilities; man cannot build in hexagons by an instinctive faculty, though bees can.

We do not wish to evade a question which we are unable to solve, or to blink the fact that the case of the lower animals is the most serious difficulty which the theory of Berkeley has to encounter. But we maintain that it is a difficulty only, not a refutation; and that, even granting the full extent of what is contended for, the theory would still be practically true for human beings. Mr. Bailey allows that infants do not manifest that early perception of distance which some animals do; he imputes this, plausibly enough, to the comparative immaturity of their organs at the period of birth.^[*] But before the time when, according to him, the organs have attained sufficient maturity for manifesting this original power, experience has furnished impressions and formed associations, which, without supposing any such power, will account for all which the eyes can do in the way of observation; and there is ample evidence that our judgments of outward things from visual signs are practically, throughout life, regulated by these acquired associations.

The facts which relate to young children and the young of the lower animals being disposed of, there remain those derived from persons born blind, and relieved from blindness at a mature age. These, if well authenticated, would be the most valuable facts of all, for the human species. They exhibit to us, in the very act of learning to see, not children or brutes, but persons capable of observing and describing their impressions, and whose judgments of objects from touch are already accurate and steady. It is a disagreeable reflection, to how great an extent these rare and valuable opportunities have been lost; how slightly and carelessly cases so interesting to science have been observed, and how scanty and insufficient is the information which has been recorded concerning them.

The best known case, that of the youth who was couched by Cheselden,^[†] has always been deemed strongly confirmatory of Berkeley’s doctrine. Mr. Bailey has however attempted, we cannot think with any success, to maintain the contrary. Cheselden’s patient said that all objects seemed to touch his eyes, as what he felt did his skin. There has been much discussion (in which our author takes an active part)^[‡] as to what the boy may have meant by touching his eyes; we think quite needlessly. That the objects touched him was obviously a mere supposition, which he made because it was with his eyes that he perceived them. From his experience of touch, perception of an object and contact with it were, no doubt, indissolubly associated in his mind. But he would scarcely have said that all objects seemed to touch his eyes, if some of them had appeared farther off than others. The case, therefore, as far as anything can be concluded from one instance, seems to prove completely that we are at first incapable of seeing things at unequal distances. Our author curiously argues that the boy might have expressed himself as he did without regarding all visible objects as equally near; for, says he, the boy compared his visual impressions to impressions of touch, and we do not consider all tangible objects as equally near. True, we do not; but if we were to say that all objects seemed simultaneously to touch our hand, it would require some ingenuity to reconcile this assertion with the fact that we were, at that very moment,^jperceiving^j them to be at different distances from it.

Another specimen of our author’s power of explaining away evidence, is to be found in his remark, that in the whole of Cheselden’s narrative “There is nothing from which we can learn or infer—not a whisper of evidence to prove—that the boy’s subsequent perceptions of visible distance had been acquired by means of the touch.”^[*]

What thinks Mr. Bailey of this passage, quoted by himself:

Mr. Bailey will^knot wish to^k shelter himself under the subterfuge that the process of learning to see, which Cheselden here so graphically describes, has reference to form only, and not to distance. Cheselden exhibits the boy actively engaged in teaching himself by the touch to judge of forms by the eye; and in this process he could not avoid learning also to judge of distances: much more rapidly, indeed, than of forms, the ideas concerned being much simpler.

After this example, the reader may dispense with our entering into the details of five other cases which our author discusses. Some of these cases are more, others less, favourable in appearance to Berkeley’s theory; but, as our author himself remarks, they all bear evidence that the observers were not duly aware of the psychological difficulties of the problem. The point which Mr. Bailey most dwells on as conclusive in his favour, is that two of the patients could distinguish by the unassisted eye whether an object was brought nearer or carried^lfarther^l from them.^[*] This, indeed, would be decisive of the question, if the experiments had been fair ones. But in one of these cases the patient was of mature years, and the trial not made till the eighteenth day after the operation, by which time a middle-aged woman might well have acquired the experience necessary for distinguishing so simple a phenomenon. In the other of the two cases, the patient, a boy seven years old, had been capable, before the operation, of distinguishing colours “when they were very strong and held close to the eye;”^[†] and had probably, therefore, had the capacity of observing, antecedently to the operation, that colours grow fainter when the coloured object is removed further off.

On the whole, then, it will probably be the opinion of the^mphilosophical^m reader, that neither by his facts nor by his arguments has Mr. Bailey thrown any new light upon the question, but has left Berkeley’s Theory precisely as he found it, subject, as it has always been, to the acknowledged difficulty arising from the motions of young animals, but otherwise unshaken, and to all appearance unshakeable.

* * * * *

Mr. Bailey having published a reply^* to the preceding criticism, it is right to subjoin the following

REJOINDER TO MR. BAILEY’S REPLY

in this pamphlet Mr. Bailey replies to our article of last October, and to a paper in Blackwood’s Magazine on the same subject.^[‡] Between Mr. Bailey and the writer in Blackwood we are not called upon to interfere. Of what he has said in answer to our own comments, our respect for him, as well as the scientific interest of the subject, compel us to take some notice; but we cannot venture to inflict upon our readers that detailed analysis of his arguments which would be necessary to satisfy him that we had duly considered them. We prefer resting our case on what we have already written, and on a comparison between that and what is offered in reply to it. We are really afraid lest in any attempt to state the substance of Mr. Bailey’s arguments, we should unwittingly leave out something which perhaps forms an essential part of them; so little do we feel capable of comprehending what it is which gives them the conclusiveness they possess in his eyes. And it is the more desirable that the reader should not take our word respecting Mr. Bailey’s opinions, as it appears that on one important point we have, in sheer love of justice and courtesy to Mr. Bailey, misrepresented them.

We remarked that a dissentient from Berkeley’s doctrine might adopt either of two theories; he might assert that we actually see distance, which is one doctrine; or he might admit that we only infer the distance of an object, from the diminution of its apparent size and apparent brilliancy, but might say that this inference is not made from experience, but by instinct or intuition. We surmised that Mr. Bailey was in a state of indecision between these two theories, but with a leaning towards the latter. In this it seems we were wrong, for he not only holds steadily to the former of the two doctrines, but finds it “inexplicable how any one of honesty and intelligence” could so far misunderstand him as to imagine otherwise, “except on the supposition of greater haste than was compatible with due examination.”^[*] We can assure Mr. Bailey that our mistake—since mistake it was—arose solely from an honest desire to do him justice. Of the two opinions, we, in all candour, attributed to him the one which appeared to us least unreasonable, and most difficult satisfactorily to refute. It would have abridged our labour very much if we had thought ourselves at liberty to ascribe to him the opinion he now avows. That opinion we thought, and continue to think, palpably untenable, being inconsistent with admitted facts, while the other, from the nature of the case, can only be combated by negative evidence.

The notion that distance from the eye can be directly seen, needs, we conceive, no other refutation than Berkeley’s. We can see nothing except in so far as it is represented on our retina; and things which are represented on our retina exactly alike, will be seen alike. The distances of all objects from the eye, being lines directed endwise to the retina, can only project themselves upon it by single points, that is to say, exactly alike; therefore they are seen exactly alike. This, which is Berkeley’s argument, Mr. Bailey, in his pamphlet, disposes of by saying that it supposes the distances to be “material or physical lines,” since “imaginary or hypothetical lines can project no points on the retina.”^[*] We must again reiterate our fear of misrepresenting Mr. Bailey, for we can scarcely suppose him to mean (what he seems to say) that only bodies can be represented on the retina, and not the blank spaces between bodies; or else, that we indeed see bodies when, and only when, they are imaged on the retina, but see the spaces between them without any such optical equivalent. The fact surely is, that we see bodies and their distances by precisely the same mechanism. We see two stars, if they are imaged on the retina, and not otherwise; we see the interval between those stars, if there is an interval on the retina between the two images, and if there is no such interval we see it not. Now, as the interval between an object andⁿourⁿ eye has not any interval answering to it on the retina, we do not see it. Surely this argument does not depend upon an implied assumption that the intervals between objects are physical lines joining them.

This is Mr. Bailey’s answer to one of our^oarguments. Whether^o he has succeeded any better in replying to the remainder of them, we must leave it to others to judge.

Mr. Bailey, in his reply, insists very much on a point which we passed over in our former article—the confirmation which^phe imagines his theory^p to derive from^qMr.^q Wheatstone’s discoveries respecting binocular vision, exhibited in the phenomena of the stereoscope.^[†] We think Mr. Bailey must admit, on further consideration, that these phenomena (as he himself says of Cheselden’s observations)^* are equally consistent with both theories. The stereoscope makes us see, or appear to see, solidity; it makes us look upon a flat picture of an object, and have, more completely than we ever had before, the semblance of seeing the object in three dimensions. But how is this done? Merely by imitating on a plane, more exactly than was ever done before, the precise sensations of colour and visible form which we habitually have when a solid object, a body in three dimensions, is presented to us. The stereoscope produces a more complete illusion than a mere picture, because it does what no previous picture ever did—it allows for, and imitates, the two different sets of ocular appearances which we receive from an object very near to us when we look at it with both our eyes. If either theory could derive support from this experiment, it would surely be that which supposes our perceptions of solidity to be inferences rapidly drawn from visual impressions confined to two dimensions. But we do not insist upon this, as we deem the argument from pictures, in any of its forms, only valid to prove, not the truth of Berkeley’s theory, but its sufficiency to explain the phenomena; or, as we before expressed it [p. 256 above], that a solid may, not that it must, be seen originally as a plane.

In the course of his remarks, Mr. Bailey takes frequent opportunities of animadverting on the tone of our article, in a manner evincing at least as much sensitiveness to what he deems hostile criticism, as is at all compatible with the character of a philosopher.^[*] We were so entirely unconscious of having laid ourselves open to this kind of^sreproof^s , as to have flattered ourselves that the style and tone of our criticism on a single opinion of Mr. Bailey, bore indubitable marks of the unfeigned respect which we entertain for his general powers; nor are we aware of having shown any other “bluntness,” “confidence,” or “arrogance,”^[†] than are implied in thinking ourselves right, and, by consequence, Mr. Bailey wrong. We certainly did not feel ourselves required, by consideration for him, to state our difference of opinion with pretended hesitation. We should not have written on the subject unless we had been able to form a decided opinion on it; and, having done so, to have expressed that opinion otherwise than decidedly would have been cowardice, not modesty; it would have been sacrificing our conviction of truth to fear of offence. To dispute the soundness of a man’s doctrines and the conclusiveness of his arguments, may always be interpreted as an assumption of superiority over him: true courtesy, however, between thinkers, is not shown by refraining from this sort of assumption, but by tolerating it in one another; and we claim from Mr. Bailey this tolerance, as we, on our part, sincerely and cheerfully concede to him the like.

GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE [I]

1846

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, II (1867), 283-334, where under the title, “Early Grecian History and Legend,” appears “(A Review of the first Two Volumes of ‘Grote’s History of Greece.’*)” with the footnote reading “Edinburgh Review, October 1846.” Reprinted from ER, LXXXIV (Oct., 1846), 343-77, unsigned, where it is headed “Art. III.—A History of Greece.—I. Legendary Greece.—II. Grecian History to the Reign of Peisistratus of Athens. By George Grote, Esq. Two vols. 8vo. London: [Murray,] 1846”; running heads “Grote’s History of Greece.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of the first two volumes of Grote’s History of Greece in the Edinburgh Review for October 1846.” (MacMinn, 60.) There are no corrections or alterations in the copy of the Edinburgh article in the Somerville College Library.

In the footnoted variants, “59” indicates D&D, II (1st ed.); “67” indicates D&D, II (2nd ed., the copy-text); “46” indicates Edinburgh Review. For comment on the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, xxviii-xxxiii and lxxxv-lxxxvi above.

Grote’s History of Greece [I]

the interest of Grecian history is unexhausted and inexhaustible. As a mere story, hardly any other portion of authentic history can compete with it. Its characters, its situations, the very march of its incidents, are epic. It is an heroic poem, of which the personages are peoples. It is also, of all histories of which we know so much, the most abounding in consequences to us who now live. The true ancestors of the European nations (it has been well said) are not those from whose blood they are sprung, but those from whom they derive the richest portion of their inheritance. The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods.

The Greeks are also the most remarkable people who have yet existed. Not, indeed, if by this be meant those who have approached nearest (if such an expression may be used where all are at so immeasurable a distance) to the perfection of social arrangements, or of human character. Their institutions, their way of life, even that which is their greatest distinction, the cast of their sentiments and development of their faculties, were radically inferior to the best (we wish it could be said to the collective) products of modern civilization. It is not the results achieved, but the powers and efforts required to make the achievement, that measure their greatness as a people. They were the beginners of nearly everything, Christianity excepted, of which the modern world makes its boast. If in several things they were but few removes from barbarism, they alone among nations, so far as is known to us, emerged from barbarism by their own efforts, not following in the track of any more advanced people. If with them, as in all antiquity, slavery existed as an institution, they were not the less the originators of political freedom, and the grand exemplars and sources of it to modern Europe. If their discords, jealousies, and wars between city and city, caused the ruin of their national independence, yet the arts of war and government evolved in those intestine contests made them the first who united great empires under civilized rule—the first who broke down those barriers of petty nationality, which had been so fatal to themselves—and by making Greek ideas and language common to large regions of the earth, commenced that general fusion of races and nations, which, followed up by the Romans, prepared the way for the cosmopolitism of modern times.

They were the first people who had an historical literature; as perfect of its kind (though not the highest kind) as their oratory, their poetry, their sculpture, and their architecture. They were the founders of mathematics; of physics; of the inductive study of politics, so early exemplified in Aristotle; of the philosophy of human nature and life. In each they made the indispensable first steps, which are the foundation of all the rest—steps such as could only have been made by minds intrinsically capable of everything which has since been accomplished. With a religious creed eminently unfavourable to speculation, because affording a ready supernatural solution of all natural phenomena, they yet originated freedom of thought. They, the first, questioned nature and the universe by their rational faculties, and brought forth answers not suggested by any established system of priestcraft; and their free and bold spirit of speculation it was, which, surviving in its results, broke the yoke of another enthralling system of popular religion, sixteen hundred years after they had ceased to exist as a people. These things were effected in two centuries of national existence: twenty and upwards have since elapsed, and it is sad to think how little comparatively has been accomplished.

To give a faithful and living portraiture of such a people; to show what they were and did, and as much as possible of the means by which they did it—by what causes so meteor-like a manifestation of human nature was produced or aided, and by what faults or necessities it was arrested; to deduce from the qualities which the Greeks displayed collectively or individually, and from the modes in which those qualities were unconsciously generated or intentionally cultivated, the appropriate lessons for the guidance of our own world—is an enterprise never yet attempted systematically, nor attempted successfully at all. Such is the declared object of the work of which the first two volumes lie before us. “First, to embody in his own mind, and next to lay out before his readers, the general picture of the Grecian world,” is Mr. Grote’s description of his task.

In this undertaking there is work for a succession of thinkers; nor will it be brought to completeness by any one historian or philosopher. But the qualifications of Mr. Grote, and the contents of these two volumes, give assurance that he will be remembered not only as the first who has seriously undertaken the work, but as one who will have made great steps towards accomplishing it. In ascribing to him the first attempt at a philosophical history of Greece, we mean no disparagement to the very valuable labours of his predecessor and friend, Bishop Thirlwall.^[*] That distinguished scholar has done much for the facts of Grecian history. Before him, no one had applied to those facts, considered as a whole, the most ordinary canons of historical credibility. The only modern historian of Greece who attempted or even affected criticism on evidence, Mr. Mitford, made almost no other use of it than to find reasons for rejecting all statements discreditable to any despot or usurper.^[†] Dr. Thirlwall has effectually destroyed Mitford as an historical authority; by substituting (though so unostentatiously as to give no sufficient idea of the service rendered) a candid and impartial narrative, for the most prejudiced misrepresentation by which party passion has been known to pervert the history of a distant time and a foreign people. But Dr. Thirlwall’s, though highly and justly esteemed as a critical, does not attempt to be a philosophical history; nor was such an attempt to be expected from its original purpose. And though, in its progress, it has far outgrown in bulk, and still more in amplitude of scope and permanent value, its primitive design,^a the plan has not been fundamentally altered; and the most important part of Mr. Grote’s undertaking has not been, in any respect, forestalled by it.

The portion which Mr. Grote has completed, and which is now published, appears at some disadvantage, from its not including even the beginning of the part of Grecian history which is of chief interest either to the common or to the philosophical reader. Mr. Grote, in his preface, laments that the religious and poetical attributes of the Greek mind appear thus far in disproportionate relief, as compared with its powers of acting, organizing, judging, and speculating.^b He might have added, that the religion and the poetry are only those of the most primitive period, the time before which nothing is known. A volume and a half are devoted to the legendary age; and the remaining half volume does not carry us much beyond the first dawn of real history.

The Legends of Greece Mr. Grote relates at greater length than has been thought necessary by any of his predecessors. This is incident to the design, which no one before him had seriously entertained, of making the history of Greece a picture of the Greek mind. There is no more important element in the mind of Greece than the legends. They constituted the belief of the Greeks of the historical period, concerning their own past. They formed also the Grecian religion; and the religion of an early people is the groundwork of its primitive system of thought on all subjects. Mr. Grote makes no distinction between the legends of the Gods and those of the Heroes. He relates the one and the other literally, as they were told by the poets, and believed by the general public, down to the time of the Roman empire. He makes no attempt to discriminate historical matter in the stories of heroes, no more than in those of the gods. Not doubting that some of them do contain such matter—that many of the tales of the heroic times are partially grounded on incidents which really happened—he thinks it useless to attempt to conjecture what these were. The siege of Troy is to him no more an historical fact than the births and amours of the gods, as recorded in Hesiod. The only thing which he deems historical in either is, that the Greeks believed them, and the poets sung them. Whether they were believed from the first, as they were afterwards, on the authority of poets, or the poets grounded their narratives on stories already current, we have no means of ascertaining; in some cases the one thing may have happened, in some the other; in Mr. Grote’s view it is immaterial, since neither the poems nor the so-called traditions bear, in his eyes, the smallest character of historical evidence.

This is essentially the doctrine of Niebuhr; and, in the hands of that eminent investigator of antiquity, it has, by English scholars, generally been accepted as subversive of the previously received view of Roman history. But no one, not even the translator of Niebuhr, Dr. Thirlwall,^[*] had applied this doctrine in the same unsparing manner to the Greek legends. Unqualified rejection has been confined to the stories of the gods. Between them and those of the heroes, a Greek would have been unable to see any difference. To his mind, both rested on the same identical testimony; both were alike part of his religious creed; supernatural agency, and supernatural motives and springs of action, are the pervading soul as much of the heroic as of the divine legends; the gods themselves appear in them quite as prominently, and even the heroes are real, though inferior, divinities. By moderns, however, the supernatural machinery (as it is called by critics profoundly ignorant of the spirit of antiquity) has been treated as a sort of scaffolding which could be taken down, instead of the main framework and support of the structure. The history of the Trojan war has been written on the authority of the Iliad, suppressing only the intervention of the gods, and whatever seemed romantic or improbable in the human motives and characters. As much credit is thus accorded to the poet, in all but the minute details of his narrative, as is given to the most veracious witness in a court of justice; since even with him we do no more than believe his statements where they are neither incredible in themselves, nor contradicted by more powerful testimony. With this mode of dealing with legendary narratives, Mr. Grote is altogether at war. His discussion of the credibility of what are called traditions is eminently original, evolving into distinctness principles and canons of evidence and belief, which, by Niebuhr, are rather implicitly assumed than directly stated.

The following passages will give a clear idea of Mr. Grote’s main position:

The two points here insisted upon are, the large space which sheer and absolute fiction still occupies in human beliefs—a place naturally larger as we recede further into a remote and uncritical antiquity; and the tendency of any strong and widely diffused feeling to embody itself in fictitious narratives, which pass from mouth to mouth, and grow into traditions.

These points have been illustrated in a more quotable, because a more condensed form, in a fugitive publication, of which Mr. Grote here acknowledges the authorship.^[*] From this we borrow an illustration, too apt to be dispensed with,—a modern mythe, caught in the act of formation. Among the “numerous fictions” which, in the words of Mr. Moore’s “Life of Byron,” have been “palmed upon the world” as his “romantic tours and wonderful adventures in places he never saw, and with persons that never existed,”^[†] one is thus recounted, in a review of the poem of Manfred, by no less a person than Goethe.

On this Mr. Grote comments as follows:

Suppose that there had never been any authentic biography of Byron, and that his own works and the various testimonies about his personality having all perished, his name were carried down to a remote age exclusively by this writing of Goethe. The case would then be parallel with that of the heroic age of Greece; and the following passage describes what would probably have happened.

The feelings to which the early Grecian legends addressed themselves, and to which they owed not their currency only, but most of them probably their very existence, were sentiments most strong and pervading; the religious feelings of the people, and their ancestorial feelings. The two, indeed, may be reduced to one, for the ancestorial were also in the most literal sense religious feelings. The legendary ancestors of each family, tribe, or race, were the immediate descendants of deities—were immortal beings, with supernatural powers to destroy or save, and worshipped with the rites and honours paid to gods. The difference between them and the gods was chiefly this, that they had once been men, and had performed exploits on earth which were the pride and glory of other men still living, who honoured them as patrons and guardian divinities—a distinction in no way tending to abate the thirst for wonderful tales respecting the heroes.

If a story harmonized with the prevailing sentiment, to doubt its truth would never occur to any one, not even to the inventors themselves; since, in a rude age, the suggestions of vivid imagination and strong feeling are always deemed the promptings of a god. The inspiration of the muse was not then a figure of speech, but the sincere and artless belief of the people; the bard and the prophet were analogous characters; Demodocus, at the court of King Alcinous, could sing the Trojan war by revelation from Apollo or from a Muse;^* and Hesiod, in the Theogony, could declare respecting himself that he knew, by the favour of the Muses, the past, the present, and the future.^[†] Herodotus expressly says that Hesiod and Homer “were the authors of the Greek Theogony, gave titles to the gods, distinguished their attributes and functions, and described their forms;” that until taught by them, the Greeks were ignorant “whence each of the gods sprang, and whether all of them were always existing, and what were their shapes.”^* Plato invariably assumes the same thing. The poems were a kind of sacred books, like the Ramayun and the Mahabharat.

It may perhaps be said, that the eager interest here supposed in the exploits of ancestors, implies the ancestors to be at least real persons, surviving in the memory of those to whom the tales were told; and that therefore most of the heroes of legend must have really existed, however much of the marvellous in their adventures may be due to the imagination of their descendants. This doctrine would not be without plausibility, were it not the known practice of the early Greeks to create not only imaginary adventures of ancestors, but imaginary ancestors. It was the universal theory of Greece that every name, common to an aggregation of persons, indicated a common progenitor. Whether it was the name of a race, as Dorians, Ionians, Achæans; of a people, as Thessalians, Dolopians, Arcadians, Ætolians; of any of the numerous political divisions of a people, or of those other divisions not made by laws, but held together by religious rites and a traditional tie, the γένη or gentes (representing probably the units by the aggregation of which the community had, at some early period, been formed); all these,^das well as many^d names of towns and localities, were believed to be etymologically derived from a primeval founder and patriarch of the whole tribe. Even names of which the origin was obvious, did not escape the application of the theory. The names of the four tribes in the primitive Athenian constitution, Geleontes, Hopletes, Argades, and Aigikoreis, appellations so evidently derived from their occupations, were ascribed, according to custom, to four Eponymi, sons of Ion, the general ancestor of the race, whose names were Geleon, Hoples, Argades, and Aigikores. No one now makes any scruple of rejecting the whole class of Eponymi, or name-heroes, from the catalogue of historical personages. Among the Greeks, however, they were the most precious of any; they were as firmly believed in, and their existence and adventures as justly entitled to the name of tradition, as any Grecian legend whatever.

But grant that the personages of the heroic legends were real, as doubtless some warriors and rulers must have left behind them an enduring memory, to which legends would not fail to attach themselves;—could we distinguish among the names, those which belonged to actual persons, would it follow that the actions ascribed to them bore a resemblance to any real occurrences? We may judge from a parallel instance. In the earlier Middle Ages, the European mind had returned to something like the naïf unsuspecting faith of primitive times. It accordingly gave birth to a profusion of legends: those of saints, in the first place, almost a literature in themselves, of which, though very pertinent to our purpose, we say nothing here. But the same age produced the counterpart of the tales of Hercules and Theseus, of the wanderings of Ulysses and the Argonautic expedition, in the shape of romances of chivalry. Like the Homeric poems, the romances announced themselves as true narratives, and were, down to the fourteenth century, popularly believed as such. The majority relate to personages probably altogether fictitious; Amadis and Lancelot we are nowise called upon to believe in; and of King Arthur, as of King Agamemnon, we have no means of ascertaining if he ever really existed or not. But the uncertainty does not extend to all these romantic heroes. That age, unlike the Homeric, notwithstanding its barbarism, preserved written records; and we know consequently from other evidence than the romances themselves, that some of the names they contain are real. Charlemagne is not only an historical character, but one whose life is tolerably well known to us; and so genuine a hero, both in war and peace—his real actions so surprising and admirable—that fiction itself might have been content with ornamenting his true biography, instead of fitting him with another entirely fabulous. The age, however, required, to satisfy its ideal, a Charlemagne of a different complexion from the real monarch. The chronicle of Archbishop Turpin,^[*] a compilation of poetic legends, supplied this want. Though containing hardly anything historical, except the name of Charlemagne and the fact of an expedition into Spain, it was declared genuine history by Pope Calixtus the Second; was received as such by Vincent de Beauvais, who, for his great erudition, was made preceptor to the sons of the wise King, Saint Louis of France; and from this, not from Eginhard or the monk of St. Gall, the poets who followed drew the materials of their narrative. Even, then, if Priam and Hector were real persons, the siege of Troy by the Greeks may be as fabulous as that of Paris by the Saracens, or Charlemagne’s conquest of Jerusalem. In the poem of Ariosto,^[*] the principal hero and heroine are Ruggiero and Bradamante, the ancestors, real or imaginary, of the Dukes of Ferrara, at whose court he lived and wrote. Does any one, for this reason, believe a syllable of the adventures which he ascribes either to these or to his other characters? Another personage of legend, who is also a personage of history, is Virgil. If the author of the Æneid were only known to us by the traditions of the Middle Ages, in what character would he have been transmitted to us? In that of a mighty enchanter. Such is the worth of what is called tradition, even when the persons are real, and the age not destitute of records. What must it be in times anterior to the use of writing?

It is now almost forgotten, that England, too, had a mythic history, once received as genuine; and neither has this wanted the consecration of the highest poetical genius, in the instances at least of Lear and Cymbeline.

We will add, before taking our leave of this part of the subject, one argument more, which we conceive to be in itself almost decisive. Authentic history, as we ascend the stream of time, grows thinner and scantier, the incidents fewer, and the narratives less circumstantial;—shading off through every degree of twilight into the darkness of night. And such a gradual daybreak we find in Greek history, at and shortly before the first Olympiad ( 776), the point from which the historical Greeks commenced their computation of time. We cannot be far wrong in fixing this as the epoch at which written characters began to be regularly employed by public authority, for the recordation of periodical religious solemnities—always the first events systematically recorded, on account of the fearful religious consequences attaching to any mistake in the proper period^eof^e their celebration.

But if, beyond the darkness which bounds this early morning of history, we come suddenly into the full glare of day—an island of light in the dark ocean of the unrecorded past, peopled with majestic forms, and glittering with splendid scenery—we may be well assured that the vision is as unreal as Plato’s^fAtlantis^f ,^[*] and that the traditions and the poems which vouch for its past existence, are the offspring of fancy, not of memory. True history is not thus interrupted in its course; it does not, like the Arcadian rivers, sink into the ground, and, after a long disappearance, rise again at a remote point. Light first, and darkness afterwards, may be the order of invention, but it is seldom that of remembrance.

The elaborate chapter in which Mr. Grote traces the progress of opinion among instructed Greeks, respecting their own legends, is important, not only in reference to the question of credibility, but as a part of the history of the human mind. Originating in a rude age, by which they were naïvely and literally believed, the legends descended into a period of comparative knowledge and culture. With the tone of that later age, or at least of the instructed portion of it, they were no longer in harmony. Several things conspired to produce this divergence. As communications grew more frequent, and travelled men became acquainted with legends for which they had acquired no early reverence, the mutually contradictory character of the stories themselves tended to undermine their authority. The characters and actions ascribed to the gods and heroes, contained much that was repugnant to the altered moral feelings of a more civilized epoch: already Xenophanes, one of the earliest Grecian philosophical inquirers, composed poems to denounce, in the most vehement terms, the stories related of the gods by Hesiod and Homer, “the universal instructor,” as he terms him.^[*] But, more than all, the commencement of physical science and intelligent observation of nature, introduced a conception of the universe, and a mode of interpreting its phenomena, in continual conflict with the simplicity of ancient faith: accustoming men to refer to physical causes and natural laws, what were conceived by their ancestors as voluntary interventions of supernatural beings, in wrath or favour to mortals.

This altered tone in the more cultivated part of the Grecian mind, did not, however, proceed to actual disbelief in the legendary religion of the people. Mankind do not pass abruptly from one connected system of thought to another: they first exhaust every contrivance for reconciling the two. To break entirely with the religion of their forefathers, would have been a disruption of old feelings, too painful and difficult for the average strength even of superior minds; and could not have been done openly, without incurring a certainty of the fate which, with all the precautions they adopted, overtook Anaxagoras and Socrates. But even of the philosophers, there were at first very few who carried the spirit of freethinking so far. In general, they were unable to emancipate themselves from the old religious traditions, but were just as little capable of believing them literally. “The result was a new impulse, partaking of both the discordant forces—one of those thousand unconscious compromises between the rational convictions of the mature man, and the indelible illusions of early faith, religious as well as patriotic, which human affairs are so often destined to exhibit.”^[*] The legends, in their obvious sense, were no longer credible; but it was necessary to find for them a meaning in which they could be believed. And hence a series of efforts, continued with increasing energy from the first known prose historian, Hecatæus, to the Neoplatonic adversaries of Christianity in the school of Alexandria, to which the nearest parallel is the attempts of Paulus and the German rationalists to explain away the Hebrew Scriptures. Rejected in their obvious interpretation, the narratives were admitted in some other sense, which stripped them of the direct intervention of any deity. They were represented either as ordinary histories, coloured by poetic ornament, or allegories, in which moral instruction, physical knowledge, or esoteric religious doctrines, were designedly wrapt up. The succession of these rationalizing explanations is recounted at length, with great learning and philosophy, by Mr. Grote.

His opinion of the historical system of explanation has been seen in the preceding extracts. Without being more favourable, on the whole, to the allegorical theory, he yet makes a concession to it, with which, if we rightly understand his meaning, we are compelled to disagree. He says, “Though allegorical interpretation occasionally lands us in great absurdities, there are certain cases in which it presents intrinsic evidence of being genuine and correct—i.e. included in the original purport of the story;”^* and he instances the tale of Ate and the Litæ, in the ninth book of the Iliad, which, he says, no one can doubt, carries with it an intentional moral. Now, it seems to us that this remark allows either too much to allegory, or not enough.

Every reader of the Iliad, even in translation, must be familiar with this fine passage; in which Ate^g(by Mr. Grote translated “reckless impulse”)^g[†] is represented as a gigantic figure, who stalks forth furiously, diffusing ruin; and Litæ, or Prayers, daughters of Zeus or Jupiter, as slowly limping after her to heal the wounds she has made. Now, if the poet did not believe the personal existence of Ate and the Litæ;—if he employed what he knew to be a mere figure of speech, as a means of giving greater impressiveness to a general remark respecting the course of human affairs,—the passage is then rightly termed allegorical. But if, as we conceive, such employment of the language of polytheism in a merely figurative sense, neither existed nor could exist until polytheism was virtually defunct; if the use of religious forms as a simple artifice of rhetoric, would have appeared to Homer (supposing the idea to have presented itself at all) an impious profanation; if the poet, in the full simplicity of his religious faith, accepted literally the personality and divinity of Ate and the Litæ, there is then no place for the word “allegory,” in its correct acceptation. That a moral meaning accompanied in his mind the religious doctrine, and even suggested it, we at once admit: but he personified and deified the moral agencies concerned; and the story, as Müller says of the legend of Prometheus and Epimetheus (Forethought and Afterthought), is not an allegory, but a mythe.^[*] Otherwise, we must go much further, and affirm a substratum of allegory in the whole Greek religion; for the majority of its deities, including nearly all the more conspicuous of them, are undoubtedly personifications of either the physical or the moral powers of nature; and, this granted, the attributes ascribed to them would necessarily shadow forth those which observation pointed out in the phenomena over which they were supposed to preside.

The natural history of Polytheism is now well understood. Religion, though ex vi termini preternatural, is yet a theory for the explanation of nature; and generally runs parallel with the progress of human conceptions of that which it is intended to explain; each step made in the study of the phenomena determining a modification in the theory. The savage, drawing his idea of power from his own voluntary impulses, ascribes will and personality to every individual object in which he beholds a power beyond his control; and at once commences propitiating it by prayer and sacrifice. This original Fetishism, towards natural objects which combine great power with a well-marked individuality, was prolonged far into the period of Polytheism proper. The Gaia of Hesiod, mother of all the gods, was not a goddess of the earth, but the earth itself; and her physical are blended with her divine attributes in a singular medley. The sun and moon, not deities residing therein, were the objects of the ancient Grecian worship: their identification with Apollo and Artemis^hbelongs^h to a much later age. The Hindoos worship as a goddess the river Nerbudda—not a deity of the river, but the river itself;^* and, if they ascribe to it sex, and other attributes inconsistent with the physical characteristics of the natural object, it is from inability to conceive the idea of personality, except in conjunction with the ordinary human impulses and attributes. The Homeric Scamander is scarcely other than the animated river itself; and the god Alpheus, who pursues Arethusa through the ocean, is the actual river, flowing through the salt waves without mixing with them, and at length combining its waters in indissoluble union with those of the fountain it loves.

But where natural objects are not thus strikingly individualized—where the mind can at once recognise, in a multitude of things, one and the same power of affecting human interests—its tendency is not to deify the objects, but to place a deity over them, who,ⁱhimselfⁱ invisible, rules from a distance a whole class of phenomena. Bread and wine are great and beneficent powers, but the blindest fetish-worshipper never probably offered prayer or sacrifice to an individual loaf or wine-flask, but to an invisible Bacchus or Ceres, whose body, being unseen, is naturally assimilated to the human, and who is thenceforth handed over to the poets to exalt and dignify. Thus the first and most obvious step in the generalization of nature, by arranging objects in classes, is accompanied by a corresponding generalization of the gods. Fire, being a more mysterious as well as a more terrible agent, has, in some religions, been an object of direct worship; but in Homer we find the transition completely effected from the worship of fire to that of the fire-god,^jHephæstos^j . Thunder, the most awful of all, was universally received as the attribute of the most powerful of deities, the ruler of gods and men. As thought advanced, not only all physical agencies capable of ready generalization, as Night, Morning, Sleep, Death, together with the more obvious of the great emotional agencies, Beauty, Love, War, but by degrees also the ideal products of a higher abstraction, as Wisdom, Justice, and the like, were severally accounted the work and manifestation of as many special divinities.

Assuredly, these objects of worship were not conceived as ideas, but as persons, whose fundamental attributes, however, necessarily ran in close analogy to those of the ideas which they embodied. Such is the primitive type of polytheism—a thing of no human invention, but, in the strictest sense of the word, natural and of spontaneous growth. Afterwards, indeed, poets and priests did invent stories concerning the gods, more or less connected or consistent with their original attributes, which stories became incorporated with religion; and the most popular deities were those concerning whom the most impressive stories had been feigned. But the legends did not make the religion; the basis of that was a bonâ fide personification and divinization of the occult causes of phenomena. In these views we have no reason to think that we at all differ from Mr. Grote; but if there is any point in which his expositions do not quite satisfy us, it is, that they do not bring out strongly enough this part of the case; that the Greek religion appears in them too much as a sort of accident, the arbitrary creation of poets and storytellers; its origin in the natural human faculties and the spontaneous tendencies of the uncultivated intellect, being indicated indeed, but not placed in a sufficiently strong light.

With this exception, we can hardly bestow too much praise on this portion of Mr. Grote’s performance. He has overcome the difficulty, so great to a modern imagination, of entering intelligently into the polytheistic frame of mind and conception of nature. In no treatise which we could mention, certainly in no work connected with Grecian history, do we find so thorough a comprehension of that state of the human intellect in which the directly religious interpretation of nature is paramount—in which every explanation of phenomena, that refers them to the personal agency of a hidden supernatural power, appears natural and probable, and every other mode of accounting for them incredible—where miracles are alone plausible, and explanation by natural causes is not only offensive to the reverential feelings of the hearer, but actually repugnant to his reason, so contrary is it to the habitual mode of interpreting phenomena. A state of mind made perfectly intelligible by our knowledge of the Hindoos; and nowhere better exhibited than in the pictures given by near observers of that curious people, who reproduce in so many respects the mental characteristics of the infancy of the human race.^*

Though many topics discussed in Mr. Grote’s volumes are more important, there is none more interesting, than the authorship of the Homeric poems; regarded by all antiquity as the production of one great poet (or at most two, for the Iliad and Odyssey), but which the scepticism of a recent period has pronounced to be compilations made as late as the time of Pisistratus, from a multitudinous assemblage of popular ballads. Now, however, that the Wolfian hypothesis seems nearly abandoned in the country in which it arose, the notion that such productions could have been manufactured by piecing and dovetailing a number of short poems originally distinct, may be ranked along with many other conceits of learned ingenuity, in the class of psychological curiosities. We are aware of no argument on the Wolfian side of the controversy which really deserves any weight, except the difficulty of conceiving that such long poems could have been composed and handed down to posterity by memory alone; for that they were produced prior to the use of writing, is certain, from many considerations,^* and especially from the absence of the smallest allusion to such an art in the whole eight-and-forty books; though so full of notices and descriptions of almost every useful or ornamental process which can be supposed to have been in existence in that early age, that they have been said to be a summary of all the knowledge of the time. The preservation of such works without help from writing, is no doubt, at the first aspect of the matter, surprising; but only because in this, as in so many other things, we antedate our modern experience, and apply to early ages the limited standard of our own. It is well said by Plato in the Phædrus, that the invention of letters was the great enfeebler of memory.^[*] In our time, when the habit is formed of recording all things in permanent characters, and when every one relies, not on memory, but on the substitutes for it, we can scarcely form an idea of what its intrinsic powers must have been, when exercised and cultivated as a thing to be solely depended upon. Between the remembering faculties of the Homerids of Chios, and those of our degenerate days, there was doubtless as great a difference, as between the powers of eye and ear of a North American Indian and those of a London citizen. Nor was it, after all, more difficult to retain a single poem of twenty-four books, than twenty-four poems of one book each, which is much less than must have formed the stock in trade of any celebrated ἀοιδὸς. As for the poet himself, he doubtless, as he proceeded in the composition, wrote his poem, as it were, on the memory of the younger bards, by whom it is consonant to the manners of that age that he should have been surrounded.

Those who assert the essential unity of the Homeric poems, by no means deny that there may have been, and probably were, interpolations, and even additions of some length, made either by the same or by other poets, to the original plan. This is the ground taken by Mr. Grote. He rejects the Pisistratean hypothesis. He maintains, from internal evidence, the complete unity of plan and authorship in the Odyssey. He claims a like unity for the greater part of the Iliad; but argues for an amount of subsequent addition to the poem, greater than we can bring ourselves to consider probable. We shall give, in his own words, what is peculiar to his theory.

We are able to go so far with the distinction drawn by Mr. Grote, as to admit that he has discriminated well between those parts of the Iliad which^kcannot^k have been additions to the original plan, and those which possibly may. If the poem does consist of an original basis and a subsequent enlargement, the books which he has pointed out, or some of them, must be the parts superadded. But that they, or even the ninth, to which he takes such vehement exception, really were such subsequent additions^l(powerful as are some of the considerations he has urged)^l , he has not succeeded in convincing us.

It is true, the books from the second to the seventh inclusive, in no way forward the action of the poem, as dependent on the anger of Achilles: and it is remarkable that, during that interval, Zeus not only suspends the performance of his promise to Thetis in the first book, but seems absolutely to have forgotten it, and directs his conduct and counsels by totally different considerations. This last is a serious blemish in the construction of the story; but imperfection of workmanship does not prove plurality of workmen; and if the poet intended to make his poem an Ilias as well as an Achilleis, there would have been in any case a difficulty of this sort to surmount, which it is not necessary to suppose that he must have surmounted successfully. But, if not strictly belonging to the plan of the Achilleis, these books conduce in a remarkable degree to the effect of those parts of the poem which do belong to it. In no epic is the interest centred exclusively in one individual; even in the Achilleis, not Achilles only, but the Greeks generally, and even the Trojans, inspire a keen sympathy; and how much that sympathy is promoted by the preliminary books, needs hardly be pointed out. Not only does the success of the Greeks in the fourth and fifth books greatly deepen the sense of their subsequent disaster, by giving it the character of a turn of fortune; while the exploits of the principal heroes, especially Diomedes and Ulysses, augment the impression of their difficulties when those heroes are disabled; but, above all, it is in those books that we become acquainted with, and interested in, most of the leading characters of the subsequent epos. Hector especially, on whom the poet evidently intended that a strong personal interest should rest—what ground should we have had for sympathising with him, were it not for the beautiful scenes with Paris and Helen in the fourth book, Andromache and Hecuba in the sixth, and Ajax in the seventh? Without the books which Mr. Grote strikes from the original plan, there would be, if we except the amiable characters of Patroclus and Sarpedon, scarcely anything in the poem which excites a really personal interest.

With regard to the ninth book, we allow there are difficulties. The principal is the speech of Achilles to Patroclus in the eleventh book,^* which certainly seems to imply that no atonement had yet been offered, or supplication made. Mr. Grote quotes several other passages, which apparently carry a similar implication; but none which, we think, it would be difficult to get over, if this were disposed of. On the other hand, there are difficulties in his own theory. He gets rid of three subsequent allusions to the transactions of the ninth book, by pronouncing them to be interpolations; but he has overlooked one of greater importance in the sixteenth, where Achilles says to Patroclus, that the time has come at which he had said that his revenge would cease, since the enemy has now reached the ships.^† He had said this nowhere, as the text now stands, except in his answer to the embassy. If it be suggested that this passage may also be an interpolation,^m we shall still urge that it is not consonant to the character of Achilles, to suppose that he would have so far renounced his anger as to send aid to the Greeks even in that extremity, if he had received no offer whatever of atonement or restitution;—if Agamemnon and the Greeks had not yet acknowledged their fault, and humbled themselves before him. With respect to the argument from the more than human ferocity manifested by Achilles, and its conflict with the Greek sentiment of Nemesis, we cannot see the matter in the same light. It is with great hesitation that we should question any opinion of Mr. Grote on a point of Greek erudition; but we know not what evidence he has that the peculiar Greek idea of Nemesis—manifested in the famous speech of Solon to Crœsus,^[*] and which afterwards acted so leading a part in the Athenian drama—had already begun to exist in the Homeric age. We rather believe it to have been one of the points of difference between the more solemn and gloomy theology of the historic age of Greece, and the lively anthropomorphism of the Homeric Pantheon. We find no traces of it in Homer or Hesiod. We find, indeed, severe vengeance taken on mortals by the Homeric deities, not for pride or arrogance generally, but for some special affront to their own dignity; and particularly for any presumptuous attempt to dispute their pre-eminence. It is on such provocation that Thamyris is struck blind by the Muses, and the children of Niobe destroyed by the arrows of Apollo and Artemis.^[†] But no such offence is offered by Achilles in the ninth book; nor any disobedience to the divine powers. No godⁿorⁿ goddess had commanded him to lay aside his wrath, as Pallas, in the first book, restrains him from drawing his sword, and Zeus, in the twenty-fourth, enjoins him, through Thetis, to restore the body of Hector. To these intimations he is at once obedient, and is represented throughout as an eminently pious hero. Nor are we at all inclined to admit that his implacability exceeds what the sentiment of that age would allow of, in a character of vehement passion. He is not intended for a faultless hero; nor does he show any ferocity in the ninth book, at all comparable to that which he displays in the sixteenth; where, in the very act of sending forth Patroclus to aid the Greeks, he utters a fervent wish that not one Greek or Trojan might be left alive, but they two might alone survive to conquer Troy. Nor can we forget that several of the nobler characteristics of Achilles are nowhere so effectually manifested as in the ninth book; the princely courtesy, rivalling the best conceptions of chivalrous romance, in his reception of the embassy; and that abhorrence of disguise, also more resembling the knightly than the^oHellenic^o model, but so necessary to the ideal of his character, which he^p emphatically announces in the lines so often quoted:

• Ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κει̑νος, ὁμω̑ς ἀΐδαο πύλησιν,
• Ὅς χ’ ἕτερον μὲν κεύθει ἐνὶ ϕρεσίν, ἅλλο δε βάζει.^[*]

With regard to the tenth book, we think there is weight in what the critics have urged, that the successful nocturnal enterprise of Diomed and Ulysses is skilfully interposed, not only to break the rapid succession of one battle upon another, but to reanimate the spirits and courage of the Greeks after the disasters of the eighth book. We cannot coincide in Mr. Grote’s unwillingness to believe “that the author of the fifth book (or Aristeia of Diomedes) would condescend to employ the hero whom he there so brightly glorifies—the victor even over Ares himself—in slaughtering newly-arrived Thracian sleepers, without any large purpose or necessity;”^[†] since to kill men who were defenceless, provided they were enemies, and not ἱκέται or suppliants, had little that was repugnant to Greek feeling, even in a more advanced age; while an ambush is invariably spoken of in the Iliad as the most dangerous service, and the most decisive test of courage to which a warrior could be exposed. An Homeric audience would see, in this unchivalrous massacre, only the real intrepidity of the two heroes, in venturing alone, and for so perilous a purpose, into the camp of their sleeping enemies; and, in the Homeric point of view, it was doubtless an exploit worthy of the most distinguished warriors.

That Mr. Grote should think it possible for the two concluding books to be additions, we confess surprises us. We cannot imagine how, with the ideas of the Greeks, both in the Homeric age and subsequently, respecting the rites of sepulture, the action of a Greek epos could ever have been complete until the two heroes, whose successive deaths formed the catastrophe of the poem, had received the accustomed funeral honours. Nor would a Greek audience, we think, have tolerated that Hector, the beloved of Zeus, whose death he so unwillingly concedes to Destiny and the public opinion of Olympus, should have been abandoned by him when dead to the ignominious fate designed, and in part executed, by Achilles. We need not point out how much the character of Achilles himself would lose of its interest, without the exquisite manner in which its softer elements are called forth by the interview with^qPriam. And^q though it may be true that “the Homeric man would enter fully into the thirst of revenge felt by Achilles,”^[*] excessive and brutal as that revenge was, it is assuming too much to suppose that the Homeric man would have sympathized with Achilles exclusively. Such, certainly, was not Homer’s purpose, as there are evidences enough even in the Achilleis to prove.

The chapter on the “State of Society and Manners as exhibited in Grecian legend,”^[†] is sound and judicious; but on this subject previous writers had not left so much to be performed. A point of originality in Mr. Grote’s treatment of it is the comparison kept up between the characteristics of the heroic and those of the historical period. Thus, for example, the sense of obligation in the Homeric period is exclusively of a personal kind: “Personal feelings, either towards the gods, the king, or some near and known individual, fill the whole of a man’s bosom; out of them arise all the motives to beneficence, and all the internal restraints upon violence, antipathy, and rapacity; and special communion, as well as special solemnities, are essential to their existence;” while, in the conceptions of the citizen of historical Athens, “the great impersonal authority called The Laws, stood out separately both as guide and sanction, distinct from religious duty or private sympathies.”^[‡] In the Council of Chiefs, and the Agora or Popular Assembly, which, though with no definite function or authority, habitually accompany the Homeric kings, Mr. Grote sees the pre-existing elements of the subsequent republican governments. The following is an important remark:

Incidental remarks of this nature, on the influence of circumstances in forming the peculiar Grecian character and civilization, occur largely in the first two chapters on historical Greece, viz. on its geography, and on “the Hellenic people generally in the early historical times.”^[*] Mr. Grote does not give these speculations for more than they are worth. He does not affect to exhaust the subject, nor pretends that the causes he assigns account for the whole of the effect; but^r points out the natural tendencies of each influential fact, as it successively passes under his review. The following is a favourable specimen:

In the six concluding chapters of the second volume, Mr. Grote comprises the sum of what is known respecting the early condition of those Grecian States which have properly no history prior to the Persian invasion; and brings down the history of^sthe Peloponesian Greeks^s to the age of Crœsus and Pisistratus. The fragmentary nature of the information, and the conscientious integrity of the author, who scruples to supply the deficiency of certified facts by theory and conjecture, render these chapters, with one exception, somewhat meagre. The exception is the chapter which treats of the Legislation of Lycurgus, the earliest Grecian event of first-rate historical importance.

Although of the personality of Lycurgus scarcely anything can be said to be known, Mr. Grote entertains no doubt that such a person existed, and that the peculiar Spartan institutions were the work of a single legislator. Indeed, extraordinary as it may seem that one man, or even a combination of men, should have had power not merely to introduce, for that is little, but to give enduring vitality to so singular a system of manners and institutions, the system itself is so intensely artificial, that any more commonplace origin would be still more improbable; it bespeaks in every part systematic design.

The received view, however, of the Lycurgean reforms, and even of the Spartan institutions, Mr. Grote shows to be, in one important point, erroneous; the supposed equal division of landed property. He rejects this, not on the score of improbability, for it is not in itself so hard to believe as what Lycurgus really effected; but because no mention of it is to be found in any Greek author who lived while the Lycurgean institutions were still in force; and there is ample proof that neither Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Isocrates, Plato, nor Aristotle knew of any such equal division, either as connected with Lycurgus or with Sparta. It rests on the sole testimony of Plutarch;^[*] and Mr. Grote believes it to have been an historic fancy, generated long after by the regrets and aspirations of the patriotic party of which the reforming kings, Agis and Cleomenes, were at the head.

The peculiarity of Sparta was not equality of fortunes, but a consistent attempt to make rich and poor live exactly alike; and live not for themselves, but as the creatures and instruments of the ideal being called the State. The expedient used by the legislator to effect this, was to destroy, not private property itself, but the possibility of any separate enjoyment of it. By a stated contribution in kind from every citizen, public tables were maintained, at which all Spartans, from childhood to death, took regularly the same frugal meal. The Spartan citizen

There is indeed no such instance of the wonderful pliability, and amenability to artificial discipline, of the human mind, as is afforded by the complete success of the Lacedæmonian legislator, for many generations, in making the whole body of Spartan citizen at Sparta exactly what he had intended to make them. At Sparta, it must be said; for a Spartan out of Sparta, at least during his country’s ascendancy, was not only the most domineering and arrogant, but in spite of, or rather by a natural reaction from his ascetic training, the most rapacious and corrupt of all Greeks: no one fell so easy a victim to the temptations of luxury and splendour. Yet such habitual abnegation of ordinary personal interests, and merging of self in an idea, were not compatible with pettiness of mind. Most of the anecdotes and recorded sayings of individual Lacedæmonians breathe a certain magnanimity of spirit; although the Lacedæmonian State, which was the object of this worship, and was accustomed not to give but to receive sacrifices, was memorable for the peculiar pettiness of its political conduct—a selfishness so excessive, as, by the blindness and even the un-Spartan cowardice which it engendered, perpetually to frustrate its own ends.

Such were the Spartans; those hereditary Tories and Conservatives of Greece; objects of exaggerated admiration to the moralists and philosophers of the far nobler as well as greater and wiser Athens; because the second-rate superior minds of a cultivated age and nation are usually in exaggerated opposition against its spirit; and lean towards the faults contrary to those against which they are daily contending. To men who felt called upon to stand up for Law against Will, and for traditional wisdom against the subtleties of sophists and the arts of rhetoricians, Sparta was the standing model of reverence for law, and attachment to ancient maxims. The revolutions which incessantly menaced every other Grecian state, and from which even Athens was not wholly secure, never threatened Sparta. The steadiness of the Spartan polity, and the constancy of Spartan maxims, were to the Greeks highly imposing phenomena. “It was the only government in Greece which could trace an unbroken peaceable descent from a high antiquity, and from its real or supposed founder;” and this, we think with Mr. Grote, was one of the main causes

The reader who is conversant with the existing state of knowledge respecting the Grecian world, will gather from what has been laid before him, that as a contribution to that knowledge, the present work is of high performance and still higher promise. The author is not surpassed even by German scholarship, in intimate and accurate acquaintance with the whole field of Greek literature and antiquity; while none of his predecessors have approached to him in the amount of philosophy and general mental accomplishment which he has brought to bear upon the subject.^u

It has been made an objection to the volumes now published, that they contain a greater amount of dissertation than of history.^[*] To such objectors it may be replied, that for the times here treated of, a continuous stream of narrative is not possible; that those who desire nothing from history but an amusing story, may find such abundantly provided elsewhere; that it is as much an historian’s duty to judge as to narrate, to prove as to assert; and that the same critics would be the first to reproach a writer who should substitute for the commonly received view of the facts a view of his own, without showing by what evidence he was prepared to substantiate it. There is in this case, too, the further peculiarity, that what is brought forward as matter of evidence, is itself almost always part and parcel of the exposition of the Greek mind; and on this score alone, no one who wishes to understand what Greece was, would desire to see one page of Mr. Grote’s argumentative chapters expunged.^v

In the present volumes the style is clear, unaffected, and often very apt and vigorous. If we have a complaint to make, it would be of the too frequent employment of words of Greek or Latin origin; some of them recognised English words, though not in common use, but others purely of his own invention, and unintelligible except to scholars. In some cases, doubtless, the words are needed, and carry their explanation along with them: such a word as “autonomous,” conveying a political idea not exactly expressed by any modern word or phrase, is its own sufficient justification; and the same may be said of “gens,” a word borrowed from Roman history, to express a combination of religious and political ideas familiar to antiquity, and the same, substantially, which Niebuhr has proved that the term denoted at Rome.^[*] But many cases would be found in a careful revisal of these volumes, in which similar hard words are used to convey a meaning which might be perfectly expressed by phrases generally intelligible.^w

GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE [II]

1853

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, II (1867), 510-54, where under the title, “Grote’s History of Greece,” appears “Vols. IX. X. XI.” Reprinted from Edinburgh Review, XCVIII (Oct., 1853), 425-47, where it is headed “Art. V.—History of Greece. By George Grote, Esq. Vols. ix, x, xi. London: [Murray,] 1852-53”; running heads “Grote’s History of Greece, Vols. IX. X. XI.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of vols. 9, 10 & 11 of Grote’s History of Greece, in the Edinburgh Review for October 1853” (MacMinn, 79). There are no corrections or alterations in the copy of the Edinburgh article in the Somerville College Library.

In the footnoted variants, “59” indicates D&D, II (1st ed.); “67” indicates D&D, II (2nd ed., the copy-text); “53” indicates Edinburgh Review. JSM quotes in several places from his earlier Spectator reviews of Grote’s History, and elsewhere paraphrases passages from those reviews. The relevant passages are indicated as variants, with the particular issue of the Spectator given in the note covering the whole passage; in the variants within quoted passages “S” indicates the Spectator, without date. For comment on the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, xxxiii-xxxvii and lxxxvi-lxxxix above.

Grote’s History of Greece [II]^*

in his eighth volume, Mr. Grote brought the narrative of Grecian History to its great turning point—the subjugation of Athens by the Spartans and their confederates; including, as the immediate sequel of that event, the sanguinary tyranny of the Thirty—the rapid reaction in Grecian feeling—the return of the exiles under Thrasybulus, subsequently known at Athens by the designation of “those from Phyle” or “those from Piræus”—the restoration of Athens, under the tolerance of Sparta, to internal freedom though denuded of empire, and the inauguration of a new era of concord by the healing measures which made the archonship of Euclides memorable to succeeding generations. The recital of these stirring events was immediately followed by those admirable chapters on the Sophists and on Socrates, which may be pronounced the most important portion yet written of this History; whether we consider the intrinsic interest of their subjects—the deep-rooted historical errors which they tend to dispel—or the great permanent instruction contained in their display of the characteristics of one of the most eminent men who ever lived—a man unique in history, of a kind at all times needful, and seldom more needed than now.^†

The three volumes which we have here to notice contain no delineations belonging to the same elevated rank with that which closed so impressively the volume immediately preceding. The exposition and estimate of Plato, which alone would have afforded similar opportunities, though falling within the chronological period comprised in the eleventh volume, is not included in it, but reserved for one yet to come;^[*] except in so far as the philosopher is personally involved in the series of Sicilian transactions, through his connexion with Dion, whose remarkable and eminently tragic character and career form the centre of interest in the most striking chapter of these volumes.^[†] There is little scope in this portion of the work for bringing prominently forward any great ethical or philosophical ideas; and the illustrations it contains of Grecian character and institutions relate principally to points which the author had largely illustrated before. In no other part of the book is the continuity of the narrative so little broken by dissertation or discussion; but in the rapid succession of animating incidents, and the living display of interesting individual characters, these volumes are not inferior to any of the preceding.

They commence with the expedition of Cyrus, and the retreat of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand: an episode fertile in exemplifications of Grecian and of Asiatic characteristics, and especially valuable as being the only detailed account of the personal adventures of any body of Greeks, or even of any individual Greek, which has been directly transmitted to us by an eye-witness and actor.^[*] Next follows the history of the short-lived Lacedæmonian ascendancy; its deplorable abuse, and the conspicuous Nemesis which fell on that selfish and domineering community, by the irreparable prostration of her power through the arms of Thebes, so many years the firm ally of Sparta, and for her treacherous conduct to whom, even more than for any other of her misdeeds, she, in the general opinion of Greece, deserved her fate. The chapters which describe this contest, relate also the resurrection of Athens, and her reattainment, in diminished measure and for a brief period, of something like imperial dignity. At this halting-place Mr. Grote suspends the main course of his narrative, and takes up the thread of the history of the Sicilian Greeks; the most interesting part of whose story is included in the present volumes. He illustrates, by the conduct and fortunes of the elder Dionysius, the successive stages of the “despot’s progress.”^[†] Here, too, the avenging Nemesis attends; but, as usual with the misdeeds of rulers, the punishment is vicarious. The younger Dionysius, a weak and self-indulgent, but good-natured and rather well-meaning inheritor of despotic power, suffered the penalty of the usurpation and the multiplied tyrannies of his energetic and unscrupulous father. The decline and fall of the Dionysian dynasty, and the restoration of Sicilian freedom, are related by Mr. Grote in his best style of ethical narrative, and with a biographical interest equal to the historical. For, as the chapters on the fall of Sparta are animated and exalted by the great qualities of Epaminondas—the first of Greeks in military genius, surpassed only by Pericles in comprehensive statesmanship, yet even more honourably distinguished among Grecian politicians by the unostentatious disinterestedness of his public virtue, and the gentleness and generosity of his sentiments towards opponents; so the Sicilian chapters are lighted up, first by the high-minded but chequered, and even in his errors eminently interesting, character of Dion, and afterwards by the steadier and more unmixed brilliancy of the real liberator of Sicily, the wise, just, and heroic Timoleon.

Last comes that gloomy period of Grecian history, the age of Philip of Macedon: during which, enfeebled by the long and destructive wars which had successively prostrated every one of her leading states, Greece fell a prey to an able and enterprising neighbour, who, at the head of a numerous population of hardy warriors implicitly obedient to his will, was enabled to turn her own military arts and discipline against herself. At the time when Philip commenced his career of aggrandisement, the only Grecian state in a condition to meet him with anything like equality of strength was Athens; still free and prosperous, but so lowered in public spirit and moral energy, that she threw away all her opportunities, and only rallied with a vigour worthy of her ancestors when it was too late to do more than perish honourably. These sad events, so far as their course can be traced through the extreme imperfection of our information, are related by Mr. Grote down to the fatal day of Chæroneia. And neither is this melancholy recital destitute of the relief afforded by the appearance on the scene of an illustrious character. Even in that age Athens possessed a man, of whom posterity has ratified the proud boast, drawn from him in self-vindication, that if there had been one such man in every state of Greece, or even in Thessaly and Arcadia^dalone^d , the attempts of Philip to reduce the Greeks to subjugation would have been frustrated. What one man, of boundless energy, far-reaching political vision, and an eloquence unmatched even at Athens, could do to save Greece from an inevitable doom, Demosthenes did. His life was an incessant struggle against the fatality of the time, and the weaknesses of his countrymen. And though he failed in his object, and perished with the last breath of the freedom for which he had lived, he has been rewarded by that immortal fame, which, as he reminded the Athenians in the most celebrated passage of his greatest oration,^[*] is not deserved only by the successful; and which he merited not more by his unequalled oratorical eminence, than by the fact, that not one mean, or selfish, or narrow, or ungenerous sentiment is appealed to throughout those splendid addresses, in which he strove to rouse and nerve his countrymen to the contest, or proudly mourned over its unsuccessful issue.

The Chæroneian catastrophe closes the epoch of Grecian history. Though much that is highly interesting remains, its interest is derived from other sources; the diffusion of Greek civilization through the Eastern nations by the expedition of Alexander and its consequences, and a few noble but vain efforts, against insuperable obstacles, in Greece itself, to regain a freedom and national independence irrecoverably lost. Of the period of Grecian greatness, we have now from Mr. Grote the completed history. We have the budding, the blossoming, and the decay and death. The fruits which survived—the permanent gifts bequeathed by Greece to the world, and constituting the foundation of all subsequent intellectual achievements—these he has not yet, or has only partially, characterised. But he has produced a finished picture of the political and collective life of Greece, and the distinctive characters of the form of social existence, during and by means of which she accomplished things so far transcending what has ever elsewhere been achieved in so marvellously short a space of time. From the legislation of Solon to the field of Marathon, a hundred years of preparation; from Marathon to Chæroneia, barely a hundred and fifty years of maturity:—that century and a half is all that separates the earliest recorded prose writing from Demosthenes and Aristotle, all that lies between the first indication to the outer world of what Greece was destined to be, and her absorption by a foreign conqueror. A momentous interval, which decided for an indefinite period the question, whether the human race was to be stationary or progressive. That the former condition is far more congenial to ordinary human nature than the latter, experience unfortunately places beyond doubt; and history points out no other people in the ancient world who had any spring of unborrowed progress within themselves. We have no knowledge of any other source from which freedom and intellectual cultivation could have come, any other means by which the light never since extinguished might have been kindled, if the world had been left, without any elements of Grecian origin, to be fought for between the unlettered Romans and the priest-led and despot-governed Asiatics. The people and the period on which this depended, must be important to posterity as long as any portion of the past continues to be remembered: and by the aid of Mr. Grote, we are now enabled to see them with a clearness and accuracy, and judge them with a largeness of comprehension, never before approached.

To disparage what mankind owe to Greece, because she has not left for their imitation a perfect type of human character, nor a highly improved pattern of social institutions, would be to demand from the early youth of the human race what is far from being yet realized in its more advanced age. It would better become us to consider whether we have, in these particulars, advanced as much beyond the best Grecian model, as might with reason have been expected after more than twenty centuries; whether, having done no more than we have done with all that we have inherited from the Greeks, and all that has been since superadded to their teachings, we ought not to look up with reverent admiration to a people, who, without any of our adventitious helps, and without the stimulus of preceding example, moved forward by their native strength at so gigantic a pace, though in an earlier portion of the path. It is true, that in institutions, in manners, and even in the ideal standard of human character as existing in the best minds, there is an improvement. All the great thinkers and heroic lives, from Christ downward, would have done little for humanity, if after two thousand years no single point could be added to the type of excellence conceived by Socrates or Plato. But it is not the moral conceptions of heroes or philosophers which measure the difference between one age and another, so much as the accepted popular standard of virtuous conduct. Taking that as the criterion, and comparing the best Grecian with the best modern community, is the superiority wholly on the side of the moderns? Has there not been deterioration as well as improvement, and the former perhaps almost as marked as the latter? There is more humanity, more mildness of manners, though this only from a comparatively recent date; the sense of moral obligation is more cosmopolitan, and depends less for its acknowledgment on the existence of some special tie. But we greatly doubt if most of the positive virtues were not better conceived, and more highly prized, by the public opinion of Greece than by that of Great Britain; while negative and passive qualities have now engrossed the chief part of the honour paid to virtue; and it may be questioned if even private duties are, on the whole, better understood, while duties to the public, unless in cases of special trust, have almost dropped out of the catalogue: that idea, so powerful in the free States of Greece, has faded into a mere rhetorical ornament.

In political and social organization, the moderns, or some of them at least, have a more unqualified superiority over the Greeks. They have succeeded in making free institutions possible in large territories; and they have learnt to live and be prosperous without slaves. The importance of these discoveries—for discoveries they were—hardly admits of being overrated. For want of the first, Greece lost her freedom, her virtue, and her very existence as a people; and slavery was the greatest blot in her institutions while she existed. It is sufficient merely to mention another great blot, the domestic and social condition of women (on which point, however, Sparta, in a degree surprising for the age, formed an honourable exception); since, in this respect, the superiority of modern nations is not so much greater as might be supposed. Even on the subject of slavery there are many, and not inconsiderable palliations. Slavery in the ancient, as in the Oriental world, was a very different thing from American or West Indian slavery. The slaves were not a separate race, marked out to the contempt of their masters by indelible physical differences. When manumitted, they mixed on equal terms with the general community; and though, in Greece, seldom admitted, any more than other aliens, to the complete political franchise of their patron’s city, they could generally become full citizens of some new colony, or be placed on the roll of some old commonwealth recruiting its numbers after a disaster. The facility with which, in these small territories, slaves could escape across the frontier, must, at the worst, have been a considerable check to ill usage. The literature of the Athenians proves that they not only cultivated, but counted on finding, moral virtues in their slaves, which is not consistent with the worst form of slavery. Neither, in Greece, did slavery produce that one of its effects by which, above all, it is an obstacle to improvement—that of making bodily labour dishonourable. Nowhere in Greece, except at Sparta, was industry, however mechanical, regarded as unworthy of a freeman, or even of a citizen; least of all at Athens, in whose proudest times a majority of the Demos consisted of free artisans. Doubtless, however, in Greece as elsewhere, slavery was an odious institution; and its inherent evils are in no way lessened by the admission, that as a temporary fact, in an early and rude state of the arts of life, it may have been, nevertheless, a great accelerator of progress. If we read history with intelligence, we are led to think concerning slavery as concerning many other bad institutions, that the error was not so great of first introducing it, as of continuing it too long.

Though Grecian history is crowded with objects of interest, all others are eclipsed by Athens. Whatever in Greece most merits the gratitude of posterity, Athens possessed in fullest measure. If the Hellenic nation is in history the main source and most conspicuous representative of progress, Athens may claim the same honourable position in regard to Greece itself; for all the Greek elements of progress, in their highest culmination, were united in that illustrious city. This was not the effect of an original superiority of natural endowments in the Athenian mind. In the first exuberant outpourings of Grecian genius, Athens bore no more than her share, if even so much. The many famous poets and musicians who preceded the era of Marathon, the early speculators in science and philosophy, and even the first historians, were scattered through all the divisions of the Greek name; with a preponderance on the side of the Ionians of Asia Minor, the Sicilian and Italian Greeks, and the islanders, all of whom attained prosperity much earlier, as well as lost it sooner, than the inhabitants of Continental Greece. Even Bœotia produced two poets of the first rank, Pindar and Corinna, at a time when Attica had only yet produced one.^* By degrees, however, the whole intellect of Greece, except the purely practical, gravitated to Athens; until, in the maturity of Grecian culture, all the great writers, speakers, and thinkers were educated, and nearly all of them were born and passed their lives, in that centre of enlightenment. Of the other Greek states, such as were oligarchically governed contributed little or nothing, except in a military point of view, to make Greece illustrious. Even those among them which, like Sparta, were to a certain degree successful in providing for stability, did nothing for progress, further than supplying materials of study and experience to the great Athenian thinkers and their disciples. Of the other democracies, not one enjoyed the Eunomia, the unimpeded authority of law, and freedom from factious violence, which were quite as characteristic of Athens as either her liberty or her genius; and which, making life and property more secure than in any other part of the Grecian world, afforded the mental tranquillity which is also one of the conditions of high intellectual or imaginative achievement.

While Grecian history, considered philosophically, is thus almost concentrated in Athens, so also, considered æsthetically, it is an epic, of which Athens, as a collective personality, may be called the hero. The fate of Athens speaks to the imagination and sympathies like that of the Achilles or Odysseus of an heroic poem; absorbing into itself even the interest excited by the long series of eminent Athenians, who seem rather like successive phases under which Athens appears to us, than individuals independent and apart from it. Nowhere does history present to us a collective body so abounding in human nature as the Athenian Demos. In them all the capacities, all the impulses and susceptibilities, the strength and the infirmities, of human character, stand out in large and bold proportions. There is nothing that they do not seem capable of understanding, of feeling, and of executing; nothing generous or heroic to which they might not be roused; and scarcely any act of folly, injustice, or ferocity into which they could not be hurried, when no honest and able adviser was at hand to recal them to their better nature. Ever variable, according to the character of the leading minister of the time; alike prudent and enterprising under the guidance of a Pericles; carelessly inert or rashly ambitious when their most influential politicians were a Nicias and an Alcibiades; yet never abdicating their own guidance, always judging for themselves, and, though often wrong, seldom choosing the worst side when there was any one present capable of advocating the better. Light-hearted too, full of animal spirits and joyousness; revelling in the fun of hearing rival orators inveigh against each other; bursting with laughter at the mingled floods of coarse buffoonery and fine wit poured forth by the licensed libellers of their comic stage against their orators and statesmen, their poets, their gods, and even themselves—“that angry, waspish, intractable little old man, Demos of Pnyx,”^* the well-known laughing-stock of one of the most successful comedies of Aristophanes. They are accused of fickleness; but Mr. Grote has shown on how false an estimate of historical facts that imputation rests,^† and that they were much rather remarkable for the constancy of their attachments. They were not fickle, but (a very different quality, vulgarly confounded with it) mobile; keenly susceptible individually, and of necessity still more collectively, to the feeling and impression of the moment. The Demos may be alternately likened to the commonly received idea of a man, a woman, or a child, but never a clown or a boor. Right or wrong, wise or foolish, Athenians are never ἀπαίδευτοι; theirs are never the errors of untaught or unexercised minds. They are always the same Athenians who have thrilled with the grandeur and pathos of Æschylus and Sophocles, who were able to ransom themselves from captivity by reciting the verses of Euripides, who have had Pericles or Demosthenes for their daily instructor and adviser, and have heard every species of judicial case, public and private, civil and criminal, propounded for their decision, in the most finished compositions ever spoken to a public assembly. They are the same Athenians, too, who live and move among the visible memorials of ancestors, the greatest of whose glories was that they had dared and suffered all things rather than desert the liberty of Greece. Their just pride in such progenitors, and their sense of what was due to the dignity and fame of their city, were ever ready to be evoked for any noble cause. Even at the last, when their energies, too late aroused, had been insufficient to save them, and they lay crushed at the feet of a conqueror, they earned the admiration of posterity by bestowing, instead of displeasure, additional distinctions on the author and adviser of the struggle which had preserved their honour, though not their safety or their freedom.

In every respect Athens deserved the high commendation given her by Pericles in his Funeral Oration, of being the educator of Greece.^‡ And we cannot better set forth the characteristics of this great commonwealth at its greatest period, than by following Mr. Grote in quoting some passages from that celebrated discourse.

This picture, drawn by Pericles and transmitted by Thucydides, of ease of living, and freedom from social intolerance, combined with the pleasures of cultivated taste, and a lively interest and energetic participation in public affairs, is one of the most interesting passages in Greek history: placed, as it is, in the speech in which the first of Athenian statesmen professed to show “by what practices and by what institutions and manners the city had become great.”^† This remarkable testimony, as Mr. Grote has not failed to point out, wholly conflicts, so far as Athens is concerned, with what we are so often told about the entire sacrifice, in the ancient republics, of the liberty of the individual to an imaginary good of the state. In the greatest Greek commonwealth, as described by its most distinguished citizen, the public interest was held of paramount obligation in all things which concerned it; but, with that part of the conduct of individuals which concerned only themselves, public opinion did not interfere: while in the ethical practice of the moderns, this is exactly reversed, and no one is required by opinion to pay any regard to the public, except by conducting his own private concerns in conformity to its expectations. On this vital question of social morals, Mr. Grote’s remarks, though belonging to an earlier volume than those which we are reviewing, are too valuable, as well as too much to the purpose, to require any apology for quoting them.

^qr The difference here pointed out between the temper of the Athenian and that of the modern mind, is most closely connected with the wonderful display of individual genius which made Athens illustrious, and with the comparative mediocrity of modern times. Originality is not always genius, but genius is always originality; and a society which looks jealously and distrustfully on original people—which imposes its common level of opinion, feeling, and conduct, on all its individual members—may have the satisfaction of thinking itself very moral and respectable, but it must do without genius. It may have persons of talent, who bring a larger than usual measure of commonplace ability into the service of the common notions of the time; but genius, in such a soil, is either fatally stunted in its growth, or if its native strength forbids this, it usually retires into itself, and dies without a sign.^q

The ambitious external policy of Athens is one of the points in Greek history which have been most perversely misjudged and misunderstood. Modern historians seem to have succeeded to the jealous animosity of the Corinthians, and other members of the Spartan alliance, at the opening of the Peloponnesian war, though by no means at one with them in the reasons they are able to assign for it. The Athenians certainly were not exempt from the passion, universal in the ancient world, for conquest and dominion. It was a blemish, when judged by the universal standard of right; but as a fact, it was most beneficial to the world, and could not have been other than it was without crippling them in their vocation as the organ of progress. There was scarcely a possibility of permanent improvement for mankind, until intellect had first asserted its superiority, even in a military sense, over brute force. With the barbarous part of the species pressing in all^saround^s , to crush every early germ of improvement, all would have been lost if there had not also been an instinct in the better and more gifted portions of mankind to push for dominion over the duller and coarser. Besides, in a small but flourishing free community like Athens, ambition was the simple dictate of prudence. No such community could have had any safety for its own freedom, but by acquiring power. Instead of reprobating the Athenian maritime empire, the whole of mankind, beginning with the subject states themselves, had cause to lament that it was not much longer continued; for that the fate of Greek civilization was bound up with it, is proved by the whole course of^tthe^t history. When the jealousies of the other Greek states stripped Athens of her empire, and nominally restored the subject allies to an independence which they were wholly incapable of maintaining, Greece lost her sole chance of making successful head against Macedonia or Rome. And considering what the short period of Athenian greatness has done for the world, it is painful to think in how much more advanced a stage human improvement might now have been, if the Athens of Pericles could have lived on in undiminished spirit and energy for but one century more.

The Athenian empire was the purest in its origin of all the empires of antiquity. It was at first a free and equal confederacy for defence against the Persians, organized by Aristides with a justice worthy of his name. It never would have become anything else, but that the majority of the allies, consisting of the comparatively unwarlike and^uunenergetic^uvAsiatic^v Greeks, chose to make their contribution in money instead of personal service, preferring to pay Athens for protecting them, rather than protect themselves. Even the removal of the treasury of the confederacy from Delos to Athens was no act of the Athenians, but of the synod of the confederacy, on the proposition of Samos. When, at a later date, some of the states attempted to secede from the alliance, and enjoy the peace and security which it afforded, without sharing in the cost, the general sentiment of the confederates at first went along with Athens in bringing back the recusants by force of arms. But, with these small town communities, to be defeated was to be conquered, and the conquered, by the universal custom of antiquity, received the law from the conqueror. That law, in the case of Athens, was only occasionally either harsh or onerous; yet thus, by degrees, the once equal allies sunk into tributaries. The few who had neither revolted, nor commuted personal service for pecuniary payment, retained their naval and military force, and their immunity from tribute, and had nothing to complain of, but that, like the dependencies of England or of any modern nation, they were compelled to join in the wars of the dominant state, without having any voice in deciding them. They do not seem to have alleged any other practical grievances against the Athenian community: their complaints, recorded by Thucydides, turn almost solely upon offence to the Grecian sentiment of city independence and dignity. Under the protection of the powerful Athenian navy, the allied states enjoyed a security never before known in Greece, and which no one of them could possibly have acquired by its own efforts. Many of them grew rich and prosperous. With their internal government Athens, as a general rule, did not interfere; in Mr. Grote’s opinion, not even to make it democratical, when it did not happen to be so already. Like all the weak states of antiquity, whether called independent or not, they were liable to extortion and oppression; not, however, from the Athenian people, but from rich and powerful Athenians in command of expeditions, against whom the Demos, when judicially appealed to, was ready to give redress. The most express testimony is borne to this general fact by the able oligarchical conspirator Phrynichus, as reported by the oligarchically inclined Thucydides, in his account of that remarkable incident in Athenian history, the revolution of the Four Hundred. The historian represents Phrynichus as reminding his fellow-conspirators that they could expect neither assistance nor good-will from the allies, since these well knew that it was from the oligarchical Athenians they were liable to injury, and looked upon the Demos as their protector.^* The reality of the protection is exemplified by the case of Paches, the victorious general who had just before captured Mitylene. The resentment of the Athenians against that revolted city was such, that they were (as is well known) persuaded by Cleon to pass a decree for putting the whole military population to death, though they recalled the mandate before it had been executed. Yet, Paches having abused his victory by violating two women of Mitylene^w(having first put their husbands to death)^w was prosecuted by them before the Athenian dicastery, and the facts being proved, was so overwhelmed by the general burst of indignation, that he slew himself in open court. This incident (which until its real circumstances had been hunted out by Niebuhr,^[*] was one of the stock examples of Athenian and popular ingratitude) is a striking illustration of the difference between the Athenian empire and the Lacedæmonian; for when Spartan citizens, in repeated instances, committed similar enormities, not against conquered enemies but friendly allies, no redress could be obtained. It required the field of Leuctra to avenge the daughters of Skedasus, or appease the manes of the victims of the harmost Aristodemus.

However unpopular the dominion of Athens may have been among her subjects, though it appears to have been so with the leading men rather than with the majority, they had reason enough to regret it after it was at an end; for not only was the little finger of Lacedæmon heavier than the whole body of Athens, but many of them only exchanged Greek dominion for that of the barbarians. Sparta was never able, for more than a few years, to protect the Asiatic Greeks even against Persia; and at the height of her power, as soon as the obligation of defending them became inconvenient, she, by the peace of Antalcidas, actually ceded the whole of that great division of Greece to the Persian king,^[†] to whom it remained subject until the invasion of Alexander. Several of the most prosperous of the islanders fared no better: Cos, Chios, and Rhodes, when by the Social War they succeeded in detaching themselves from the second Athenian empire, fell almost immediately into dependence on the Carian despot Mausolus, against whom the Rhodians had soon to appeal again to their enemy, Athens, for assistance. So mere a name was that universal autonomy, which was used so successfully to stir up the feelings of the Hellenic world against its noblest member; so entirely did the independence of Greece turn on the maintenance of some cohesion among her multifarious particles, while the political instincts of her people obstinately rejected the merging of the single city-republic in any larger unity.

The intellectual and moral pre-eminence which made Athens the centre of good to Greece, and of the good to after-generations of which Greece has been the medium, was wholly the fruit of Athenian institutions. It was the consequence, first of democracy, and secondly, of the wise and well-considered organization, by which the Athenian democracy was distinguished among the democratic constitutions of antiquity. The term democracy may perhaps be deemed inapplicable to any of the Grecian governments, on account of the existence of slavery; and it is inapplicable to them, in the purest and most honourable sense of the term. But in another sense, not altogether inappropriate, those governments, the first to which the word democracy was applied, must be considered entitled to the name; in the same manner as it is given to the northern States of America, although women are there excluded from the rights of citizenship; an exclusion which, equally with that of slaves, militates against the democratic principle. The Athenian Constitution was so far a democracy, that it was government by a multitude, composed in majority of poor persons—small landed proprietors and artisans. It had the additional democratic characteristic, far more practically important than even the political franchise; it was a government of boundless publicity and freedom of speech. It had the liberty of the bema, of the dicastery, the portico, the palæstra, and the stage; altogether a full equivalent for the liberty of the press. Further, it was the only government of antiquity which possessed this inestimable advantage in the same degree, or retained it as long. Enemies and friends alike testify that the παῤῥησία of Athens was paralleled in no other place in the known world. Every office and honour was open to every citizen, not, as in the aristocratic Roman republic (or even the British monarchy), almost nominally, but really: while the daily working of Athenian institutions (by means of which every citizen was accustomed to hear every sort of question, public and private, discussed by the ablest men of the time, with the earnestness of purpose and fulness of preparation belonging to actual business, deliberative or judicial) formed a course of political education, the equivalent of which modern nations have not known how to give even to those whom they educate for statesmen. To their multitudinous judicial tribunals the Athenians were also indebted for that habitual love of fair play, and of hearing both sides of a case, which was more or less a quality of the Greeks generally, but had so firm a hold on the Athenians that it did not desert them under the most passionate excitement. The potency of Grecian democracy in making every individual in the multitude identify his feelings and interests with those of the state, and regard its freedom and greatness as the first and principal of his own personal concerns, cannot be better described than in the words of Mr. Grote. After quoting a remarkable passage from Herodotus, descriptive of the unexpected outburst of patriotic energy at Athens after the expulsion of the Pisistratidæ and the establishment of the Cleisthenean constitution,^* Mr. Grote proceeds as follows.

The influences here spoken of were those of democracy generally. For the peculiar and excellent organization of her own democracy, Athens was indebted to a succession of eminent men. The earliest was her great legislator, Solon; himself the first capital prize which Athens drew in the dispensations of the Destinies; a man whose personal virtue ennobled the city^xfor^x which he was chosen to legislate, and the merit of whose institutions was a principal source of the deep-rooted respect for the laws, which distinguished Athens beyond any other of the ancient democracies. The salutary forms of business established by Solon, and calculated to secure as much caution and deliberation as^ywere^y compatible with ultimate decision by a sovereign Ecclesia, lived through the successive changes by which the Constitution was rendered more and more democratic. And though it is commonly supposed that popular passion in a democracy is peculiarly liable to trample on forms when they stand between it and its object—which is indeed, without question, one of the dangers of a democracy—there is no point in the character of the Athenians more remarkable, than their respect and attachment to the forms of their Constitution. In the height of their anger against Pericles, for not leading them out to defend their lands and houses from the ravages of the Peloponnesians—because he, standing on his privilege as a magistrate, abstained from calling an assembly, no assembly met. There is indeed but one marked instance known to us in Athenian history, of that violation of forms which was the daily practice of most of the oligarchical governments. That one was a case of great and just provocation, the “cause célèbre” of the six generals who neglected to save their drowning countrymen after the sea fight of Arginusæ: and there was, as Mr. Grote has shown, no injustice in the fact of their condemnation by the people, though there was a blameable violation of the salutary rules of criminal procedure established for the protection of the innocent. It was in this case that the philosopher Socrates, accidentally that month a senator of the presiding tribe, as firm against the “civium ardor prava jubentium” as afterwards against the “vultus instantis tyranni,”^[*] singly refused to join in putting the question to the assembly contrary to the laws; adding one to the proofs that the man of greatest intellect at that time in Athens was also its most virtuous citizen.

After Solon (omitting the intervening usurpation of Pisistratus), the first great constitutional change was the reformation of Cleisthenes, an eminent man, to whose character and historical importance no one before Mr. Grote had done justice. The next was that in which the immediate mover was Aristides, at the re-establishment of the city after the Persian war, when the poorest class of citizens was first admitted to share in public employments. The final measures which completed the democratic constitution were those of Pericles and Ephialtes; more particularly the latter, a statesman of whom, from the unfortunate absence of any cotemporary history of the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars except the brief introductory sketch of Thucydides,^[†] we have to lament that too little is known, but of whom the recorded anecdotes indicate a man worthy to have been the friend of Pericles.^* Ephialtes perished by assassination, a victim to the rancorous hatred of the oligarchical party. Assassination afterwards disappears from Athenian public life, until reintroduced on a regular system by the same party, to effect the revolution of the Four Hundred. The Athenian Many, of whose democratic irritability and suspicion we hear so much, are rather to be accused of too easy and goodnatured a confidence, when we reflect that they had living in the midst of them the very men who, on the first show of an opportunity, were ready to compass the subversion of the democracy by the dark deeds of Peisander and Antiphon, and when they had effected their object, perpetrated all the villanies of Critias and his associates.^zThese men^aought always to be present to the mind, not merely as^ba^b dark background to the picture of the Athenian republic, but as an active power in it^a.^zcThey^c were no obscure private individuals, but men of rank and fortune, not only prominent as politicians and public speakers, but continually trusted with all the great offices of state. Truly Athens was in more danger from these men than from the demagogues: they were indeed themselves the worst of the demagogues—described by Phrynichus, their confederate, as, for their own purposes, the leaders and instigators of the Demos to its most blameable actions, ποριστὰς καὶ ἐσηγητὰς τω̑ν κακω̑ν τῳ̑ δήμῳ, ἐξ ὠ̑ν τὰ πλείω αὐτοὺς ὠϕελει̑σθαι.^[*]

These are a few of the topics on which a flood of light is let in by Mr. Grote’s History, and from which those who have not read it may form some notion of the interest which pervades it, especially the part relating to the important century between 500 and 400 ^d The searching character of Mr. Grote’s historical criticism is not suspiciously confined to matters in which his own political opinions may be supposed to be interested. Though the statement has the air of an exaggeration, yet after much study of Mr. Grote’s book we do not hesitate to assert, that there is hardly a fact of importance in Grecian history which was perfectly understood before his re-examination of it. This will not seem incredible, to those who are aware how new an art that of writing history is; how very recently it is that we possess histories, of events not cotemporary with the writer, which, apart from literary merit, have any value otherwise than as materials; how utterly uncritical, until lately, were all historians, even as to the most important facts in history, and how much, even after criticism had commenced, the later writers merely continued to repeat after the earlier. In our own generation, Niebuhr has effected a radical revolution in the opinions of all educated persons respecting Roman history. Grecian events, subsequent to the Homeric period, are more authentically recorded; but there, too, a very moderate acquaintance with the evidence was sufficient to show how superficially it had hitherto been examined.

^e That the Sophists, for example, were not the knaves and profligates they are so often represented^fto have been^f , could be gathered even from the statements of the hostile witnesses on whose authority they were condemned. The Protagoras alone, of their great enemy Plato, is a sufficient document.^gBut Mr. Grote has been the first to point out clearly what the Sophists really were .^hThat term was the common designation for speculative inquirers generally, and more particularly for instructors of youth; and was applied to Socrates and Plato, as much as to those whom they confuted. The Sophists formed no school, had no common doctrines, but speculated in the most conflicting ways on physics and metaphysics; while with respect to morals, those among them who professed to prepare young men for active life, taught the current morality of the age in its best form: the apologue of the Choice of Hercules was the composition of a Sophist.^[*] It is most unjust to the Sophists to adopt, as the verdict of history upon them, the severe judgment of Plato, although from Plato’s point of view they deserved it. He judged them from the superior elevation of a great moral and social reformer: from that height he looked down contemptuously enough, not on them alone, but on statesmen, orators, artists—on the whole practical life of the period, and all its institutions, popular, oligarchical, or despotic; demanding a reconstitution of society from its foundations, and a complete renovation of the human mind. One who had these high aspirations, had naturally little esteem for men who did not see, or aspire to see, beyond the common ideas of their age; but, as Mr. Grote remarks, to accept his judgment of them would be like characterizing the teachers and politicians of the present time in the words applied to them by Owen or Fourier.^[†] Even Plato, for the most part, puts the immoral doctrines ascribed to the Sophists (such as the doctrine that might makes right) into the mouths not of Sophists, but of ambitious active politicians, like Callicles. The Sophists, in Plato, almost always express themselves not only with decorum, but with good sense and feeling, on the subject of social duties; thoughⁱhis hero Socratesⁱ always succeeds in puzzling them, and displaying the confusion of their ideas, or rather of the common ideas of mankind, of which they are the exponents.^hg

^j Again, the Athenian democracy had been so outrageously, and without measure, misrepresented, that whoever had read, as so few have done, Thucydides and the orators with decent intelligence and candour, could easily perceive that the vulgar representation was very wide of the truth; just as any one who had read Livy could see, and many did see, that the Agrarian law was not the unjust spoliation that was pretended: but as it required Niebuhr to detect with accuracy what the Agrarian law actually was,^[*] so no less profound a knowledge of Greek literature than that of Mr. Grote, combined with equal powers of reasoning and reflection, would have sufficed to make the effective working of the Athenian Constitution as well known to us as it may now be pronounced to be. The mountain of error which had accumulated and hardened over Greek history, the removal of which had been meritoriously commenced by Dr. Thirlwall, has not only been shaken off, but the outlines of the real object are now made visible. And so cautious and sober is Mr. Grote in the^kestimation^k of evidence, so constantly on his guard against letting his conclusions outrun his proofs, as to make it a matter of wonder that among so much that is irreparably lost, his researches have enabled him to arrive at so considerable an amount of positive and certifiable result.

This conscientious scrupulousness in maintaining the demarcation between conjecture and proof, is more indispensable than any other excellence in a historian, and above all in one who sets aside the common notion of many of the facts which he relates, and replaces it by a version of his own. Without this quality, such an innovator on existing beliefs inspires no reliance, and can only, at most, unsettle historical opinion, without helping to restore it. Anybody can scrawl over the canvas with the commonplaces of rhetoric or the catchwords of party politics; and many, especially in Germany, can paint-in a picture from the more or less ingenious suggestions of a learned imagination. But Mr. Grote commands the confidence of the reader by his sobriety in hypothesis, by never attempting to pass off an inference as a fact, and, when he differs from the common opinion, explaining his reasons with the precision and minuteness of one who neither desires nor expects that anything will be taken upon trust. He has felt that a history of Greece, to be of any value, must be also a running commentary on the evidence, and he has endeavoured to put the reader in a position to judge for himself on every disputable point. But the discussions, though to a historical taste as interesting as the narrative, are not carried on at its expense. Wherever the facts, authentically known, allow a consecutive stream of narrative to be kept up, the story is told in a more interesting manner than it has anywhere been told before, except in the finest passages of Thucydides.

We are indeed disposed to assign to this history almost as high a rank in narrative as in thought. It is open, no doubt, to minute criticism; and many writers are superior to Mr. Grote in rapidity, grace, and picturesqueness of style. But even in these respects there is no such deficiency as amounts to a fault, while in two qualities, far more important to the interest, not to say the value, of his recitals, he has few equals and probably no superior. The first is, that at each point in the series of events, he makes it his primary object to fill his own mind and his reader’s with as correct and complete a conception as can be formed of the situation; so that we enter at once into the impressions and feelings of the actors, both collective and individual^l . Niebuhr had already, in his Lectures on Ancient History^m ,^[*] carried his characteristic liveliness of conception into the representation of the leading characters of Greek history, depicting them, often we fear with insufficient warrant from evidence, like persons with whom he had long lived and been familiar; but, for clearness and correctness in conceiving the surrounding circumstances, and the posture of affairs at each particular moment, we do not think him at all comparable to Mr. Grote.

ⁿOne of the beneficial fruits of this quality is, that it makes the history a philosophic one without apparent effort. There is no need of lengthened discussion to connect causes with their effects; the causes and effects are parts of the same picture, and the causes are seen in action before it appears what they are to produce. For example, the reader whose mind is filled with the greatness attained by Athens while her councils were ruled by the commanding intellect and self-restraining prudence of Pericles, might almost anticipate the coming disasters when he finds, in the early chapters of the^oseventh volume^o , into the hands of what advisers Athens had already fallen. And, mark well, these evil advisers were not the demagogues, but the chiefs of the aristocracy, the richest and most highborn men in the republic—Nicias and Alcibiades. Mr. Grote had already shown grounds for believing that Cleon, and men of his stamp, had been far too severely dealt with by historians; not that they did not frequently deserve censure, but that they were by no means the worst misleaders of the Athenian people. The demagogues were, as he observes, essentially opposition speakers. The conduct of affairs was habitually in the hands of the rich and great, who had by far the largest share of personal influence, and on whose mismanagement there would have been hardly any check, but for the demagogues and their hostile criticism. These opinions receive ample confirmation from the course of affairs, when, there being no longer any lowborn Cleon or Hyperbolus to balance their influence, Nicias and Alcibiades had full scope to ruin the commonwealth. The contrary vices of these two men, both equally fatal, are exemplified in the crowning act of their maladministration; the one having been the principal adviser of the ill-starred expedition to Syracuse, while the other was the main cause of its ruinous failure, by his intellectual and moral incapacity.ⁿ

^p This genuine realization of the successive situations,^qalso^q renders the narrative itself a picture of the Greek mind. Carrying on, throughout, the succession of feelings concurrently with that of events, the writer becomes, as it were, himself a Greek, and takes the reader along with him. And hence, if every discussion or dissertation in the book were omitted, it would still be wonderfully in advance of any former history in making the Greeks intelligible. For example, no modern writer has made the reader enter into the religious feelings of the Greeks as Mr. Grote does. Other historians let it be supposed that, except in some special emergencies, beliefs and feelings relating to the unknown world counted for very little among the determining causes of events; and it is a kind of accredited opinion, that the religion of the ancients sat almost as lightly on them, as if it had been to them, what it is in modern literature, a mere poetical ornament. But the case was quite otherwise: religion was one of the most active elements in Grecian life, with an effect, in the early rude times, probably on the whole beneficial, but growing more and more injurious as civilization advanced. Mr. Grote is the first historian who has given an adequate impression of the omnipresence of this element in Grecian life; the incessant reference to supernatural hopes and fears which pervaded public and private transactions, as well as the terrible power with which those feelings were capable of acting, and not unfrequently did act, on the Hellenic susceptibilities. While our admiration is thus increased for the few superior minds who, like Pericles and Epaminondas, rose above at least the vulgarer parts of the religion of their country, or, like Plato, probably rejected it altogether, we are enabled to see the explanation of much that would otherwise be enigmatical, and to judge the Greeks with the same amount of allowance for errors produced by their religion, which in parallel cases is always conceded to the moderns.

The other eminent quality which distinguishes Mr. Grote’s narrative is its pervading ἤθος; the moral interest, which is so much deeper and more impressive than picturesque interest, and exists in portions of the history which afford no materials for the latter. The events do not always admit of being vividly depicted to the mental eye; and when they do, the author does not always make use of the opportunity: but one thing he never fails in—the moral aspect of the events and of the persons is never out of sight, and gives the predominating character to the recital. We use the word moral not solely in the restricted sense of right and wrong, but as inclusive of the whole of the sentiments connected with the occasion. Along with the clear light of the scrutinizing intellect, there is the earnest feeling of a sympathizing contemporary. This rich source of impressiveness in narration is often wanting in writers of the liveliest fancy, and the most brilliant faculty of delineating the mere outside of historical facts^r .

^sNor is the narrative deficient in the commoner sources of interest. The apt selection and artistic grouping of the details of battles and sieges, Mr. Grote had found done to his hand by the consummate narrators whom he follows, and in this respect he could do no better than simply to reproduce their recital. There is much more that belongs peculiarly to himself, in the series of remarkable characters whom he exhibits before us, not so much (generally speaking) in description or analysis, as in action. In the earlier period, the prominent characters are Themistocles and Aristides: Themistocles, the most sagacious, the most far-sighted, the most judiciously daring, the craftiest, and unfortunately also one of the most unprincipled of politicians; who first saved, then aggrandized, and at last would have sold his country: Aristides, the personification of public and private integrity, the one only Grecian statesman who finds grace before the somewhat pedantically rigid tribunal of the Platonic Socrates.

^tThe^t figure which most brightly illuminates^uthe middle period^u of Mr. Grote’s history is Pericles—“the Thunderer”—“the Olympian Zeus,” as he was called by his libellers, the comic dramatists of Athens.^[*] Seldom, if ever, has there been seen in a statesman of any age, such a combination of great qualities as were united in this illustrious man: unrivalled in eloquence; eminent in all the acquirements, talents, and accomplishments of his country; the associate of all those among his^vcotemporaries^v who were above their age, either in positive knowledge or in freedom from superstition; though an aristocrat by birth and fortune, a thorough democrat in principle and conduct, yet never stooping to even the pardonable arts of courting popularity, but acquiring and maintaining his ascendancy solely by his commanding qualities; never flattering his countrymen save on what was really admirable in them, and which it was for their good to be taught to cherish, but the determined enemy of their faults and follies; ever ready to peril his popularity by giving disagreeable advice, and when not appreciated, rising up against the injustice done him with a scornful dignity almost amounting to defiance. Such was Pericles: and that such a man should have been practically first minister of Athens during the greatest part of a long political life, is not so much honourable to him as to the imperial people who were willing to be so led; who, though in fits of temporary irritation and disappointment, excusable in the circumstances, they several times withdrew their favour from him, always hastened to give it back; and over whom, while he lived, no person of talents and virtues inferior to his was able to obtain any mischievous degree of influence. It is impossible to estimate how great a share this one man had in making the Athenians what they were^w . A great man had, in the unbounded publicity of Athenian political life, extraordinary facilities for moulding his country after his own image; and seldom has any people, during a whole generation, enjoyed such a course of education, as forty years of listening to the lofty spirit and practical wisdom of Pericles must have been to the Athenian Demos.

As the next in this gallery of historical portraits, we quote the character of another but a far inferior Athenian statesman, whom Mr. Grote is, we think, the very first to appreciate correctly, and bring before us in the colours and lineaments of life.^x

We have the more willingly extracted this passage, because, like many others in these volumes, it contains lessons applicable to other times and circumstances than those of Greece; Nicias being a perfect type of one large class of the favourites of public opinion, modern as well as ancient. And the view here incidentally presented of some points in the character and disposition of the Athenian Many, will afford to readers who only know Athens and Greece through the medium of writers like Mitford, some faint idea of how much they have to unlearn.^s

With regard to style, in the ordinary sense, what is most noticeable in Mr. Grote is, that his style always rises with his subject. The more valuable the thought, or interesting the incident, the apter and more forcible is the expression; as is generally the case with writers who are thinking of their subject rather than of their literary reputation. We can conscientiously say of him what, rightly understood, is the highest praise which, on the score of mere composition, a writer in the more intellectual departments of literature can desire or deserve; that everything which he has to express, he is always able to express adequately and worthily.^y

BAIN’S PSYCHOLOGY

1859

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, III (1867), 97-152, where the title is footnoted: “Edinburgh Review, October 1859.—1. ‘The Senses and the Intellect.’ By Alexander Bain, A.M. [London: Parker,] 1855. 2. ‘The Emotions and the Will.’ By the same Author. [London: Parker,] 1859.” Reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, CX (Oct., 1859), 287-321, where the article (unsigned) is headed: “Art. I.—1. The Senses and the Intellect. By Alexander Bain, A.M. London: [Parker,] 1855. 2. The Emotions and the Will. By Alexander Bain, A.M., Examiner in Logic and Moral Philosophy in the University of London. London: [Parker,] 1859”; the running heads are “Bain’s Psychology.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Bain’s two treatises on the Mind, in the Edinburgh Review for October 1859” (MacMinn, 92). An unsigned offprint of the article in the Somerville College Library, paged 1-35, titled “Bain’s Psychology,” with “[From theEdinburgh Reviewof October 1859]” printed under the title, has no corrections or alterations in the text; the bibliographic information in the headings is slightly expanded.

In the footnoted variants, “59” indicates Edinburgh Review (not, as is normally the case, D&D, 1st ed., because this article appeared after the publication of that edition); “67” indicates D&D, III (1st ed., 1867, the copy-text). For comment on the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, lviii-lxvii and lxxxix-xc above.

Bain’s Psychology

the sceptre of psychology has decidedly returned to this island. The scientific study of mind, which for two generations, in many other respects distinguished for intellectual activity, had, while brilliantly cultivated elsewhere, been neglected by our countrymen, is now nowhere prosecuted with so much vigour and success as in Great Britain. Nor are the achievements of our thinkers in this obstinately-contested portion of the field of thought, merely one-sided and sectarian triumphs. The two conflicting schools, or modes of thought, which have divided metaphysicians from the very beginning of speculation—the à posteriori and à priori schools, or, as they are popularly rather than accurately designated, the Aristotelian and the Platonic—are both flourishing in this country; and we venture to affirm that the best extant examples of both have been produced within a recent period by Englishmen, or (it should, perhaps, rather be said) by Scotchmen.

Of these two varieties of psychological speculation, the à posteriori mode, or that which resolves the whole contents of the mind into experience, is the one which belongs most emphatically to Great Britain, as might be expected from the country which gave birth to Bacon. The foundation of the à posteriori psychology was laid by Hobbes (to be followed by the masterly developments of Locke and Hartley), at the very time when Descartes, on the other side of the Channel, was creating the rival philosophical system; for the French, who are so often ill-naturedly charged with having invented nothing, at least invented German philosophy. But after having initiated this mode of metaphysical investigation, they left it to the systematic German thinkers to be followed up; themselves descending to the rank of disciples and commentators, first on Locke, and more recently on Kant and Schelling. In England, the philosophy of Locke reigned supreme, until a Scotchman, Hume, while making some capital improvements in its theory, carried out one line of its apparent consequences to the extreme which always provokes a reaction; and of this reaction, another Scotchman, Reid, was the originator, and, with his eminent pupil, Stewart, also a Scotchman, introduced as much of the à priori philosophy as could in any way be made reconcilable with Baconian principles. These were succeeded by Dr. Thomas Brown (still a Scotchman), who drew largely and not unskilfully from both sources, though, for want of a patience and perseverance on a level with his great powers, he failed to effect a synthesis, and only produced an eclecticism. Meanwhile, the more elaborate form of the à priori philosophy which the whole speculative energy of Germany had been employed in building up, and which the French had expounded with all the lucidity which it admitted of, was in time studied also among us; and, according to what now seems to be the opinion of the most competent judges, this philosophy has found in a Scotchman, Sir William Hamilton, its best and profoundest representative. But the great European philosophical reaction, was to have its counterreaction, which has now reached a great height in Germany itself, and is taking place here also; and of this, too, in our island, the principal organs have been Scotchmen. Mr. James Mill, in his Analysis of the Human Mind,^[*] followed up the deepest vein of the Lockian philosophy, that which was opened by Hartley, to still greater depths: and now, in the work at the head of this article (we say work, not works, for the second volume, though bearing a different title, is in every sense a continuation of the first), a new aspirant to philosophical eminence, Mr. Alexander Bain, has stepped beyond all his predecessors, and has produced an exposition of the mind, of the school of Locke and Hartley, equally remarkable in what it has successfully done, and in what it has wisely refrained from—an exposition which deserves to take rank as the foremost of its class, and as marking the most advanced point which the à posteriori psychology has reached.^*

We have no intention to profess ourselves partisans of either of these schools of philosophy. Both have done great things for mankind. No one whose studies have not extended to both, can be considered in any way competent to deal with the great questions of philosophy in their present state. And though one of the two must be fundamentally the superior, there can be no doubt that, whichever this is, it has been greatly benefited by the searching criticisms which it has sustained from the other. But as the Lockian, or à posteriori, psychology has for some time been under a cloud throughout Europe, from which it is now decidedly emerging, and giving signs that it is likely soon again to have its turn of ascendency, there may be use in making some observations on the general pretensions of this philosophy, its method, and the evidence on which it relies, and in helping to make generally known a work which is the most careful, the most complete, and the most genuinely scientific analytical exposition of the human mind which the à posteriori psychology has up to this time produced.

In these remarks no complete comparison between the two modes of philosophizing is to be looked for. Psychology, with which we are here concerned, is but the first stage in this great controversy—the arena of the initial conflict. The account which the two schools respectively render of the human mind is the foundation of their doctrines; but the crowning peculiarity of each resides in the superstructure. That the constitution of the mind is the key to the constitution of external nature—that the laws of the human intellect have a necessary correspondence with the objective laws of the universe, such that these may be inferred from those—is the grand doctrine which the one school affirms and the other denies; and the difference between this doctrine and its negation, is the great practical distinction between the two philosophies. But this question is beyond the compass of psychology. The à priori philosophers, when they inculcate this doctrine, do so not as psychologists, but as ontologists; and some distinguished thinkers, who, so far as psychology is concerned, belong essentially to the à priori school, have not thought it necessary to enter, except to a very limited extent, on the ground of ontology. Among these may be counted Reid and Stewart, as well as other more recent names of eminence. Indeed, the grand pretension of the à priori school in its extreme development, that of arriving at a knowledge of the Absolute, has received its most elaborate and crushing refutation from two philosophers of that same school—Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Ferrier: the à posteriori metaphysicians having in general thought that the essential relativity of our knowledge could dispense with direct proof, and might be left to rest on the general evidence of their analysis of the mental phenomena. Yet the philosophers whom we have named are not the less, up to a certain point, ontologists. They all hold, that some knowledge, more or less, of objective existences and their laws, is attainable by man, and that it is obtained by way of inference from the constitution of the human mind. Reid, for example, is decidedly of opinion that Matter—not the set of phenomena so called, but the actual Thing, of which these are effects and manifestations—is cognizable by us as a reality in the universe; and that extension, solidity, and other fundamental attributes of visible and tangible Nature, known to us by experience, are really and unequivocally qualities inherent in this actual thing; the evidence of which doctrine is, that we have, ineradicable from our minds, conceptions or perceptions of these various objects of thought, of which conceptions or perceptions the existence is inexplicable, save from the reality of the things which they represent.^[*] Thus far Reid: who is therefore in principle as much an ontologist as Hegel, though he does not lay claim to as minute a knowledge of the constitution of “Things in themselves.” On the legitimacy of this mode of reasoning, the other school is at issue with them. The possibility of ontology is one of the points in dispute between the two. It is one into which we do not here enter.

On the ground of simple psychology, the distinction between the two philosophies consists in the different theories they give of the more complex phenomena of the human mind. When we call the one philosophy à priori, the other à posteriori, or of experience, the terms must not be misunderstood. It is not meant that experience belongs only to one, and is appealed to as evidence by one and not by the other. Both depend on experience for their materials. Both require as the basis of their systems, that the actual facts of the human mind should be ascertained by observation. It is true they differ to some extent in their notion of facts; the à priori philosophers cataloguing some things as facts, which the others contend are inferences. The fundamental difference relates, however, not to the facts themselves, but to their origin. Speaking briefly and loosely, we may say that the one theory considers the more complex phenomena of the mind to be products of experience, the other believes them to be original. In more precise language, the à priori thinkers hold, that in every act of thought, down to the most elementary, there is an ingredient which is not given to the mind, but contributed by the mind in virtue of its inherent powers. The simplest phenomenon of all, an external sensation, requires, according to them, a mental element to become a perception, and be thus converted from a passive and merely fugitive state of our own being, into the recognition of a durable object external to the mind. The notions of Extension, Solidity, Number, Magnitude, Force, though it is through our senses that we acquire them, are not copies of any impressions on our senses, but creations of the mind’s own laws set in action by our sensations; and the properties of these ideal creations are not proved by experience, but deduced à priori from the ideas themselves, constituting the demonstrative sciences of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, statics, and dynamics. Experience, instead of being the source and prototype of our ideas, is itself a product of the mind’s own forces working on the impressions we receive from without, and has always a mental as well as an external element. Experience is only rendered possible by those mental laws which it is vainly invoked to explain and account for. A fortiori do all our ideas of supersensual things, and all our moral and spiritual judgments and perceptions, proceed from our inherent mental constitution. Experience is the occasion, not the prototype, of our mental ideas, and is neither the source nor the evidence of our knowledge, but its test; for as what we call experience is the outward manifestation of laws which are not to be found in experience, but which may be known à priori, and as the effects cannot be in contradiction to the cause, it is a necessary condition of our knowledge that experience shall not conflict with it.

We are now touching the real point of separation between the à priori and the à posteriori psychologists. These last also for the most part acknowledge the existence of a mental element in our ideas. They admit that the notions of Extension, Solidity, Time, Space, Duty, Virtue, are not exact copies of any impressions on our senses. They grant them to be ideas constructed by the mind itself, the materials alone being supplied to it. But they do not think that this ideal construction takes place by peculiar and inscrutable laws of the mind, of which no further account can be given. They think that a further account can be given. They admit the mental element as a fact, but not as an ultimate fact. They think it may be resolved into simpler laws and more general facts; that the process by which the mind constructs these great ideas may be traced, and shown to be but a more recondite case of the operation of well-known and familiar principles.

From this opinion, which ascribes an ascertainable genesis to that part of the more complex mental phenomena which derives its origin from the mind itself, instead of regarding it, with the à priori psychologists, as something ultimate and inscrutable, there arises necessarily a wide difference between the two as to what are called by the à priori philosophers necessary elements of thought. M. Cousin, one of the ablest, and (Fichte excepted) quite the most eloquent teacher of the à priori school, deems it the radical error of Locke and his followers to have raised the question of the origin of our ideas at the opening of the inquiry, without first making a complete descriptive survey of the ideas themselves; which if they had done, he thinks they must have recognised, as involved in all our thoughts, certain necessary assumptions, inconsistent with the origin which Locke ascribes to them.^[*] The difference, however, between the two theories, is not as to the fact that these assumptions are made, but as to their being necessary assumptions. The Lockians think they are able to show how and why the mind is led to make these assumptions. They believe that it is not obliged by any necessity of its nature to make them. They think that the cause of our making the assumptions lies in the conditions of our experience; that those conditions are often accidental and modifiable, and might be so modified that we should no longer be led to make these assumptions; and even when the assumptions depend upon conditions of our experience which do not, so far as our faculties can judge, admit of actual modification, yet if by an exercise of thought we imagine them modified, the supposed necessity of the assumptions will disappear. For example: the transcendentalist examines our ideas of Space and Time, and finds that each of them contains inseparably within itself the idea of Infinity. We can of course have no experimental evidence of infinity: all our experiences, and therefore, in his opinion, all our ideas derived from experience, are of things finite. Yet to conceive Time or Space otherwise than as things infinite is impossible. The infinity of Space and Time he therefore sets down as a necessary assumption: and if his philosophy leads him (which Kant’s did not) to regard Space and Time as having any existence at all external to the mind, he proceeds, as an ontologist, to infer from the necessity of the assumption, the infinity of the things themselves. The à posteriori psychologist, on his part, also perceives that we cannot think of Space or of Time otherwise than as infinite; but he does not consider this as an ultimate fact, or as requiring any peculiar law of mind or properties of the objects for its explanation. He sees in it an ordinary manifestation of one of the laws of the association of ideas,—the law, that the idea of a thing irresistibly suggests the idea of any other thing which has been often experienced in close conjunction with it, and not otherwise. As we have never had experience of any point of space without other points beyond it, nor of any point of time without others following it, the law of^ainseparable^a association makes it impossible for us to think of any point of space or time, however distant, without having the idea irresistibly realized in imagination, of other points still more remote. And thus the supposed original and inherent property of these two ideas is completely explained and accounted for by the law of association; and we are enabled to see, that if Space or Time were really susceptible of termination, we should be just as unable as we now are to conceive the idea. This being once seen, although the mental element, Infinity, still remains attached to the ideas, we are no longer prompted to make a “necessary assumption” of a corresponding objective fact. We are enabled to acknowledge our ignorance, and our inability to judge whether the course of Things, in this respect, corresponds with our necessities of Thought. Space or Time may, for aught we know, be inherently terminable, though in our present condition we are totally incapable of conceiving a termination to them. Could we arrive at the end of space, we should, no doubt, be apprised of it by some new and strange impression upon our senses, of which it is not at present in our power to form the faintest idea. But under all other circumstances the association is indissoluble, since every moment’s experience is constantly renewing it.

In this example, which is the more significant as the case is generally considered one of the main strongholds of the à priori school, the two leading doctrines of the most advanced à posteriori psychology are very clearly brought to view: first, that the more recondite phenomena of the mind are formed out of the more simple and elementary; and, secondly, that the mental law, by means of which this formation takes place, is the Law of Association. Though not the first who pointed out this law, Locke was the author of its first great application to the explanation of the mental phenomena, by his doctrine of Complex Ideas. The idea of an orange, for example, is compounded of certain simple ideas of colour, of visible and tangible shape, of taste, of smell, of a certain consistence, weight, internal structure, and so forth: yet^bour^b idea of an orange is to our feelings and conceptions one single idea, not a plurality of ideas; thus showing that when any number of sensations have been often experienced simultaneously or in very rapid succession, the ideas of those sensations not only raise up one another, but do this so certainly and instantaneously as to run together, and seem melted into one. In this example, however, the original elements may still, by an ordinary effort of consciousness, be distinguished in the compound. It was reserved for Hartley to show that mental phenomena, joined together by association, may form a still more intimate, and as it were chemical union—may merge into a compound, in which the separate elements are no more distinguishable as such, than hydrogen and oxygen in water; the compound having all the appearance of a phenomenon sui generis, as simple and elementary as the ingredients, and with properties different from any of them: a truth which, once ascertained, evidently opens a new and wider range of possibilities for the generation of mental phenomena by means of association.

The most complete and scientific form of the à posteriori psychology, is that which considers the law of association as the governing principle, by means of which the more complex and recondite mental phenomena shape themselves, or are shaped, out of the simpler mental elements. The great problem of this form of psychology is to ascertain, not how far this law extends, for it extends to everything; ideas of sensation, intellectual ideas, emotions, desires, volitions, any or all of these may become connected by association under the two laws of Contiguity and Resemblance, and when so connected, acquire the power of calling up one another. Not, therefore, how far the law extends, is the problem, but how much of the apparent variety of the mental phenomena it is capable of explaining; what ultimate elements of the mind remain, when all are subtracted, the formation of which can be in this way accounted for; and how, out of those elements, and the law, or rather laws, of association, the remainder of the mental phenomena are built up. On this part of the subject there are, as might be expected, many differences of doctrine; and the theory, like all theories of an uncompleted science, is in a state of progressive improvement.

This mode of interpreting the phenomena of the mind is not unfrequently stigmatised as materialistic; how far justly, may be seen when it is remembered that the Idealism of Berkeley is one of the developments of this theory. With materialism in the obnoxious sense, this view of the mind has no necessary connexion, though doubtless not so directly exclusive of it as is the rival theory. But if it be materialism to endeavour to ascertain the material conditions of our mental operations, all theories of the mind which have any pretension to comprehensiveness must be materialistic. Whether organisation alone could produce life and thought, we probably shall never certainly know, unless we could repeat Frankenstein’s experiment;^[*] but that our mental operations have material conditions, can be denied by no one who acknowledges, what all now admit, that the mind employs the brain as its material organ. And this being granted, there is nothing more materialistic in endeavouring, so far as our means of physiological explanation allow, to trace out the detailed connexions between mental manifestations and cerebral or nervous states. Unhappily, the knowledge hitherto obtainable on this subject has been very limited in amount; but when we consider, for example, the case of all our stronger emotions, and the disturbance of almost every part of our physical frame, which is occasioned in these cases by a mere mental idea, no rational person can doubt the closeness of the connexion between the functions of the nervous system and the phenomena of mind, nor^ccan^c think any exposition of the mind satisfactory, into which that connexion does not enter as a prominent feature.

It is undoubtedly true that the Association Psychology does^drepresent many of^d the higher mental states as in a certain sense the outgrowth and offspring of the lower. But in other cases, philosophers have not considered as degrading, the formation of noble products out of base materials, and have rather been disposed to celebrate this, as one of the exemplifications of wisdom and contrivance in the arrangements of Nature. Without undertaking to determine what portion of truth lies in this philosophy, and how far any of the nobler phenomena of mind are really constructed from the materials of our animal nature, it is certain that, to whatever extent this is the fact, it ought to be known and recognised. If these nobler parts of our nature are not self-sown and original, but are built or build themselves up, out of no matter what materials, it must be highly important to the work of the education and improvement of human character, to understand as much as possible of the process by which the materials are put together. These composite parts of our constitution (granting them to be such) are not for that reason factitious and unnatural. The products are not less a part of human nature than their component elements. Water is as truly one of the substances in external nature, as hydrogen or oxygen; and to suppose it non-existent would imply as great a change in all we know of the order of things in which we live. It is only to a very vulgar type of mind, that a grand or beautiful object loses its charm when it loses some of its mystery, through the unveiling of a part of the process by which it is created in the secret recesses of Nature.

The aim, then, which the Association Psychology proposes to itself, is one which both schools of mental philosophy should equally desire to see vigorously prosecuted. It is important, even from the point of view of transcendentalists, that all which can be done by this system for the explanation of the mental phenomena should be brought to light. For, in the first place, all admit that there is much which can be so explained. The law of association, every one allows, is real, and a large number of mental facts are explicable thereby. But further, the sole ground upon which the transcendental mode of speculation in psychology can possibly stand, is the failure of the other. The evidence of the à priori theory must always be negative. There can be no positive proof that oxygen, or any other body, is a simple substance. The sole proof that can be given is, that no one has hitherto succeeded in decomposing it. And nothing can positively prove that any particular one of the constituents of the mind is ultimate. We can only presume it to be such, from the ill success of every attempt to resolve it into simpler elements. If, indeed, the phenomena alleged to be complex manifested themselves chronologically at an earlier period than those from which they are said to be compounded, this would be a complete disproof, at least of that origin. But the fact is not so: on the contrary, the higher mental phenomena are so well known to unfold themselves after the lower, that sensational experience, which is so violently repudiated as their origin and source, is, from the necessity of the case, admitted as the occasion which calls into action the mental laws that develop them. The first question, therefore, in analytical psychology ought to be, how much of the furniture of the mind will experience and association account for? The residuum which cannot be so explained, must be provisionally set down as ultimate, and handed over to observation to determine its conditions and laws.

On the other hand, it is necessary to be exigeant as to the evidence for the validity of the analysis by which a mental phenomenon is resolved into association. Much has been tendered on this subject, even by powerful thinkers, as proved truth, to which it is impossible soberly to assign any higher value than that of philosophical conjecture. The rules of inductive logic must be duly applied to the case. When the elements can be recognised by our consciousness as distinguishably existing in the compound, there is no difficulty. When they are not thus distinguishable, the gradual growth and building up of the complex phenomenon may be a fact amenable to direct observation. In the case of the higher intellectual and moral phenomena of our being, the observation may be practised on ourselves. In the case of those of our acquisitions which are made too early to be remembered, the observation may be of children, of the young of other animals, or of persons who are, or were during a part of life, shut out from some of the ordinary sources of experience; persons like Caspar Hauser, brought up in confinement and solitude; persons destitute of sight or hearing; especially those born blind and suddenly restored to sight. This last is a precious source of information, which unfortunately has been very scantily made use of. In the case of children and young animals, our power is very limited of ascertaining what actually passes within them. But in so far as we are able to interpret their outward manifestations, we have some means of ascertaining what, in their minds, precedes^ewhat. We^e can often, by sufficiently close observation, perceive a mental faculty forming itself by gradual growth; and in some cases we can, to a certain extent, ascertain the conditions of its formation, which are often such as to bring it within the known laws of association. Though the product may, to our consciousness, appear sui generis, not identical in its nature with any or with all of the elements, yet if the mode of its production be invariably found to consist in bringing certain sensations or ideas to pass through the mind simultaneously, or in immediate succession, and if the effect is produced pari passu with the number of repetitions of this conjunction, we may conclude with considerable assurance that the apparently simple phenomenon is a compound of those ideas, united by association. For we know that it is the effect of repetition to knit all conjunctions of ideas closer and closer, until they so coalesce as to leave no trace in our consciousness of their separate existence. One of the most familiar cases of this remarkable law, is the case of what are called the acquired perceptions of sight. It is admitted by nearly all psychologists, that when we appear to see distance and magnitude by the eye, we do not really see them, but see only certain signs, from which, by a process of reasoning, rendered so rapid by practice as to have become entirely unconscious, we infer the distance or magnitude which we fancy we see. No alleged transformation of mental phenomena by association can be more complete, or more extraordinary, than this. Yet it is one of the few results of psychological analysis which can be brought to the test of a complete Baconian induction: for the case admits of an ample range of experiments; and the result of them is, that wherever the signs are the same, our impressions of distance and magnitude are the same, and wherever the signs are different, our impressions are different, although the real distance and magnitude of the object looked at remain all the while exactly as they were. Hardly any theory of the formation of a mental phenomenon by association can deserve, after this, to be rejected in limine, for inherent incredibility, or inconsistency with our consciousness. There is hardly any mental phenomenon (except those which association itself presupposes) of which we can say that, from its own nature, it could not possibly have been produced by association. But, from the intrinsic possibility of its having been so produced, to its actually being so, is a wide step; and unless the case admits of actual experiment, or unless there be something in the observed development of the individual mind to bear out the conjecture, it can be ranked only as an hypothesis, of no present value except to suggest points for further verification.

There is, however, a large class of cases—and these are among the most important of all—in which the explanation by way of association is not attended with any of these difficulties and uncertainties. The mental fact which is the subject of dispute may be, not any one mental phenomenon, but a conjunction between phenomena. The thing to be explained often is no other than the fact that some one idea is suggested by, and apparently involved in, another; and the point to be decided is, whether this happens necessarily, and by an inherent law; as infinity is said to be inherently involved in our ideas of time and space, and externality in our ideas of tangible objects. In such cases the evidence of origin in association may often be complete; and it is in such that the greatest triumphs of the Association Psychology have been achieved. A conjunction, however close and apparently indissoluble, between two ideas, is not only an effect which association is able to produce, but one which it is certain to produce, if the necessary conditions are sufficiently often repeated without the intervention of any fact tending to produce a counter-association. It is, therefore, in these cases, sufficient if we can show, that there has really existed the invariable conjunction of sensible phenomena in experience, which is necessary for the formation of an inseparable association between the corresponding ideas. If, as in the case of Time and Space, already examined, this can be shown to be the fact, then that conjunction of sensible experiences is the real cause: formation by association is the true theory of the phenomenon, and it is in the highest degree unphilosophical to demand any other.

These few observations on the nature and scope of the Association Psychology generally, were necessary for fixing the position of Mr. Bain’s treatise in mental science. Belonging essentially to the association school, he has not only, with great clearness and copiousness, illustrated, popularised, and enforced by fresh arguments, all which that school had already done towards the explanation of the phenomena of mind, but he has added so largely to it, that those who have the highest appreciation and the warmest admiration of his predecessors, are likely to be the most struck with the great advance which this treatise constitutes over what those predecessors had done, and the improved position in which it places their psychological theory. Mr. Bain possesses, indeed, an union of qualifications peculiarly fitting him for what, in the language of Dr. Brown, may be called the physical investigation of mind.^[*] With analytic powers comparable to those of his most distinguished predecessors, he combines a range of appropriate knowledge still wider than theirs; having made a more accurate study than perhaps any previous psychologist, of the whole round of the physical sciences, on which the mental depend both for their methods, and for the necessary material substratum of their theories: while those sciences, also, are themselves in a far higher state of advancement than in any former age. This is especially true of the science most nearly allied, both in subject and method, with psychological investigations, the science of Physiology: which Hartley, Brown, and Mill had unquestionably studied, and knew perhaps as well as it was known by any one at the time when they studied it, but in a superficial manner compared with Mr. Bain; the science having in the meanwhile assumed almost a new aspect, from the important discoveries which had been made in all its branches, and especially in the functions of the nervous system, since even the latest of those authors wrote.

Mr. Bain commences his work with a full and luminous exposition of what is known of the structure and functions of the nervous system. What may be called the outward action of the nervous system is twofold,—sensation and muscular motion; and one of the great physiological discoveries of the present age is, that these two functions are performed by means of two distinct sets of nerves, in close juxtaposition; one of which, if separately severed or paralysed, puts an end to sensation in the part of the body which it supplies, but leaves the power of motion unimpaired; the other destroys the power of motion, but does not affect sensation. That the central organ of the nervous system, the brain, must in some way or other co-operate in all sensation, and in all muscular motion except that which is actually automatic and mechanical, is also certain; for if the nervous continuity between any part of the body and the brain is interrupted, either by the division of the nerve, or by pressure on any intermediate portion, unfitting it to perform its functions, sensation and voluntary motion in that part cease to exist. That the memory or thought of a sensation formerly experienced has also for its necessary condition a state of the brain, and of the same nerves which transmit the sensation itself, does not admit of the same direct proof by experiment; but is, at least, a highly probable hypothesis. When we consider that in dreams, hallucinations, and some highly excited states of the nervous system, the idea or remembrance of a sensation is actually mistaken for the sensation itself; and also that the idea, when vividly excited, not unfrequently produces the same effects on the whole bodily frame which the sensation would produce, it is hardly possible, in the face of all this resemblance, to suppose any fundamentally different machinery for their production, or any real difference in their physical conditions, except one of degree. The instrumentality of the brain in thought is a more mysterious subject; the evidence is less direct, and its interpretation has given rise to some of the keenest controversies of our era, controversies yet far from being conclusively decided. But the general connexion is attested by many indisputable pathological facts: such as the effect of cerebral inflammation in producing delirium; the relation between idiocy and cerebral malformation or disease; and is confirmed by the entire range of comparative anatomy, which shows the intellectual faculties of the various species of animals bearing, if not an exact ratio, yet a very unequivocal relation, to the development in proportional size, and complexity of structure, of the cerebral hemispheres.

However imperfect our knowledge may still be in regard to this part of the functions of the nervous system, it is certain that all our sensations depend upon the transmission of some sort of nervous influence inward, from the senses to the brain, and that our voluntary motions take place by the transmission of some sort of nervous influence outward, from the brain to the muscular system; these two nervous operations being, as already observed, the functions of two distinct systems of nerves, called respectively the nerves of sensation and those of motion. It is now necessary to notice another physiological truth, brought to light only within the present generation, viz. the different functions of the two kinds of matter of which the nervous system is compounded. The nerves consist partly of grey vesicular or cell-like matter, partly of white fibrous matter. Physiologists are now of opinion that the function of the grewy matter is that of originating power, while the white fibrous matter is simply a conductor, which conveys the influence to and from the brain, and between one part of the brain and another. With this physiological discovery is connected the first capital improvement which Mr. Bain has made in the Association Psychology as left by his predecessors; the nature of which we now proceed to indicate.

Those who have studied the writings of the Association Psychologists, must often have been unfavourably impressed by the almost total absence, in their analytical expositions, of the recognition of any active element, or spontaneity, in the mind itself. Sensation, and the memory of sensation, are passive phenomena; the mind, in them, does not act, but is acted upon; it is a mere recipient of impressions; and though adhesion by association may enable one of these passive impressions to recall another, yet when recalled, it is but passive still. A theory of association which stops here, seems adequate to account for our dreams, our reveries, our casual thoughts, and states of mere contemplation, but for no other part of our nature. The mind, however, is active as well as passive; and the apparent insufficiency of the theory to account for the mind’s activity, is probably the circumstance which has oftenest operated to alienate from the Association Psychology any of those who had really studied it. Coleridge, who was one of these, and in the early part of his life a decided Hartleian, has left on record, in his Biographia Literaria, that such was the fact in his own case.^[*] Yet, no Hartleian could overlook the necessity, incumbent on any theory of the mind, of accounting for our voluntary powers. Activity cannot possibly be generated from passive elements; a primitive active element must be found somewhere; and Hartley found it in the stimulative power of sensation over the muscles. All our muscular motions, according to him, were originally automatic, and excited by the stimulus of sensations; as, no doubt, many of them were and are. After a muscular contraction has been sufficiently often excited by a sensation, then, in Hartley’s opinion, the idea or remembrance of the sensation acquires a similar power of exciting that same muscular contraction. Here is the first germ of volition: a muscular action excited by an idea. After this, every combination of associated ideas into which that idea or remembrance enters, and which, therefore, cannot be recalled without recalling it, obtains the power of recalling also the muscular motion which has come under its control. This is Hartley’s notion of the point of junction between our intellectual states and our muscular actions, which is the foundation of the theory of Volition. It involves two assumptions, both of which are merely hypothetical. One is, that all muscular action is originally excited by sensations; which has never been proved, and which there is much evidence to contradict. The other is, that between the primitive automatic character of a muscular contraction, and its ultimate state of amenability to the will, an intermediate condition is passed through, of excitability by the idea of the sensation by which the motion was at first excited: that the intervention of this idea is necessary in all cases of voluntary power; and that the recalling of it is the indispensable machinery of voluntary action. This is a mere hypothesis, which consciousness does not vouch for, and which no evidence has been brought to substantiate.

Mr. Bain has made a great advance on this theory. Those who are acquainted with the French metaphysical writers of this century, or even with the first paper of M. Cousin’s Fragments Philosophiques,^[*] will remember the important modification made by M. Laromiguière in Condillac’s psychological system. M. Laromiguière had noted in Condillac the same defect which has been pointed out in the Association philosophers; and as Condillac had placed the passive phenomenon, Sensation, at the centre of his system, M. Laromiguière corrected him by putting instead of it the active phenomenon, Attention, as the fundamental fact by which to explain the active half of the mental phenomena.^[†] Mr. Bain’s theory (the germ of which is in a passage cited by him from the eminent physiologist, Müller),^[‡] stands in nearly the same relation to Hartley’s as Laromiguière’s to that of Condillac. He has widened his basis by the admission of a second primitive element. He holds that the brain does not act solely in obedience to impulses, but is also a self-acting instrument; that the nervous influence which, being conveyed through the motory nerves, excites the muscles into action, is generated automatically in the brain itself, not, of course, lawlessly and without a cause, but under the organic stimulus of nutrition; and manifests itself in the general rush of bodily activity, which all healthy animals exhibit after food and repose, and in the random motions which we see constantly made without apparent end or purpose by infants. This doctrine, of which the accumulated proofs will be found in Mr. Bain’s first volume (The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 73-80), supplies him with a simple explanation of the origin of voluntary power. Among the numerous motions given forth indiscriminately by the spontaneous energy of the nervous centre, some are accidentally hit on, which are found to be followed by a pleasure, or by the relief of a pain. In this case, the child is able, to a certain extent, to prolong that particular motion, or to abate it; and this, in our author’s opinion, is the sole original power which we possess over our bodily motions, and the ultimate basis of voluntary action. The pleasure which the motion produces, or the pain which it relieves, determines the detention or relinquishment of that particular muscular movement. Why there is this natural tendency to detain or to get rid of a muscular contraction which influences our sensations, as well as why that tendency is towards pleasure and from pain, instead of being the reverse, cannot be explained. The author’s reason for considering this to be our only original power over our bodily movements, is not that the supposition affords any help in clearing up the mystery, or possesses any superiority of antecedent probability; for it is just as likely à priori that we should be able, by a wish, to select and originate a bodily movement, as that we should merely be able to prolong one which has already been excited by the spontaneous energies of our organisation. Mr. Bain’s reason for preferring the latter theory, is merely that the evidence is in its favour; that no other is consistent with observation of children and young animals. We will exhibit a part of the exposition in his own words.

In confirmation and illustration of these^f remarks, we quote from another part of the same volume the following “notes of observation made upon the earliest movements of two lambs seen during the first hour of their birth, and at subsequent stages of their development.”

The larger half of Mr. Bain’s first volume is occupied by the exposition of Association. His exemplification and illustration of this fundamental phenomenon of mind, in its two varieties—adhesive association by contiguity in time or place, and suggestion by resemblance—are quite unexampled in richness, clearness, and comprehensiveness. The whole of the intellectual phenomena, as distinguished from the emotional, he considers as explicable by that law. But to render this possible, the law must be conceived in its utmost generality. Association is not between ideas of sensation alone. The following is the author’s statement of the two laws of association, the law of Contiguity, and that of Similarity:

One of the leading features in Mr. Bain’s application of these laws to the analysis of phenomena, is the great use he makes of the muscular sensations, in explaining our impressions of, and judgments respecting, things physically external to us. The distinction between these sensations and those of touch, in the legitimate sense of the word, and the prominent part they take in the composition of our ideas of resistance or solidity, and extension, were first pointed out by Brown,^[*] and were the principal addition which he made to the analytical exposition of the mind. Mr. Bain carries out the idea to a still greater length, and his developments of it are highly instructive, though he sometimes, perhaps, insists too much upon it, to the prejudice of other elements equally or more influential. Thus, in his explanation of the acquired perception of distance and magnitude by sight, he lays almost exclusive stress on the sensations accompanying the muscular movements by which the eyes are adapted to different distances from us, or are made to pass along the lengths and breadths of visible objects. That this is one of the sources of the acquired perceptions of sight, cannot be doubted; but that it is the principal one, no one will believe, who considers that all the impression of unequal distances from us that a picture can give, is produced not only without this particular indication, but in contradiction to it. The signs by which we mainly judge are the effects of perspective, both linear and aerial; in other words, the differences in the actual picture made on the retina: the imitation of which constitutes the illusion of the painter’s art, and which we should have been glad to see illustrated by Mr. Bain, as he is so well able to do, instead of being merely acknowledged by a quotation in a note (pp. 380n-382n). We regret that our limits forbid us to quote (pp. 372-6) his explanation of the mode whereby, in his opinion, the feeling of resistance, a result of our muscular sensations, generates the notion, often supposed to be instinctive, of an external world.

Respecting the law of Association by Contiguity, so much had been done, with such eminent ability, by former writers, that this part of Mr. Bain’s exposition is chiefly original in the profuseness and minuteness of his illustrations. To bring up the theory of the law of Similarity to the same level, much more remained to do, that law having been rather unaccountably sacrificed to the other by some of the Association psychologists; among whom Mr. James Mill, in his Analysis, even endeavoured to resolve it into contiguity;^[*] an attempt which is perhaps the most inconclusive part of that generally acute and penetrating performance, association by resemblance being, as Mr. Bain observes, presupposed by, and indispensable to the conception of, association by contiguity. The two kinds of association are indeed so different, that the predominance of each gives rise to a different type of intellectual character; an eminent degree of the former constituting the inductive philosopher, the poet and artist, and the inventor and originator generally; while adhesive association gives memory, mechanical skill, facility of acquisition in science or business, and practical talent so far as unconnected with invention.

To the long chapters on Contiguity and Similarity, Mr. Bain subjoins a third on what he terms Compound Association; “where several threads, or a plurality of links or bonds of connexion, concur in reviving some previous thought or mental state” (ibid., p. 544); which they consequently recall more vividly: a part of the subject too little illustrated by former writers, and which includes, among many others, the important heads of “the singling out of one among many trains,” [p. 562,] and what our author aptly terms “obstructive association.” [P. 564.] The subject is concluded by a chapter on “Constructive Association,” analysing the process by which the mind forms “combinations or aggregates different from any that have been presented to it in the course of experience,” and showing this to depend on the same laws [p. 571]. We are unable to find room for the smallest specimen of these chapters, which are marked with our author’s usual ability, and fill up what is partially a hiatus in most treatises on Association.

Mr. Bain’s exposition of the Emotions is not of so analytical a character as that of the intellectual phenomena. He considers it necessary, in this department, to allow a much greater range to the instinctive portion of our nature; and has exhibited what may be termed the natural history of the emotions, rather than attempted to construct their philosophy. It is certain that the attempts of the Association psychologists to resolve the emotions by association, have been on the whole the least successful part of their efforts. One fatal imperfection is obvious at first sight: the only part of the phenomenon which their theory explains, is the suggestion of an idea or ideas, either pleasurable or painful—that is, the merely intellectual part of the emotion; while there is evidently in all our emotions an animal part, over and above any which naturally attends on the ideas considered separately, and which these philosophers have passed without any attempt at explanation. It is a wholly insufficient account of Fear, for example, to resolve it into the calling up, by association, of the idea of the dreaded evil; since, were this all, the physical manifestations that would follow would be the same in kind, and mostly less in degree, than those which the evil would itself produce if actually experienced; whereas, in truth, they are generically distinct; the screams, groans, contortions, &c., which (for example) intense bodily suffering produces, being altogether different phenomena from the well-known physical effects and manifestations of the passion of terror. It is conceivable that a scientific theory of Fear may one day be constructed, but it must evidently be the work of physiologists, not of metaphysicians. The proper office of the law of association in connexion with it, is to account for the transfer of the passion to objects which do not naturally excite it. We all know how easily any object may be rendered dreadful by association, as exemplified by the tremendous effect of nurses’ stories in generating artificial terrors.

We must not, therefore, expect to find in the half volume which Mr. Bain has dedicated to this subject, any attempt at a general analysis of the emotions. He has not even (except in one important case, to which we shall presently advert) entered, with the fulness which belongs to his plan, and which marks the execution of every other part of it, into the important inquiry, how far some emotions are compounded out of others. He gives a general indication of his opinion on the point; but his illustrations of it are scattered, and mostly incidental. He has, however, written the natural history of the emotions with great felicity, in a manner at once scientific and popular; insomuch that this part of his work presents attractions even to the unscientific reader. Mr. Bain’s classification of the emotions is different from, and more comprehensive than, any other which we have met with. He begins with “the feelings connected with the free vent of emotion in general, and with the opposite case of restrained or obstructed outburst;”^[*] the feelings, in short, of liberty or restraint in the utterance of emotion; which he regards as themselves emotions, and entitled, on account of their superior generality, to be placed at the head of the catalogue. He next proceeds to one of the simplest as well as most universal of our emotions—Wonder. The third on his list is Terror. The fourth is “the extensive group of feelings implied under the title of the Tender Affections.”^[†] The consideration of these feelings is by most writers blended with that of Sympathy; which is carefully distinguished from them by our author, and treated separately, not as an emotion, but as the capacity of taking on the emotions, or mental states generally, of others. A character may possess tenderness without being at all sympathetic, as is the case with many selfish sentimentalists; and the converse, though not equally common, is equally in human nature. From these he passes to a group which he designates by the title, Emotions of Self: including Self-esteem, or Self-complacency, in its various forms of Conceit, Pride, Vanity, &c., which he regards as cases of the emotions of tenderness directed towards self, and has largely illustrated this view of them. The sixth class is the emotions connected with Power. The seventh is the Irascible Emotions. The eighth is a group not hitherto brought forward into sufficient prominence, the emotions connected with Action. “Besides the pleasures and pains of Exercise, and the gratification of succeeding in an end, with the opposite mortification of missing what is laboured for, there is in the attitude of pursuit, a peculiar state of mind, so far agreeable in itself, that factitious occupations are instituted to bring it into play. When I use the term plot-interest, the character of the situation alluded to will be suggested with tolerable distinctness.”^[*] This grouping together of the emotions of hunting, of games, of intrigue of all sorts, and of novel-reading, with those of an active career in life, seems to us equally original and philosophical. The ninth class consists of the emotions caused by the operations of the Intellect. The tenth is the group of feelings connected with the Beautiful. Eleventh and last, comes the Moral Sense.

Of these, the four first are regarded by Mr. Bain as original elements of our nature, having their root in the constitution of the nervous system, and not explicable psychologically. The remaining seven he considers as generated by association from these four, with the aid of certain combinations of circumstances. Though, as already remarked, he does not discuss this question in the express and systematic manner which his general scheme would appear to require, he has said many things which throw a valuable light on it, together with some which we consider questionable. But we still desiderate an analytical philosophy of the emotional, like that which he has furnished of the intellectual, part of our constitution. Much of the material is ready to his hand, and only requires co-ordination under the universal law of mind which he has so well expounded. For example, the most complicated of all his eleven classes, the æsthetic group of emotions, has been analysed to within a single step of the ultimate principle, by thinkers who did not see, and would not have accepted, the one step which remained. Mr. Ruskin would probably be much astonished were he to find himself held up as one of the principal apostles of the Association Philosophy in Art. Yet, in one of the most remarkable of his writings, the second volume of Modern Painters, he aims at establishing, by a large induction and a searching analysis, that all things are beautiful (or sublime) which powerfully recall, and none but those which recall, one or more of a certain series of elevating or delightful thoughts.^[*] It is true that in this coincidence Mr. Ruskin does not recognise causation, but regards it as a pre-established harmony, ordained by the Creator, between our feelings of the Beautiful and certain grand or lovely ideas. Others, however, will be inclined to see in this phenomenon, not an arbitrary dispensation of Providence, which might have been other than it is, but a case of the mental chemistry so often spoken of; and will think it more in accordance with sound methods of philosophizing to believe, that the great ideas so well recognised by Mr. Ruskin, when they have sunk sufficiently deep into our nervous sensibility, actually generate, by composition with one another and with other elements, the æsthetic feelings which so nicely correspond to them.

The last of our author’s eleven classes, that of Moral Emotion, is the only one on which, in relation to the problem of its composition, he puts forth his whole strength. The question whether the moral feelings are intuitive or acquired—a point so often and so warmly contested between the rival schools of Psychology—has never before, we think, been so well or so fully argued on the anti-intuitive side. This masterly chapter would serve better than any other to give a correct idea of Mr. Bain’s philosophical capacity and turn of mind; but, unfortunately, either extracts or an abridgment would do it injustice, as they would impair the argument by mutilating it. Mr. Bain’s theory is, that the moral emotions are of an extremely complicated character; a compound, into which the social affections, and sympathy (which is a different thing from the social affections), enter largely, as well as, in many cases, the almost equally common fact of disinterested antipathy. But the peculiar feeling of obligation included in the moral sentiment, Mr. Bain regards as wholly created by external authority. He considers this character as impressed upon the feeling entirely by the idea of punishment. The purely disinterested character which the feeling assumes after appropriate cultivation, he holds to be one of the numerous instances of a feeling transferred by association to objects not containing in themselves that which originally excited it. This general conception of the origin of the moral sentiment is nothing new; but there is considerable novelty, as well as ability, in the mode in which it is worked out: and without, on the present occasion, expressing any opinion on this vexata quæstio, we can safely recommend Mr. Bain’s dissertation to the special study of those who wish to know the theory entertained on this subject by the Association school, and the best which they have to say in its support.

From the Emotions, Mr. Bain proceeds to the Will; and if, on the former subject, the reader who has previously gone through Mr. Bain’s first volume finds less of psychological analysis than he probably expected, such a complaint will not be made on the topic which succeeds. By no previous psychologist has the Volitional part of our nature been gone into with such minute detail, and the whole of the phenomena connected with it set forth and analysed with such fulness and such grasp of the subject. We have already stated the view taken by our author of the origin, or first germ, of our voluntary powers, which he conceives to be grounded, first, on “the existence of a spontaneous tendency to execute movements independent of the stimulus of sensations or feelings;”^[*] and, secondly, of a power to detain and prolong, or to abate and discontinue, a present movement, under the stimulus of a present pleasure or pain. If this be correct, the original power of the will over our muscles is much the same in extent, as it is and always remains over our thoughts and feelings; for over them, the only direct power we have is that of detaining them before the mind, or (it would perhaps be more correct to say) of producing any number of immediate mental repetitions of them, which is the meaning of what we call Attention. Through ten successive chapters Mr. Bain expands and applies this idea, showing how, in his belief, all the phenomena of volition are erected by Association on this original basis. The titles of some of the chapters and sections will show the comprehensiveness of the scheme:—The Spontaneity of Movement; Link of Feeling and Action; Growth of Voluntary Power; Control of Feelings and Thoughts; Motives or Ends; the Conflict of Motives; Deliberation, Resolution, Effort; Desire; the Moral Habits; Prudence, Duty, Moral Inability. It is only in the eleventh chapter, after the analysis of the phenomena is completed, that the author encounters the question which usually, in the writings of metaphysicians, usurps nearly all the space devoted to the phenomena of Will: we need hardly say that we refer to the Free-Will controversy. Mr. Bain is of opinion that the terms Freedom and Necessity are both equally inappropriate, equally calculated to give a false view of the phenomena. He thinks the word Necessity “nothing short of an incumbrance” in the sciences generally.^[†] But he adheres, in an unqualified manner, to the universality of the law of Cause and Effect, or the uniformity of sequence in natural phenomena, to which he does not think that the determinations of the will are in any manner an exception. He holds that men’s volitions and voluntary actions might be as certainly predicted, by any one who was aware of the state of the psychological agencies operating in the case, as any class of physical phenomena may be predicted from causes in operation. We quote, not as the best passage, but as the one which best admits of extraction, a portion of the controversial part of this chapter, being that in which the author examines the appeal made to consciousness as an infallible criterion in all psychological difficulties:

Mr. Bain then proceeds to show, but at too much length for quotation, that the only fact testified to by any person’s consciousness is an instantaneous fact—“the state of his or her own feelings at any one moment:”^[*] that when the person proceeds to speak of a past, and merely remembered feeling, fallibility begins: that when he speaks of sequences, and the law of a feeling, even in himself, much more in mankind generally, he transcends the dominion of consciousness altogether, and enters on that of observation, which, whether introspective or external, is subject to a thousand errors. Now the free-will question is emphatically one of^glaw^g , and can be determined only by deep philosophizing, not by a brief appeal to the fancies of an individual concerning himself. A man’s consciousness can no more inform him what laws his volitions secretly obey, than his senses, when he beholds falling bodies, furnish him with the corresponding information respecting the law of gravitation.

The work concludes with two chapters on special subjects, the one on Belief, the other on Consciousness; subjects discussed separately, and in the last stage of the exposition, in consequence of the peculiar view taken of them by Mr. Bain, which differs from that of all previous metaphysicians.

Belief is, of all the phenomena usually classed as intellectual, that which the Association psychologists have hitherto been the least successful in analysing; though it has given occasion to some able and highly instructive illustrations, by Mr. James Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the power of indissoluble association.^[†] But the opinion which these authors have advanced, that belief is nothing but an indissoluble association between two ideas, seems an inadequate solution of the problem; because, in the first place, if the fact were so, belief itself must always be indissoluble; which, evidently, it is not; and, in the second place, one does not see what, on this theory, is the difference between believing the affirmative and the negative of a proposition, since in either case (if the theory be true), the idea expressed by the subject of the proposition must inseparably and irresistibly recall the idea expressed by the predicate. The doctrine of these philosophers would have been irrefragable, had they limited it to affirming that an indissoluble association (or let us rather say, an association for the present irresistible), usually commands belief; that when such an association exists between two ideas, the mind, especially if destitute of scientific culture, has great difficulty in not believing that there is a constancy of connexion between the corresponding phenomena, considered as facts in nature. But, even in the strongest cases of this description, a mind exercised in abstract speculation can reject the belief, though unable to get over the association. A Berkeleian, for example, does not believe in the real existence of matter, though the idea is excited in his mind by his muscular sensations as irresistibly as in other people.

Mr. Bain’s opinion is, that the difficulty experienced by the Association psychologists in giving an account of Belief, and the insufficient analysis with which they have contented themselves, arise from their looking at Belief too exclusively as an intellectual phenomenon, and disregarding the existence in it of an active element. His doctrine is, that Belief has no meaning, except in reference to our actions; that the distinctive characteristic of Belief is that it commands our will.

No one will dispute that “the genuineness of the state of belief is tested by the control of the actions” (pp. 570-1). If we really believe a statement, we are willing to commit ourselves in conduct, on the prospect of finding the result accord with our belief. And there is no doubt that it is this command over the actions, which gives all its importance to that particular state of mind, and leads to its being named and classed separately. Yet the question remains, what is that state of mind? The action which follows is not the belief itself, but a consequence of the belief. Where there is an effect to be accounted for, there must be something in the cause to account for it. Since the willingness to commit ourselves in conduct occurs in some cases, and does not occur in others, there must be some difference between the former set of cases and the latter, as regards the antecedent phenomena. What is this difference? According to Mr. Bain, it does not lie in the strength of the tie of association between the ideas of the facts conceived.

So that, after all, Mr. Bain regards belief as a case of “intuitive tendency;” but not a case sui generis. He considers it as included under the general law of Volition. The spontaneous activity of the brain, combined with the original property inherent in a painful or pleasurable stimulus, makes us seize and detain all muscular actions which of themselves, and directly, bring pleasure or relief; those actions, in consequence, become, through the law of association, producible by means of our ideas of pleasure or pain; and it is, in the author’s view, by an extension of the same general phenomenon, that actions which only remotely, and after a certain delay, attain our ends, come similarly under the command of our ideas of those ends. When this command is established, then, according to him, the phenomenon, Belief, has taken place; namely, belief in the efficacy of the action to promote the end. This is our author’s theory of Belief. An obvious objection to it is, that we entertain beliefs respecting matters in regard to which we have no wishes, and which have no connexion with any of our ends. But to this Mr. Bain answers (and his answer is just), that in such cases there is always a latent imagination that we might have some object at stake on the reality of the fact we believe, and a feeling that if we had, we should go forward confidently in the pursuit of any such object. We quote the following passage for the practical lesson conveyed in it:

It is assuredly a strange anomaly, that so many authors, after having applied the whole force of their intellects to prove the existence in the human mind of intellectual or moral instincts, proceed, without any argument at all, to legitimate and consecrate everything which those instincts prompt, as if an instinct never could go astray; a consecration not usually extended to our physical instincts, though even there we often notice a certain tendency in the same direction, not sufficient to persuade when there is no predisposition to believe, but amounting to a considerable makeweight to weak arguments on the side of an existing prepossession. This grave philosophical, leading to still graver practical error, is always (as in the passage quoted) duly rebuked by the author. As a portion, however, of the theory of Belief, we desiderate a more complete analysis of the psychological process by which ulterior experience, or a more correct interpretation of experience, modifies the original tendency so powerfully described by the author, and subdues belief into subordination and due proportion to evidence.

It only remains to speak of Mr. Bain’s theory of Consciousness, which is the subject of his final chapter. He regards it as being simply the same thing with discrimination of difference. Consciousness is only awakened by the shock of the transition from one physical or mental state to another. Hobbes had remarked, that if any one mode of sensation or feeling were always present, we should probably be unconscious of its existence.^[*]

We perceive (in short) or are conscious of, nothing but changes, or events. Consciousness partakes always of the nature of surprise.

Following out this line of thought, Mr. Bain regards knowledge as virtually synonymous with consciousness, and points out that we never have knowledge of one thing by itself. Knowing a thing, means recognising the differences or agreements between that thing and another or others.

Such is a brief account of a remarkable book; which, once known and read by those who are competent judges of it, is sure to take its place in the very first rank of the order of philosophical speculation to which it belongs. Of the execution, a very insufficient judgment can be formed from our extracts. The book is, indeed, a most difficult one to extract from; for as scarcely any treatise which we know proceeds so much by the way of cumulative proof and illustration, any extract of moderate dimensions is much the same sort of specimen as, we will not say a single stone, but a single row of stones, might be of a completed edifice. We hope that we may have assisted in directing the attention of those who are interested in the subject, to the structure itself; assuring those who belong to the opposite party in philosophical speculation, that so massive a pile, so rich in the quantity and quality of its materials, even if they are not disposed to take up their abode in it, cannot be used even as a quarry without abundant profit.

GROTE’S PLATO

1866

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, III (1867), 275-379, where the title, “Plato,” is footnoted: “Edinburgh Review, April, 1866.” Reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, CXXIII (April, 1866), 297-364, where the article (unsigned) is headed: “Art. I.—Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates. By George Grote, F.R.S., &c. 8vo. 3 vols. London: [Murray,] 1865”; the running heads are “Grote’s Plato.” Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A review of Grote’s ‘Plato and the other Companions of Socrates’ in the Edinburgh Review for April 1866” (MacMinn, 97). An unsigned offprint of the article in the Somerville College Library, paged 1-68, is titled “Plato / and the other / Companions of Socrates. / By / George Grote, F.R.S., &c.”; JSM has added under the title in ink “(Edinburgh Review, 1866)”—his habitual indication when an article was to be reprinted; there are no alterations or corrections in the offprint.

In the footnoted variants, “66” indicates Edinburgh Review, “67” indicates D&D, III, 1st ed. (the copy-text). For an account of the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, xxxvii-xli and xc-xci above.

Grote’s Plato

the readers of Mr. Grote’s History of Greece were not likely to forget the hope held out in its concluding volume,^[*] that he who had so well interpreted the political life of Hellas would delineate and judge that great outburst of speculative thought, by which, as much as by her freedom, Greece has been to the world what Athens according to Pericles was to Greece, a course of education.^[†] It might have been safely predicted, that the same conscientious research, the same skilful discrimination of authenticated fact from traditional misapprehension or uncertified conjecture, and the same rare power of realizing different intellectual and moral points of view, which were conspicuous in the History, and nowhere more than in the memorable chapters on the Sophists and on Sokrates, would find congenial occupation in tracing out the genuine lineaments of Plato, Aristotle, and their compeers. But the present work does more than merely keep the promise of Mr. Grote’s previous achievements—it reveals new powers: had it not been written the world at large might never have known, except on trust, the whole range of his capacities and endowments. Though intellects exercised in the higher philosophy might well perceive that such a book as the History of Greece could not have been produced but by a mind similarly disciplined, the instruction which lay on the surface of that great work was chiefly civic and political; while the speculations of the Grecian philosophers, and emphatically of Plato, range over the whole domain of human thought and curiosity, from etymology up to cosmogony, and from the discipline of the music-school and the gymnasium to the most vast problems of metaphysics and ontology. Many even of Mr. Grote’s admirers may not have been prepared to find, that he would be as much at home in the most abstract metaphysical speculations as among the concrete realities of political institutions—would move through the one region with the same easy mastery as through the other—and would bring before us, along with the clearest and fullest explanation of ancient thought, mature and well-weighed opinions of his own, manifesting a command of the entire field of speculative philosophy which places him in the small number of the eminent psychologists and metaphysicians of the age.

The work of which we now give an account, though complete in itself, brings down the history of Greek philosophy only to Plato and his generation; but a continuation is promised, embracing at least the generation of Aristotle; which, by the analogy of the concluding chapters of the present work, may be construed as implying an estimate of the Stoics and Epicureans. If to this were added a summary of what is known to us concerning the Pythagorean revival and the later Academy, no portion of purely Greek thought would remain untreated of; for Neoplatonism, an aftergrowth of late date and little intrinsic value, was a hybrid product of Greek and Oriental speculation, and its place in history is by the side of Gnosticism. What contact it has with the Greek mind is with that mind in its decadence; as the little in Plato which is allied to it belongs chiefly to the decadence of Plato’s own mind. We are quite reconciled to the exclusion from Mr. Grote’s plan, of this tedious and unsatisfactory chapter in the history of human intellect. But such an exposition as he is capable of giving of Aristotle, will be hardly inferior in value to that of Plato. The latter, however, was the most needed; for Plato presents greater difficulties than Aristotle to the modern mind; more of our knowledge of the master, than of the pupil, is only apparent, and requires to be unlearnt; and much more use has been made of what the later philosopher can teach us, than of the earlier.

Though the writings of Plato supply the principal material of Mr. Grote’s three volumes, the portion of them which does not relate directly to Plato is of great interest and value. The first two chapters contain as full an account as our information admits, of the forms of Greek philosophy which preceded Sokrates; and the two which conclude the work recount the little which is known (except in the case of Xenophon it is very little) of the other “Socratici viri”^[*] and their speculations: the Megaric school, commencing with Eukleides, the Cynic, with Antisthenes, the Cyrenaic or Hedonistic, with Aristippus. All these were personal companions of Sokrates, and their various and conflicting streams of thought did not flow out of a primitive intellectual fountain opened by him, but issued from the rock in different places at the touch of his magical wand; for it was his profession and practice to make others think, not to think for them. Concerning Sokrates himself, though in one sense nearly the whole book relates to him, there is no express notice in these volumes, the narrative and estimate which we read in the History of Greece being sufficient.^[†]

Some knowledge of the earlier Hellenic thinkers is necessary to a full understanding of Plato. Unfortunately the materials are defective, and almost wholly second-hand, a few fragments only of the original authors having been preserved by the citations of later writers. We are in possession, however, of what were regarded by their successors as the fundamental doctrines of each; but there is some difficulty in knowing what to make of them. These first gropings of the speculative intellect have so little in common with modern scientific habits, that the modern mind does not easily accommodate itself to them. The physical theories seem so absurd, and the metaphysical ones so unintelligible, that there needs some stress of thought to enable us to perceive how eminently natural they were. Multiplied failures have taught us the unwelcome lesson, that man can only arrive at an understanding of nature by a very circuitous route; that the great questions are not accessible directly, but through a multitude of smaller ones, which in the first ardour of their investigations men overlooked and despised—though they are the only questions sufficiently simple and near at hand, to disclose the real laws and processes of nature, with which as keys we are afterwards enabled to unlock such of her greater mysteries as are really within our reach. This process, which human impatience was late in thinking of, and slow in learning to endure, is an eminently artificial one; and the mind which has been trained to it has become, happily for mankind, so highly artificialized, that it has forgotten its own natural mode of procedure. The natural man, in the words of Bacon’s emphatic condemnation, naturam rei in ipsa re perscrutatur.^[*] He neither can nor will lay a regular siege to his object, approach it by a series of intermediate positions, and possess himself first of the outworks; he will make but one leap into the citadel: and since, to his freshly awakened curiosity, no inquiry seems worth pursuing which promises less than an explanation of the entire universe, he makes a plausible guess which explains or seems to explain a few obvious facts, and stretches or twists this into a theory of the whole. Such theories were thrown up in considerable number and variety by the early Hellenic mind. Mr. Grote has recounted what is known of them, and by the application of a clear philosophic intellect to the results of his own and of German erudition, has made out as much of their meaning as any one can well hope to do. To render that meaning intelligible without a considerable effort of thought, exceeds even his powers; for the terms which embody it have no exact equivalents in modern language, which, having fitted itself to more definite conceptions of the problems, and to a certain number of ascertained solutions, has got rid of many of the vaguenesses and ambiguities to which the early conjectural solutions were principally indebted for such plausibility as they possessed.

These early theories, as we said, may be distinguished into physical and metaphysical, though the physical hypotheses could not always dispense with metaphysical aid, and the metaphysical ones were employed to account for physical phenomena. In the physical, some one or more substances familiar to experience were assumed as the element or elements which, variously transformed, are the material of the entire universe; and all the phenomena of nature were supposed to be produced by the powers, properties, or essences of these elements, or by hidden forces residing in them. Thales ascribed this cosmic universality to water, Anaximenes to air: we must remember that the ancients called many things water and air which are not so styled in modern physics. Empedokles explained all things by the mixture and mutual action of earth, water, air, and fire. These material substances were usually supposed to require the concurrence of certain abstract entities called Wet and Dry, Cold and Hot, Soft and Hard, Heavy and Light, &c., which were the immediate if not ultimate agents in the generation of phenomena.^* It would be a mistake were we to imagine that these and similar hypotheses were really absurd, until proved so by the subsequent course of inductive investigation. A more artful examination of nature has since shown that the supposed elements are not real elements but compounds, and that the generalized properties, which were mistaken for causative agencies, are the products of incorrect generalization and abstraction—notiones temerè à rebus abstractæ.^[*] But this was not, and could not be, known at the time when the hypotheses were framed. In the meanwhile, they served as first steps in that comparison of phenomena in respect of their likenesses and differences, which is the preparation for the discovery of their laws; and the process of applying the hypotheses to the explanation of facts other than those which had suggested them, was continually bringing into view fresh points of likeness and difference, and laying the foundation for less imperfect hypotheses. The metaphysical theories, on the other hand, which grounded their conception of the universe not on physical agencies, but on the largest and vaguest abstractions—the One, the Same, the Different, that which Is, that which Becomes—seem, to us, not so much erroneous as unmeaning: we find it difficult to conceive what can have been in the thoughts of men who could offer matter like this as an explanation of anything. By we, must be understood the physicists, the experimentalists, the Baconians; since the German Transcendentalists find much more signification in these than in the physical hypotheses. For, indeed, their Ontology is essentially a return to this first stage of human speculation—a reproduction of the same methods, the same questions, and to a great degree the same answers, sometimes under a superficial varnish of modern inductive philosophy. Hegel moves among the same vague abstractions as the earliest tyros in metaphysical thought; his dialectics recall the Parmenides of Plato’s dialogue, while his substantive doctrines are in great part a reproduction of Herakleitus. If we turn back to Anaximander, the earliest known speculative philosopher after his townsman Thales, we find already the fundamental notions of Transcendentalism.

We have here the fundamental antithesis of the Transcendentalists, Matter and Form; while the conception of an abstract Body, devoid of properties, but with a potentiality of evolving them from itself by an indwelling force, is the transcendental Noumenon, as contrasted with Phænomenon. Again, the Ens of Parmenides, Being in General, “which is always, and cannot properly be called either past or future,” which is not “really generated or destroyed, but only in appearence to us, or relatively to our apprehension,” which “is essentially One, and cannot be divided,”^† what is it (as Mr. Grote remarks)^‡ but the Absolute of the modern Ontologists? a little in advance of them however, for the Eleatic philosopher left to his Absolute one quality cognisable by man, that of Extension, but the Transcendentalists refuse it even that, and yet maintain (some of them at least) that it is knowable. Even the almost Asiatic mysticism of Pythagoras respecting Number, has, as Mr. Grote points out,^§ its exact equivalent in German nineteenth-century philosophy. When numbers, mere abstract properties of things, are mistaken for actual things, they are soon supposed to exert powers, and have as good a chance as anything else of finding a philosopher to instal them as the ruling power of the universe.

Both these veins of speculation—the physical and the metaphysical—were temporarily thrown into the shade by the new turn given to the philosophic mind by Sokrates: but for a short time only; for the ambitious striving for a theory of the universe reappears in its most metaphysical form in the later productions of his greatest disciple, Plato. The originality of Sokrates, which was of the highest order, consisted chiefly in his method. Yet his principal instrument had been in part prepared for him by the pupil of Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, “who stands announced on the authority of Aristotle as the inventor of dialectic; that is, as the first person, of whose skill in the art of cross-examination and refutation conspicuous illustrative specimens were preserved.”^* The speciality of Zeno consisted in bringing prominently forward the difficulties and objections to which a theory was liable: not in the modern manner, by producing facts inconsistent with it, but rather by tracing its consequences, and reducing it to a logical contradiction; a mode of arguing which he more particularly employed against those who opposed his master’s doctrine of the Absolute and Indivisible One, and maintained with Herakleitus that the universe is not One but Many. The celebrated paradoxes by which Zeno is best known, his arguments against the reality of Motion, Mr. Grote^† considers neither as sceptical fallacies nor logical puzzles, but as bonâ fide arguments, not intended to disprove motion as a phenomenal fact, but to assert its relative character, as a state of our own consciousness—incapable of being, in any true and consistent meaning, predicated of the Ens Unum, or Absolute, which the Parmenidean doctrine regarded as immoveable. However this may be, these arguments were quite in keeping with the vocation of Zeno for what Mr. Grote happily terms the negative arm of philosophy^[*] —that which tests the truth of theories by the difficulties which they are bound to meet; and if he often mistook verbal difficulties for real, this was inevitable at first, and Plato frequently did the same.

It was reserved for Sokrates, and for Plato, who, whether as the interpreter or continuator of Sokrates, can never be severed from him, to exalt this negative arm of philosophy to a perfection never since surpassed, and to provide it with its greatest, most interesting, and most indispensable field of exercise, the generalities relating to life and conduct. These great men originated the thought, that, like every other part of the practice of life, morals and politics are an affair of science, to be understood only after severe study and special training; an indispensable part of which consists in acquiring the habit of considering, not merely what can be said in favour of a doctrine, but what can be said against it; of sifting opinions, and never accepting any until it has emerged victorious over every logical, still more than over every practical objection. These two principles—the necessity of a scientific basis and method for ethics and politics, and of rigorous negative dialectics as a part of that method, are the greatest of the many lessons to be learnt from Plato; and it is because the modern mind has in a great measure laid both these lessons, especially the latter of them, aside, that we regard the Platonic writings as among the most precious of the intellectual treasures bequeathed to us by antiquity. Mr. Grote is of the same opinion, and has rendered, by the work before us, an inappreciable service, in facilitating the study to those who can read the original, and making the results accessible to those who cannot.

He first relates the biography of Plato, as far as it can be constructed from the extant authorities. He then treats of the Platonic Canon; and after a comparison and ponderation of evidence, equal in merit to any in his History, accepts as works of Plato the entire list recognised by the Alexandrian critics, and admitted by all scholars until for the first time disputed by German editors and commentators in the present century. A chapter is next devoted to a general view of the Platonic writings; and the remainder of the work (except the final chapters on the minor Sokratics), consists of a minute analysis and compte rendu of each dialogue separately. In this analysis are comprehended the following elements, which are far from being kept as separate in fact as we must keep them in description. First, a complete abstract of the dialogue, omitting no idea, and no important development. Attention is next drawn to the light which the dialogue throws on Plato’s doctrine or method, and the bearing which it has upon the author’s general conception of Plato and his writings. Lastly, the thoughts on which the particular dialogue turns, or which are struck out in the course of it, are disentangled from the context, and critically examined, sometimes at considerable length, both from Plato’s point of view and from the author’s; and when the verdict is adverse, we are shown the author’s own view of the same questions, and its justification. The book is thus a perfect treasury of instructive discussions on the most important questions of philosophy, speculative and practical; while at the same time it is a quite complete account of Plato. Plato himself, not anybody’s interpretation of him, is brought before us. Nothing needs be taken on trust, except the fidelity of the abstract, which is perfect. We lose, of course, Plato’s dramatic power, his refined comedy, and the magic of his style, the reproduction of which (could any one hope to succeed in it) would be the work, not of an expositor, but of a translator. But the thoughts are there, exactly as they are, and exactly where they are, in the Platonic writings. The account of each dialogue is thus a kind of complete work in itself—a plan necessarily involving much repetition, as the same idea or Platonic peculiarity, being manifested in several dialogues, gives fresh occasion for the same line of remark. These repetitions have been censured by some critics from a literary point of view, as signs of want of skill in composition;^[*] but this is to mistake the author’s purpose. He does not lay himself open to the reproach from carelessness or awkwardness; he altogether disregards and defies it. What would be imperfections in a picture of Plato addressed to the imagination, are merits in what is meant to be an aid or substitute for the study of the philosopher in detail. Mr. Grote intended the reader to judge of Plato for himself—to find in each chapter what he would have found in the corresponding dialogue, together with all that is necessary for understanding it and estimating its value. His own opinions on Plato and the Platonic topics turn up often, because every dialogue contains fresh evidence bearing on them. The alternative was indeed open to him of using references instead of repetitions; and had he cared more for his literary reputation, and less for his subject, he would have adopted it. But those who read for instruction will generally prefer that the things they need to be reminded of should be told over again in a form and language adapted to the special occasion, rather than be compelled to search for them in another chapter, where they are exhibited in a quite different framework of circumstances. Even in an artistic point of view, it is too narrow a conception of art, to exclude that which produces its effect by an accumulation of small touches. Besides, many of Mr. Grote’s views being contrary to received opinion, he was bound to give some idea of the mass of evidence on which they rest. Those who find it tiresome to have this evidence noted en passant where it occurs, would have far more reason to complain if it had been culled out and laid in a single heap, in which case we may surmise that few of them would have taken the trouble even to look at it.

In truth, there are few, if any, ancient authors concerning whose mind and purpose so many demonstrably false opinions are current, as concerning Plato; and there is probably no writer, of merit comparable to his, and of whom so many writings survive, who leaves us in so much real uncertainty respecting his opinions. His works—except a few letters, which (allowing them, with Mr. Grote, to be authentic) were written late in life, and have mostly a biographic rather than a philosophical interest—are exclusively in the form of dialogue; and he himself is never one of the interlocutors. Not one of the opinions contained in them is presented as his own, nor in any connexion with himself. There certainly is, in almost every dialogue, one principal speaker, who either as confuter or instructor carries off the honours of the discussion. But this chief speaker, in the great majority of cases, is not a fictitious or unknown person, who could only be looked on as the author’s own spokesman, but a philosopher with a well-marked intellectual individuality of his own, and regarded by Plato himself with the deepest reverence. The question arises, how far the opinions put into the mouth of Sokrates are those of the real Sokrates, or of Plato speaking in his name? and if the former, whether Plato desired to be considered as adopting them? But, again, Sokrates, though generally the leading speaker, is not always so. In one dialogue, the Parmenides, he takes part in the discussion, but only to be powerfully confuted by that veteran philosopher. In the Sophistes and the Politikos he is a mere listener, while the place usually filled by him is occupied by a nameless stranger from Elea; though these two dialogues are an avowed continuation of the Theætetus, in which Sokrates takes the leading part. In Timæus and Kritias, the persons bearing those names are the teachers, and Sokrates an approving and admiring hearer. In the Leges and Epinomis he does not appear at all. Some reason there must have been for these diversities, but it neither shows itself in the dialogues, nor is known by external evidence. All this would have been of little consequence, if the dialogues had exhibited a consistent system of opinions, always adhered to and always coming out victorious. But so far is this from being the case, that the result of a large proportion of them is merely negative, many opinions in succession being tried and rejected, and the question finally left unsolved. When an opinion does seem to prevail, it almost always happens that in some other dialogue that same opinion is either refuted, or shown to involve difficulties which, though frequently passed over, are never resolved. Some of the ancient critics were hence led to suspect that Plato had, as his master professed to have, no positive opinions; a supposition for which plausible arguments might be drawn from many of the dialogues, but which is quite inconsistent with the spirit of others. Besides, a philosopher who for nearly forty years lectured in open school to numerous audiences, must have had something positive to teach them: mere negation and confutation raise up imitators, but not disciples.

To these various puzzles the German editors and critics add another—namely, which of the writings ascribed to Plato are really his own. They relieve their author from the responsibility of contradictory opinions, by rejecting many dialogues as spurious, on account of something in them that is inconsistent with what is said in some other dialogue, or with what the critic is of opinion that Plato must have thought, or on the mere ground of inferior merit as a composition; for of Plato alone among writers or artists it seems to be imagined that he cannot have produced any work not equal to his finest. Mr. Grote gains a triumphant victory over these critics, by exhibiting the overwhelming strength of the external testimony; showing that the rejections grounded on internal evidence proceed on an ideal of Plato which is a mere imagination of the critic; and pointing out that what are deemed evidences of unauthenticity in the rejected dialogues, are equally found in those which no one rejects, or could reject, since they are the type itself, which the others are thrown out for not conforming to. If we could add to our knowledge of what Plato’s writings were, any authentic information respecting the order in which they were written, their inconsistencies might be found to correspond with successive stages of the progress of his own mind. But we have nothing on this subject save conjectures, each founded on an antecedent theory of the very matter which it is intended to clear up. The imperfect publicity which ancient writings obtained at their first appearance, consisting chiefly in being read aloud by the author, or by some one whom he had allowed to take a copy, makes it impossible to fix the chronological succession of a writer’s works, when they are at all numerous. Several dialogues, by their allusions to historical events, give indication of a date to which it is supposed that they must have been subsequent; but even this supposition is uncertain, since, as we are informed by Dionysius,^[*] Plato retouched and corrected his writings up to the latest period of his life. When a dialogue professes to be a continuation of another dialogue, it was probably, though not certainly, the latest composed of the two. There is a presumption that the dialogues of mere search preceded those which expound and enforce some definite doctrine; though, as one of the best German critics of Plato remarks,^* this must be taken with a limitation, since he may have continued to produce dialogues of search after those of exposition began. Finally, direct testimony combines with internal probability in placing the Leges after the Republic, and near the end of Plato’s career. This is nearly all the help which the works themselves give towards ascertaining the order of their composition; but we have a precious though limited item of information from Aristotle, respecting some metaphysical doctrines taught by Plato in his latest lectures, varying considerably from those we read in any of the dialogues, but towards which the line of thought in several of them seems to be leading up.^[†] We may, therefore, place those particular dialogues among the last of his compositions, and in the order of their approach to what we are told of his final teachings. This indication, agreeing with other internal evidence, gives the following as the latest terms of the series:—Republic, Timæus (with its unfinished appendage Kritias), Leges, with its supplement the Epinomis—the first probably separated by a considerable interval of time from the two last; and the Philebus, which we believe to be later than the Republic, probably coming in at some intermediate point.

Such being the paucity of direct evidence of Plato’s opinions and purposes, there was no check to the latitude which readers and admirers might give themselves in deducing theories from the general tone of his writings. Much, no doubt, may be thence inferred, but it requires more than a knowledge of Plato to distinguish what. Great men and great writers outlive the ideas and most of the monuments of their time, and descend to posterity disjoined from the element in which they lived, and by which their thoughts ought to be interpreted. This is especially the case with great reformers. How continually we should misunderstand the deliverances of Luther, of Fichte, of Bentham, of Voltaire, of Rousseau, Fourier, Owen—may we add of Carlyle? if we knew nothing of their age, and of the men and things they attacked, but what they themselves tell us. Men who are in open quarrel with the whole body of their contemporaries, do not make the discriminations which posterity is bound to make; and their sweeping denunciations do not imply, from them, what such statements would mean from persons perhaps greatly their inferiors, but not standing so far off from the rest of the world as to efface all differences of distance. This caution has been disregarded and ignored in Plato’s case; yet none of the great thinkers and writers who have come down to us require it more. When Plato says hard things of his countrymen, or of any class or profession among them, he is judging them by their divergence from his own standard, which was, no doubt, in many respects superior to theirs (though by no means so in all respects), but which he himself proclaimed to be a new and original one, and which certainly differed as widely from the modern European or English standard as from the Athenian. But the denunciations which he levels at them from his own point of view, are almost always interpreted as from ours, and we fancy that their conduct and feelings, if known to us in detail, would appear to us as blameable and contemptible as Plato deemed them; whereas we should find them, with a few superficial differences, very like our own; and it is most certain that Plato, if he returned to life, would be to the full as contemptuous of our statesmen, lawyers, clergy, professors, authors, and all others among us who lay claim to mental superiority, as he ever was of the corresponding classes at Athens; while they, on their part, would regard him very much as they regard other freethinkers, socialists, and visionary reformers of the world.

The opinion which commonly prevails about Plato is something like the following. The Athenians, and the other Greeks, had become deeply demoralized by a set of impostors called Sophists—pretenders to universal knowledge, and adepts at disconcerting simple minds by entangling them in a mesh of words—who corrupted young men of fortune, by denying moral distinctions, and teaching the art of misleading a popular assembly. The lives and intellectual activity of Sokrates and Plato had for their chief object to counteract the doctrines and influence of these men. They devoted themselves to vindicating the cause of virtue against immoral subtleties; but they came too late; the evil was too far advanced for cure, and the ruin of Greece was ultimately the consequence of the corruption engendered by the Sophists. In Philosophy proper, the speculations of Plato are supposed to have been guided by a similar purpose. He was the founder and chief of the Idealist or Spiritualist school, against the Materialistic or Sensational, which under the auspices of the Sophists, is asserted to have been generally prevalent; and was the champion of the intuitive or à priori character of moral truth, against what is regarded, by most of the Platonic critics, as the low and degrading doctrine of Utility.

Readers of Mr. Grote’s History are acquainted with the strong case which is there made out against this common theory.^[*] Mr. Grote disbelieves the alleged moral corruption as a fact; and denies positively that the Sophists were the cause of it, or that the persons so called had any doctrines in common, much less the immoral ones imputed to them. He affirms that there is no evidence that any one of them taught the opinions alleged, and full proof that some taught the reverse: That the Sophists were not a sect, but the general body of teachers by profession, and, as is everywhere the case with professional teachers as a class, the moral and prudential opinions they taught were the common and orthodox ones of their country: That Plato’s quarrel was precisely with those common opinions, and his antagonism to the Sophists a mere consequence of this; and his testimony, were it far stronger than it is, has no value against them, unless we are willing to extend our condemnation, as he did, to the ways of mankind in general. These views of Mr. Grote, which we are satisfied are true to the letter, receive continual confirmation from his survey of the Platonic writings; and we think it possible even to strengthen his argument, by showing that the case presented against the Sophists on Plato’s authority, is contradicted by Plato’s own representation of them.

First, who were the Sophists? In the more lax use of the word, it was a name for speculative men in general. All the early philosophers whose theories are presented in Mr. Grote’s first two chapters, were^acalled^a Sophists in ordinary parlance; especially when, as was probably the case with all of them, they taught orally, and took money for their teaching. M. Boeckh says of one of Plato’s cotemporaries, the famous mathematician Eudoxus, “he lived as a Sophist, which means, he taught and gave lectures.”^* Against these men, as a body, no accusation is brought, nor had Plato any hostility to them. But the Sophists, emphatically so called, were those who speculated on human, as distinguished from cosmic, questions; who made profession of civil wisdom, and undertook to instruct men in the knowledge which qualifies for social or political life. As one whose whole time was passed in discussing these topics, Sokrates was counted among Sophists, both during his life and after his death. Æschines, in the oration against Timarchus, gives him that title.^[*] Isokrates, himself called a Sophist in an oration of Demosthenes,^† alludes distinctly to Plato as being one.^‡ A Sophist named Mikkus is introduced in the Platonic Lysis as a companion and eulogist (ἐπαινέτης) of Sokrates. But the most conspicuous Sophists cotemporary with Sokrates, the supposed chiefs of the immoral and corrupting teachers against whom he is said to have warred, were Protagoras, Prodikus, and Hippias. They are all three introduced into the great and many-sided Platonic composition called Protagoras, and are often referred to by name in other dialogues, Hippias even having two to himself.^[†] Now, while there is an undisguised purpose on Plato’s part to lower the reputation of these men, and convict them of not understanding what they professed to teach, not a thought or a sentiment is ascribed to them of any immoral tendency, while they often appear in the character of serious and impressive exhorters to virtue.

With regard to Protagoras in particular, the discourse which he is made to deliver on the moral virtues is justly considered by Mr. Grote as “one of the best parts of the Platonic writings.”^§ It springs out of a doubt raised, seriously or ironically, by Sokrates, whether virtue is teachable, on the ground that there are no recognised teachers of it, as there are of other things. Protagoras admits the fact, and says that the reason why there are no express teachers of virtue is that all mankind teach it. Artistic or professional skill in any special department needs only be possessed by a few, for the benefit of the rest; but social and civic virtue, consisting in justice and self-restraint, is indispensable in every one; and as the welfare of each imperatively requires this virtue in others, every one inculcates it on all. A highly philosophical as well as eloquent exposition follows,

This common standard of virtue Protagoras fully accepts. He takes it “for granted that justice, virtue, good, evil, &c., are known, indisputable, determinate data, fully understood and unanimously interpreted.”^‡ He pretends not to set right the general opinion, but “teaches in his eloquent expositions and interpretations the same morality, public and private, that every one else teaches; while he can perform the work of teaching somewhat more effectively than they:”^§ and “what he pretends to do, beyond the general public, he really can do.”^¶ Sokrates (or Plato under his name) not accepting this common standard, and not considering justice, virtue, good, and evil, as things understood, but as things whose essence, and the proper meaning of the words, remain to be found out, of course contests the point with Protagoras; and bringing to bear on him the whole power of the Sokratic cross-examination, convicts him of being unable to give any definition or theory of these things; an incapacity which, in Platonic speech, goes by the name of not knowing what they are. The inability of Protagoras to discuss, and of his opinions to resist logical scrutiny, is driven home against the Sophist with great force. But it is remarkable that Protagoras, in answering the questions of Sokrates, whenever required to choose between two opinions, one of which is really or apparently the more moral or elevating, not only chooses the loftier doctrine, but declares that no other choice would be agreeable to his past life, to which he repeatedly appeals as not permitting him to concede anything that would lower the claims or dignity of virtue; thus proving (as far as anything put into his mouth by Plato can prove it), not only that he had never taught other than virtuous doctrines, but that he had an established reputation both for virtuous teaching, and for an exemplary and dignified life. Finally, it is Sokrates who, in this dialogue, maintains the “degrading” doctrine of Utilitarianism—at least the part most odious to its impugners, the doctrine of Hedonism, that Pleasure and the absence of Pain are the ends of morality; in opposition to Protagoras, to whom that opinion is repugnant; a reversal of the parts assigned to the two teachers by the German commentators, very embarrassing to some of them, who, rather than impute to Plato so “low” a doctrine, resort to the absurd supposition that one of the finest specimens of analysis in all his writings is ironical, intended to ridicule a Sophist who is not even represented as agreeing with it. Let us add, that though at first sore under his confutation by Sokrates, Protagoras parts with him on excellent terms, and predicts for him, at the conclusion of the dialogue, great eminence in wisdom.

Prodikus of Keios has no dialogue devoted to himself, nor is Sokrates ever introduced as confuting him. Except a few touches of good-humoured ridicule on his subtle verbal distinctions, chiefly found in the Protagoras, and probably intended not so much for disparagement as to heighten the dramatic interest of that eminently dramatic dialogue; and except that he comes in for his share of the raillery kept up against the Sophists generally about the money they took from their pupils, Prodikus is treated by Plato with marked respect. Sokrates not only confesses intellectual obligations to him, but speaks of him more than once, at least semi-seriously, as his teacher; and is made to say in the Theætetus,^* that in conversing with young men, he is apt at discerning those to whom he can be of no use, and judging by whom they will be benefited, and that he has handed over many to Prodikus—a sure proof that in Plato’s opinion Prodikus was not only no corrupter of youth, but improving to them. As a matter of fact, we know that Prodikus was the author of the celebrated mythe or apologue called “The Choice of Hercules,” one of the most impressive exhortations in ancient literature to a life of labour and self-denial in preference to one of ease and pleasure. The substance of this composition is preserved by Xenophon, who, in his Memorabilia, introduces Sokrates repeating it to Aristippus, and declaring that it was a favourite lecture of Prodikus, one of those which he oftenest delivered;^* and it bears a nearer resemblance than anything in Plato to the moral teachings ascribed by Xenophon to the real Sokrates. Prodikus, therefore, is out of the question in any charge against the Sophists of immoral teaching or influence.

Hippias, a man conspicuous among his cotemporaries for the rare variety of his accomplishments, is treated by Plato more disrespectfully. The two dialogues called by his name not only exhibit him as (like Protagoras) unable to cope with Sokrates in close discussion, or give a philosophic theory of the subjects on which he was accustomed to discourse, but load him with ridicule, of a less refined character than usual with Plato, for his naïf vanity and self-confidence. It is possible that the real Hippias may have been open to ridicule on this account; but from any vestige of immoral or corrupt teaching the Hippias of Plato is as clear as his Protagoras and his Prodikus. In the Second Hippias, that Sophist is introduced as having just finished delivering, with great applause, an encomium on the character of Achilles in the Iliad, as contrasted with Ulysses in the Odyssey, asserting the great moral superiority of the former. Now, even the better Greeks did not usually give so marked a preference to the direct, frank, and outspoken type of character, over one which aimed at good objects by skilful craft and dissimulation; so that Hippias stands represented by Plato as one whose moral standard, so far as it differed from the common one, was exceptionally high and noble—as that of Sophokles is shown to have been by the character of Neoptolemus, contrasted with that of Ulysses in the Philoktetes.^[*] The Sophist maintains this high estimate of veracity and sincerity throughout the dialogue; while the only ethical doctrine which is malè sonans is assigned to Sokrates himself, who, by a series of arguments which Hippias is totally unable to refute, contends that one who speaks falsehood knowingly is less bad than one who speaks it unknowingly, and (as a general thesis) that “those who hurt mankind, or cheat, or lie, or do wrong wilfully, are better than those who do the same unwillingly.”^† Mr. Grote may well say that

It is obvious what advantage Melêtus and Anytus might have derived from this thesis of Sokrates, if they had brought it up against him before the Dikasts; though it is merely a paradoxical form which, as we know from Xenophon,^[*] the real Sokrates gave to one of his favourite opinions, adopted and strenuously maintained by Plato, that the root of all moral excellence is knowledge.

Except these three distinguished men, the only other Sophists, in the more limited sense, who are shown up by Plato, or brought by him into collision with Sokrates, are the two brothers in the Euthydemus; who are not represented as persons of any celebrity (though somebody of the name of Euthydemus is mentioned in the Kratylus in connexion with a philosophical paradox), but as old men who have passed their lives in teaching gymnastic and military exercises, together with rhetoric, and have only quite lately turned their attention to dialectics, or the art of discussion. We know nothing otherwise of these persons, who may have been entirely fictitious, and in any case the care taken to describe them as novices in their art precludes the supposition of their being intended as representative men. The purpose of the dialogue is obviously to rebut the accusation brought against Sokrates, and doubtless also against Plato, of being jugglers with words, and dealers in logical puzzles; which is done by exhibiting, on the one hand, a caricature of the most absurd logical juggling in the persons of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, and on the other, an illustrative specimen of Plato’s ideal of the genuinely Sokratic process—real Dialectic, contrasted with Eristic; the one merely embarrassing and humiliating an ingenuous student, by involving him through verbal ambiguities in obvious absurdities; the other, encouraging and stimulating him to vigorous exercise of his own mind in clearing his thoughts from confusion. Mr. Grote’s comments on this dialogue, as on most of the others, are singularly interesting and valuable. It suffices here to observe that the purpose of the Euthydemus is not to discredit anybody, but to repel the attacks made on dialectic, by exhibiting the good form of it in marked opposition to the bad.

There is thus absolutely nothing in Plato’s representation of particular Sophists that gives countenance to the reproaches usually cast upon them. There is, however, another class of teachers on whom he is more severe, and into whose mouth he does, though but in one instance, put immoral doctrines. These are the Rhetoricians, or teachers of oratory; a vocation sometimes combined with that of Sophist, but carefully distinguished from it by Plato, in that one of his works in which rhetoric is most depreciated. The types exhibited of the class are Gorgias, Polus, and Thrasymachus, all of whom Sokrates is introduced as triumphantly confuting. As there is thus something more of foundation for the common interpretation of Plato’s attacks on the rhetoricians, than of those on the Sophists, it is worth showing how very little that something amounts to.

Rhetoric, being the art of persuasion, is necessarily open to the reproach that it may be used indifferently in behalf of wrong and right, and may avail to “make the worse appear the better reason.”^[*] But so far was it in Greece from being taught or recommended for this purpose by its popular teachers, that Gorgias, the most celebrated of them, in the dialogue bearing his name, and intended to lay rhetoric and the rhetoricians prostrate in the dust, is represented as emphatically deprecating such a use of it. After extolling, in magnificent terms, the value of his art, the general power it gives of attaining objects, and the ascendancy it confers in the State, he proceeds to say that, like all other powers, it should be used justly; and as gymnastic teachers are not blamed, or expelled from the city, if any one trained by them abuses the bodily strength he has acquired, by assaulting his parents or his friends, so the teachers of rhetoric are not in fault if their pupils make an unjust use of the valuable talent bestowed upon them; “for they (the teachers) bestowed it to be rightly used, against the enemies of the State and against evil-doers, not in aggression, but in defence.”^[†] Thus far Gorgias; who, even in this most polemic dialogue, is treated with considerable respect, and has his dignity saved by being withdrawn from the Sokratic cross-examination when the conflict begins to grow serious. We may fairly presume that his teaching was as far above all moral reproach as that of Isokrates, the most famous and successful Grecian rhetorical teacher whose works have come down to us—to whose earnest and impressive inculcation of the moral virtues it is sufficient to allude.

The dispute is taken up by Polus, another teacher of rhetoric, represented as a much younger and very petulant man, between whom and Sokrates there is a discussion of a very dramatic character, with much vehemence on one side, and sarcasm and irony on the other. Sokrates asserts that to do injustice is the greatest of evils—a far worse one than to be unjustly done by: while Polus maintains, on the contrary, that an unjust man who escapes punishment, and practises injustice on so great a scale as to achieve signal success—especially he who can make himself despot of his city—is supremely enviable. Now this, which seems to be evidence on the side of the common theory, is really a strong confirmation of Mr. Grote’s; for no reader of Plato can be unaware that what Polus here expresses (though disclaimed by the Platonic Protagoras as a vulgar prejudice)^* was the received opinion and established sentiment of the Grecian world. Polus appeals to it, and says—“Ask any of the persons present:” to which Sokrates answers—“Instead of refuting me by argument, you, like a pleader in a court of justice, overwhelm me with witnesses. No doubt all the testimony is on your side. If you ask Nicias” (the most morally respected citizen and politician of his time), “or Aristokrates, or the whole family of Pericles, or any family you think fit—in short, any Athenian or any foreigner, they will all assent; but I, one man, do not assent, and the only witness I will call is yourself; unless I can convince you that I am in the right, I shall consider myself to have done nothing.”^[*] Similar evidence of the universal opinion appears at every turn in the Platonic dialogues. Whether it is the ambitious and unprincipled Alcibiades, or the youthful and inquiring Theages, or the two grave and reverend elders from Crete and Lacedæmon who figure in the Leges, they all speak with the same voice: the usurping despot, and every one who is eminently successful in injustice, is a man to be envied—such a man (they usually add) as we, and all the world, and you yourself, Sokrates, if you could, would wish to be. Sokrates claims complete originality in the contrary opinion, that injustice is an evil, and the greatest that can befall any one—a doctrine which, through the teachings of Plato himself, of the Stoics, and of some of the forms of Christianity, has grown so familiar to us, that it has become a truism, and even a cant; and moderns are ready to conclude offhand that not to profess it implies a denial of moral obligation. But look at Polus himself in the dialogue. He is asked by Sokrates—“You think it a worse thing (κάκιον) to be injured than to injure. Do you also think it a baser, or more shameful thing (αἴσχιον)?” Polus acknowledges the reverse: and Sokrates goes on to prove (by a fallacious argument, however), that whatever is more αἰσχρόν must be more κακόν.^[†] Now this distinction of Polus is exactly that which the Greeks drew. Their opinion, that a wicked man would be happy if he could succeed in his wickedness, did not make them less abhor the bad man. He was to be restrained, punished, and, if need be, extirpated, not because his guilt was an evil to himself, but because it was an evil to others. He was looked upon as one who sought, and, if successful, obtained, good to himself by the damage and suffering of other people, and who was therefore not to be tolerated by them unless on compulsion. This is a different doctrine from the common one of modern moralists, but not an immoral doctrine; and even if it were, the Sophists and rhetoricians did not invent it, but found it universal. The speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus, in the Second Book of the Republic, set forth this view of the case. Both these speakers strenuously disapprove the unjust life, and are anxious to be convinced that it is a calamity to the evil-doer. But, according to them, all mankind, even those who most inculcate justice, inculcate it as self-sacrifice, describing the life of the just man as hard and difficult, that of the unjust as pleasant and easy. The very best of them represent justice as personally desirable only on account of the good reputation and social consideration which attend it, implying that one who could acquire the reputation and rewards of justice without the reality, would be supremely fortunate, possessing the prize without the sacrifices, while he who had the reality, but missed the rewards, would be utterly miserable. Any man would be unjust if he possessed the ring of Gyges, which rendered the wearer invisible at pleasure. With this memorable testimony as to what was the general belief, it is mere ignorance to throw the responsibility on the Sophists and rhetoricians. We may add that even Polus is so far from being put in an odious light, that his petulance abates under the Sokratic cross-examination; he is not uncandid, does not obstinately resist conviction, and ends by confessing himself refuted. The speaker in this dialogue who really professes immoral doctrines, who denies that injustice is αἰσχρόν, and asserts that right and wrong are matters of convention, is Kallikles: neither a Sophist nor a rhetorician, but an active and ambitious political man, who, though he frequents the rhetoricians, proclaims his contempt of the Sophists, and represents a type of character doubtless frequent among Grecian politicians, though we may doubt their having ever publicly professed the principles they acted on.

The other rhetorical teacher shown up by Plato is Thrasymachus in the Republic, who is presented as rude, overbearing, even insolent in his manner of discussing, and who undoubtedly is made to profess, with a not very material difference, essentially the same immoral doctrine as Kallikles. He is accordingly confuted and put to shame; but even Thrasymachus ends better than he began, and though he takes no share in the long sequel of the dialogue, joins with others in pressing Sokrates to go on, and parts with him on friendly terms. This single exhibition of Thrasymachus, made, not by himself, but by Plato when he wants a spokesman for an immoral doctrine, is the solitary case that can be cited from Plato in support of the opinion which imputes immoral teaching to the Sophists; and Thrasymachus was not a Sophist, but a rhetorician.^*

Nevertheless, it neither needs nor can be denied, not only that Plato had an unfavourable opinion of the Sophists generally, but that his writings contain much evidence of their being looked upon, in Athenian society, with a widespread sentiment of aversion. Their unpopularity may be accounted for, without supposing it to have been, in a moral point of view, deserved. In the first place, the disapprobation was far from being unanimous. Though the name Sophist was already a term of reproach, it was also one of praise: Plato himself speaks of “the genuine Sophistic art” (ἡ γένει γενναία σοϕιστική)^† as a thing which he cannot completely distinguish from something laudable, and asks, “Have we not, in seeking for the Sophist, unexpectedly found the Philosopher?^‡ In another place, when speaking of the skilful adaptations of Creative Power, he says that the gods are admirable Sophists. The term, when applied to any one, was an insult or a compliment according to the person who used it; like metaphysician, or political economist, or Malthusian, in our own day. And this double tradition was prolonged into the latest period of Grecian culture. It lasted even after the word philosopher had come into use as the designation which all kinds of speculative men took to themselves; when this name might have been expected to engross all the favourable associations, leaving only the unfavourable to the word sophist. In one of the dialogues of Lucian, who was cotemporary with Marcus Aurelius, the sophist is identified with the philosopher, and described as the chosen and professional inculcator and guardian of virtue.^§ Those who are chiefly brought forward by Plato as thinking ill of the Sophists, are either practical politicians, whose contempt for theorists is no rare or abnormal phenomenon in any age, or elderly and respectable fathers of families, who had passed through life with credit and success without the acquirements which they now found the younger generation running after. The character in Plato who exhibits the strongest example of mingled hatred and contempt for the Sophists, is Anytus, in the Menon. This man, a politician of influence and repute, no sooner hears them mentioned than he bursts into a torrent of abuse, calling them people whom it is madness to have anything to do with, and whose presence no city ought to tolerate; though he admits, when questioned, that he has never conversed with any of them, nor has any personal knowledge of what they taught, but does not the less indignantly denounce them as “corrupters of youth,”^[*] the charge on which afterwards, in conjunction with Melêtus, he indicted Sokrates, with^cwhat^c result we all know. It is worth mentioning, that Xenophon relates, on the authority of Sokrates himself, the origin of the offence which Anytus had taken against him: it was because he criticized the education which Anytus was giving to his son, saying that a man who sought for himself the greatest honours of the state ought to have brought up this promising youth to a higher occupation than his own business of a tanner.^* This is probably a fair example of the feeling which indisposed respectable elderly Athenians towards “Sokrates the Sophist,”^[†] and towards the other Sophists. When the charge of corrupting youth comes to be particularized, it always resolves itself into making them think themselves wiser than the laws, and fail in proper respect to their fathers and their seniors. And this is a true charge: only it ought to fall, not on the Sophists, but on intellectual culture generally. Whatever encourages young men to think for themselves, does lead them to criticize the laws of their country—does shake their faith in the infallibility of their fathers and their elders, and make them think their own speculations preferable. It is beyond doubt that the teaching of Sokrates, and of Plato after him, produced these effects in an extraordinary degree. Accordingly, we learn from Xenophon that the youths of rich families who frequented Sokrates, did so, for the most part, against the severe disapprobation of their relatives.^[*] In every age and state of society, fathers and the elder citizens have been suspicious and jealous of all freedom of thought and all intellectual cultivation (not strictly professional) in their sons and juniors, unless they can get it controlled and regulated by some civil or ecclesiastical authority in which they have confidence. But it had not occurred to Athenian legislators to have an established Sophistical Church, or State Universities. The teaching of the Sophists was all on the voluntary principle; and the dislike of it was of the same nature with the outcry against “godless colleges,” or the objection of most of our higher and middle classes to any schools but denominational ones. They disapproved of any teaching, unless they could be certain that all their own opinions would be taught. It mattered not that the instructors taught no heresy; the mere fact that they accustomed the mind to ask questions, and require other reasons than use and wont, sufficed at Athens, as it does in most other places, to make the teaching dangerous in the eyes of self-satisfied respectability. Accordingly, respectability, as Plato himself tells us, looked with at least as evil an eye on Philosophers as on Sophists. Sokrates, in the Apologia, speaks of the reproach of atheism, of making the worse appear the better cause, and so forth, as the charges always at hand to be flung at those who philosophize; τὰ κατὰ πάντων τω̑ν ϕιλοσοϕούντων πρόχειρα ταυ̑τα.^[†] Xenophon also calls the teaching of an art of words “the common reproach of the multitude against philosophers.”^* There is nothing in all Plato more impressive than his picture, in the Gorgias and the Republic, of the solitary and despised position of the philosopher in every existing society, and the universal impression against him, as at best an useless person, but more frequently an eminently wicked one (παμπονήρους, κακοὺς πα̑σαν κακίαν).^‡ He takes pains to point out the causes which gave to this unfavourable opinion of philosophers a colour of truth, and admits that it was not unfrequently justified by the conduct of those who were so called; which is more than he ever says of the Sophists.

Plato’s own dislike of the Sophists was probably quite as intense as that to which he testifies on the part of the Athenian public: but was it of the same nature? Did he regard them as corruptors of youth? Not if the Sokrates of the Republic expresses Plato’s opinions. In one of the most weighty passages of that majestic dialogue, Sokrates is made to say—People fancy that it is Sophists and such people that are corruptors of youth; but this is a mistake. The real corruptor of the young is society itself; their families, their associates, all whom they see and converse with, the applauses and hootings of the public assembly, the sentences of the court of justice. These are what pervert young men, by holding up to them a false standard of good and evil, and giving an entirely wrong direction to their desires. As for the Sophists, they merely repeat the people’s own opinions.

And it is these false opinions of the multitude, as he proceeds to show, which corrupt so many minds originally well fitted for philosophy, and divert them to the paths of vulgar ambition. If there is a class from whom he deems the multitude to have imbibed these false opinions, and whom he consequently makes accountable for them, it is the poets, who, in the religion of Hellas, were also the theologians.

Why, then, is Plato so merciless in running down the Sophists? The reasons are plain enough in many parts of his writings: let us look for them where we may be sure of finding them, in the dialogue devoted to defining what a Sophist is. The Sophistes is an elaborate investigation into the Sophist’s nature and essence, and, besides its direct purpose, is intended as an example of the most thorough mode of conducting such investigations. From a succession of different points of view, Plato arrives at several definitions of the Sophist, some of which want so little of being complimentary, that he confesses a difficulty in distinguishing the Sophist from the Dialectician. Others are condemnatory, but the grounds of condemnation which emerge are limited to two; the same which compose the definition by his pupil Aristotle, of a Sophist in the unfavourable sense: χρηματιστὴς ἀπὸ ϕαινομένης σοϕίας ἀλλ’ οὐκ οὔσης.^[*] The first and principal topic of disparagement (which recurs in almost every dialogue where they are mentioned) is that they took money for their teaching. And everything proves that whatever antipathy he had to the Sophists specially, as distinguished from other influential classes in Greece, was grounded on that circumstance alone. This will perhaps be hardly credible to many readers. In modern times, when everybody takes pay for everything (legislators and county magistrates alone excepted), and it is thought quite natural and creditable that men should be paid in money even for saving souls, it is difficult to realize the point of view from which Plato and Sokrates looked on this subject. Sokrates, we are told by Xenophon, compared those who sell their wisdom to those who sell their caresses,^* and maintained that both alike ought only to be given in exchange for love. Nor is this inconsistent with the fact that Plato certainly, and Sokrates probably, though they took no fees, accepted presents from their admirers: for to minister to the needs of a friend was a duty of friendship; and the Platonic Sokrates^† expresses his whole sentiment on the question by saying, that the teachers of any special art may consistently and reasonably demand payment for their instructions, because they profess to make people good artists or artificers, not good men; but that it is the height of inconsistency in a professed teacher of virtue to grumble because those whom he has pretended to instruct do not pay him sufficiently, since his complaint of their injustice is the clearest proof that the instruction has been of no use.^‡ Nor is it difficult to find arguments, tenable even from the modern point of view, which might be, and have been, brought to prove the mischief of erecting the commerce of ideas into a money-getting trade. In the brilliant dialogue entitled Gorgias, in which the hardest things are said that are to be found in all Plato both against the sophistic and the rhetorical profession, he classes them as two branches of one comprehensive, not art but knack, that of adulation (κολακεία). They attain their purposes, he affirms, not by making people wiser or better, but by conforming to their opinions, pandering to their existing desires, and making them better pleased with themselves and with their errors and vices than they were before.^[*] And is not this the really formidable temptation of all popular teaching and all literature? necessarily aggravated when these are practised for their pecuniary fruits. We may picture to ourselves Plato, judging from this point of view the teachers of the present day.^dAn^d established clergy, he might say, are directly bribed to profess an existing set of opinions, whether they believe them or not, and however remote they may be from truth. The ministers of every non-established sect are no less bound by their pecuniary interest to preach, not what is true, but what their flocks already believe. Of lawyers it is unnecessary to speak, who must either give up their profession, or accept a brief without scruple from what they know to be the wrong side. Schoolmasters, and the teachers and governors of universities, must, on every subject on which opinions differ, provide the teaching which will be acceptable to those who can give them pupils, not that which is really the best. Statesmen, he might say, have renounced even the pretence that anything ought to be required from them but to give to the public, not what is best for it, but what it wishes to have. The press, especially the most influential part of it, the newspapers and periodicals—by what incessant evidence does it prove that it considers as its business to be of the same mind with the public; to court, assent to, adulate, Public Opinion, and instead of disagreeable truths, ply it with the things it likes to^ehear.^e There is so much groundwork of reality for a representation like this, that some in our own day draw the same practical inference with Plato, and think there should be no law of copyright, that writers may no longer be tempted to prepare opinions for the market, and no one may write aught but what he feels impelled to put forth from pure zeal for his convictions. We think this opinion wrong, not because nothing can be said for it, but because there is much more to be said on the opposite side. It is, however, a substantially correct expression of Plato’s sentiments, and shows that his bitterness against the Sophists for being paid teachers was far from being the mere sentimentality which we might be apt to think it.

The other ground of disapproval of the Sophists which comes out in the Sophistes, and wherever else Plato discusses them, is, that the doctrines in which they dealt were apparent, not real wisdom; Opinion only, and not Knowledge. Whoever is aware of what Plato meant by knowledge, and of the attitude which he and his master assumed towards what passed for such among their cotemporaries, will admit that what is here said of the Sophists was true; but not truer of them than of all other persons in that age. If there is one thing more than another which Plato represents Sokrates as maintaining, it is that knowledge, on the subjects most important to man, did not yet exist, though everybody was living under the false persuasion of possessing it. He, Sokrates, did not pretend to know anything, except his own ignorance; but inasmuch as other people did not know even that, Sokrates, who did, deserved the palm of wisdom assigned to him by the Delphian Oracle. In the Apologia, which is either the real speech of Sokrates, or Plato’s idealization of his life and character, he represents himself as driven by a religious obligation to cross-examine all men, and discover if any of them had attained that real knowledge which he himself was conscious of not possessing. For this purpose, as he says, he sought the conversation of those who seemed, or were considered, wise; beginning with the politicians, all of whom he found to be in a state of gross ignorance, and in general more profoundly so in proportion to their reputation, but puffed up in the extreme by a false opinion of their own knowledge. He next tested the poets, but found that though they composed splendid things, doubtless by a divine afflatus, they were unable to give any rational account of the works which, or of the subjects on which, they composed. Last, he tried the artificers, and these, he found, did possess real knowledge, each concerning his special art; but fell into the error of imagining that they knew other things besides, which false opinion put them on the whole in a worse condition than his own conscious ignorance. It is noticeable that he does not here mention the Sophists among those whom he had cross-examined, and convicted of not knowing what they pretended to know. It is evident, however, that one who had this opinion concerning all the world, would come first and most into collision with the teachers. Those who not only fancied that they knew what they knew not, but professed to teach it, would be the very first persons whom it would fall in his way to convict of ignorance; and this is the exact position of Plato with regard to the Sophists. He attacks them not as the perverters of society, but as marked representatives of society itself, and compelled, by the law of their existence as its paid instructors, to sum up in themselves all that is bad in its tendencies.

The enemy against whom Plato really fought, and the warfare against whom was the incessant occupation of the greater part of his life and writings, was not Sophistry, either in the ancient or the modern sense of the term, but Commonplace. It was the acceptance of traditional opinions and current sentiments as an ultimate fact; and bandying of the abstract terms which express approbation and disapprobation, desire and aversion, admiration and disgust, as if they had a meaning thoroughly understood and universally assented to. The men of his day (like those of ours) thought that they knew what Good and Evil, Just and Unjust, Honourable and Shameful, were, because they could use the words glibly, and affirm them of this and of that, in agreement with existing custom. But what the property was, which these several instances possessed in common, justifying the application of the term, nobody had considered; neither the Sophists, nor the rhetoricians, nor the statesmen, nor any of those who set themselves up or were set up by others as wise. Yet whoever could not answer this question was wandering in darkness; had no standard by which his judgments were regulated, and which kept them consistent with one another; no rule which he knew, and could stand by, for the guidance of his life. Not knowing what Justice and Virtue are, it was impossible to be just and virtuous; not knowing what Good is, we not only fail to reach it, but are certain to embrace Evil instead. Such a condition, to any one capable of thought, made life not worth having. The grand business of human intellect ought to consist in subjecting these general terms to the most rigorous scrutiny, and bringing to light the ideas that lie at the bottom of them. Even if this cannot be done, and real knowledge be attained, it is already no small benefit to expel the false opinion of knowledge; to make men conscious of their ignorance of the things most needful to be known, fill them with shame and uneasiness at their own state, and rouse a pungent internal stimulus, summoning up all their mental energies to attack these greatest of all problems, and never rest until, as far as possible, the true solutions are reached. This is Plato’s notion of the condition of the human mind in his time, and of what philosophy could do to help it; and any one who does not think the description applicable, with slight modifications, to the majority even of educated minds in our own and in all times known to us, certainly has not brought either the teachers or the practical men of any time to the Platonic test.^*

The sole means by which, in Plato’s opinion, the minds of men^fcan^f be delivered from this intolerable state, and put in the way of obtaining the real knowledge which has power to make them wise and virtuous, is what he terms Dialectics; and the philosopher, as conceived by him, is almost synonymous with the Dialectician. What Plato understood by this name consisted of two parts. One is, the testing every opinion by a negative scrutiny, eliciting every objection or difficulty that could be raised against it, and demanding, before it was adopted, that they should be successfully met. This could only be done effectually by way of oral discussion; pressing the respondent by questions, to which he was generally unable to make replies that were not in contradiction either to admitted fact, or to his own original hypothesis. This cross-examination is the Sokratic Elenchus; which, wielded by a master such as Sokrates was, and as we can ourselves appreciate in Plato, no mere appearance of knowledge without the reality was able to resist. Its pressure was certain, in an honest mind, to dissipate the false opinion of knowledge, and make the confuted respondent sensible of his own ignorance, while it at once helped and stimulated him to the mental effort by which alone that ignorance could be exchanged for knowledge. Dialectics, thus understood, is one branch of an art which is a main portion of the Art of Living—that of not believing except on sufficient evidence; its function being that of compelling a man to put his belief into precise terms, and take a defensible position against all the objections that can be made to it. The other, or positive arm of Plato’s dialectics, of which he and Sokrates may be regarded as the originators, is the direct search for the common feature of things that are classed together, or, in other words, for the meaning of the class-name. It comprehends the logical processes of Definition and Division or Classification; the theory and systematic employment of which were a new thing in Plato’s day: indeed Aristotle says that the former of the operations was first introduced by Sokrates.^[*] They are indissolubly connected, Division being, as Plato inculcates, the only road to Definition. To find what a thing is, it is necessary to set out from Being in general, or from some large and known Kind which includes the thing sought—to dismember the kind into its component parts, and these into others, each division being, if possible, only into two members (an anticipation of Ramus and Bentham), marking at each stage the distinctive feature which differentiates one member from the other. By the time we have divided down to the thing of which we are in quest, we have remarked its points of agreement with all the things to which it is allied, and the points that constitute its differences from them; and are thus enabled to produce a definition of it, which is a compendium of its whole nature. This mode of arriving at a definition is elaborately exemplified, first on an insignificant subject, then on a great and difficult one, in the Sophistes and Politikos; two of the most important of the Platonic dialogues, because in both of them the conception of this part of the process of philosophizing is purely Baconian, unincumbered by the ontological theory which Plato in other writings superinduces on his pure logic.^* Without this theory, however, a very insufficient conception would be formed of the Platonic philosophy. The bond of union among the particulars comprised in a class, as understood by Plato, is not a mental Concept, framed by abstraction, and having no existence outside the mind, but a Form or Idea, existing by itself, belonging to another world than ours—with which Form or Idea, concrete objects have a communion or participation of nature, and in the likeness of which (though a very imperfect likeness) they have been made. When this mode of conceiving the process of generalization had been received into Plato’s mind, he was led to think that the Ideas were the real existences, which were alone permanent, alone the object of knowledge. Individual objects, if they could be said to be knowable at all, were only knowable through the Ideas, which, therefore, it was the characteristic function of the philosopher to cognise; thus exalting the philosopher to a region above nature and the earth, and making him of kin to the gods, who, being the possessors of supreme wisdom, must live in the perpetual contemplation of these glorious and superterrene existences. We have here reached the mystical and poetical side of Plato’s philosophy; and the dialectic process being the only road by which an earthly nature can approach these divine essences (for he by no means^gregarded^g their apprehension as intuitive), we begin to understand how that process acquires the poetical and religious halo which surrounds it in his mind; how the dialectician becomes a kind of divine person—the nearest approach possible for man to the celestial nature.

The real merits, however, of the Platonic dialectics are not dependent on this religious and metaphysical superstructure; and before we follow Plato farther on that slippery ground, we must dwell a little on the debt mankind owe to him for this, incomparably his greatest gift.

The larger half of the Platonic compositions is directly devoted to the exemplification and application of the dialectic art; the investigation, in conversation between two persons, of the definition of some term in general use, connected with emotional sentiments and practical impulses and restraints. Sometimes the inquiry takes the shape of confutation of an opinion maintained by some admired teacher, or self-confident dogmatist: sometimes the interlocutor is a friend or companion, usually an ingenuous youth, who is encouraged to attempt a definition, and as the definitions he hazards are successively shown to be insufficient, looks out for another, free from the particular fault which has been pointed out. An idea of the variety of topics embraced by these inquiries may be conveyed to those unacquainted with Plato, by the following catalogue:

All these dialogues have for their sole object the investigation of Definitions, either in the way of confutation or of simple search. If we add those of which an important part is directed to this purpose, though the dialogue has other objects besides, we include the four greatest masterpieces of Plato’s genius:

Protagoras.—A manifold and magnificent display of the Sokratic and Platonic mind, a great part of which consists of an inquiry into the definitions of the cardinal virtues, and especially of Courage.

Phædrus.—Equally multifarious; part of which is a discussion respecting the nature and definition of Rhetoric.

Gorgias.—What is Rhetoric? With this inquiry the dialogue sets out, but leads through it into an ethical controversy on the superiority of the just over the unjust life.

Republic.—The inquiry, What is Justice? is the starting point of this great work, which widens out into a complete treatise on the Platonic ethics, and on the constitution of a perfect commonwealth.

A series of investigations worthy to be attributed to the philosopher who, as we hear from Xenophon, “never ceased considering, along with his companions, what each existing thing is,” being of opinion “that those who know what each thing is, are able to exhibit it to other people; but when men know it not, it is no wonder that they themselves go astray, and mislead others.”^*

In casting our eyes over this list, we are forcibly reminded what a curious thing Mixed Modes are; if we may venture to borrow from the Lockian psychology a phrase which has fallen into undeserved disuse, signifying those complex ideas which the mind makes up for itself, not by directly copying an original in nature, but by combination of elements more or less arbitrarily selected from experience. Of this kind are the various concepts connected with praise and blame, which, being mostly compounded of elements having little to hold them together except a common emotion, are differently composed in different ages and countries, and the words which represent them in one language have no synonyms in another. We found it impossible to express the subjects of several of Plato’s dialogues in English, except by heaping together a number of names, no one of which is an exact equivalent of the Greek word, and which even in combination are only an approximate expression of the same collection of attributes. The subject of the Lysis is ϕιλία, translated Friendship; and the inquiry into the nature of ϕιλία has to give an account of friendship; but it has also to give an account of a man’s ϕιλία for horses, and dogs, and wine, of the ϕιλία of a sick body for health and medicine, that of a philosopher for wisdom, even the imaginary attraction of Dry for Moist, Cold for Hot, Bitter for Sweet, Empty for Full, and contraries in general for one another. Σωϕροσύνη, the subject of the Charmides, is one of the most difficult words to translate in the whole Greek language. The common rendering, Temperance, corresponds to a part of the meaning, but is ridiculously inadequate to the whole. Continence, Modesty, Moderation, are all short of the^hmark. Self-Restraint^h and Self-Control are better, but imply the coercion of the character by the will, while what is required is rather a character not needing coercion. There is also in the Greek word an implied idea of order, of measure, and, as may be seen from this very dialogue, of deliberateness, which are wanting in the nearest English equivalents. Unobtrusiveness, too, is an essential part of the concept; and there is a connotation besides of Judgment or Intelligence (let us say Reasonableness); otherwise Plato could not, as he does in the Protagoras, found an apparent argument on the antithesis between σωϕροσύνη and ἀϕροσύνη.^[*] Sobriety, a word used several times in this connexion by Mr. Grote, perhaps comes nearest to the Greek word in its variety of applications; but even this hardly admits of being substituted for it in discourse, without a perpetual running comment. A still more illustrative case, interesting as an example of the relation between national language and national character, is the Greek employment of the words which we translate by Beautiful and Ugly: καλόν and αἰσχρόν. These terms, derived from purely physical characteristics, and never ceasing to carry that meaning, became the symbols, both in speculation and in daily life, of the æsthetic or artistic view of human actions and qualities, as distinguished from the useful and the simply dutiful; an aspect prominent, and even predominant, in the susceptible Grecian mind, but which, to our exclusively practical turn of thought, confirmed by monachism and puritanism, is scarcely intelligible, and our translators bungle with their “honourable” and “shameful” in a vain attempt to express the complicated sentiment of the Greeks on matters of conduct and character, or to understand what their writers meant. The French, whose ethical sentiment retains more of the æsthetic element, sometimes indeed out of due proportion to the prudential and the dutiful, realize better the Hellenic feeling, and can often, even in moral discussion, translate τὸ καλόν by “le beau;” though there is no similar correlation of “le laid” with αἰσχρόν.^*

In spite, however, of these divergences between Plato’s world and our own in the composition of the complex ideas to which emotions are attached, whoever has a due value for the Method will often learn as much from these cases, as from the more frequent ones in which the subject of inquiry is a Mixed Mode identical or very similar to one familiar to ourselves; as Virtue, Justice, Courage, Knowledge, Law.

In many of these investigations, the person questioned does not at first exactly know what is expected from him, and instead of a genuine definition, replies by specimens of particular things commonly included under the name; the pretentious and practised teacher Hippias, as represented in the dialogue, being as unfamiliar with the sort of investigation intended, and more inexpert and clumsy when he attempts it, than the respectable and competent man of action Laches, the opulent Thessalian patrician Menon, or the youth Theætetus. Sokrates labours, by a profusion of illustrative examples (showing how little familiar the notion then was), to make them understand that what is wanted is not any particular cases of the beautiful, or of virtue, or of knowledge, but what Beauty, or Virtue, or Knowledge, in themselves are. The respondent is then encouraged, or, if in an antagonistic position, compelled, to point out some feature or circumstance which is always present along with the notion or predicate into the meaning of which they are inquiring. The part of Sokrates is, to show either that this feature or circumstance is not present in all the cases, or, more frequently, that it is present in many more than the cases, to which the word is applicable; thus obliging the respondent either to withdraw his definition and try another, or to limit the first by some circumstance, intended to exclude the particulars which had been unguardedly left within the boundary. Many definitions are tried, and shown to be untenable, and the dialogue often concludes without any result but the confession of ignorance. Even when one of the definitions examined seems to be accepted in one dialogue, it is often contested, and apparently refuted, in another; so that the result, on the whole, is rather one of method than of doctrine; though striking fragments of truth come to the surface, in the general turning up of the subject which the process involves. The confutations, too, though of marvellous ingenuity, are frequently, to us, obvious fallacies. Yet the process is the true and only mode of acquiring abstract notions which are both clear, and correspond to points of identity among real facts; and the manifold and masterly exemplification of it in the Platonic dialogues is a discipline in precise thinking, to which there is even now nothing simile aut secundum in philosophy. To suppose that dialectic training only trains dialecticians, is great ignorance of its power and virtue. Such training is an indispensable education for dogmatic thinkers: and it is quite in the course of nature that Plato should have been the master of Aristotle. But the many first-rate minds which have owed much of their clearness and vigour to the Platonic dialectic, have shown what it had done for them by the fruits it brought forth in themselves, rather than by creating any fresh models of it. The dialogues, therefore, are the still unrivalled types of the dialectic process; made captivating by all the grace and felicity of execution which gave to the author the title of the Attic Bee; and afford an example, once in all literature, of the union between an eminent genius for philosophy and the most consummate skill and feeling of the artist.

Much, however, as the modern world owes to the Platonic dialectics, it is seldom duly sensible of the obligation. The testing and cross-examining process is never popular.

“Nothing can be more repugnant to an ordinary mind than the thorough sifting of deep-seated, long familiarized notions.”^* Scarcely any modern would endure to submit himself to the Sokratic interrogation, which, to Plato’s apprehension, was so emphatically the only sufficient Elenchus or test, that he entertained a very poor opinion of the value either of long speeches, or of written discourse, where the discourser was not at hand to be questioned and to question—διδόναι καὶ δέχεσθαι λόγον.^[*] Even such approach to the Sokratic method as written composition admits of, the confutation of adversaries behind their backs, is seldom regarded with much favour; even those who agree with the writer caring little for it, beyond what pleasure they may take in seeing their opponents humiliated. For themselves, they are content to be convinced by their own reasons, without troubling themselves about counter-arguments which they are sure must be fallacious. Yet truth, in everything but mathematics, is not a single but a double question; not what can be said for an opinion, but whether more can be said for it than against it. There is no knowledge, and no assurance of right belief, but with him who can both confute the opposite opinion, and successfully defend his own against confutation. But this, the principal lesson of Plato’s writings, the world and many of its admired teachers have very imperfectly learned. We have to thank our free Parliament, and the publicity of our courts of justice, for whatever feeling we have of the value of debate. The Athenians, who were incessantly engaged in hearing both sides of every deliberative and judicial question, had a far stronger sense of it.

The other, or positive half of the Platonic dialectic, is equally far from being appreciated; that, namely, whereby the vague generalities which serve as the standard of censure or applause in common discourse, are put on the logical rack, and compelled to declare what definite signification lies in them. This twofold obligation, to be able to maintain our opinions against the criticism of opponents and refute theirs, and never to use a term in serious discourse without a precise meaning, has always been odious to the classes who compose nearly the whole of mankind; dogmatists of all persuasions, and merely practical people. Hence it is that human intellect improves so slowly, and, even in acquiring more and more of the results of wisdom, grows so little wiser. In things that depend on natural sagacity, which is about equally abundant at all times, we are not inferior to our forefathers; in knowledge of observed facts we are far beyond them; but we cast off particular errors without extirpating the causes of error; the Idols of the Tribe, and even of the Den, infest us almost as much as formerly;^[†] the discipline which purges the intellect itself,ⁱprotectingⁱ it from false generalization, inconclusive inference, and simple nonsense, on subjects which it imperfectly knows, is still absent from all but a few minds. We have been disabused of many false and pernicious opinions by the evidence of fact, but not by correcting the mental habits which^jengender^j them; and we are almost as ready as ever to receive new errors, when our senses and memory do not supply us with truths which those particular erroneous opinions would contradict.

It is singular that Plato himself did not fully profit by the principal lesson of his own teaching. This is one of the inconsistencies by which he is such a puzzle to posterity. No one can read many of the works of Plato, and doubt that he had positive opinions. But he does not bring his own opinions to the test which he applies to others. “It depends on the actual argumentative purpose which Plato has in hand, whether he chooses to multiply objections and give them effect, or to ignore them altogether.”^* “The affirmative Sokrates only stands his ground because no negative Sokrates is allowed to attack him.”^† Or, what is worse, Plato applies the test, and disregards its indications; states clearly and strongly the objections to the opinion he favours, and goes^kon^k his way as if they did not exist. If there is a doctrine which is the guide of his deepest speculations, which he invests with all the plausibility that his wonderful power of illustration can give, and clothes in the most brilliant colours of his poetic imagination, it is the theory of Self-Existent Ideas—the essential groundwork of some of his grandest dialogues, especially the Phædrus, the Phædon, and an important portion of the Republic. Yet there is in his writings no specimen of logical confutation more remarkable than that by which Parmenides, in the dialogue so called, overthrows this very doctrine, put into the mouth of the youthful Sokrates. Some of the Platonic critics consequently decide the Parmenides not to be a work of Plato, but one directed against Plato, by a disciple of the Eleatic school; forgetting that Parmenides, in the dialogue, gives an equally peremptory refutation of his own principal doctrine, the Unity of Being, and moreover winds up his refutation of the theory of Ideas by saying that, liable as it is to these great difficulties, philosophy and dialectics would be impossible unless it were admitted.^‡ One would expect that so important a theory would not be left in this predicament, suspended between opposite reasons deemed equally irresistible. We should have supposed that the great master of dialectics, since he accepted the doctrine, would have held himself bound to refute its seeming refutation. Yet he never does this, and, we venture to think, could not have done it. The objections are repeated, in a more abridged form, in the Philebus, and are equally left unanswered, Sokrates merely remarking, that the subject will probably always continue to be a theme for the ingenuity of young dialecticians.^* The dogmatic Plato seems a different person from the elenctic Plato:

The most important, though not the whole, of these varieties of tone and sentiment, seem to us to be explained by the philosopher’s advance in years, and growth in positive convictions. The first alone will account for much. There needs little argument to prove that the warfare against the intenser pleasures, and condemnation of all mental perturbations, of the Philebus, the Leges, and even the Republic, belong to a later time of life than the amatory enthusiasm of the Phædrus and the Symposion. Again, the works which bear the strongest marks of having been written in Plato’s later years, show a great modification in his estimation of the Elenctic process. He had apparently met the not unfrequent fate of great reformers, so strikingly exemplified in the career of Luther, who, precisely because he had succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation in his original purpose, had to expend his principal energies during the latter part of his life in driving back followers who had outrun their leader. In the dialogues of mere Search, which were probably written by Plato while the influence of Sokrates over his mind was still predominant, there is nothing he oftener repeats, in the person of his hero, than that the mere awakening of a sense of ignorance, the mere destruction of the false persuasion of knowledge which is universal among mankind, is in itself, though nothing further come of it, a highly valuable result of Dialectics. But as he advanced in life, and acquired a persuasion of knowledge of his own; when, to use a metaphor of Mr. Grote’s, he ceased to be leader of opposition, and passed over to the ministerial benches, he came to think that the Sokratic cross-examination is a dangerous edge-tool. Already in the Republic we find him dwelling on the mischiefs of a purely negative state of mind, and complaining that Dialectics are placed too early in the course of education, and are taken up by “immature youths, who abuse the licence of interrogation, find all their home-grown opinions uncertain, and end by losing all positive convictions.”^† In the Platonic commonwealth, this pursuit only commences at the age of thirty, in order that Plato’s own dogmatic opinions may have a long start before being exposed to the dangers of the elenctic test. Dialectic, with its logical cross-examination, is still, however, the grand instrument of philosophizing, and those trained in it are alone considered fit to rule. But as Plato advanced still further in years and in dogmatism, he seems to have lost his relish and value for Dialectic altogether. In his second imaginary commonwealth—that of the Leges—it is no longer mentioned; it forms no part of the education either of the rulers or of the ruled, but in lieu of it is substituted a rigid and immutable orthodoxy of Plato’s own making, any disloyalty to which, or any dream of trying it by the Elenchus, is repressed with Torquemada-like severity. With regard to his omission to fortify his opinions in his own mind, against the difficulties raised by himself, our suspicion is, that he had come to despair of the efficacy of the dialectic process as a means of discriminating truth; that his inability to solve his own objections had brought him to the persuasion that objections insoluble by dialectics could be made against all truths; and, the ethical and political tendencies of his mind becoming predominant over the purely speculative, he came to think that the doctrines which had the best ethical tendency should be taught, with little or no regard to whether they could be proved true, and even at the risk of their being false.

There are thus, independently of minor discrepancies, two complete Platos in Plato—the Sokratist and the Dogmatist—of whom the former is by far the more valuable to mankind, but the latter has obtained from them much the greater honour. And no wonder; for the one was capable of being a useful prop to many a man’s moral and religious dogmas, while the other could only clear and invigorate the human understanding.

There is, indeed, ample justification for the homage which all cultivated ages have rendered to Plato simply as a moralist—as one of the most powerful masters of virtue who have appeared among mankind. Amid all his changes, there is one thing to which he is ever constant—the transcendent worth of virtue and wisdom (which he invariably identifies), and the infinitely superior eligibility of the just life, even if calumniated and persecuted, over the unjust, however honoured by men, and by whatever power and grandeur surrounded. And what he thus feels, no one ever had a power superior to his of making felt by his readers. It is this element which completes in him the character of a Great Teacher. Others can instruct, but Plato is of those who form great men, by the combination of moral enthusiasm and logical discipline. “Aristotle,” says Mr. Grote, “in one of his lost dialogues, made honourable mention of a Corinthian cultivator, who in reading the Platonic Gorgias, was smitten with such vehement admiration, that he abandoned his fields and his vines, came to Athens forthwith, and committed himself to the tuition of Plato.”^* It was not, we may be assured, by its arguments, that the Gorgias produced this striking manifestation of psychagogic efficacy; for they are nearly all of them fallacies, and could not have resisted the first touch of the cross-examining Elenchus, so unsparingly applied to their impugners. This great dialogue, full of just thoughts and fine observations on human nature, is, in mere argument, one of the weakest of Plato’s works. It is not by its logic, but by its ἠ̑θος, that it produces its effects; not by instructing the understanding, but by working on the feelings and imagination. Nor is this strange; for the disinterested love of virtue is an affair of feeling. It is impossible to prove to any one Plato’s thesis, that justice is supreme happiness, unless he can be made to feel it as such. The external inducements which recommend it he may be taught to appreciate; the favourable regards and good offices of other people, and the rewards of another life. These considerations, however, though Plato has recourse to them in other places, are not available in the Gorgias. The posthumous recompense he only ventures to introduce in the form of a mythe; and the earthly one is opposed to the whole scheme of the dialogue, which represents the virtuous and wise man as, in every existing society, a solitary being, misjudged, persecuted, and having no more chance with the Many against their adulators, than (to use Plato’s comparison)^[*] a physician would have, if indicted before a jury of children by a confectioner for giving them nauseous drugs instead of delicious sweetmeats. It is precisely this picture of the moral hero, still tenax propositi^[†] against the hostility and contempt of the world, which makes the splendour and power of the Gorgias. The Sokrates of the dialogue makes us feel all other evils to be more tolerable than injustice in the soul, not by proving it, but by the sympathy he calls forth with his own intense feeling of it. He inspires heroism, because he shows himself a hero. And his failures in logic do not prevent the step marked by the Gorgias from being one of the greatest ever made in moral culture—the cultivation of a disinterested preference of duty for its own sake, as a higher state than that of sacrificing selfish preferences to a more distant self-interest.

In the Republic, the excellence and inherent felicity of the just life are as impressively insisted on, and enforced by arguments of greater substance. But, as Mr. Grote justly remarks, those arguments, even if conclusive, are addressed to the wrong point; for the life they suppose is not that of the simply just man, but of the philosopher. They are not applicable to the typical just man—to such a person as Aristeides, who is no dialectician, soars to no speculative heights, and is no nearer than other people to a vision of the Self-Existent Ideas, but who, at every personal sacrifice, persistently acts up to the rules of virtue acknowledged by the worthiest of his countrymen. It is not obvious what place there was for Aristeides in the Platonic theory of virtue, nor how he was to be adjusted to the doctrine of Plato and of the historical Sokrates, that virtue is a branch of knowledge, and that no one is unjust willingly. Aristeides probably had the same notions of justice as his cotemporaries, and could as little as any of them have answered Sokratic interrogatories by a definition of it which would have been proof against all objections. The conformity of his will to it, the never being unjust willingly, was probably the chief moral difference between him and ordinary men. Plato might indeed have said that Aristeides had the most indispensable point of knowledge—he knew that the just man must be the happiest. But Aristeides was not the kind of man of whom Plato has, more or less successfully, proved this; and the true Platonic doctrine is that it is impossible to be just, without knowing (in the high Platonic meaning of knowledge) what justice is.^*

When we try Plato, as a moralist, by this test of his own; when, from the inspired apostle of virtue, we pass to the philosophic teacher of it, and ask for his criterion of virtue, we find it different in different works. In the Protagoras, it is completely utilitarian, in all that is stigmatized by some people as “low” and “degrading;” though justly condemned by Mr. Grote from the utilitarian point of view, because destitute of the unselfish element.^[*] According to the Sokrates of the Protagoras, there is nothing good as an end except pleasure and the absence of pain; all other good things are but means to these. Virtue is an affair of calculation, and the sole elements of the calculation are pains and pleasures. But the elements computed are the agent’s own pains and pleasures, omitting those of other people, and of mankind. The system is thus a selfish one; though only theoretically^lso^l , since its propounder would have held fast to the doctrine that the just is the only happy life, i.e. (according to the theory of this dialogue) the one which affords to the agent himself the greatest excess of pleasure over pain. The standard of the Protagoras agrees with that of the historical Sokrates, who throughout the Memorabilia inculcates the ordinary duties of life on hedonistic grounds, and recommends them by the ordinary hedonistic inducements, the good opinion and praise of fellow-citizens, reciprocity of good treatment, and the favour of benevolent deities. Even in the Leges, Plato affirms that people will never be persuaded to prefer virtue unless convinced of its being the path of greatest pleasure, and that whether it is so or not (though he fully believes that it is), they must not only be taught to believe this, but no approach to a doubt of it must be tolerated within the country. The Sokrates of the Gorgias, however, dissents both from the Sokrates of the Protagoras and from the real Sokrates. Good is, with him, no longer synonymous with Pleasurable, nor Evil with Painful. To constitute anything a Good, it must be either pleasurable or beneficial (ὠϕέλιμον), and Justice belongs to the category of Beneficial; but beneficial to what end, is not explained, except that the end certainly is not Pleasure. Justice is assimilated to the health of the soul, injustice to a disease: and since the health of the body is its greatest good, and disease its greatest evil, the same estimate is extended by analogy to the mind. There is no attempt, in the Gorgias, to define Justice. In the Republic, which has this definition for its express purpose, and travels through the whole process of constructing an ideal commonwealth to arrive at it, the result is brought out, that Justice is synonymous with the complete supremacy of Reason in the soul. The human mind is analysed into the celebrated three elements, Reason, Spirit or Passion (τὸ θυμοειδές, another troublesome Mixed Mode) and Appetite. The just mind is that in which each of the three keeps its proper place; in which Reason governs, Passion makes itself the aid and instrument of Reason, and the two combined keep Appetite in a state of willing subjection. In the Philebus, which is professedly De Bono (or rather De Summo Bono), the subject is more discriminatingly scrutinized. After a long discussion, in which those who uphold Pleasure, and those who contend for wisdom or intelligence (ϕρόνησις), as the ultimate end, are both confuted; Good, or that which is worthy of being desired, is found to consist of five things, desirable in unequal degrees. We shall not quote the whole list, as, from the vagueness of some of the conceptions, and the extremely abstract nature of the phraseology, even Mr. Grote confesses how hard it is to be understood.^[*] The first four, however, have exclusive reference to the rational elements of the mind, while the fifth, placed far below the others, consists of the few pleasures which are gentle and unmixed with pain; all others, and especially the intenser pleasures, having been eliminated, as belonging to a distempered mental condition. All these theories lay themselves open to Mr. Grote’s criticism, by defining virtue with reference to the good only of the agent himself; even justice, pre-eminently the social virtue, being resolved into the supremacy of reason within our own minds: in disregard of the fact that the idea and sentiment of virtue have their foundation not exclusively in the self-regarding, but also, and even more directly, in the social feelings: a truth first fully accepted by the Stoics, who have the glory of being the earliest thinkers who grounded the obligation of morals on the brotherhood, the συγγένεια, of the whole human race. The grand defect of Plato’s ethical conceptions (excellently discussed in Mr. Grote’s remarks on the Republic) was in overlooking, what was completely seized by Aristotle—that the essential part of the virtue of justice is the recognition and observance of the rights of other people.^*

It is noticeable that even in the Republic, the governing and controlling principle of the mind, which we have translated Reason, and whose unresisted authority constitutes the essence of virtue, is τὸ λογιστικόν—literally the calculating principle (λογιστική being used by Plato himself, in the Gorgias, to denote a portion of Arithmetic).^[†] This is the very doctrine of the Protagoras, except that the elements to be calculated are different. And, through the whole series of the dialogues, a Measuring Art, μετρητικὴ τέχνη, as a means of distinguishing the truth of things from their superficial appearance, is everywhere desiderated as the great requisite both of wisdom and of virtue. When, however, the test of Pain and Pleasure is abandoned, no other elements are shown to us which the Measuring Art is to be employed to measure. Of course it has to measure our minds and actions themselves; but we measure anything, to make it conform to, or agree with, the dimensions of something else; and Plato does not tell us of what else. Our life is to be regulated, but we are not told what it is to be regulated by. The measuring process is supposed to have a virtue in itself. The analogy used is that of the untrue magnitudes and proportions of objects as seen by the eye, and their rectification by measurement; Plato overlooking that it is not the act of measuring which rectifies them, but the perceptions of touch which the measuring only ascertains. The idea of Measure as a good in itself, independent of any end beyond it, seems to have grown upon Plato as he advanced in life. Mere conformity to a fixed rule, especially if accompanied by regularity of numerical proportion, became his principal standard of excellence. This answered to a powerful sentiment in the Hellenic mind, which, combining with vehement impulses a high sense of personal dignity, demanded harmonious proportion in mind and deportment as much as in architecture, and to which anything inordinate, dissonant, unrhythmical, even in voice or demeanour, was not only distasteful,^* but seemed an indication of an ill-regulated mind; as it is expressly affirmed to be by Plato in the Republic.^† In Plato’s own mind we know that Measure and Regularity were the very footprints of divinity; that they, and only they, were the marks of design in the Kosmos, and where they ceased, the share of Deity ended too; the Kosmos altogether being but a compromise with ἀνάγκη or Necessity; which, by an inversion of the modern idea, stood for the capricious portion of the agencies in Nature—those in which the same consequent did not invariably follow the same antecedent.^‡ In the Philebus, Measure and the Measured, μέτρον καὶ τὸ μέτριον καίριον,^[*] stand as the first elements of Good, even Intelligence being only the third, and Pleasure (limited to the unexciting pleasures) the fifth and hindmost. In Plato’s later speculations, from the Republic to the Epinomis, the sciences of measure and proportion, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy, gradually take the place of Dialectics as the proper education of a ruler and philosopher. We learn from Aristotle that this was even more emphatically the case in his lectures, during the latter years of his life. Those which he delivered on the Ipsum Bonum, or Idea of Good, to the surprise of hearers, turned on transcendental properties of numbers. Number was resolved into two elementary factors—The One, and the Dyad or Two, this last being identified with the Indeterminate; and the Good was affirmed to be identical with the One, while Evil was the Unbounded or Undetermined, ἀόριστον and ἄπειρον.^* Thus did the noble light of philosophy in Plato go out in a fog of mystical Pythagoreanism.

In this Pythagorean morass, as we learn from the same authority, the brilliant doctrine of Ideas was submerged and quenched. Yet that doctrine stands, and will stand to posterity, as the purest type of the Platonic metaphysics. It is true of Plato, as of all his countrymen with the partial exception of Aristotle, that while their moral and political thoughts abound in a wisdom both practical and of permanent application, their metaphysical speculations are only interesting as the first efforts of original and inventive minds to let in light on a dark subject. The Platonic Ideas are nothing more; but, of all theories which have arisen in ingenious minds from an imperfect conception of the processes of abstraction and generalization, they are surely among the most plausible as well as beautiful. Men already abstracted and generalized before Plato wrote, or they would not have been human beings; but they did so by an unconscious working of the laws of association, which resembled an instinct: no theory ofⁿthoseⁿ operations was in existence till Plato formed one, and the mere direction of consciousness upon the processes themselves was a new thing, which, as we see in many of the dialogues, even an intelligent pupil required to be assisted to do by a great prodigality of illustration. Now a contemplative mind soon perceived that all the objects of sense, whether substances, attributes, or events—and the noblest objects most—are that which they are, in only an imperfect manner, and suggest to the mind a type of what they are, far more perfect than themselves; a “something far more deeply interfused,”^[*] which eye has not seen nor ear heard,^[†] but of which that which can be seen or heard is an imperfect, and often very distant, resemblance. Psychology in its infancy did not yet enable men to perceive that the mind itself creates this more perfect type, by comparison and abstraction from the imperfect materials of its experience; but they perceived that the types embodied the unattainable perfection of all other things, and were the models which Nature itself seemed to strive to approach. What, then, could be more natural than to regard the types as real objects, concealed from sense, but cognisable directly by the mind—which, once conceived as external to us, seemed more real than anything else, all other things resembling imperfect attempts to copy them? The Self-Beautiful, the Self-Good, which not only were to all beautiful and good things as the ideal is to the actual, but united in themselves the separate perfections of all the various kinds of beauty and goodness—these forms or essences, from a participation in which all concrete things derive what they possess of goodness and beauty, but paled and disfigured by the turbid element in which they are immersed—these existences, so vastly more splendid than their feeble earthly representatives, and not, like them, subject to injury or decay—must not they be Realities in a far higher sense than the particulars which are within sensible cognisance? particulars which indeed are not realities: for there is no particular good or beautiful or just thing, which is not, in some case that may be supposed, unjust, evil, and unbeautiful. Was it not then to be presumed that the part of our nature which apprehends these Real Existences would perceive them far more clearly, but for the veil of sense interposed; and that it is only when the veil is removed, that we pass out of the world of images and likenesses into that of the Things themselves, and contemplate the splendid vision in all its brightness? But even in this world of shadows, the mind of the philosopher, trained by the dialectic process to see “the One in the Many,” can achieve, by arduous labour, such a perception of the Ideal Forms, as qualifies him for admission to a nearer and more satisfactory view of them in a life after death.

The mode in which Plato was led, by the same train of thought, to another of his opinions, the famous doctrine of Reminiscence, is not left for us to divine. It is shown to us in the Menon, in which more that is characteristic of Plato is brought together in a smaller space than in any other dialogue: if the Phædon and the Gorgias are noble statues, the Menon is a gem. Why is it, asks Sokrates,^[*] that when we seek for something we do not know, we yet know what we are seeking? and how comes it that we are able to recognise it when found? This, it seems, had been one of the puzzles of these early thinkers, resembling others of which great notice is taken in the Platonic writings: not quibbles of captious sophists, as commentators and historians of philosophy pretend, but difficulties really embarrassing to those who were trying to understand their own mental operations. Why^o, asks Sokrates,^o does truth (so hard to find) when found, approve itself to us, often instantaneously, as truth? He can think of no explanation, but that we had known it in a former life, and need only to be reminded of our knowledge. Modern thinkers who have stopped short at Plato’s point of view, resolve the difficulty by pronouncing the knowledge to be intuitive. But Plato could not put up with this explanation; he knew too well how slowly, painfully, and at last imperfectly, the knowledge is acquired. The whole process of philosophizing was conceived by him as a laborious effort to call former knowledge back to mind. His doctrine is related to that of Wordsworth’s ode, erroneously called Platonic, not as identical but as opposite: with Wordsworth our life here is “a sleep and a forgetting,”^[*] with Plato it is a recollecting. We at once perceive the support which this doctrine gives to Plato’s conception of the process of instruction (a conception supremely important in his own and in all time) that “teaching and learning are words without meaning;”^* that knowledge is “to be evolved out of the mind, not poured into it from without.”^† The intimate connexion between the doctrine of Reminiscence and that of Ideas, even were it not obvious, would be shown by the Phædon, in which the Reminiscence theory is maintained on the express ground that every existing thing, in itself incomplete, brings to mind a type of its own nature more perfect than itself; and as we can only be reminded of that which we once knew, we must have known the type in a former life. The two doctrines are inseparably blended in the poetic mythe delivered by Sokrates in the Phædrus; and when in Plato’s later years the one doctrine drops out of his speculations, so does the other.

The doctrine of Pre-existence is naturally connected with that of Immortality; and in the Phædon the arguments for the latter are mostly grounded on the former. That wonderful dialogue, which divides with perhaps the Gorgias alone, the honour of being the most finished and consummate prose composition in Plato, if not in all literature—which combines in itself more sources of the grandest interest, more artistically fused together, than any other of Plato’s works—contains not one argument which is not a fallacy, or which could convince any one not anxiously desirous to be convinced. Plato himself, when he approaches the subject in other dialogues, resorts to quite different arguments, more resembling those on which recent schools of metaphysics have grounded the doctrines of Spiritualism. For instance, in the Leges, he argues that Mind or Soul, the principle of Life, is the only thing which originates motion—inanimate objects only carrying on and transmitting force communicated to them from elsewhere; that Mind, therefore, rules Matter, and must be anterior to it (πρεσβύτερον), and not subject to its laws.^[*] This argument, though adduced only as proof of a Divine government, is available for the other purpose, and though we are far from thinking it conclusive, is worth all those of the Phædon put together. As Mr. Grote remarks, though the personal incidents of the Phædon are Sokratic, and are probably those which really happened, its doctrines and arguments are exclusively Platonic.^[†] Sokrates, it is well known, professed no dogmatic certainty about another life. It is all the more worthy of note, that Plato had not yet abandoned the Sokratic canon of belief—viz. that it ought to be the genuine, unbiassed, untampered with, conviction of the individual reason, after giving an impartial hearing to every argument that can be thought of. As the Gorgias proclaims, with an energy and solemnity never surpassed, the rights of the individual intellect, and the obligation on every one, though the whole world should be on the contrary side, to stand firm, he alone, in asserting what recommends itself to his own reason; so in the Phædon, as Mr. Grote observes in one of his many valuable remarks on that dialogue:

One of the things for which Plato has been most applauded by those modern schools which pique themselves on counting him among their precursors, is the warfare which he is supposed to have made on a sceptical philosophy, attributed, totally without evidence, to the Sophists generally, and considered as one of the means by which they demoralized the Greeks. The doctrines meant are two. One is the special tenet of Herakleitus (who was not a Sophist, except in the loose sense in which all speculative thinkers were so called), that the universe is in a state of perpetual flux, in which nothing is, but all things become (εἰ̑ναι, γίγνεσθαι; the Hegelian Seyn and Werden). The other is the doctrine of Protagoras, that “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not. As things appear to me, so they are to me: as they appear to you, such they really are to you.”^[*] In other words, the doctrine of the Subjective nature of truth: which is a scandal to philosophers, as seeming to make all opinions equally true, and truth “that which each man troweth.”^[†]

Now, what the Herakleitean doctrine affirms of all things, is what Plato himself believed of the phenomenal world—of things cognisable by sense. The only thing which he regarded as really existing, τὸ ὄντως ὄν, was the Intelligible World, the world of Self-existent Forms; the extramundane prototypes of that, in the visible universe, which seems, but is not, real existence, and which is considered by him as something intermediate between Ens and Non-Ens.^* Herakleitus did not believe in these Forms, and that was the amount of difference between him and Plato. When they both refused to the world of sense what they called Real Existence, they did not mean to deny what we^punderstand by the term, but only what the ancient thinkers understood by it^p . What they denied of the visible universe, was Existence in a transcendent sense—the Existence per se which Plato ascribed to his Ideas, and Xenophanes and Parmenides to their Ens Unum. In modern phrase, Herakleitus denied the Absolute; though his doctrine of a really existent Principle of Change, and his other tenet of an Universal Reason apart from individual minds, a doctrine much in favour with some modern Transcendentalists, reintroduced an Absolute of another kind. Now it may safely be affirmed that no scepticism, limited to the Absolute, ever did anybody harm, or made the smallest practical difference to any human being. The doctrine of Protagoras requires a little more consideration. Though we may reasonably suppose that Plato, in the Theœtetus, gives it in that Sophist’s words, we are ignorant by what reasons Protagoras defended it, or in what sense he explained it. Sir William Hamilton considered it to mean his own doctrine of the Relativity of human knowledge, and placed Protagoras at the head of his list of early authorities in support of that doctrine.^[*] Mr. Grote interprets the maxim Homo Mensura in the same sense, but includes also in its meaning the autonomy of the individual intellect.^[†] That everything is true to me, which appears so to me, he understands to mean, that my reception of it as truth depends, and ought to depend, on the impression which the evidence makes upon my own mind. Mr. Grote, therefore, defends the Protagorean doctrine against the Sokrates of the Theœtetus; but his defence, though useful and instructive, does not satisfy us, and is the only important point in the whole work on which we find ourselves differing from Mr. Grote. For the truth of an opinion, even to myself, is a different thing from my reception of it as true, since it implies reference to an external standard. My mind, on the evidence before it, may accept as truth that I am five miles from London; but when I set out to walk the distance, and find it ten, the ten miles were all along as true for me as for other people. Protagoras cannot well have intended to deny this, but he cannot be acquitted of an incorrect and misleading mode of expression. His proposition is valid as to our present feelings or states of consciousness, the truth of which has no meaning except that we are actually feeling them; and this is probably the reason why Plato (erroneously in Mr. Grote’s opinion)^[*] identifies it with the doctrine that knowledge is sensible perception (αἴσθησις), the truth of the one doctrine being coextensive with the sphere of the other. But it is not true of the past, the future, the absent, or anything present except the feeling in our mind. It is invalid as to all that are called matters of belief or opinion: for a belief or opinion is relative not only to the believing mind, but to something else—namely, the matter of fact which the belief is about. The truth of the belief is its agreement with that fact. Mr. Grote says: “To say that all men recognise one and the same objective distinction between truth and falsehood, would be to contradict palpable facts. Each man has a standard, an ideal of truth in his own mind; but different men have different standards.”^* Of the proof of truth, yes: but not, we apprehend, of truth itself. No one means anything by truth, but the agreement of a belief with the fact which it purports to represent. We grant that, according to the philosophy which we hold in common with Mr. Grote, the fact itself, if knowable by us, is relative to our perceptions—to our senses or our internal consciousness; and our opinion about the fact is so too; but the truth of the opinion is a question of relation between these two relatives, one of which is an objective standard for the other. Justice is not done to Plato’s attack on “Homo Mensura” without considering this aspect of the matter; the rather as he himself brings forward these very arguments. Sokrates asks, Since man is the measure of all things, and has the criterion of truth in himself, whatever he thinks or perceives being true to him, will the criterion serve for things yet to come? If he thinks he shall catch a fever and feel hot, and a physician thinks the contrary, will he be feverish and hot to himself, but not to the physician?^[*] A fair reductio ad absurdum, and a just criticism on Protagoras, though, if Mr. Grote is right in his interpretation of the Protagorean dictum, the error is in language, not in thought. But in philosophy, especially where it touches the ultimate foundations of our reason, wrong language is as misleading as a wrong opinion.

This dialogue, the Theætetus, though it ends without any conclusion, leaving the question proposed in it unanswered, is one of the most suggestive in all Plato by the number of points of view it brings forward; and is among the finest examples in his writings of genuine honest Search, in which the confutation of any one, even when it falls in his way, is only incidental, and even then the greatest pains are taken to put, in the most forcible manner, whatever the confuted person could say. In arguing against Protagoras (who is treated with a respect in marked contrast with the manner in which the Herakleiteans, and some materialistic philosophers, supposed to be the school of Demokritus, are referred to), Sokrates laments the necessity of disputing his opinion when he is not present nor even alive to defend it; says that as he and his friends are not here to help their doctrine, the obligation lies on their adversaries to do it; and fulfils that obligation by a discourse of some length,^[†] which, like those of Glaukon and Adeimantus in the Republic, is a monument of the essential fairness of Plato’s mind. The Theætetus contains some of Plato’s acutest examinations of certain speculative questions which often recur in other dialogues: among others the difference between Knowledge and True Opinion, ὀρθή or ἀληθὴς δόξα. This distinction gave Plato great trouble, and the whole subject of the truth and falsity of opinions was full of intricacy and logical embarrassment to him and to his cotemporaries.^[‡] Among other points, it appears to have been a serious puzzle to them, in what manner false opinions could be possible; how we can think that which is not—a non-entity—any more than we can touch, or eat, or drink that which is not.^[§] It is surprising how often Plato returns to this perplexity. More than half the Sophistes is devoted to the discussion of it, merely in a parenthesis. As a specimen of the stumbling-blocks which the early metaphysical inquirers found in their path, as well as a striking example of the diversity of the points of view of different dialogues, we will quote a passage from Mr. Grote on this subject:

There is a similar discrepancy in the view taken by Plato, in different dialogues, of the distinction between True Opinion and Knowledge. In the Menon, it would seem as if the two were much the same, except that Opinion is “evanescent, and will not stay in the mind, while Knowledge is permanent and ineffaceable.”^† True Opinion is converted into Knowledge, when bound down (δεδεμένον) “by a chain of causal reasoning”^[*] (αἰτίας λογισμῳ̑). This binding process, it is added, is ἀνάμνησις, or reminding, and can only be accomplished by questioning, sufficiently repeated and diversified.^[†] What the ἀνάμνησις does is rather differently defined in the Phædrus; it there generates the apprehension of the general Concept,^‡ which in that dialogue means the Self-existent Idea. In other dialogues the view taken is very similar, minus the idea of Reminiscence. Knowledge is that of which a rational explanation can be given; that which is guaranteed by both arms of the dialectic process, being able to resist all confutation, and having been arrived at by a correct use of the logical process of Division, διαίρεσις κατ’ εἴδη, terminating in an unimpeachable Definition. Anything short of this is only Opinion. We here have what is rightly regarded as the characteristically Platonic view of the subject; but it is remarkable that this very definition of knowledge, ἀληθὴς δόξα μετὰ λόγου, is one of those propounded by Theætetus, and, after a long discussion between him and Sokrates, abandoned.^[‡] The most elaborate, but the obscurest exposition we find of this subject, is in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic. We cannot give it at length, but its leading point is, that knowledge is of Forms or Ideas, while Opinion relates to the world of sense, composed of mere images of those Forms.^§ But the knowledge of Forms is only to be acquired by Dialectics.^¶

Among views so contradictory, and in which no common conviction or purpose appears, what worth, it may be asked, is there to us in the investigations? Besides the worth of their Method, they have, though in unequal degrees, a value in their substance;

As regards Plato himself, the probability is that there was a period in his life when he was, on merely speculative points, a real Seeker, testing every opinion, and bringing prominently forward the difficulties which adhere to them all; and that during this period many of his principal dialogues were written, from points of view extremely various, embodying in each the latest trains of thought which had passed through his mind on the particular subject. That the difficulties of his own suggesting, even after he had definitively identified himself with the opinions to which they apply, are hardly ever solved, seems only explicable on the supposition that he had ceased to care about solving them, having come to think that insoluble difficulties were always to be expected. He certainly, if we trust his Seventh Epistle, was then of opinion that no verbal definition of anything can precisely hit the mark, and that the knowledge of what a thing is, though not attainable till after a long and varied course of dialectic debate, is never the direct result of discussion, but comes out at last (and only in the happier natures) by a sort of instantaneous flash. He probably became indifferent to speculation for its own sake, ceased to expect that any theoretical position would be found unassailable, and no longer cared for anything but practical results. In his latest compositions there is no abatement of ethical earnestness, but “the love of dialectic, and the taste for enunciating difficulties even when he could not clear them up, died out within him.”^† He almost became infected with the misology so impressively deprecated in his own Phædon, and an example among many, that this misology is not always, as there represented, the road to scepticism, but still oftener to the most intolerant affirmative dogmatism.

The ethical and political doctrines of Plato are really the only ones which can be regarded as serious and deeply-rooted convictions. At the head of these, or only second after his faith in the exclusive eligibility of the just life, must be placed the opinion common to him with Sokrates, that Virtue is a branch of Intelligence, or Knowledge. His best argument for this opinion is, that not only all the external things we value, such as health, strength, and pecuniary means, but all that we regard as virtues—courage, temperance, and the rest—may be so used as to do harm instead of good: they all require a discriminating faculty to decide when they ought to be employed and when not; and this, which is the distinctive element of virtue, is a part of Knowledge. Though the premises of this argument are profoundly true, they only prove that the knowledge in question is one of the conditions of virtue, but not that it is virtue itself; something else besides the knowledge of what is right being necessary to induce us to practise it. We know what would have been Plato’s answer to this objection. He would have said, that the further condition required is also a knowledge, the knowledge that to do right is good; no one desires evil knowing it to be evil; it is desired because it is believed to be good. But even if Plato had proved, as completely as he thought he had, that to do wrong is the greatest evil which can befall the wrong-doer, it would have remained a question whether the habitually vicious man is capable of having this belief impressed upon him; whether the evidence that happiness is to be found in virtue alone, can reach a mind not prepared for it by already possessing the virtues of courage, temperance, &c., not to mention justice, the most fundamental of all.

This exaltation of Knowledge—not Intellect, or mere mental ability, of which there is no idolatry at all in Plato, but scientific knowledge, and scientifically-acquired craftsmanship, as the one thing needful in every concern of life, and pre-eminently in government—is the pervading idea in Plato’s practical doctrines. He derived it from Sokrates, who (says Xenophon) “considered as kings and rulers not those who wield the sceptre, or those who have been chosen by the incompetent (ὑπὸ τω̑ν τυχόντων), nor those who have drawn the successful lot, or who by force or deceit have got into the highest place, but those who know how to rule.”^* What constitutes the man who knows how to rule, is the subject of an important dialogue, the Politikos. We there learn that he is one of the rarest of human beings; that the greatest concern of a State is to obtain such a man, and place him at the head of it; that when so placed, his power cannot be too absolute; to limit him by laws, even of his own making, being as absurd as if a scientific physician were required never to deviate from his own prescriptions. This exclusive right of the most capable person to rule—a principle strenuously asserted by Plato against the theory and practice of all governments (modern as well as ancient); and the doctrine that when this Capable Person has been obtained, the rest of the community have nothing to do but to obey him—form a theory of government which must be quite to the taste of Mr. Carlyle; but he is probably less pleased with the further proposition added by Plato, that the depositary of this divine right is not found, but made, and that his qualification is Science; a philosophic and reasoned knowledge of human affairs—of what is best for mankind. When this is possessed, it is a far surer guide than laws, which cannot possibly be adapted to all individual cases; but when this scientific wisdom cannot be had, laws are better than any mere counterfeit of it: “The true government of mankind is the scientific or artistic; whether it be carried on by one, or a few, or many—whether by poor or rich, by force or consent—whether according to law, or without law.” But

The ideal of government expressed in this passage, though expanded and minutely applied in other works, is never materially varied. Of the two detailed treatises on Government, in the dialogue form, which we have from Plato, the Republic and the Leges, the former is a delineation of his best form of society, under the unrestricted authority of one or a very small number, scientifically trained and fitted for the function of rulers. The Leges must be understood (and that is its best excuse) as a set of directions for the construction and preservation of his second-best State, in which, the scientific ruler not being forthcoming, an imperfect substitute is provided in the form of laws, which he seems to have thought would only answer the purpose by being not only inviolable but unalterable. Accordingly, in the ideal commonwealth of the Republic, there is no responsibility of any kind—no provision for written laws or courts of justice; the wisdom of the scientific rulers being wholly trusted to, for doing without such things, or providing them as far as required. The whole energy of Plato’s constructive intellect is concentrated on the means of sifting the most gifted natures out of the body of citizens, and educating them from the earliest infancy to the age of fifty, by which time, and not before, it is expected that a very few, or at least one, competent scientific governor may be met with among them. This, and the intellectual and emotional training of the remainder of the people, so that they shall willingly obey and second these rightful chiefs, compose the whole machinery of the Republic. In Leges, on the contrary, where no such scientific rulers are looked for, there is an elaborate and minute system of positive laws, carrying legal regulation down to the details of common life, and accompanied by all the ordinary apparatus of courts of justice; magistrates of various kinds chosen for short periods, by processes from which even the democratic Lot is not wholly excluded—and systematic accountability of all persons in office, in the Athenian manner, after the expiration of their term, to an authority in which the whole body of citizens have a qualified participation. The author does not disguise that his government is not the abstractedly best; and records his persistence, on some principal points, in those doctrines of the Republic which are put in abeyance in the Leges, where the community ostensibly contemplated is an actual Cretan colony.

While Plato has thus two independent plans for the constitution of a political society, his notion of the end to be aimed at never varies. The business of rulers is to make the people whom they govern wise and virtuous. No political object but this is worth consideration.^qWith respect to^q the other things usually desired by men and communities, he does not indeed always maintain the scornful tone assumed in the Gorgias, where all the statesmen of Athens, even the eminent ones of old—Miltiades, Themistokles, Kimon, Perikles—are reproached for having “filled the city with harbours, and docks, and fortifications, and tributes, and similar rubbish” (ϕλυαριω̑ν), instead of improving their desires, “the only business of a good citizen.”^* In other places (as in the Second Alcibiades, Euthydemus, Menon, Leges), he contents himself with saying, that it is better not to have such things at all, than to have them, if devoid of the wisdom without which they cannot profit the possessor; or, with Sokrates in the Apologia, that wealth does not produce virtue, but virtue wealth, and all other things that are desirable. But, either as the sole desirable thing, or as the means of obtaining all others, the wisdom and virtue of the citizens (considered as identical) are the only proper end of government.

In the political theory thus conceived by Plato—confining ourselves to his scheme of the ideally best, and neglecting his compromise with existing obstacles in the comparatively tame production of his decline—there are two things specially deserving of remark. First, the vigorous assertion of a truth, of transcendent importance and universal application—that the work of government is a Skilled Employment; that governing is not a thing which can be done at odd times, or by the way, in conjunction with a hundred other pursuits, nor to which a person can be competent without a large and liberal general education, followed by special and professional study, laborious and of long duration, directed to acquiring, not mere practical dexterity, but a scientific mastery of the subject. This is the strong side of the Platonic theory. Its weak side is, that it postulates infallibility, or something near it, in rulers thus prepared; or else ascribes such a depth of comparative imbecility to the rest of mankind, as to unfit them for any voice whatever in their own government, or any power of calling their scientific ruler to account. The error of Plato, like most of the errors of profound thinkers, consisted in seeing only one half of the truth; and (as is also usual with such thinkers) the half which he asserted, was that which he found neglected and left in the background by the institutions and customs of his country. His doctrine was an exaggerated protest against the notion that any man is fit for any duty; a phrase which is the extreme formula of that indifference to special qualifications, and to the superiority of one mind over another, to which there is more or less tendency in all popular governments, and doubtless at Athens, as well as in the United States and in Great Britain, though it would be a mistake to regard it in any of them as either universal or incurable.

But though Plato had no hesitation in allowing absolute power to the scientific ruler when he had got one, the superiority of his genius is displayed in his clear perception of the difficulties with which this scheme of government was beset, and in the boldness with which he grappled with the problem; daring all things, however opposed to the common notions of his time (and of ours), if he could see his way to removing the rocks and shoals which threatened to be fatal to his commonwealth. The mental superiority which gives the divine right to rule, did not, in his opinion, consist in being able forcibly to seize the powers of government, and retain them by sternly repressing all active opposition and silencing every disapproving voice. This was a common enough phenomenon in Plato’s time, not quite unknown in ours; but the superiority which Plato required in his ruler was of a very different kind. According to him, it was precisely the young men most gifted by nature, and most capable of being trained to the character of genuine rulers, that when perverted by the false standard of good and evil prevailing in existing society, and delivering themselves up to selfish and lawless ambition, fall into the deep-dyed iniquity of the Tyrannus. In that combination of profound philosophy with sublime eloquence and rich poetic imagination which composes the later books of the Republic, there is a moving picture of the mode in which society, by its temptations and its wrongly-placed applauses and condemnations, corrupts these originally fine natures: and the portraiture of the full-blown Tyrannus, in the consummation of his guilt, his hatefulness to gods and men, the depth of his inward misery, and the retribution that awaits him, generally in this life, but certainly in a world to come, is one of the best known and most impressive passages in Plato.^[*] The Platonic ruler or rulers, as already remarked, are not found, but made; and the problem of making them was conceived by him in all its magnitude and difficulty. It could only be achieved by centering upon them, and upon the class from whom they were to be selected, every kind of tuition and training, intellectual, emotional, and practical, that could help to form the character required, and^rby^r withdrawing them utterly from the influence of those conditions of ordinary life, which give rise to inclinations and to a type of character disqualifying for the pure and noble use of irresponsible power.

To this purpose belongs the proscription of all such tales and legends of the gods (legends as sacred to the Greeks as the narratives of the Old and New Testaments to the ordinary Christian) as represented them to be the authors of any evil, or imputed to them unjust commands, or human weaknesses, or ascribed to them, or their descendants the Heroes, any acts which would be wicked or disreputable if done by ordinary human beings. These stories, Plato affirms, are not true; but were they so, they should not be suffered to be repeated and believed. Other legends, of a moral and elevating character, should be composed (a thing considered by him quite within the competence of Government), and the people brought up in the belief of them from their first childhood. To the same head belongs the exclusion from the Republic, not (as is sometimes asserted) of all poets, but of those who will not consent to the expurgation from their poems of all sentiments and opinions which the philosophic rulers deem injurious: for instance, that death, or the life after death, is fearful and horrible; and especially that most pernicious opinion, that there can be happiness without virtue, or that virtue is not itself the summit of happiness. Certain kinds of poetry however, the epic and dramatic, are absolutely banished, in common with all other indiscriminately mimetic or imitative arts. Art ought not to represent, either to the senses or to the mind, the likeness of anything but what is good and noble; nor ought the citizens to recite, or read, or hear recited, an imitation of the thoughts, feelings, or conduct, or bad, or degraded, or weak and foolish persons. The same severe restrictions were placed on music, a most important agent of good or evil in the estimation of Greeks, whose popular education (except the gymnastic and military elements) was chiefly emotional. No tunes or measures were tolerated in the Republic, but such as were licensed by the authorities, by whom all that were of a wailing, a relaxing, or a voluptuous character must be forbidden, those only being retained which soothe and mitigate the violent emotions, or which inspire active energy. To the same educational purpose belong the peculiar institutions of Plato respecting property and marriage, which have given some scandal to posterity, and would probably have given much more, if Plato had been suspected of a penchant for scepticism and materialism, instead of being admired as their chief enemy. The explanation of this portion of his scheme is very simple. It was not intended for the citizens generally, but for the ϕύλακες or military profession, from whom the prince or the ruling elders were selected, and who were the executors of their orders and the instruments of their government. This armed body having the remaining citizens entirely at their mercy, all was lost if they preferred their private interest to that of the public; and Plato well knew, even with the most perfect education he could give them, how little chance they had of escaping this perversion. Since it did not consort with his idea of scientific government to give the unscientific multitude even a joint authority in their own affairs, there was only one mode of protection left; those in command must have no private interests of their own to care for. The other citizens have each their family and property, but the guardians must have nothing which they can call their own. Their maintenance must be temperately provided at a common table by the State; they must have no private possessions, and must not know their own children. The object is that which the Catholic Church seeks to obtain by the celibacy of its clergy, and the communism of its monastic orders; exclusive devotion to the purposes of their institution. Whatever else may be justly said against this Platonic conception, it deserves any name rather than that of a toleration of licentiousness; for it leaves less to individual inclination than any existing practice, the public authorities deciding (within the age appointed for “producing children for the city”)^[*] who should be united with whom. Mr. Grote truly remarks, that with the customs of the Platonic commonwealth, and the Platonic physical and mental education common to both sexes, the passion between them would be likely to be reduced to its very lowest degree of power;^[†] a result decidedly intended and calculated on by Plato in the Leges.

Though not expressly remarked, it is continually visible in Mr. Grote’s book, as well as in the works themselves, how strong a hold the idea of the Division of Labour had taken on Plato’s mind. He propounds it as explicitly as Adam Smith,^[*] at the beginning of his delineation of the natural constitution and growth of a State; and it governs all the arrangements of his ideal Republic. To use his own phrase, there shall be no double or triple men in the commonwealth; each does one thing, and one only; in order that every one may have that to do for which he has greatest natural aptitude, and that each thing may be done by the person who has most studied and practised it. Civil justice in a commonwealth, which furnishes him with the type and illustrative exemplar of justice in an individual mind, consists in every person’s doing his own appointed business, and not meddling with that of another.^* An artificer must not usurp the occupation of another artificer; rulers alone must rule, guardians alone fight, producers alone produce and have the ownership of the produce. When these limits are observed, and no one interferes in the legitimate business of some one else, the community is prosperous and harmonious; if not, everybody has something which concerns him more nearly than the true discharge of his own function; the energies of the different classes are distracted by contests for power, and the State declines into some one of the successive gradations of bad government, which a considerable portion of the Republic is employed in characterizing. The demand for a Scientific Governor, not responsible for any part of his conduct to his unscientific fellow-citizens, is part of this general conception of Division of Labour, and errs only by a too exclusive clinging to that one principle.

It is necessary to conclude; though volumes might easily be occupied with the topics on which Plato’s compositions throw light, either by the truths he has reached, by the mode of his reaching them, or by his often equally instructive errors. We would gladly also have quoted more copiously from Mr. Grote; having said little or nothing of the important discussions, on all the principal topics of Plato, which he has^t, in this work,^t incidentally contributed to the philosophy of the age from the stores of his richly endowed mind. The point of view from which these topics are treated, as all acquainted with Mr. Grote’s writings would expect, is that of the Experience philosophy, as distinguished from the Intuitive or Transcendental; and readers will esteem the discussions more or less highly, according to their estimation of that philosophy; but few, we think, will dispute that Mr. Grote, by this work, has placed himself in a distinguished rank among its defenders, in an age in which it has been more powerfully and discriminatingly defended than at any former time. For further knowledge we must refer to the work itself, which will not only be the inseparable companion of Plato’s writings, but which no student, of whatever school of thought, can read without instruction, and no one who knows anything of philosophy or the history of philosophy, without admiration and gratitude.

TAINE’S DE L’INTELLIGENCE

1870

EDITOR’S NOTE

Fortnightly Review, n.s. VIII (July, 1870), 121-4, headed (under the general heading, “Critical Notice”), “De l’Intelligence. Par H[ippolyte] Taine. Two vols. 8vo. Paris [: Hachette], 1870.” Signed “J. S. Mill.” The essay was reprinted in the posthumous 4th vol. of Dissertations and Discussions (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1875), 111-18. Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “A notice of Taine’s book ‘de l’Intelligence’ in the Fortnightly Review of July 1, 1870” (MacMinn, 99). There is no copy of the essay in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

A manuscript fragment of part of the text (see 444^a-a) is in the Mill-Taylor Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science; there are no substantive variants between it and the printed text. For comment on the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, lxviii-lxxiv and xci-xcii above.

Taine’s De l’Intelligence

m. taine is one of the most known in England—at least by repute—of the present generation of thinkers and writers in France. The fact that one of his principal writings is a History of English Literature,^[*] has made his name, in a certain degree, familiar to the readers of our periodicals; and some are aware that his work contains ingenious and original views on the philosophy of literature. But so slender is the interest of most English readers in the philosophy of literature, or in any but the biographic and anecdotic portion of its history; and so excessive is the English distrust of all theories on the subject, that M. Taine’s work, notwithstanding its special relation to England, would probably be found to have obtained a greater amount of intelligent recognition, and even of intelligent criticism, in France. A fortune the reverse of this may be prophesied for the able and striking treatise which he has just published. It is fitted to obtain an earlier and higher appreciation in England than in France. The Philosophy of Mind at present excites greater interest, and is more studied, on this side the Channel, than at any former period of our history, except the brief interval which began with Locke and terminated with Hume and Reid; and M. Taine’s treatment of it has more in common with the best English speculation than with any of the philosophies now prevalent in France. Psychology and metaphysics have, it is true, a greater amount of nominal cultivation in France than in England; they are part of the curriculum of all the public establishments for higher instruction, which educate a far larger proportion of the better-off classes than our universities. But the official doctrine of those establishments is the effete philosophy of Royer-Collard, Jouffroy, and Cousin—no longer made stimulating to the intellect by the genius and vigour with which the doctrines of the school were originally given forth by its founders. The long ascendancy of Cousin in the University of France has filled all the chairs of philosophy with disciples, twice or thrice removed, of himself and of the Germans, with the practical effect of alienating most of the minds which have received any scientific training from the study of psychology altogether. M. Comte, the founder of the only rising philosophic movement in France, treated all scientific study of the mind, except through the medium of the brain—we might even say of the skull—as altogether irrational. Those, indeed, of his followers who adhere to the banner of M. Littré, have thrown off this with many other prejudices of their master, and are raising up readers and pupils for the English psychologists and for M. Taine. With the exception, however, of a very meritorious volume by M. Mervoyer,^* M. Taine’s is the first serious attempt to supply the want of a better than the official psychology. His book has a freshness, a vigour, and a scientific spirit, to which we have been long unaccustomed in works of French origin respecting the mind; and though its ultimate influence will probably be great, it will for the present meet with no countenance from any of the recognised representatives of that department of French cultivation. But we feel certain that it will be welcomed, as soon as known, by the most advanced school of English mental science; for, while it has a marked and original distinctive character of its own, unlike any other treatise on the subject, it is in harmony and close alliance with many of the most thorough-going speculations of the Association school of psychology. It diverges from them only in the two concluding chapters, which, in our judgment, overleap the bounds of really scientific inference, and, without even the warrant of supposed intuition à priori, claim absolute validity through all space and time for generalisations of human thought, which we can only admit under the inherent limitations of human experience.

The method of M. Taine’s work is correctly described in his preface. He there^asays: Under the name of our Intellect, what I intend to treat of is our knowledge. The Intellect is only our faculty, capacity, or power of knowing; and faculties, capacities, and powers are not Things, or Entities, having an existence of their own, but merely a mode of classifying, under certain heads, the facts which, by the forms of language, they are spoken of as producing. I, therefore, go at once to the facts themselves, which, in the present case, are the various portions of our knowledge. I endeavour, first, to analyse this knowledge into its simplest elements; and afterwards to ascertain the laws which govern the assemblage of those elements, and to trace the manner in which, by the operation of these laws, our different kinds of knowledge are built up—from the simplest and most concrete perceptions, memories, and expectations, to our most universal concepts and judgments; and I attempt to estimate the certitude, and extent of validity, of all these.

The work, therefore, consists of two parts—an Analytic and a Synthetic. The first, or analytic part, entitled “The Elements of Knowledge,” is divided into four books—on Signs, on Images, on Sensations, and on the Physical Conditions of Mental Events. By signs, M. Taine does not mean exclusively names, but anything mental by means of which we think of things not present to our senses. A sign, he says, is always an image, more or less vague or faded. We think of an individual object by what is called our remembrance of it, that is, by a mental image, which, in the normal state, is very much vaguer and fainter than the impression of which it is a copy. We think of classes of objects by what is called a general idea, or general notion; this, however, is again an image, still more vague in the greater part of its contents, but in which the characters common to the whole class have been made artificially predominant and distinct, by being associated with a name. So that we always, in reality, think by means of images; but we can make a very faint and imperfect image do the work; and it is the instrument of naming, properly used, which alone, in any but the most simple cases, enables us to do this with safety. M. Taine gives a very instructive exposition of the mode in which (as pointed out by Leibnitz, Condillac, and others) these imperfect images do duty in our reasoning processes symbolically, in lieu of complete representations of objects. And he shows how, by the artifice of general names, which enables us to ensure the presence, in those mutilated images, of all such characters of the objects as are essential to the reasoning, we are able to arrive at true and definite conclusions respecting objects of which we cannot have a perfectly distinct conception—such as very high numbers, polygons with a thousand sides, and so forth.^a

All our thoughts, then, being really images, our mental images form the subject of the second book. Their nature, and the laws of their recurrence, and of their decay or obliteration, are copiously illustrated by interesting experiences, drawn both from the healthy and from various morbid conditions. Images, again, being sensations more or less faded or weakened, sensations are next treated of; they are classified and analysed agreeably to the latest physiological discoveries and the most advanced psychology, until the most simple and elementary sensations, or what seem to be such, are arrived at. From sensations the author proceeds to their physical conditions, the constitution and functions, so far as ascertained, of the nervous system.

The analysis of our knowledge having thus been carried down to the simplest elements that can at present be reached, the second part—the Synthesis—commences. This also is divided into four books: Of the different kinds of Knowledge; the Knowledge of Bodies; the Knowledge of Mind; the Knowledge of what is general (des choses générales).

The first three of these books, and a great part of the fourth, are highly instructive reading to the student of analytical psychology. The distinction between the original and the acquired perceptions of our different senses, the origin and composition of our ideas of external objects, the ultimate analysis of the ideas of matter and mind, and many cognate subjects, are expounded, with great metaphysical acumen, a judicious avoidance of many wrong turnings into which previous thinkers have wandered, and a talent of exposition which adds as much to the substantial value as it does to the attractiveness of the treatise. All these subjects are illustrated by new and characteristic observations and experiences. M. Taine has profited largely by the speculations of the English thinkers with whom he most nearly agrees, and he fully acknowledges the debt; but his conception of the subject has only been enriched, not suggested by them; what they have taught him seems merely to have fallen into its place in a system of thought commenced within himself. The mutual support which he and they lend to one another is the accordance of independent thinkers.

When, in the fourth book, M. Taine arrives at the subject of our acquisition of general knowledge, he agrees fully, as to the principles of generalisation from experience, with the English writers on the logic of induction, and gives an excellent outline of the doctrines which he holds in common with them. But, as already intimated, there is another part of this final book in which he is at issue with those who are in general his nearest allies, namely, on the evidence of axioms, which he does not, like them, hold to be grounded on experience, and limited by its conditions. Neither does he, however, even in the case of the axioms of geometry, agree with those who consider them to be a peculiar class of truths, known à priori, or intuitively evident. He thinks that they may be demonstrated, and classes them among “analytic propositions”—that is, truths latently included in the ideas which are the subject of them, to be proved by evolving them out of the ideas; and he does, ingeniously and quite legitimately, demonstrate some of them in this way. But this does not seem to us at all to advance his main position. The fundamental properties of a straight line may be, and are, contained in our concept of a straight line; but if the concept itself is the product of experience, the truth of the properties comes to us from the same source. The concept can only be made up of properties which we observe: we put the properties into the concept, and what we have put into it there is nothing surprising in our afterwards finding in it. If, then, our idea of a straight line is derived from observation (and we are not sure that M. Taine denies it to be so), all that he maintains respecting the proof of the axioms of geometry may be, and much of it must be, admitted. In acquiring by observation the idea of a straight line, we necessarily acquire, and include in the idea, the knowledge that two straight lines joining the same two points coincide altogether; in other words, do not enclose any space. This property must be, expressly or by implication, a part of any sufficient account we can give of the concept which experience has left in our minds. But a straight line, and this property of it, become known to us simultaneously, and from the same source. When M. Taine goes on to claim for the first principles of other sciences—for instance, of mechanics—a similar origin and evidence to what he claims for those of geometry, and on the strength of that evidence attributes to them an absolute truth, valid for the entire universe, and independent of the limits of experience, he falls into what seem to us still greater fallacies; partly, as we think, by confounding the two meanings of the word Same—Identity, and Exact Similarity. But of this we must leave M. Taine’s readers to judge. The merits of his book are such as to command an unprejudiced consideration of that small part of it in which, according to our individual judgment, he has been deserted by that perception of the true conditions of scientific evidence which has guided him through the greater part of his course. The book deserves to be, and we hope will be, universally read by real students of psychology.

BERKELEY’S LIFE AND WRITINGS

1871

EDITOR’S NOTE

Fortnightly Review, n.s. X (Nov., 1871), 505-24, where the title is footnoted: “ ‘The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne, including many of his writings hitherto unpublished. With Prefaces, Annotations, his Life and Letters, and an Account of his Philosophy.’ By Alexander Campbell Fraser, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. In four vols., 8vo. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. 1871.” Signed “J. S. Mill.” The essay was reprinted in the posthumous 4th vol. of Dissertations and Discussions (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1875), 154-87. Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “An article on Berkeley’s Life and Writings, in the Fortnightly Review for November 1871” (MacMinn, 101). There is no copy of the essay in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

For comment on the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, xlv-xlviii and xcii above.

Berkeley’s Life and Writings

professor fraser, and the University of Oxford, have done a good service to philosophy, in recalling the attention of students to the writings of a great man, by the publication of a new, and the first complete, edition of his works. Every tiro in metaphysics is familiar with the name of Berkeley, and thinks himself perfectly well acquainted with the Berkeleian doctrines: but they are known, in most cases, so far as known at all, not from what their author, but from what other people, have said of them, and are consequently, by the majority of those who think they know them, crudely conceived, and their most characteristic features misunderstood. Though he was excelled by none who ever wrote on philosophy in the clear expression of his meaning, and discrimination of it from what he did not mean, scarcely any thinker has been more perseveringly misapprehended, or has been the victim of such persistent ignoratio elenchi; his numerous adversaries having generally occupied themselves in proving what he never denied, and denying what he never asserted. If the facilities afforded by Professor Fraser’s labours induce those who are interested in philosophy or in the history of philosophy to study Berkeley’s speculations as they issued from his own mind, we think it will be recognised that of all who, from the earliest times, have applied the powers of their minds to metaphysical inquiries, he is the one of greatest philosophic genius: though among these are included Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Hartley, and Hume; Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant. For, greatly as all these have helped the progress of philosophy, and important as are the contributions of several of them to its positive truths, of no one of them can it be said as of Berkeley, that we owe to him three first-rate philosophical discoveries, each sufficient to have constituted a revolution in psychology, and which by their combination have determined the whole course of subsequent philosophical speculation; discoveries, too, which were not, like the achievements of many other distinguished thinkers, merely refutations of error, and removal of obstacles to sound thinking, but were this and much more also, being all of them entitled to a permanent place among positive truths. These discoveries are—

1. The doctrine of the acquired perceptions of sight: that the most important part of what our eyes inform us of, and in particular externality, distance, and magnitude, are not direct perceptions of the sense of sight, but judgments or inferences, arrived at by a rapid interpretation of natural signs; the signification of which signs is taught to us neither by instinct nor reason, but by experience.

2. The non-existence of abstract ideas; and the fact that all the general or class notions by means of which we think or reason, are really, whether we know it or not, concrete ideas of individual objects.

3. The true nature and meaning of the externality which we attribute to the objects of our senses: that it does not consist in a substratum supporting a set of sensible qualities, or an unknown somewhat, which, not being itself a sensation, gives us our sensations, but consists in the fact that our sensations occur in groups, held together by a permanent law, and which come and go independently of our volitions or mental processes.

The first-mentioned of these three speculations was the earliest great triumph of analytic psychology over first appearances (dignified in some systems by the name of Natural Beliefs); and at once afforded a model and set an example to subsequent analysts.

The second corrected a misconception which darkened the whole theory of the higher operations of intellect, making impossible any real progress in the analysis of those operations until the error had been got rid of. The Conceptualists stopped the way in philosophy, as at an earlier period the Realists had done. Berkeley refuted them, and, while adopting what was true in the doctrines of Nominalism, laid the foundation of a theory of the action of the mind in general reasoning, far ahead of anything which the Nominalists had arrived at.

Thirdly and lastly, the speculations of Berkeley concerning our notion of the external world, besides their psychological importance as an analysis of perception, were the most memorable lesson ever given to mankind in the great intellectual attainment of not believing without evidence. From that time a new canon of belief, and standard of proof, were given to thinkers, on all the abstruser subjects of philosophical inquiry.

The three together have made Berkeley the turning-point of the higher philosophy in modern times. As a matter of historical fact, this admits of no dispute. Psychology and metaphysics before and after Berkeley differ almost like ancient and modern history, or ancient and modern physics. His first two discoveries have been the starting-point of the true analytic method of studying the human mind, of which they alone have rendered possible the subsequent developments; while his reasonings on Matter have confessedly decided the direction of all succeeding metaphysical thought, alike in those who accepted, wholly or partially, the doctrine of Berkeley, and in those who fought against it.

When to all this it is added that, in mere literary style, he can take rank among the best writers of an age not unjustly regarded as in that respect the great age of English prose literature, there is reason enough that a knowledge of his doctrines should be sought in his own works, and that the present edition of them should not rest idly on library shelves, but should be part of the familiar reading of all serious students of the philosophy or history of the human mind.

In reading Berkeley’s writings as a connected whole, one is forcibly struck with the completeness with which all his characteristic doctrines had been wrought out in his mind, before he gave publicity to any of them. In the very interesting common-place book (or rather note-book) kept by Berkeley when a student at the University of Dublin, and which Professor Fraser has had the good fortune and merit of bringing to light,^[*] every opinion distinctive of Berkeley is already found, even down to his points of dispute with the mathematicians; and found, not in germ merely, but almost as complete in point of mere thought, as in any of his subsequent writings. What is called his idealism, or disbelief in Matter, had not only been reached by him, but had become a fixed habit of thought at that early age. This fact is not without psychological interest, as explaining the sincere astonishment manifested in many passages of his writings, that his interpretation of sensible phenomena should not, as soon as understood, be seen to be the self-evident and common-sense view of them. Such examples of the mental law—that a mode of representing things to ourselves with which we have grown familiar, however opposed it may be to common opinion, tends to become, in our own minds, apparently self-evident—should not, when they come before us, be dismissed as the eccentricities of an individual, but should make us reflect how much more likely it is that the common opinion itself may also be indebted for its apparent self-evidence to its still greater degree of familiarity, often unbroken by the suggestion, even to fancy, of anything contradictory to it.

The doctrine of Berkeley’s first psychological work, the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,^[†] seems, and indeed is, quite independent of immaterialism; and has been accepted by the great majority of subsequent psychologists, most of whom have adopted a hostile attitude towards his idealism. But, though he published the theory of the acquired perceptions of sight before his main doctrine (which it only preceded by a year), in his own mind there was an intimate connection between them. For, the form in which he liked to represent to himself those visual appearances of linear and aërial perpective, and those muscular sensations attending movements of the globes of the eyes, which, being interpreted, inform us of tangible distance and magnitude, was that of a language in which God speaks to us, and the meaning of which, derived solely from his will, is taught to us, not by direct instruction, but by experience. Now, Berkeley’s idealism was an extension of this notion to the whole of our bodily sensations. As considered by him, all these are the direct act of God, who by his divine power impresses them on our minds without the intervention of any passive external substance, and who has established among them those constant relations of co-existence and successions required for our guidance in life, which suggest to us the unfounded idea of objects external to us, other than minds or spirits. The doctrine of the Essay on Vision might be conceived as a first step towards this system, and derived, no doubt, an additional recommendation to Berkeley from fitting so well into it; but in itself it rests on evidence strictly its own, and is equally compatible with either opinion as to the externality and substantiality of physical nature. Accordingly, it received almost unanimous assent from philosophers of both opinions, until, in our time, some unsuccessful attempts have been made to overthrow it. Among physiologists, indeed, many have remained strangers to it; for physiologists have had in full measure the failing common to specialists of all classes: they have been bent upon finding the entire theory of the phenomena they investigate within their own speciality, and have too often turned a deaf ear to any explanation of them drawn from other sources.

And here, since the question of the acquired perceptions of sight has of late been called up for rehearing, it is pertinent to remark, that the evidence of the doctrine is of that positive and irrefragable character which cannot often be obtained in psychology; it amounts to a complete induction. In general, the analytic argument by which states of consciousness, supposed to be original, are proved to be acquired, is of the nature of negative evidence. It is shown that mental laws exist which would account for their being acquired; that the known facts are consistent with the supposition of their having been so acquired; and it is maintained, with reason, that when a phenomenon may have been, and was even antecedently likely to be, produced by known causes, there is no warrant for ascribing their existence to a distinct principle in nature. But the case of the acquired perceptions of sight does not require this negative argument. It rests on positive experiment. It did so, even before its corroboration by the direct evidence of Cheselden’s and Nunneley’s patients.^[*] The signs by which, according to the theory, we judge of distance and magnitude, are the proportion of the visual field which the image occupies, the clearness or indistinctness of its outline, the brightness or faintness of its colours, the number of visible objects which seem to intervene, and the amount of muscular sensation experienced in making the eyes converge so that they both point to the object. Now the connection of all these things with our perceptions of distance and magnitude by the eye, is proved by the same evidence which proves the connection between other causes and their effects: viz., when the causes are present, the effects follow; when the causes are absent, the effects do not take place; and when the causes are altered, the effects are altered. Thus, when we look at a terrestrial object through a telescope, the merely optical effect of the instrument is, that the image occupies a larger portion of the field of vision than when we look at the object with the naked eye; and because of this, we cannot help thinking that we see it larger, and because larger, therefore nearer, than with the unassisted sight. In a hazy atmosphere, when the image of a mountain reaches us fainter in colour and with a less definite outline than at other times, we seem to see it farther off, and therefore (since the size of the image is the same as usual) more lofty, than we know it to be. The reverse takes place in a peculiarly clear atmosphere, when all distant objects appear nearer and smaller than at other times. When none of the criteria supposed in the theory are present, we do not see distance from us at all; as in the case of the heavenly bodies, of the distances of which we have no perception, and all of which, therefore, appear equally distant. We are also without perception of their magnitude, saving that those which produce the largest image in the eye appear the largest, and that all of them appear larger when near the horizon than when at a greater elevation, partly because the images are less bright, and partly because they are seen across a multitude of objects, while in the more elevated position no object of known distance intervenes between us and them.^* In all these cases, the difference is not in our conscious judgments, but in our apparent perceptions. The conscious judgment often does not share in the illusion. The man or the tree that we look at through the telescope is of a size and distance which may be accurately, and is always approximately, known; and the knowledge is not in the least shaken by any number of observations with the telescope. Yet we cannot express what we know to be an untrue appearance, in any less strong terms than by saying that we seem to see the things as we know them not to be. These experiments fulfil the conditions of a true induction. That what seems perception is a rapid interpretation of signs, is not a matter of doubtful argument, but rests on the same evidence, both in kind and in degree, as the truths of physical science.

The only part of this subject which is still really open to discussion, is the precise nature of the visual signs by which we discern extension in two dimensions, and plane figures, and of the relation between those signs and the facts which they signify. Much argument has been expended, we are far from saying uselessly, in maintaining that we must certainly have, by the mere sense of sight, some perception of superficial extension and figure. But these arguments in no way touch Berkeley’s theory; since he admits that we have distinctive impressions of sight corresponding to differences of tactual extension and figure, which impressions we may call, if we please, and he himself often does call (for want of a better designation), visible extension and figure. We could not be made aware by the sign, of differences in the things signified, unless there were concomitant differences in the sign itself. But Berkeley’s position is, that visible extension and figure, or what we choose to call by those names, have nothing in common with the tactual, or what we consider as the real, extension and figure which they serve to indicate; that the tie between them is entirely arbitrary, derived from the appointment of God; and that, far from visible extension and tactual extension being the same quality, we never should have suspected that there was any connection between them if experience had not disclosed it. In his opinion, a person born blind, and afterwards, when grown up, made to see, would not at first, on being shown a cube and a sphere, know whether the one or the other is the cube or sphere already known to him by touch. And this opinion is borne out by the best recorded instances. But the theory does not need this extreme conclusion; for though visible extension or figure may have, and indeed can have, no positive resemblance to tactual, there may be between them an analogy, or resemblance of relations—that is, the parts of the one may have mutual relations resembling those between the parts of the other. For example, both the visible and the tangible cube have corners; a sort of singular points, which do not exist in either the visible or the tangible sphere; and this similarity of relations might cause a person born blind, and afterwards couched, to suspect (though he could not at first know) that the visible cube, if it corresponds to anything tangible, corresponds to a tangible cube rather than to a tangible sphere. This analogy, however, does not seem to have afforded any guidance either to Cheselden’s patient or to Nunneley’s.

The originality of Berkeley is not so complete in this, the first of his three distinctive doctrines, as in the other two. The doctrine has been, by all who followed him, traced up to his Essay, in which it was for the first time pressed home, and defended against objections, so as to gain it admission among established truths.^[*] But he was not the first thinker to whom the idea had presented itself. As pointed out by Professor Fraser,^[†] not only had Malebranche, with whose philosophy Berkeley was familiar, made considerable approaches to it, but the fundamental doctrine is stated, in terms which Berkeley himself might have subscribed to, in a passage of Locke’s essay, first inserted in the fourth edition, and a part of which is quoted by Berkeley in his treatise. Locke himself not improbably received the idea from his friend Molyneux, to whom is due even the illustration from the sphere and cube.^[‡] Berkeley, therefore, has not the merit of the conception; but he has that of raising it from a surmise to a scientific truth.

It also deserves remark, that the impossibility of seeing distance from the eye (inasmuch as, whether great or small, it projects but one point on the retina)—though often supposed to be one of the principal novelties in Berkeley’s theory—neither was, nor professed to be, a novelty, but was assumed by him, in the very beginning of his Essay, as an admitted truth. The writers on optics had already discerned thus much; but the error into which they had fallen, and which it was the aim of Berkeley to correct, was, that we judge of distances by a necessary inference of reason, from geometrical considerations which, as Berkeley says with truth, we are totally unconscious of, and which the great majority of mankind know nothing about. The whole stress of his argument is directed to showing that the inference is not one of reason, but of empirical association, and that the connection between our impressions of sight and the facts they indicate can be discovered only by direct experience. It is this which makes Berkeley’s analysis of vision the leading and model example of the analytic psychology. The power of the law of association in giving to artificial combinations the appearance of ultimate facts was then for the first time made manifest.

The second of Berkeley’s great contributions to philosophy—his theory of general thought—is, that it is carried on, not, as even Locke imagined, by means of general or abstract ideas, but by ideas of individuals, serving as representatives of classes. All ideas, it was maintained by Berkeley, are concrete and individual, which yet is no hindrance to our arriving, by means of them, at truths which are general. When, for example, we prove the properties of triangles, the idea in our mind is not, as Locke supposed, the abstract idea of a triangle which is nothing but a triangle—which is neither equilateral, isosceles, nor scalene—but the concrete idea of some particular triangle, from which, nevertheless, we may conclude to all other triangles, if we have taken care to use no premises but such as are true of any triangle whatever. This doctrine, which is now generally received, though perhaps not always thoroughly comprehended, was undoubtedly, like that of the acquired perceptions of sight, intimately connected in Berkeley’s mind with his ideal theory; for he regarded the notion of matter, apart from sensations in a mind, as the supreme instance of that absurdity, an abstract idea. As in the theory of vision, so in this, Berkeley broke the neck of the problem. He for the first time saw to the bottom of the Nominalist and Realist controversy, and established the fact that all our ideas are of individuals; though he left it to his successors to point out the exact nature of the psychological machinery (if the expression may be allowed) by which general names do their work without the help of general ideas. The solution of this, as of so many other difficulties, lies in the connotation of general names. A name, though common to an indefinite multitude of individual objects, is not, like a proper name, devoid of meaning; it is a mark for the properties, or for some of the properties, which belong alike to all these objects, and with these common properties it is associated in a peculiarly close and intimate manner. Now—though the name calls up, and cannot help calling up, in addition to these properties, others in greater or smaller number which do not belong to the whole class, but to the one or more individual members of it which, for the time being, are serving as mental types of the class—these other ingredients are accidental and changeable; so that the idea actually called up by the class name, though always that of some individual, is an idea in which the properties that the name is a mark of are made artificially prominent, while the others, varying from time to time, and not being attended to, are thrown into the shade. What had been mistaken for an abstract idea, was a concrete image, with certain parts of it fluctuating (within given limits) and others fixed, these last forming the signification of the general name; and the name, by concentrating attention on the class-attributes, prevents the intrusion into our reasoning of anything special to the individual object which in the particular case is pictured in the mind.^*

The third of Berkeley’s distinctive doctrines, and that by which his name is best known, is his denial of Matter, or rather of Matter as defined by philosophers; for he always maintained that his own opinion is nearer to the common belief of mankind than the doctrine of philosophers is. Philosophers, he says, consider matter to be one thing, and our sensible impressions, called ideas of sense, another: they believe that what we perceive are only our ideas, while the Matter which lies under them and impresses them upon us is the real thing. The vulgar, on the contrary, believe that the things they perceive are the real things, and do not believe in any hidden thing lying underneath them. And in this I, Berkeley, differ with the philosophers, and agree with the vulgar, for I believe that the things we perceive are the real things, and the only things, except minds, that are real. But then he held with the philosophers, and not with the vulgar, that what we directly perceive are not external objects, but our own ideas; a notion which the generality of mankind never dreamed of. Accordingly, at the conclusion of his fullest and clearest exposition of his own doctrine (the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous), Berkeley says that the truth is at present “shared between the vulgar and philosophers: the former being of opinion that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the mind.”^*

It was enough for Berkeley to say, and this he was fully justified in saying, that he did not deny the validity of perception, nor of consciousness; that he affirmed the reality of all that either the vulgar or philosophers really perceive by their senses, and denied only what was not a perception, but a rapid and unconscious inference, like the inference which is mistaken for perception when we judge of externality and distance by the eye; with the difference, however, that in this last case the inference is legitimate, having experience to rest upon, while in the case of matter there is no ground in experience or in anything else for regarding the sensations we are conscious of as signs of the presence of anything, except potentialities of other sensations. Berkeley might say with truth, and in his own language he did say, that he agreed with the common opinion of mankind in all that they distinctly realise to themselves under the notion of matter. For he agreed in recognising in the impressions of sense a permanent element, which does not cease to exist in the intervals between our sensations, and which is entirely independent of our own individual mind (though not of all mind). And he was quite right in maintaining that this is all that goes to make up the positive notion which mankind have of material objects. The point at which he diverged from them was where they add to this positive notion a negative one—viz., that these objects are not mental, or such as can only exist in a mind. Without including this, it is impossible to give a correct account of the common notion of matter; and on this point an unmistakeable difference existed between Berkeley and the common mind. It was competent to Berkeley to maintain that this part of the common notion is an illusion; and he did maintain this, in our opinion successfully. He was not equally successful in showing how the illusion is produced, and in what manner it grows into a delusion. He gives as a sufficient explanation “that men knowing they perceived several ideas, whereof they themselves were not the authors—as not being excited from within, nor depending on the operation of their wills—this made them maintain those ideas or objects of perception had an existence independent of and without the mind, without ever dreaming that a contradiction was involved in those words.”^* It is not surprising that this explanation should not be accepted as sufficient. For our thoughts, also, do not always depend on our own will; and therefore, on this theory, our thoughts, as well as our sense-perceptions, should sometimes be considered to be external to us. Berkeley escapes from this difficulty by greatly exaggerating the dependence of the thoughts upon the will.^† He also adds, as another distinction between sensations and thoughts, that the former are “not excited from within.” But the very notions of without and within, in reference to our mind, involve belief in externality, and cannot, therefore, serve to account for the belief. Berkeley left this part of his theory to be completed by his successors. It remained for them to show how easily and naturally, when a single sensation of sight or sound indicates the potential presence, at our option, of all the other sensations of a complex group, this latent though present possibility of a host of sensations not felt, but guaranteed by experience, comes to be mistaken for a latent cause of the sensations we actually feel; especially when the possibilities, unlike the actual sensations, are found to be common to us with other minds. This has been shown, perhaps more fully and explicitly than ever before, in the present generation. That it could not be so distinctly pointed out by Berkeley, was partly because he had not thoroughly realised the fact, that the permanent element in our perceptions is only a potentiality of sensations not actually felt. He saw indeed, quite clearly, that to us the external object is nothing but such a potentiality. “The table I write on,” he says in the Principles of Human Knowledge, “I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed—meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit does perceive it.”^* But in itself the object was, in his theory, not merely a present potentiality, but a present actual existence, only its existence was in a mind—in the Divine Mind. This is the positive side of his theory, not so generally known or attended to as the negative side, and which involves, we think, some serious logical errors.

It must here be observed, that Berkeley was not content with maintaining that the existence of a material substratum is neither perceived by the senses, nor proved by reason, nor necessary to account for the phenomena, and is therefore, by the rules of sound logic, to be rejected. He thought that it could be disproved. He considered the notion of matter to involve a contradiction: and it was true that the notion as defined by many philosophers did so. For their definition of matter affirmed it to be purely passive and inert; yet they regarded material objects as the exciting causes of our sensations. There was no refuting Berkeley when he said that what is passive and inert cannot cause or excite anything. To the notion of philosophers that the causes of our sensations might be “the configuration, number, motion, and size of corpuscles,” he replied by an appeal to consciousness. Extension, figure, and motion, he said, are ideas, existing only in the mind; “but whoever shall attend to his ideas, whether of sense or reflection, will not perceive in them any power or activity; there is, therefore, no such thing contained in them. A little attention will discover to us that the very being of an idea implies passiveness and inertness in it, insomuch that it is impossible for an idea to do anything, or, strictly speaking, to be the cause of anything. Whence it plainly follows that extension, figure, and motion cannot be the cause of our sensations.”^† From this he deduces that as our sensations must have a cause, and as this cannot be other sensations (or ideas), and as there exists no physical thing except sensations (or ideas), the cause of our sensations must be a spirit. He thus anticipates the doctrine of which so much use has been made by later philosophers of a school opposed to his own; that nothing can be a cause, or exert power, but a mind.

It would have been well if the thinker who was almost the founder and creator of the Experience philosophy of mind, had contented himself with (in the language of Kant) a criticism of experience—with distinguishing what is and what is not a subject of it: instead of, as we find him here, dispensing with experience, by an à priori argument from intuitive consciousness. For it is in vain to consult consciousness about the existence of a power. Powers are not objects of consciousness. A power is not a concrete entity, which we can perceive or feel, but an abstract name for a possibility; and can only be ascertained by seeing the possibility realised. Intuitive perception tells us the colour, texture, &c., of gunpowder, but what intuition have we that it can blow up a house? True it is that all we can observe of physical phenomena is their constancies of co-existence, succession, and similitude. Berkeley had the merit of clearly discerning this fundamental truth, and handing down to his successors the true conception of that which alone the study of physical nature can consist in. He saw that the causation we think we see in nature is but uniformity of sequence. But this is not what he considers real causation to be. No physical phenomenon, he says, can be an efficient cause; but our daily experience proves to us that minds, by their volitions, can be, and are, efficient causes. Let us be thankful to Berkeley for the half of the truth which he saw, though the remainder was hidden from him by that mist of natural prejudice from which he had cleared so many other mental phenomena. No one, before Hume, ventured to think that this supposed experience of efficient causation by volitions is as mere an illusion as any of those which Berkeley exploded, and that what we really know of the power of our own volitions is only that certain facts (reducible, when analysed, to muscular movements) immediately follow them. Berkeley proceeded to argue, that since our sensations must be caused by a mind, they must be given to us by the direct action of the Divine Mind, without the employment of an unintelligible inert substance as an intermediate link. Having no efficacy as a means, this passive substance could only intervene, if at all, not as a cause, but as an occasion, determining the Divine Being to give us the sensations: a doctrine actually held by Malebranche and other Cartesians, but to Berkeley inadmissible, since what need can the Deity have of such a reminder? Indeed, Malebranche admitted that on his theory there would be no necessity for believing in this superfluous wheel in the machinery, if its existence had not been, as he supposed it to be, expressly affirmed in Scripture. Therefore, thought Berkeley, all that is termed perception of material objects is the direct action of God upon our minds, and no substance but spirit has any concern in it.

But Berkeley did not stop here. That which is the immediate object of perception according to previous philosophers, and the sole object according to Berkeley, was our ideas—a much-abused term, never more unhappily applied than when it was given as a name to sensations and possibilities of sensation. These ideas (argued Berkeley) are admitted to have a permanent existence, contrasted with the intermittence of actual sensations; and an idea can have no existence except in a mind. They exist in our own minds only while we perceive them, and in the minds of other men only while those other men perceive them; how then is their existence sustained when no man perceives them? By their permanently existing in the mind of God. This appeared to Berkeley so conclusive an argument for the existence of a Supreme Mind, that it might well take the place of all the other evidences of natural theology. There must be a Deity, because, if there were not, there would be no permanent lodging-place for physical nature; since it has no existence out of a mind, and does not constantly and continuously exist in any finite mind. And he sincerely believed that this argument put a final extinguisher upon “atheism and scepticism.”^[*] All that we perceive must be in a mind, and when no finite being is perceiving it, there is only the Divine Mind for it to abide in. This quaint theory presents a distant and superficial resemblance to Plato’s doctrine of ideas; and in Siris,^[†] which in its metaphysical part contains the latest of Berkeley’s statements of his opinion, he presses Plato and the Platonists (who, as Coleridge says, should rather be called the Plotinists)^[‡] into the service of his theory; leading Professor Fraser to believe that the theory itself had undergone modifications, and had been developed in his later years into something more nearly akin to Realism.^[§] To our mind the passages in Siris do not convey this impression. There is a wide chasm between Berkeley’s doctrine and Plato’s, and we do not believe that Berkeley ever stepped over it. The Platonic Ideas were self-existent and immaterial, but were as much external to the Divine Mind as to the human. The gods, in their celestial circuits, so imaginatively depicted in the Phædrus, lived in the perpetual contemplation of these Ideas, but were neither the authors, nor were their minds the seat and habitation of them; their sole privilege above mankind was that of never losing sight of them. Moreover Plato’s Ideas were not, like Berkeley’s, identified with the common objects of sense, but were studiously and most broadly distinguished from them, as being the imperishable prototypes of those great and glorious attributes—beauty, justice, knowledge, &c.—of which some distant and faint likeness may be perceived in the noblest only of terrestrial things. We see no signs that Berkeley ever drew nearer to these opinions; and it seems to us that his citations of the Platonists were not an adoption of their doctrines, but an attempt to show that they had, in a certain sense, made an approximation to his, at least to the extent of throwing off the vulgar opinions.

The part of Berkeley’s theory on which he grounded what he deemed the most cogent argument for a Deity, is obviously the weak and illogical part of it. While showing that our sensations, equally with our thoughts, are but phenomena of our own mind, he recognised, with the rest of the world, a permanent element in the sensations which does not exist in the thoughts; but he had an imperfect apprehension of what that permanent element is. He supposed that the actual object of a sensible perception, though, on his own showing, only a group of sensations, and suspended so far as we are concerned when we cease to perceive it, comes back literally the same the next time it is perceived by us; and, being the same, must have been kept in existence in another mind. He did not see clearly that the sensations I have to-day are not the same as those I had yesterday, which are gone, never to return; but are only exactly similar; and that what has been kept in continuous existence is but a potentiality of having such sensations, or, to express it in other words, a law of uniformity in nature, by virtue of which similar sensations might and would have recurred, at any intermediate time, under similar conditions. These sensations, which I did not have, but which experience teaches me that I might have had at any time during the intermission of my actual sensations, are not a positive entity subsisting through that time: they did not exist as sensations, but as a guaranteed belief; implying constancy in the order of phenomena, but not a spiritual substance for the phenomena to dwell in when not present to my own mind. Professor Fraser, in several of his annotations, expresses the opinion that Berkeley did not mean, when a sensation comes back after an interval, that it is numerically the same, but only that it is the same in kind. But if the same only in kind, how can it require to be kept individually in existence during the interval? When the momentary sensation has passed away, the occurrence, after a time, of another and exactly similar sensation, does not imply any permanent object, mental any more than material, to keep up an identity which does not really exist. If Berkeley thought that what we feel is retained in actual, as distinguished from potential, existence, when we are no longer feeling it, he cannot have thought that it is nothing more than a sensation. And in truth, by giving it the ambiguous and misleading name Idea, he does leave an opening for supposing it to be more than a sensation. His Ideas, which he supposes to be what we perceive by our senses, are nothing different, and are not represented by him as anything different, from our sensations: he frequently uses the words as synonymous: yet he doubtless would have seen the absurdity of maintaining that the sensation of to-day can be really the same as the sensation of yesterday, but he saw no absurdity in affirming this of the idea. By means of this word he gives a kind of double existence to the objects of sense: they are, according to him, sensations, and contingencies, or permanent possibilities, of sensation, and yet they are also something else; they are our purely mental perceptions, and yet they are independent objects of perception as well; though immaterial, they exist detached from the individual mind which perceives them, and are laid up in the Divine Mind as a kind of repository, from which it almost seems that God must be supposed to detach them when it is his will to impress them on us, since Berkeley rejects the doctrine of Malebranche, that we actually contemplate them in the Divine Mind. This illogical side of Berkeley’s theory was the part of it to which he himself attached the greatest value; and he would have been much grieved if he had foreseen the utter neglect of his favourite argument for Theism. For it was for this, above all, that he prized his immaterial theory. Indeed, the war against freethinkers was the leading purpose of Berkeley’s career as a philosopher.^*

Besides Berkeley’s properly metaphysical writings, some notice must be taken of his strictly polemical performances—his attacks on the freethinkers, and on the mathematicians. The former controversy pervades more or less all his writings, and is the special object of the longest of them, the series of dialogues entitled Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher.^[*] Of this it may be said with truth, that were it not the production of so eminent a man, it would have little claim to serious attention. As a composition, indeed, it has great merit; and, together with the dialogues on Matter, entitle Berkeley to be regarded as the writer who, after Plato, has best managed the instrument of controversial dialogue. The opinions, however, which he puts into the mouths of freethinkers are mostly such as no one would now think worth refuting, for the excellent reason that nobody holds them; it may be permitted to doubt whether they were even then held by any one worth answering. The freethinkers in the dialogues are two in number—Alciphron, who is intended to represent a disciple of Shaftesbury; and Lysicles, a follower of Mandeville, or rather a man of pleasure who avails himself of Mandeville in defending his own way of life. Alciphron stands for sentimental, Lysicles for sensual infidelity; the latter (with whom Alciphron also at first seemed to agree) denying all moral distinctions, and professing a doctrine of pure selfishness. Now Mandeville himself did neither of these, nor are such doctrines known to have been ever openly professed, even by those who, so far as they dared, acted on them.^* It is most likely that Berkeley painted freethinkers from no actual acquaintance with them, and in the case of “sceptics and atheists”^[*] without any authentic knowledge of their arguments; for few, if any, writers in his time avowed either scepticism or atheism, and, before Hume, nobody of note had attempted, even as an intellectual exercise, to set out the case on the atheistical side. Like most other defenders of religion in his day, though we regret to have it to say of a man of his genius and virtues, Berkeley made no scruple of imputing atheism on mere surmise—to Hobbes, for example, who never speaks otherwise than as a believer in God, and even in Christianity; and to the “god-intoxicated” Spinoza.^[†] We may judge that he replied to what he supposed to be in the minds of infidels, rather than to what they anywhere said; and, in consequence, his replies generally miss the mark. Indeed, with the exception of his own special argument for Theism, already commented upon, he has much more to say for the usefulness of religion than for its truth; and even on that he says little more than what is obvious on the surface. A noticeable thing, not only in his controversy with the freethinkers, but through all his miscellaneous writings, is the firm persuasion he expresses of the spread and growth not only of religious unbelief, but, in addition to that, of immorality of all kinds, from the dissipations and profligacies of men about town, to robberies on the highway; and in particular he held that political corruption had surpassed all previous bounds, and that the very idea of public spirit, or regard for the public interest, was treated with contempt. No doubt, the settlement of the old questions which had strongly interested the multitude—while the new ones, which date from the American and French revolutions, had not yet come in—made the reigns of the two first Georges a time of political indifference, always favourable to the venality of politicians. Yet, when we carry back our thoughts to the courts and parliaments of the last two Stuarts, or further off, to those of James I, or earlier still, of Henry VIII, we shall not easily believe that such change as had taken place was in any direction but that of improvement. However this be, Berkeley was under a strong belief, more frequent than well-founded in the case of many good men at all periods, that the nation was degenerating; and he felt it his peremptory duty to do what in him lay towards checking that degeneration, by reasserting and fortifying with new arguments the old doctrines of religion and morals. It would have greatly astonished him to be told that, as a philosopher, he would in a future age be accounted the father of all subsequent scepticism; while, as a moralist, he would be under the ban of the next spiritualist revival, since, like nearly all the theologians of his time, he was distinctly and absolutely an utilitarian—one of Paley’s sort, who believed that God’s revealed Word is the safest guide to utility.

Berkeley’s controversy with the mathematicians has far more pith and substance, and may even now be read with considerable profit. This, too, was conceived by himself as part of his warfare against freethinkers, being an argument ad hominem addressed to “an infidel mathematician,” to the effect that as he, in mathematics, believed mysteries, and things contrary to reason, it was not open to him to reject Christianity because it contained mysteries above reason. The mathematical mysteries in question were the doctrines relating to infinites, and specially those on which the differential or infinitesimal calculus was grounded. The conclusions arrived at by this process Berkeley did not dispute, inasmuch as they were often confirmed by experience, and had not, in any case, been contradicted by it; but he maintained that the rational grounds of the theory were quite untenable, and at variance with the boasted exactness and demonstrative character of mathematical reasoning. And it is difficult to read, without parti pris, The Analyst,^[*] and the admirable rejoinder to its assailants, entitled A Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics^[†] (the latter one of the finest pieces of philosophic style in the English language), and not to admit that Berkeley made out his case. It was not until later that the differential calculus was placed on the foundation it now stands on—the conception of a limit; which is the true basis of all reasoning respecting infinitely small quantities, and, properly apprehended, frees the doctrine from Berkeley’s objections. Nevertheless, so deeply did those objections go into the heart of the subject, that even after the false theory had been given up, the true one was not (so far as we are aware) worked out completely, in language open to no philosophical objection, by any one^* who preceded the late eminent Professor De Morgan, who combined, with the attainments of a mathematician, those of a philosophic logician and psychologist. Though whoever had mastered the idea of a limit could see, in a general way, that it was adequate to the solution of all difficulties, the puzzle arising from the conception of different orders of differentials—quantities infinitely small, yet infinitely greater than other infinitely small quantities—had not (to our knowledge) been thoroughly cleared up, and the meaning that lies under those mysterious expressions brought into the full light of reason, by any one before Mr. De Morgan.

Berkeley was not solely a speculative philosopher and theologian; he also wrote on things directly practical, as was to be expected from his keen interest in the welfare of mankind, and specially of his own Ireland. The labours and the years of life which he devoted to the attempt to found a college at Bermuda, chiefly for the education of missionaries—a scheme which, solely through the influence of his personal character, got so far as to obtain a (for the time) large subscription list, and an address from the House of Commons, followed by the grant of a charter and a promise of £20,000 from the minister, but which, when the fascination of his presence had been removed, was quietly let drop—need not here be further dwelt upon. In his writings on practical subjects there is much to commend, and a good deal to criticise. One of them is a vindication of Passive Obedience, or the Christian doctrine of not resisting the Supreme Power.^[*] It is an impressive lesson of tolerance, to find so great a man as Berkeley a thoroughly convinced adherent and defender of a doctrine not only so pernicious, but by that time so thoroughly gone by. The reader of the tract perceives that the writer was misled by an exaggerated application of that cardinal doctrine of morality, the importance of general rules. As it was acknowledged that the cases in which it is right to disobey the laws or rebel against the Government are not the rule but the exception, Berkeley threw them out altogether, for his moral rules admitted of no exceptions. The most considerable and best known of his writings on practical interests is the Querist, wherein opinions are propounded in a form to which Berkeley was partial, that of queries. It is in this that we find his celebrated query, “Whether, if there was a wall of brass a thousand cubits high round this kingdom, our natives might not nevertheless live cleanly and comfortably, till the land, and reap the fruits of it.”^* The majority of the queries, like this, are on subjects of political economy. Their chief merits are the strong hold which the author has of the fundamental truths, that the industry of the people is the true source of national wealth, and luxurious expenditure a detriment to it; and the distinctness with which he perceived, being therein much in advance of his age, that money is not in itself wealth, but a set of counters for computing and exchanging wealth, and, in his own words, “a ticket entitling to power, and fitted to record and transfer this power.”^[*] Had he followed up this idea, he might have anticipated the work of Adam Smith; but he held, apparently, to the conclusions of what is called the mercantile system, while rejecting its premises, and seems to have thought the consumption of foreign luxuries vastly more injurious to the national wealth than that of luxuries produced at home.

Few of Berkeley’s writings have been so much heard of, though in our days none, probably, so little read, as Siris—originally published under the title of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the virtues of Tar-Water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising one from another—a work which begins with tar-water and ends with the Trinity, the intermediate space being filled up with the most recondite speculations, physical and metaphysical. It may surprise some persons when we say that the part of this which is best worth reading is that which treats of tar-water. Berkeley adduces a mass of evidence, from much experience of his own and of others, to the powers of tar-water both in promoting health and in curing many diseases, and thinks it probable, though without venturing to affirm, that it is an universal medicine. All this is often supposed to be a mere delusion of the philosopher, by those who do not know that the efficacy he ascribes to his remedy is in part real, since creosote, one of the ingredients of tar-water, is used with success both as a tonic and for the relief of pain, not to mention the disinfecting and other virtues of another ingredient, the now much talked-of carbolic acid. In any case, it is a valuable lesson to see how great, and seemingly conclusive, a mass of positive evidence can be produced in support of a medical opinion which yet is not borne out, except to a very limited extent, by subsequent experience. Having, as he thought, established à posteriori the restorative virtues of tar-water, Berkeley, like a philosopher as he was, endeavoured to investigate the cause, or general principle of these virtues; but he sought for evidence both of the possibility of a panacea, and of the probability of this being such, in the doctrines of an erroneous, and now thoroughly exploded, chemistry, and through them, in the mixed physical and metaphysical theories of the ancient philosophers. One of the points he strove to make out was, that fire is the vital force, or principle of life; having first, as he thought, established, from his antiquated chemistry, a peculiar connection between tar and the element of fire. But as it was not consistent with Berkeley’s philosophy to let it be supposed that fire, or anything except mind, could be a real agent, he ascends through this apparently humble subject to his own highest speculations. “It is neither acid, nor salt, nor sulphur, nor air, nor æther, nor visible corporeal fire—much less the phantom fate or necessity—that is the real agent, but, by a certain analysis, a regular connection or climax, we ascend through all those mediums to a glimpse of the First Mover, invisible, incorporeal, unextended, intellectual source of life and being.”^* And the ancient philosophers, whom he had already cited in confirmation of his physics, are now invoked to give what support they can to his theology, very unsuccessfully in our opinion. Professor Fraser attaches great value to Siris, saying, that “the scanty speculative literature of these islands in last century contains no other work nearly so remarkable,” and that “every time we open its pages we find fresh seeds of thought. It breathes the spirit of Plato and the Neoplatonists in the least Platonic generation of English history since the revival of letters.”^† We confess we see in it no connection but with what is least valuable in Plato, his mystical cosmogony, that which is really common to him with the Neoplatonists; and while we do not think it adds anything of the smallest value to Berkeley’s thoughts elsewhere expressed, it overloads them with a heap of useless and mostly unintelligible jargon, not of his own but of the Plotinists.

Professor Fraser has fulfilled the duties of an editor with intelligence and fidelity. He has in general contented himself with explaining and elucidating his author, and has been more sparing in comment of his own, even in the way of defence, than might perhaps have been expected from the valuable services of this kind which he has rendered to the Berkeleian doctrines in other writings. The chapter, however, which he has devoted to “The Philosophy of Berkeley,”^‡ contains much useful matter in explanation and recommendation of Berkeley’s main thoughts, with some hints at what he deems shortcomings, which, to be properly judged, would require much more expansion. The biography which he has contributed, incorporating a great number of letters of Berkeley not previously known, is a work both of labour and of love, for which thanks are due to Professor Fraser. Unhappily the letters, being mostly to his man of business, Mr. Thomas Prior, do not bring to light anything very novel in the life or character of the philosopher; but both they and the biography will be always welcome to his admirers, by admitting them to such imperfect acquaintance as is still obtainable with the daily life of so excellent and eminent a man.

GROTE’S ARISTOTLE

1873

EDITOR’S NOTE

Fortnightly Review, n.s. XIII (Jan., 1873), 27-50, where the title is footnoted: “Aristotle. By George Grote. Edited by Alexander Bain, Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen, and G. Croom Robertson, Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic in University College, London. In two volumes. London [: Murray], 1872.” Signed “J. S. Mill.” The essay was reprinted in the posthumous 4th vol. of Dissertations and Discussions (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1875), 188-230. Identified in JSM’s bibliography as “An article on Grote’s Aristotle in the Fortnightly Review for January 1st 1873” (MacMinn, 101). There is no copy in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

There are, exceptionally, two complete manuscripts of the essay, one a draft (Harvard), the other the press-copy (Library of Congress). These have been collated with the text; in the footnoted variants “H” indicates the Harvard manuscript; “C”, the Library of Congress manuscript; “73”, the Fortnightly Review. The variants also give the few places where the final text returns to a cancelled reading in the Harvard MS. For comment on the composition of the essay and related matters, see the Introduction and the Textual Introduction, xlii-xlv and xcii-xciv above.

>The first folio of the draft MS of “Grote’s Aristotle” Houghton Library, Harvard University

>The first folio of the press-copy MS of “Grote’s Aristotle” Library of Congress

Grote’s Aristotle

a book which should^aperform^a for Aristotle what the author of the present volumes had^baccomplished^b for Plato; which should^ccontain^c an accurate and exhaustive account of all his multifarious works, with a critical appreciation of them, both from the philosophical point of view and from the historical; would be as welcome to philosophers and scholars as the work by which Mr. Grote expounded Plato to English readers^d ; and would have been, perhaps, even more difficult to execute with that thoroughness which alone would have contented the eminent author. Seldom has^eany literary undertaking given^e more cause to lament the shortness of human life, and the impossibility of^f extending beyond the allotted limits lives valuable to mankind, than this work, in its present unfinished condition, exhibits. For Mr. Grote’s death was not, in the ordinary^gmeaning^g of the word, premature; he lived to the ripe age of seventy-six years; but this, his^hlatest^h production, down to the very chapter in which his pen was interrupted by fatal illness, shows an undiminished vigour of intellect and perseverance of mental industry, which raise sad thoughts of how muchⁱgoodⁱ work he might^jstill have done,^j if the merely animal and nutritive organs of his bodily frame had been capable of as long a^kpersistency^k of life and health as the properly human organ, the reasoning and thinking brain.^lRemembering^l , however, that this is^monly one among the many inherent imperfections of our existence on earth^m , and that a work of such magnitude, commenced after the age of seventy, wasⁿexceedinglyⁿ likely never to be completed, let us turn to the two goodly volumes which are the^oresult^o of the labours of those last years, and rather rejoice that so much has been given, and this of so excellent a quality, than mourn over what might have been if the^pconstitution^p of human life had been different.

For the work, though unfinished, is not a mere fragment: a part only of the task has been performed, but what is done is thoroughly done; a portion only of the ground has been covered, but what has been built on that portion is a completed structure in itself. The account of the logical writings of Aristotle, and of his position as a thinker on logic, is^qcomplete; and^q this includes, as is known, by far the greater part of what is permanently valuable in his contributions to the sum of human knowledge, as distinguished from the value, in an historical point of view, of^r his speculations, regarded as steps in the development of human thought. In the natural order of succession, the psychology and metaphysics follow^safter^s the logic; but on these time was only given to Mr. Grote to make a commencement. One^tchapter, abruptly broken off,^t is all that he had prepared on^uthese subjects^u to form part of the present treatise. But as far as regards the mere exposition of Aristotle, apart from criticism and comment, the blank is in a measure supplied by a full abstract, and, in part, translation, of the six principal books of the Metaphysica (as well as of two books of the De Cœlo,^[*]v intimately connected with them), which Mr. Grote had made^w, as a help^w to himself, not for publication, but which the editors have, very properly, printed in an appendix. An account of Aristotle’s psychology, contributed^xby him^x in 1868 to the third edition of Professor Bain’s work, The Senses and the Intellect,^[†] is^yalso^y reprinted as the last chapter of the treatise. The appendix contains two other papers, also written^zfor two of Mr. Bain’s treatises,^[‡] and there published, in which Mr. Grote gives his^z view of Aristotle’s doctrines^arespecting two of the principal questions on the border ground between logic and metaphysics^a . One is^bthe question^b which was the subject of his^cchief^c controversy with Plato, the nature of Universals; the other^d is that of First Principles. Both essays are as thorough and as highly finished as any part of the treatise itself. To these are now added^e compositions^fwhich, either wholly or in part, appear^f for the first time—one, a correction of the mistakes of Sir William Hamilton respecting the relation of Aristotle to what is called^g, by the Reid and Stewart school,^g the philosophy of Common Sense^h, of which philosophy Hamilton, on very insufficient grounds, claims him as an apostle^h ; and two short but valuable papers on Epicurus and on the Stoics, some account of whom was toⁱhave beenⁱ included in the work on Aristotle, as the earlier^jSocratic^j schools, the Megarics,^kthe^k Cynics, and Cyrenaics (what little is known of them) were comprehended in^lthat^l on Plato. The matter^mrelating to Aristotle in the appendix^m , together with the lucid expositionⁿ of some main points of his doctrine in the two chapters which stand as parts of the work itself, are a most valuable contribution to^othe^o knowledge and^punderstanding^p of Aristotle as a psychologist and metaphysician, and will not only lighten the labour of such as may take up the task after Mr. Grote, but will^qhelp materially^q to guide them into the true path.^rBut^r the greatest value of the work will^salways^s reside in the part^tof it^t which is completed, the analysis and appreciation of the treatises composing the Organon; a name and classification^u, it must be said,^u not of Aristotle’s^v making, but introduced by his^wcommentators^w to distinguish the logical treatises, those on the^xrules and method^x of philosophizing, from the^yfar^y greater number which aimed at^zsetting forth^z some of the results of philosophy.

When Aristotle is^acalled, not without justice,^a the founder of logic, this is not to be understood solely of^bthe portion of logic with which his name is specially identified,^b the doctrine of the syllogism. Of this, however, he ^cwas not only the great teacher, but^c expressly^dclaimed to be^d the creator. In one of the few passages of his voluminous writings which^econtain a direct^e reference to himself, he declares that on this subject he had no helps, and no precursors.^fUnlike^f rhetoric, on which there existed^ga copious body of^h theory and precept, inherited from predecessors and accumulated by successive traditions,^g in dialectic (he says)—

In such modest terms does Aristotle speak of what he had done for a theory which, in the judgment even of^jso distant an age as the present^j , he did not,^kas he himself says, merely^k commence, but completed,^lso^l far as completeness can be affirmed of^ma^m scientific doctrine. The theory, as it came from his hands, has proved its sufficiency by the practical rules which heⁿ grounded on it, and which have been found to cover every case and suffice for every purpose for which they were^ointended; and^o (^pexcept the easy addition of the hypothetical syllogism^p ) none of the attempts^qthat^q have been made, even by men of great knowledge and ability (some of the most notable of them in our own age), to give greater extension and precision to the syllogistic theory, have been able to make good their claim to any^rother value than^r that of a school exercise. Opinion, indeed, has varied, during the two thousand and more years^sthat separate us from Aristotle^s , respecting the utility of any such rules, and^t of the syllogistic theory itself. After having been long deemed the key to all science it came to be^uaccounted^u a mere incumbrance, and has only of late^vbecome a^v subject of rational estimation. All, however, that has been discovered or invented by modern thought has not invalidated the claim of the syllogism to be a correct analysis of the process of reasoning by general terms—the operation which establishes a conclusion by showing that it comes within the scope of a generalisation^wthat has already^w been assented to on evidence deemed^xsufficient; and^x the rules grounded on this analysis do all that rules can do to insure the correct performance of the operation: they point out the conditions^yrequisite^y for correctness, and distinguish with scientific precision the modes of error.^zIt has, no doubt, been shown (what was never clearly seen until lately) that the syllogism is not really a process of inference; all that there is of inference being completed in the induction from experience which gave us the generalisation we syllogize from. The syllogistic process merely maintains consistency between our general theorems from experience and our particular applications of it, and compels us to face the whole extent of the generalisation which is necessary to justify our inference in a given particular case. What is called Formal Logic is the logic of consistency: and consistency is not necessarily truth, but is one of the most essential conditions of it. A mastery of the syllogistic logic does not necessarily make a sound thinker, but goes far towards making a clear one; and a clear understanding is already well advanced on the road towards soundness.^z

But the merits of Aristotle in regard to logic are not confined within this, the narrowest acceptation in which the term is used; they extend to the widest. There are none of the operations of the intellect in the pursuit of truth to which his services were not considerable. He cannot indeed be credited with being the permanent legislator of any of the other departments of logic, as he was of the syllogism. Yet it will, we think, be found that he did as much for them as was compatible with the very early stage which scientific studies had then reached; for it was only after considerable trial of all the paths which^alay open to them^a , that mankind could discover which^b it is that leads to the desired end. As Aristotle was^c far from completing any logical theory save that of the syllogism, so he^ddid^d not claim to have originated any other. He says expressly that the inventor of definition and of induction was Socrates. What exactly it^ewas^e which he intended by these impressions to ascribe to Socrates,^fwe are reduced to gather mainly from other evidence^f . We know,^g both from the^hvivid^h dramatic representation by Plato of the mode of discussionⁱpractised byⁱ Socrates, and from the direct testimony of the more commonplace Xenophon, that it mainly consisted in attempting to ascertain “what” each of the facts or ideas which figure in the talk of the market-place and in the^jdeliberation^j of the public assembly “is;”^kor,^k in other words, in^la search after definitions^l . And though it is neither known, nor at all likely, that any rules for this investigation were laid down either by Socrates or by Plato, most of the Platonic dialogues are practical exemplifications of it.^mIn Mr. Grote’s opinion,^* the induction which Aristotle placed to the credit of Socrates, was the establishment of definitions by generalisation from an enumeration of particulars.^†m The Platonicⁿpracticeⁿ of dividing down to the thing which is the subject of inquiry,^owas regarded^o by Bacon as the nearest approach to a true method of induction to be found among the ancients, because it^pdid not proceed^p by simple enumeration, but by rejectiones et exclusiones debitas^[*]q—by an equal scrutiny of the instances in which the thing sought was absent, and of those in which it was present. But^q Plato practised this method only in inquiring into definitions: and,^rin its application^r to that investigation, Aristotle completely^sappropriated^s it; the doctrine that a definition must be per genus et differentiam being its theoretic generalisation, and the Predicamental Tree its paradigm.

^tBut Aristotle had a much larger and juster conception of the functions of Induction than merely this. He^t did for induction the^ufirst great thing that^u had to be done for it—^v the only great thing^wthat^w could be done for it in the then state of science; in doing which he had not, so far as we know, been anticipated by Socrates, while^xin Plato he had^x his chief adversary: he pointed out that induction is the ultimate ground and evidence of all^your^y knowledge. In^zsyllogizing (as he explains)^z we argue^adownward^a from general truths; but the general truths which are the ἀρχαὶ or ultimate premises of our^bsyllogisms^b must be^ccollected from particular^c experience. His practice^d, it must be admitted, seems to modern critics^d to have been^eoften^e very insufficiently^fgoverned^f by his own doctrine; but he was consistent in upholding the theory. And^ghis^g recognition of it^hdoes the more honour^h to hisⁱphilosophicalⁱ perspicacity, inasmuch as the only science in which,^jat the time when he lived^j , any considerable achievement had been made, was mathematics; a science in which the inductions that constitute the first premises are truths^kso obvious and familiar, that it is particularly easy to mistake them^k for intuitions^ldirectly apprehended by the mind; and they^l are, in fact, the example principally relied on by those^m who, down to and in our ownⁿtimesⁿ , deny Aristotle’s principle. In^ohis^o eyes, however, the axioms laid down in geometry, and those implied in arithmetic, are^pmerely the most obvious of our generalisations from observation. They are^p all learnt from sense: not^qmerely suggested by it^q to the mind, which afterwards perceives them to rest on a higher evidence, but^r actually proved by sense. If, by one of the schools between which philosophy is still divided, this is imputed to him as an error, the other, and in our opinion better, school sees in it a far-sighted anticipation of the ultimate verdict of philosophy.

Having thus put induction in its^sproper^s place, as the foundation and evidence of the truths from which all others flow, Aristotle does not inquire further into it, nor attempt to^tfind^t any scientific criterion^ufor distinguishing good induction from^u bad. His mind^vdoes not seem^v to have travelled beyond the primitive conception of induction,^wdescribed^w by Bacon as “Inductio per enumerationem simplicem, ubi non reperitur instantia contradictoria:”^[*] and he probably considered this sufficient for scientific, as he certainly did for dialectic purposes; for, in the Topica,^[†] he lays it down that if one party in the discussion produces a number of instances in support of a generalisation, and the other party is unable to produce any in contradiction to^xit^x , he must be held to admit it. That Aristotle should not have seen his way to the scientific tests of correct and incorrect induction, will not be surprising, if we consider that^ythose tests are all^y grounded upon the universality of the Law of Causation,^zand that this universality was^z not known nor admitted in Aristotle’s^atime^a , nor considered^bby him admissible^b . That the same phenomena always, without exception,^creappear^c whenever a determinate set of conditions is exactly realised, was a truth which had not dawned upon his mind;^dnor had the knowledge of nature, which at that early period had been acquired, as yet established this uniformity of sequence as an universal, but only as a partial truth^d . Aristotle not only believed that some of^ethe sequences which we now call^e laws of nature are true invariably, and others only for the most part, but^fadmitted^f as positive causes in nature two agencies of which uniformity could not in any sense be predicated, τύχη and τὸ αὐτομάτον, chance and spontaneity.^[*]gIt can surprise no one that when the first basis of scientific induction, the constancy of the course of nature, had been so imperfectly laid, the rules and tests of induction which have been built upon that basis after its soundness had been proved by three centuries of the successful application of induction to subjects of ever increasing intricacy and complication, could not be arrived at by divination.^g It is not, however,^hquite so obvious why Aristotle could^h not have seen as much of the matter as Bacon saw; for Bacon also lived at a time when physical science had madeⁱ few of its modern achievements, and such of them as it had made (those of Galileo) he^jseems to have been^j ignorant of. Accordingly Bacon, no more than Aristotle, was able, by his mere sagacity, to arrive at the true rules and tests of induction. But he did, by that rare sagacity, perceive that such tests and rules must be grounded on the application to the investigation of nature, of that comparison of affirmative and negative instances^kto discover their point of difference,^k which Socrates and Plato had introduced and Aristotle had adopted for the investigation of definitions^land for that only^l .^mIt^m may seem a great derogation from Aristotle’sⁿreach of thoughtⁿ that he should have left it to Bacon to make this step. But we should consider that though Bacon had no experience of the success of the modern induction, he had two thousand years’ experience of the failure of the ancient. There had^oby that time been ample evidence^o that the results arrived at by spontaneous generalisation from^pthe instances which first offer themselves, are not to^p be relied on. Such reliance was^qstill admissible^q in Aristotle’s time. For he was the very first who put that primitive^rinduction upon its proper trial^r , by using it systematically for scientific purposes; making a vast collection of such facts or^sreputed^s facts as he could procure, and trying what^tcould be done^t in the way of^udirect^u generalisation from them.^vThe need of a more artful method of induction was not likely to^v be felt until after the natural mode^wwas seen to have^w failed; and it was the failure of that mode, after an ample trial by such a man as Aristotle,^xto establish conclusions that would stand the test of practice,^x that awakened^yBacon, and not him alone,^y but all the most advanced minds in an age of^zrenewed^z intellectual activity, to the^aneed^a of a safer^band more penetrating^b inductive method.

These considerations ought to be borne in mind in judging of the numerous cases in which^cAristotle’s particular speculations have^c the appearance of being false to his own fundamental principle, that all knowledge is^d derived from experience. In Mr. Lewes’s book on Aristotle^e(a work,^fso^f far as the present writer’s knowledge of Aristotle enables him to judge, of exemplary fairness; but which,^gthough^g warmly acknowledging the great genius of Aristotle, yet dealing chiefly with his crude physical speculations, unavoidably gives a much stronger feeling of his defects than of his superiority),^e there are to be found abundant examples of conclusions drawn by him from premises which, to our^heyes^h , do not seem groundedⁱon experience at all, but onⁱ what he himself specially warns others against—preconceptions originating in the mind.^[*] We^jdoubt not^j , however, that Aristotle, if these assumptions had been questioned, would have unhesitatingly claimed for them the character of inductions from experience.^kTo take one instance:^k he frequently assumes as a principle from which^lconclusions may legitimately^l be drawn^mconcerning^m facts, that nature always aims at the best. Nothing, indeed, can be less scientific, or lessⁿsupportedⁿ by a true knowledge of nature, than this generalisation; but^oAristotle^o would have had no difficulty in citing as evidence of it, among other facts, all those adaptations^p(so far as then ascertained) on^p which writers on natural theology^qinsist^q as marks of benevolent design; and though he must have known of many^rfacts^r apparently pointing the other way, he could not then know how deeply that^sother way^s penetrates into the most intimate constitution of nature, and doubtless^tbelieved^t that they all admitted of explanations which would reconcile them with the theory.^uThe example we have chosen is a rather peculiar one, and we often find him building conclusions upon^u premises the connection of which with observed fact is, to modern apprehension, far more distant^v; but we^v still find him proceeding on some analogy, or apparent analogy, to some of the experiences of sense. These are not grounds on which he can^wfairly^w be charged with abandoning his^xfundamental^x principle. Rather, this mode of proceeding seems the inevitable first stage of the attempt to make a^ybroad^y and far-reaching application of^zthe^z principle. For it is now well understood that science^adoes not advance by the mere^a collection of materials, but by using^bthem^b , as fast as collected, in^cthe construction of^c provisional generalisations, fitted to give a definite direction to further inquiry,^dand themselves destined, according to the results of fresh inquiry, to be corrected, limited, or totally abandoned^d . The first set of provisional generalisations were naturally and properly drawn from the most obvious facts. Generalisation “ex his tantummodo quæ præsto sunt pronuncians,” so deservedly^econdemned^e by Bacon^[*]fas the final method^f of scientific procedure, is^gquite legitimate as^g its first stage; and if the provisional character of^hthe^h generalisations was lost sight of, and they were mistaken forⁱproved truthsⁱ , the responsibility does not lie with Aristotle, who took^jthe greatest pains to enlarge^j the stock of facts, and who^kcertainly neither dreamed nor^k desired that his speculations should be accepted as infallible. It is true, he can hardly have imagined how very far his generalisations would prove to be from a genuine interpretation of nature. For he did not know, nor did any one then know, that the most familiar parts of nature are often the most intricate and complex, and that there are none of which the ultimate laws^ldiffer more widely^l from anything which first appearances give^m indication of.

ⁿ Neither let us^ogreatly blame Aristotle^o for not having more carefully sifted the evidence of his facts. It is^pcharged^p against him that in the natural history of fishes, for example, he^qsets^q down as facts^rwhatever^r were told to him as such by fishermen, some of which were real^sresults of^s observation, while others were^tmere^t popular superstitions; but he had^u, mostly, no means^u of distinguishing the one from the other.^vHe was forced to receive a great proportion of his information on trust. The age of scientific specialists had not yet arrived.^v Had he devoted his time, like Mr. Buckland, to a careful personal observation of the character and habits of fishes, he would have become,^wwithout^w doubt, a very remarkable ichthyologist; but could he have written even the History of Animals,^[*] not to^xmention^x the Organon, the Ethics,^[†] or the Rhetoric?^[‡] In his day, the greatest service which any one could do to physical science, was to make the largest possible collection of^yphysical^y facts, and^zto link them together even by conjecture, leaving^z it to the future to eliminate those which the more ^aattentive^a observation thus directed to them did not confirm. Aristotle did this, with an industry and often an intelligence deserving high praise; nor is it imputable to him that a dictum of his came to be thought, by a succession of^bgenerations^b , better evidence of truth than the use of their eyes.

Intimately connected with his opinion respecting the foundation of all our knowledge in sensible experience, is his view of the nature of Universals; which^cexcited more interest and more discussion among^c those who succeeded him than his doctrine of Induction, and contributed^dmost^d to make him be considered as the founder and chief of the school of sensible experience, in opposition to the Platonic or^eRealistic-Idealist^e school. Plato, it is well known, gave great prominence in many of his principal Dialogues, to the doctrine, that all individual and sensible objects being in a perpetual^fprocess of^f change, never being, but^galways^gbecoming, there could be no knowledge, in^hany true sense of the term^h , of them, but only of certain archetypes or Forms, cognisable by intellect alone; which Formsⁱareⁱ the attributes in their^jcompleteness^j , an imperfect semblance of which we recognise in the best objects of sense. These Forms^k(called by him Ideas, ἰδέαι, one of the Greek equivalents of form)^k had^l, according to him,^l a separate existence of their own, quite apart from^msense. The^m gods lived in the constant contemplation of them, whichⁿwas only possible toⁿ the human mind after a thorough training in philosophy, and^ocould be complete^o only in a life after death. These were the only real Entia, or beings; the world of sense was^psomething^p half-way between Entity and Non-Entity. Such is the doctrine^qrespecting^q Universals which is called, and justly called, Platonic; though Plato also left very forcible statements of its difficulties, and the objections to which it was liable; coupled, however, with the declaration that in spite of all these, unless the doctrine is admitted, no knowledge is possible. Against this theory Aristotle carries on^ran unrelaxing^r polemic; and gives, in considerable detail, his reasons for rejecting it. But, being a constructive as well as a critical thinker, he sets up a counter theory.^[*] According to this, individual objects of sense, instead of not being Entia at all, are so^smore specially and in a fuller degree than any other things^s . He calls them, and them alone, First Substances. Genera and Species^tare^t substances also (Second Substances), but not self-existent, like Plato’s Forms; on the contrary, he denies them all existence, except in, and as implicated with, some First Substance. Attributes^u, though also included among Entia, could still less be admitted to have a separate existence^u . Without going the length of the Nominalist doctrine, which holds nothing to be universal but names, Aristotle takes up a^v middle position, analogous to that of the modern Conceptualists;^wbut differing from them^w in this, that^xwhereas they consider^x Universals as notions in the mind, made up from the world of sense by the intellect itself through a process of abstraction,^y Aristotle regarded them as^z having a real external existence;^aas only perceived, not made, by the intellect; perceived^a , however, not as^bindependent^b entities, but as inseparable elements of the objects perceived by sense. The antagonism between this^ctheory^c and Plato’s,^dthe two doctrines placing the seats^d of objective reality at opposite poles, the one in individuals, the other in the highest generalities, accounts for the character assigned to Aristotle^eof being^e the head and front of the à posteriori, as Plato is^fheld to be^f of the à priori metaphysics. But it is^gnoticeable^g that^h in the hands of theⁱschool that predominated in the Middle Agesⁱ , who assuredly looked up to Aristotle with an almost servile deference,^jhis philosophy^j grew into a well-defined system of Realism, from which it was reserved to^kthinkers of a much later date to emancipate thought^k . Mr. Grote was of opinion that this^lmisinterpretation, as he considered it,^l was in a measure owing to the very imperfect possession of Aristotle’s writings^mby^m the early Middle Ages. In aⁿprivateⁿ letter quoted by the editors in their preface,^oMr. Grote^o says that he should be able to show “how much the improved views of the question of Universals depended on the fact that more and more of the works of Aristotle, and better texts, became known to Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and their successors. During the centuries immediately succeeding Boethius, nothing of Aristotle, except the Categories and the treatise De Interpretatione,^[*] was known, and these in a Latin translation. Most fortunately, the Categories was never put out of sight; and it is there that the doctrine of Substantia Prima stands clearly proclaimed.”^*

But though the doctrine of Substantia Prima, in the book on the Categories, thoroughly excludes Plato’s form of realism, that of Substantia Secunda, which is there combined with it, afforded a basis on which it was possible to erect another^p realistic doctrine. Universals, as understood by Aristotle, were not indeed, like Plato’s, extra rem, but they were in re, and not solely in the cognising mind. The difference, no doubt,^qwas great between the two doctrines^q . As conceived by Aristotle, universals would perish if there were no particulars to predicate them of:

This was^sa great^s advance on the doctrine, that the only reality, and the only^tpossible subject of science, exists^t in a sphere altogether apart from particulars^u; and it did not, like that, cultivate a disdain of the physical details among which lies the only real road to the discovery of the laws of nature. But^u the admission of general substances, though only as embodied in individual substances, gave^va^v loop-hole^wthrough which, in another shape, the realism which is a natural outgrowth of the human mind^w could creep in; and a world of argument and discussion was found necessary again to dislodge it. The^xtendency to believe that a real thing is signified wherever there is a real word, was in this instance^x favoured by some of the leading doctrines of Aristotle in^ymetaphysic^y proper: especially by^z two distinctions, which run through^aall^a his “Philosophia Prima”—the analysis of every object of perception or thought into two ingredients, Matter and Form, and the cognate distinction between Potential and Actual being; the matter of a thing being only potentially the thing, until the superinduction of the form makes it actually so. These forms, which he does not call ἰδέαι, like^bthose of Plato,^b but εἴδη,^cand^c which are in reality the attributes of objects, are thus the actual creators of^d objects as they exist in ἐντελεχεία or completedness; and^ethis attribution to forms^e of a kind of active power, made it difficult to avoid^fregarding^f them as substantive entities: whether existing outside the individual thing or only in it, seeming from that point of view to be of little consequence.^gIndeed, Aristotle^hactually^h makes it one of his reproaches against Plato’s Ideas, that from their immobility in themselves, and complete severance from individual bodies, they could not haveⁱaⁱ moving force, whereby anything can be made to become; whereas his εἴδη were actual causes.^g

^j The real expulsion^kof the objective existence of universals from philosophy was left^k to be effected by the Nominalist schoolmen, towards the end of the Middle Ages: since which the only dispute remaining open is between the pure Nominalism of Hobbes, and the Conceptualism of Locke and Brown; the one seeing nothing in general names but a collection of resembling objects and a word; the other superadding a mental representation, called^l an abstract idea, a general notion, or a concept. Nevertheless, though Aristotle did not finally accomplish the work, he will always be honourably recognised as the thinker who began it;^mthe first who saw that knowledge begins in particulars, and rises from them to the universal, and that our knowledge of universals is but the knowledge of something which exists in the particulars, some point which a number of particulars have in common; the first, therefore, who diverted intellect^m from the path which could only lead,ⁿand did for ages leadⁿ , to making philosophy a jingle of mystical^oabstractions, and turned it into that better path which lands us at the goal of a truer philosophy, the most general and comprehensive expression of real facts.^o

In the remaining^pbranches^p of logic, those which relate to propositions, and to the^qmodes^q of signification of terms, the services of Aristotle^rwere less signal, but not less indispensable^r . Before him, the expression of the operations of the mind in language had scarcely received the merest commencement of^slogical^s analysis: we see by Plato that technical terms did not yet exist even for the subject and predicate of a proposition, still less for the differences of (so-called) quantity and quality in propositions, the equivalence or non-equivalence of different forms, and the modes of opposition^tamong^t propositions—a^usure^u proof that these distinctions, elementary as they^vare^v , had not yet excited sufficient attention to^whave led^w to their being generalised^x. Even Plato, as Mr. Grote points out,^*x shows a curious want of perception of some of them;^yand^y his predecessors and some of his cotemporaries were^zentangled^z in many puzzles,^awhich would have been puzzles to no one to whom these distinctions were familiar, but^a from which they^bcould find^b no means of extrication but through some^cpalpable^c absurdity.^dIt is impossible, without some knowledge of the early speculations of mankind before their^esimplest^e logical instruments were duly fashioned,^d to appreciate the debt due to those who first gave to such of those instruments as are now the most familiar, the precision^fwhich fits them^f for their work. This merit may justly be claimed for Aristotle, in^grespect^g to almost all the terminology and distinctions of formal logic. Of the “positive theory of propositions which we read in his treatise De Interpretatione,” Mr. Grote remarks:

It is another^rservice of Aristotle to logic^r , that he was the first^sto treat^s largely and systematically of the ambiguities of terms; and (though not unfrequently misled by them himself) made a practice, through all his writings, of distinguishing the various senses in which the principal terms of philosophy were used, and even discriminating between meanings^tthat^t are wholly different and those which are connected by some tie of analogy with one another. Of this last distinction he makes frequent use in the generalities of his^uphilosophy. For^u example, he says that Ens^v, or Being,^v though predicable of all the categories (substance, quantity, quality, &c.) is not predicated of them as a^wgenus is predicated of its various^w species, in one and the same sense;^xbut yet, not in senses wholly unconnected with one another. A^x quality, for instance, is not a Being in^yexactly^y the same sense as a Substance is; it is called a Being by a kind of analogy: and some Beings, therefore, may be^z, and are,^z more or less Beings than others;^a less fully Beings, Beings in a less complete degree. In connection with this, let us mention that, as Mr. Grote points out, Aristotle^bin some degree^b anticipated the acute remark of Hobbes, first brought into its due position of importance by James Mill,^[*] respecting the double meaning of^cto be^c ; “first, per se, as meaning existence; next, relatively, as performing the function of copula in predication. . . . We may truly say Homer is a poet” (copula), “but we cannot truly say Homer is” (existence). “He tells us, in reply either to Plato or to some other contemporaries, that though we may truly say Non-Ens est opinabile, we cannot truly say Non-Ens est, because the real meaning of the first of these propositions is Non-Ens est opinabile non esse.”^* We see in some of Plato’s dialogues what an amount of verbal fallacy, and even of genuine perplexity, arose from^dinattention to^d this double meaning.

In the book on the Categories, Entia or Beings, in the^elarge^e extension which Aristotle^fallows^f to the term (an^gextension^g including whatever can be thought or spoken about^haffirmatively, and excluding, if anything, only negatives^h ), are distinguished, and arranged under heads; but only in respect of their capacity of entering into a proposition.ⁱOneⁱ kind of Ens, the individual object, or Substantia Prima, is unfit to be predicated of anything except itself, and can enter into a proposition only as a subject. Genera and Species, or Second Substances, may be predicates as well as subjects; and they, as well as all the other Categories, communicate some special kind of information respecting the subject of which they are predicated. Substance is the answer to the question, What^jis it. Quantity to How great is it. Quality to Of what sort is it^j . Ad aliquid, or Relation, to What character has it in reference to something else. And so with the other Categories—Where, When, Posture, Dress or Equipment, Action, and^k Being acted upon. There has been an endless amount of writing for, against, and in explanation of, the validity of this classification. Mr. Grote, while himself criticizing it from the point of view of the Relativity of^lall^l human knowledge, defends it, not without success, against some of the minor criticisms which have been made^mby (among others)^m the present writer.^[†] The best which can be said in favour of it will be found in the acute work of Dr. Franz Brentano, on the different meanings of ens according to Aristotle;^* a^obook often cited^o and highly appreciated by Mr. Grote. Dr. Brentano attempts to^pdetect^p the logical process^q, never stated by Aristotle himself, whereby he^q was led to constitute precisely those ten Categories; and though (as Mr. Grote thinks) he may not have^rproved^r that Aristotle^sreally did^s reach them by that path, he has undoubtedly shown that they might have been so reached, and that the classification^tadmits of a valid defence^t from the Aristotelian point of view. Dr. Brentano has also, we think, completely proved (what has sometimes been denied) that although, in the scheme of the Categories, the idea of predication was predominant, Aristotle did also regard them as the Summa Genera in a classification of Things. To have made the first attempt at a classification of Things in general in their logical aspect, external realities and mental abstractions^utaken^u together, was so^vconsiderable^v a step, that one may more justly wonder that its defects are not greater, than at their being so great as they are. The detailed^wdiscussion of the several^w Categories brings out various properties and distinctions which are permanently^xvalid^x , and have passed into modern thought.

Thus far of Aristotle as a logician: in which character^yhis performances, considered under the double aspect of originality and substantial value, have justly earned for him^y the highest honour which it has been in the power of any one to deserve in that science. As a psychologist and metaphysician he stands on a much lower level^z, and his labours in those fields have seldom more than an historical interest^z . Except an incidental remark here and there,^ahis claims to have made^a any real contribution to positive knowledge on those subjects^brest on^b the share he had in laying the foundation of the doctrine of Association. The amount of that share is much disputed. Sir William Hamilton, in one of the elaborate dissertations appended to his edition of Reid, claims for Aristotle to have been “at once the founder and finisher of the theory of association:”^[*] meaning, of course, the laws of association itself,^c not the modern applications of it to the explanation of the more^dcomplex^d mental phenomena^e, most of which applications Hamilton did not admit^e . He^facknowledges^f that in order to establish^gthis high claim on behalf of Aristotle, it^g is necessary to correct^hmisconceptions “which^h , bequeathed by the first, have been inherited by the last of Aristotle’s interpreters.”^*iIf, therefore, the philosopher knew all that Hamilton believed him to have known, he did not succeed in transmitting the knowledge to his most distinguished pupils. But this, which to most people would seem a defect, enhances, in Hamilton’s eyes, the glory of the master.ⁱ “Aristotle,” he says, “has been here so long misapprehended only because he was so far ahead of his expositors. Nor is there a higher testimony to his genius than that it required a progress in philosophy of two thousand years before philosophers were prepared to apprehend his meaning, when the discovery of that meaning was abandoned to their own intelligence.”^†jLooking solely at his own pages, Hamilton seems to make^j out a strong case.^kUnfortunately for him,^k Mr. Grote has shown, in a paper^lnow first published (in the appendix), that Hamilton’s capacity^l of putting a meaning into passages of Aristotle^mwhich Aristotle never thought of, exceeded anything for which our previous knowledge of Hamilton had prepared us. Mr. Grote himself, however,^m says, in more measured language, thatⁿAristotle, in his account of Memory and Reminiscence,ⁿ “displays an acute and penetrating intelligence of the great principles of the Association of Ideas,”^omore, however, in^o reference to reminiscence^pthan to memory; “and the exaggerated prominence that he has given to the distinction between the two (determined apparently by a wish to keep the procedure of man apart from that of animals) tends to perplex his description of the associative process.”^p‡ Had we possessed from Mr. Grote that ^qminute^q examination of the treatise on Memory and Reminiscence which would doubtless have formed part of his work on Aristotle, instead of the brief notice of it in the essay contributed to^rMr.^r Bain, we should have been better able to judge how far, if at all, in this case (as, according to Mr. Lewes, in many branches of physics) modern knowledge has been read into Aristotle’s words.

The^spart^s of Aristotle’s writings known as the Metaphysica did not receive that name from the philosopher himself; it was invented by his Greek editors, and signified merely the position which they assigned to those writings in their arrangement of his works. Aristotle’s own name for the subject matter of them was ἡ πρώτη ϕιλοσοϕία,^[*]t a phrase adopted from him by Bacon and Hobbes as a name for the highest generalities of philosophy. It was in this sense that Aristotle used it, and what he included^uunder^u it consisted of all that^vbelonged^v to Being as such—^w Ens quatenus Ens; together with—

^x This principium contradictionis,^yor^y Law of Contradiction, has ever since been recognised as the ultimate principle of^zall syllogistic, which is as much as to say of all general,^z reasoning; the validity of which^aconsists in^a the fact that to deny the conclusion,^baccepting^b the premises, involves a contradiction; and^cits real, and only real, function^c is to keep our particular judgments consistent, and^dthe reverse of those judgments^d inconsistent, with the general propositions to which we have previously given our assent. The distinct laying down of this axiom^e(“and its supplement or correlative, the maxim of the Excluded Middle”)^e[*] was the necessary completion of the theory of the syllogism.^fObvious as these maxims appear, the clear perception that the evidence of general reasoning depends on them was a capital step in philosophy, and shows the determination of Aristotle to follow subjects up to their first principles.^f

The question arises, what is the ground of^gthese^g axioms themselves; and Aristotle does not blink this question. There were thinkers in and before his time,^hparticularly^h Herakleitus and his followers, who denied the axiom of contradiction. Aristotle

ⁱ Mr. Grote gives a full^jexposition of this opinion^j of Aristotle, but himself dissents from it, observing that the^kworst dilemma to which the supposed opponent could be reduced is that^k of falling into another contradiction^l—a difficulty^l which, by maintaining that a self-contradiction^mis not necessarily^m false, heⁿhasⁿ declared himself willing to face. In Mr. Grote’s opinion, the proof of the Axiom of Contradiction, like that of all other axioms,^ois^o inductive. “All that can really be done in the way of defence is, to prove the Maxim in its general enunciation by an appeal to particular cases. If your opponent is willing to grant these particular cases, you establish the general Maxim against him by way of induction; if he will not grant them, you cannot prove the general Maxim at all.”^* This is indeed hunting the doctrine of à priori knowledge from its last refuge: and we should be heartily glad if we were able to agree with Mr. Grote^p: so important do we deem it both to philosophy and to practice to leave nothing standing which countenances the notion that there is a kind of knowledge independent of experience^p . But it seems to us that though the meaning of^qthe two maxims,^q of Contradiction and Excluded Middle, like that of all other propositions expressed in general terms, is only understood by means of particular cases,^rthose axioms^r stand, in one respect, on a different ground from axioms in general.^sThe proposition that the affirmation and denial of the same fact cannot both be true, is at once assented to for this reason, that^s the judging one^tof them to be true and judging^t the other to be false are not two different acts^uof the mind, but the same act^u . We assent with like readiness to the statement that they cannot both be false, because the judging either^v to be false is the very same mental act with judging the other to be true. This identity of the mental operation constitutes the^wvery meaning of the^w words in which the axioms are^xexpressed;^x it is impossible to understand the words “true” and “false,”^y the words “is” and “is not,”^zin any other sense^z . For this reason it seems to us that the axioms in question do not need the support of a^agathered experience;^a they have their root in a mental fact which makes it impossible to contravene them^* —a fact implied in^kevery form of words which can be used to express them.^klUndoubtedly, however, the impossibility must be felt in particular instances before it can be assented to in general terms; and in this sense it must be granted to Mr. Grote that the proof of the generalisation lies in the particular instances.^l†

We have now reached the limits of the portion of Aristotle’s ontology and psychology which is fully explained and^adiscussed^a by Mr. Grote. To go on to the remainder with no more of that invaluable assistance than^b the abstract of the Metaphysica^c in the appendix, and the analysis of the DeAnimâ^[*] written for Professor Bain’s treatise,^[†] would be an undertaking^dwhich could only be practicable^d after a study of the original^elittle short of that which had been given by Mr. Grote^e . The difficulty of finding a meaning, intelligible to modern habits of thought, in trains of speculation so^falien to^f our methods, expressed in phraseology^gfor which we have no equivalents, and which seems to us hopelessly entangled and^g irremediably confusing, is extreme; and the result is seldom, unless in an historical point of view (nor always even in that), of a value commensurate with the difficulty. The Metaphysica, or^h such part of it as has come down to us (for its fragmentary appearance has struck the commentators, andⁱit has been conjectured to have neverⁱ been completed), turns^jprincipally^j upon the two antitheses^kwe have already referred to^k , that of Matter and Form, and that of Potential and Actual. Everything is composed of Matter and Form, except^lan hypothetical^l First Matter which has no Form, and a Form which has no Matter, and is the Divine Intelligence. But those composite objects^mwhich have both Matter and Form,^m are all of them Matter in relation to any different or additionalⁿFormsⁿ which they are capable of taking on. Everything^ois^o potentially whatever it is capable of becoming, and^pby virtue of the appropriate Form^p it becomes what it does become.^qrBesides Matter and Form, Aristotle recognises another element, Privation.^rsSome changes^t are produced, not by a Form, but by the Privation of a Form; thus, he^udoes not recognise a Form of Health and a Form of Sickness, but regards^u sickness as the privation of health;^v a sick man, from being potentially well, becomes actually so by^wreceiving^w the Form of Health; but a healthy man becomes sick, not^xthrough^x a Form of Sickness, but through^ythe^y Privation of the Form of Health.^s These notions, and the^znumerous^z minutiæ and subtleties into which they are followed out, even were they liable to no other objection, would tell us nothing of the laws of phenomena; they^agive no power of prediction, and explain nothing; they are but^a a particular mode of restating the^bfacts^b to be explained. To say that it is the union of the form of health with^cthe matter of the body^c which makes the man healthy, is^dbut^d to say, in technical language, that he is made healthy by health. If^ethe Form of Health is anything different from the fact of health, it is^e an imaginary entity conjured up out of an abstraction, and supposed to be immanent in all things^fthat possess^f the property it is the form of; as, in a still earlier stage of speculation, gods were thought to be immanent in rivers, and nymphs in trees.^gThere is a state of the human mind in which these metaphysical fictions seem to convey explanation; and Aristotle, with all his far-sighted perception that the source of knowledge is observation of particulars, had not got beyond that state.^g

^hWhat is commonly called the Psychology^h of Aristotle is a theory of the various souls, or living principles, which he recognises as existing in nature, and regards as the Forms or Active Principles of life in its different degrees; though he hardly regards them as objectively distinct from one another, but rather as modifications ofⁱa singleⁱ Principle, successively superinduced by the addition of^jmore^j attributes.^kHis classification of the supposed agents fairly coincides with the modern classification of the phenomena.^k The first is the Nutritive Soul, common to animal and vegetable life. The second is the Sensitive^l, which is also the Locomotive^l Soul, common to all animals. The third and highest is the Noëtic, or Intellectual Soul, belonging to man alone. This last, again, he finds it necessary to subdivide into the passive, or merely receptive intelligence, and the active intelligence, or νου̑ς ποιητικός; the latter of which is the moving force, ^mthrough^m which what is merely potential in the passive intelligence becomes actual.^[*] No part of the speculations of Aristotle is more obscure than the theory ofⁿtheⁿ νου̑ς ποιητικός, which he regarded as a part of the universal νου̑ς of the universe, independent of the bodily frame, and^otherefore capable^o of surviving it, though whether or not with a personal immortality^premains^p matter of dispute. The subject is^qbut^q slightly touched on in the essay by Mr. Grote which^ris printed as^r the last chapter of his treatise. A^s full and elaborate treatment of it, grounded on a comprehensive view of Aristotle’s metaphysical doctrines,^thas been given^t by a writer already mentioned, Dr. Franz Brentano,^uin a work^uOn the Psychology of Aristotle, especially with reference to the νου̑ς ποιητικός,^* which,^whaving been published as lately as 1867^w , does not seem to have been known to Mr. Grote when he wrote his essay^x; and which, without venturing to decide whether the author has established all his points, the present writer cannot help noting as one of the most thoroughly executed pieces of philosophical research and exegesis^x which it has been his fortune to meet with.

The Ethics, Politics,^[†] and Rhetoric of Aristotle are not^ytouched upon^y by Mr. Grote, and the present^zis not a convenient^z occasion for^asaying much about them; still less about the Poetics.^a[‡] We may^bsay, however, of the Rhetoric, that^b besides its special worth in^cregard^c to its particular subject, which is even now considerable,^dit^d is one of the^erichest^e repositories of incidental remarks on human nature and^fhuman affairs that^f the ancients have bequeathed to^gus. In^g this consists also, in our judgment, the principal value of the Ethics and Politics, which, as treatises on^hthose special^h subjects, have for their most markedⁱcharacteristics thatⁱ dread of extremes and^jlove of the via media which were deeply rooted in Aristotle’s mind. The Politics, in lieu^j of the adventurous anticipations of genius^kwhich we find in the Republic of Plato, presents us with^k the mode of thinking of a Liberal Conservative, or rather, of a moderate aristocratical politician, at Athens. In the main,^lit^l is a philosophic consecration of existing facts (witness its strange defence of slavery),^[*] choosing by preference among those facts^msuch as^m tend towards stability, rather than towards improvement.ⁿIt should be remembered that, unless so far as Plato may be considered an exception, none of the ancient politicians or philosophers believed in progress; their highest hopes were limited to guarding society against its natural tendency to degeneration.ⁿ

There remains^oto be noticed^o one work of Aristotle, which is copiously analyzed and^pcommented on^p by Mr. Grote, and which is of great importance to^qa^q correct understanding of the Greek mind: the treatise which^r, under the name of Topica, is included in the Organon, and of which the Sophistici Elenchi is properly the concluding book^r . Both^sthe conception and^s the detail of this work^tare of a nature to^t puzzle, and, when not properly understood,^uto^u scandalize, the modern mind. It is a treatise on Dialectic Reasoning, as distinguished from Demonstrative, which last had been elaborately treated in the^vAnalytics. Dialectic^v , as there understood, is^w the art of arguing for victory, not for truth,^xand instruction in that art is the declared^x object of the treatise. In order justly to appreciate such^ya design^y , and to perceive how it could coexist, as in Aristotle’s case the whole collection of his writings witnesses that it did, with an indefatigable ardour in the pursuit of truth, it is necessary to remember how large a place in Grecian life was occupied by contests of skill between individuals, in matters both physical and intellectual. When we^zthink of^z the vast honour understood to^aaccrue^a , not only^bto the actual victor but to the city he belonged to^b , by his gaining a prize in the Olympic festival^camong which prizes one for poetry was included)^c , and the^dnumerous^d minor^ecompetitions^e of a similar kind in the various Greek states,^fby which the minds of aspiring persons were kept perpetually on the stretch to acquire celebrity by successes of this nature; it cannot be wondered at^f that after Dialectics, or regulated discussion by question and answer, had been introduced by Zeno of Elea, and brought to perfection by Socrates and Plato, this also should have become extensively popular as a game of skill. In this game, a thesis, usually on some^gimportant and highly interesting subject^g , was propounded for discussion,^hthe propounder undertaking^h to defend it against allⁱobjections. The assailants were required to proceed by puttingⁱ questions to him, which must be such as admitted of^jan explicit^j answer by yes or no, nor was any other kind of answer permissible.^kIf the assailants were able to reduce the respondent to admissions inconsistent with each other or with the thesis, they were victorious; if they failed to do this, the victory was with the respondent.^k In this intellectual exercise no wrong was done to truth,^lthe known object being,^l not to disprove the thesis, but to test the disputant’s ability to defend it against objections. How completely ^msuch^m was the sole object is shown in this, that the assailant of the thesis was not allowed to propound positive arguments against it; he could only put questions to the respondent, and must derive his refutation from the respondent’s own answers. There is nothing immoral in arguing for victory when that is theⁿobject professedⁿ , and the only wrong^othat could^o be committed in the case^pwas^p a violation of the rules of the game. These rules were of course framed with a view to render such contests possible, to make them intelligible and interesting to an audience, and to secure a fair field and fair play to both^qsides. This explains^q why the premises introduced by the arguers were required to be ἔνδοξα, (in the language of the casuists, borrowed no doubt from Aristotle, probable opinions), that is, they must be opinions either^rheld generally^r by mankind, or maintained by some respected authority. However true they might be, if they were recondite, and remote from common apprehension, the respondent could not reasonably be expected to be prepared for them; while, if they had good authority on their side, it was not even necessary that the person using them should believe them to be true, truth not being the object, but to reduce the respondent to an inconsistency, and it^sbeing^s always open to him^tto admit them or not^t . The same thing explains why it was^u lawful, even in the opinion of Aristotle, to entrap the respondent into an admission, which on calm reflection he would not have made; for this equally answered the purpose of testing his skill and knowledge. On the other hand, the licenses allowed by the game might be pushed too far, and the allowable kinds and degrees of artifice might be exceeded in such a manner as to defeat the legitimate^vpurpose of the trial of skill. This^v , Aristotle says, was^woften done by dishonest persons, or persons^w of a litigious disposition; and the concluding book,^xDe Sophisticis Elenchis^x , is composed of warnings against^ytheir^y malpractices.

^zThe purpose of Aristotle, in giving instructions for success in these contests, went much farther than merely to qualify people for being victorious over an adversary. The study and practice were^z , he said, of great utility in reference to the pursuit of truth. “First” (^awe now^a quote from Mr. Grote) “the debate is a valuable and stimulating mental exercise.”^bThis was the simplest and most obvious of its recommendations.^b “Secondly, it is useful for our intercourse with the multitude: for the procedure directs us to note and remember the opinions of the multitude, and such knowledge will facilitate our intercourse with them; we shall converse with them out of their own opinions, which we may thus be able beneficially to modify.” This is^cinteresting,^c as indicating Aristotle’s opinion^d(differing from that of many of the ancient philosophers)^d that the philosopher ought not to keep^ealoof^e from the multitude, and^fwithdraw himself from^f the duty of advising them for their good by arguments drawn^gfrom^g their own opinions. “Thirdly, dialectic debate has an useful though indirect bearing even upon the processes of science and philosophy, and upon the truths thereby acquired. For it accustoms us to study the difficulties on both sides of every question, and thus assists us in detecting and discriminating truth and falsehood.”^* Of this benefit^hfrom^h dialectic exercise, Aristotle’s own practice affords aⁱremarkable verificationⁱ : for he very^jfrequently^j commences his investigation of a difficult question by^ka detailed^k enumeration and statement of the ἀπορίαι, the difficulties or puzzles, which affect it; and there is no way in which his method of studying a subject sets a more beneficial example. In this respect^lhe was greatly^l in advance not only of his own time, but^m of ours. His general advice for exercise and practice in Dialecticⁿis admirably adapted toⁿ the training of one’s own mind^ofor^o the pursuit of truth. “You ought to test every thesis by first assuming it to be true, then assuming it to be false, and following out the consequences on both sides.”^pThis was already the practice of the Eleatic dialecticians, as we see in the Parmenides^q .^p

We are far from asserting that the dialectic contests of the Greeks, or the public disputations of the Middle Ages which^ssucceeded to^s them, had never any but a beneficial^teffect^t ; that they had not their snares and their temptations, and that the good they effected might not be still better attained by other means. But the fact remains that no such means have been provided, and that the old^utraining has^u disappeared, even from the Universities, without having been^vreplaced^v by any other. There is no reason why a practice so useful for the pursuit of truth should not be employed when the^wattainment^w of truth is the^xsole^x object. We have known this most effectually done by a set of young students of philosophy, assembling on certain days to read regularly through some standard book on psychology,^y logic, or political economy; suspending the reading whenever any one had a difficulty to propound or an idea to start, and carrying on the discussion from day to day, if necessary for weeks, until the point raised had been searched to its inmost depths, and no difficulty or obscurity capable of removal by discussion remained. The intellectual training given by these debates, and especially the habit they gave of leaving no dark corners unexplored—of searching out all the ἀπορίαι, and never passing over^zany^z unsolved difficulty—has been felt, by those who took part, to have been invaluable to them as a mental discipline. There would be nothing impracticable in making exercises of this kind a standing element of the course of instruction in the higher branches of knowledge; if the teachers had any^aperception^a of the want which such discussions would supply, or thought it any part of their business to form thinkers, instead of “principling” their pupils (as Locke expresses it) with ready-made knowledge.^[*] But the saying of James Mill, in his essay on Education, is as true now as when it was written—that even the theory of education is far behind the progress of knowledge, and the practice lamentably behind even the theory.^[†]

^b We now take our leave of Aristotle, referring the reader for fuller knowledge to Mr. Grote’s book; which, as a guide to all the parts of Aristotle’s speculations that are included in it, fulfils the expectations excited by his work on Plato, and leaves nothing to regret but that the remainder of the Aristotelian writings have not had the benefit of the same clear exposition and philosophical criticism, and that a general estimate of Aristotle and of what he did, by so competent a judge, has not been bestowed on us. Besides the matter already spoken of, the work contains a life of Aristotle, and a discussion of the canon of his writings; in both of which, the use made of scanty materials is worthy the author of the History of Greece. It is a curious and almost unique accident, that although many of the writings of Aristotle have been lost, we are actually in possession of some, and those among the most important, which were not accessible to his followers for many generations after the death of his immediate successor, Theophrastus. The collection of manuscripts made by Aristotle and enlarged by Theophrastus, which contained the most precious of the Aristotelian treatises, remained near a century and a half in a hiding place under ground, at Skepsis in Asia Minor, to prevent their being seized by the kings of Pergamus to enrich the royal library; and they emerged from thence after the extinction of the Attalid dynasty, so injured by damp and worms that many passages had to be restored conjecturally: first by anincompetent editor, Apellikon; afterwards more intelligently, but necessarily with increase of difficulty, by Andronicus of Rhodes, somewhat later than the time of Cicero, in whose early youth the books were brought to Rome from Athens by Sylla. So narrowly did posterity escape the loss of one of the chief treasures of Grecian antiquity; many of the treatises having only come down to us through these damaged manuscripts: the condition of which is probably responsible for much of the obscurity which has given so much trouble to commentators and to students: for Aristotle’s literary style, though often awkward (being both prolix and elliptical) is by no means, in his best preserved works, deficient in clearness.

Appendix

Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited in the Essays, with Variants and Notes

mill, like most nineteenth-century authors, is somewhat cavalier in his approach to sources, his identifications being often vague and his quotations not exact. This Appendix is intended to help correct these deficiencies, and to serve as an index of names and titles (which are consequently omitted in the analytic Index). Included also, at the end of the Appendix, is the one reference to British statute law, under the heading “Statutes.” The material otherwise is arranged in alphabetical order, with an entry for each author and work quoted or referred to in the text. Both the speakers and those persons referred to in JSM’s translations of Plato’s dialogues are included in this Appendix, with an indication in the notes of the instances when the references and quotations occur in the translation and summary—i.e., when they are Plato’s—but not when they appear in JSM’s comments on the dialogues. (Legendary figures do not appear in this Index.) Similarly, the notes indicate which references and quotations are taken by JSM from other sources.

The entries take the following form:

1. Identification: author, title, etc., in the usual bibliographic form.

2. Notes (if required) giving information about JSM’s use of the source, indication if the work is in his library, and any other relevant information.

3. Lists of the pages where works are reviewed, quoted, and referred to.

4. A list of substantive variants between JSM’s text and his source, in this form: page and line reference to the present text. Reading in the present text] Reading in the source (page reference in the source).

The list of substantive variants also attempts to place quoted passages in their contexts by giving the beginnings and endings of sentences. Omissions of two sentences or less are given in full; only the length of other omissions is given. In a few cases, following the page reference to the source, cross-references are given to footnoted variants in the present text. When the style has been altered by setting down quotations, the original form is retained in the entries. There being uncertainty about the actual Greek texts used by JSM, the Loeb editions of the Classics are used when possible, and the quotations are not collated.

Acumenus.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus.

referred to: 86

Adeimantus.

note: the reference at 167 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167, 396

Adrastus.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus.

referred to: 86

Æantodorus.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167

Ælian, Claudius.Varia Historia Epistolae Fragmenta. Ed. Rudolph Hercher. Leipzig: Teubneri, 1866.

referred to: 327n.

Æschines.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167

— Against Timarchus, in The Speeches of Æschines (Greek and English). Trans. Charles Darwin Adams. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1919, 4-155.

quoted: 398

referred to: 389

— On the Embassy, in ibid., 162-301.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 284

Æschylus.

referred to: 317

— Prometheus Bound, in Æschylus (Greek and English). Trans. Herbert Weir Smyth. 2 vols. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963, I, 214-315.

note: the quotation is in a quotation from Grote.

quoted: 280

Agis III (of Sparta).

note: the reference at 300 is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 300, 337n

Albertus Magnus.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 489

Alcæus. Referred to: 315n

Alcibiades.

note: the reference at 143 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 143, 166n, 316, 331, 395

Aldrich, Henry.Artis logicæ compendium. Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1691.

note: a copy of the 2nd ed. (ed. H. L. Mansel [Oxford: Graham, 1852]), which the reference antedates, in JSM’s library, Somerville College; in that ed. the quotation is on 91; the reference at 23 is on 24 ff. The quotation (a translation) is in a quotation from Whately. The work, frequently reprinted and translated, is also known as Artis logicæ rudimenta and (as JSM indicates at 20) “the Oxford Logic.”

quoted: 32

referred to: 20, 23, 29

32n.2-3 “This . . . all.”] [translated from:] 2. Inductio; in qua ponitur quantum opus est de singulis, & deinde assumitur de universis; ut Hic, & illa & iste magnes trahit ferrum; Ergo omnis. [The passage continues:] Est igitur Enthymema quoddam; nempe Syllogismus in Barbara, cujus minor reticetur. (23)

Alexander (the Great).

note: the reference at 243 is in a quotation from Niebuhr.

referred to: 243, 312, 323, 336n

Anacharsis. Referred to: 397n

Anacreon.

note: the reference at 67 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus.

referred to: 67, 315n

Anaxagoras.

note: the reference at 87 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus, that at 160 in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 87, 160, 286, 397n

Anaximander. Referred to: 381

Anaximenes. Referred to: 380

Andron.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 124

Andronicus (of Rhodes). Referred to: 510

Anon. “Bailey’s Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision,” Spectator, XV (8 Jan., 1842), 41-2.

referred to: 262

Antalcidas. Referred to: 323

Antiphon.

note: the reference at 167 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology, that at 222 is to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Parmenides.

referred to: 167, 222, 327

Antisthenes (the Cynic).

note: the reference at 492 is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 378, 492

Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius. Referred to: 397

Anytus.

note: the references at 153-71 passim are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 153, 158-9, 162-4, 167, 169, 171, 393, 398

Apellicon (Apellikon). Referred to: 510

Apollodorus.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167, 171

Aratus. Referred to: 337n

Archelaus.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 113, 118, 147

Ariosto, Ludovico.Orlando Furioso. 3 vols. Orleans: Couret de Villeneuve, 1785.

note: this ed. in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

referred to: 284

Aristeides (Aristides) (the Just).

note: the reference at 147 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 147, 322, 327, 333, 416, 417n

Aristippus (the Cyrenaic). Referred to: 378, 392

Aristocrates.

note: the reference at 114 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 114, 395

Aristodemus. Referred to: 323

Ariston.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167

Aristophanes.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 326

— Acharnians, in Aristophanes (Greek and English). Trans. Benjamin Bickley Rogers. 3 vols. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960, I, 2-117.

quoted: 333

— The Clouds, in ibid., I, 262-401.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 153, 153n, 154

— The Knights, in ibid., I, 120-259.

quoted: 317

Aristophon.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 98

Aristotle.

note: the references at 298, 300, 302, 320, 334, 415 are in quotations from Grote. The Loeb eds. of Aristotle are used throughout for ease of reference. Various Greek eds. of different works are in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

referred to: 12, 23, 26, 84n, 95, 274, 298, 300, 302, 310n, 313, 320, 334, 336n, 377-8, 382, 386, 410, 415, 419, 421, 475-510 passim

— Analytica Priora, in The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics (Greek and English). Trans. Harold P. Cooke and Hugh Tredennick. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938, 198-530.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

quoted: 12

referred to: 498

— Analytica Posteriora, in Posterior Analytics, Topica (Greek and English). Trans. Hugh Tredennick and E. S. Forster. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960, 24-260.

referred to: 12, 505

— The “Art” of Rhetoric (Greek and English). Trans. J. H. Freese. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1926.

referred to: 486, 504-5

— Categories, in The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics (Greek and English). Trans. Harold P. Cooke and Hugh Tredennick. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938, 12-108.

referred to: 489, 494

— De Anima, in On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath (Greek and English). Trans. W. S. Hett. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935, 8-202.

referred to: 501-2, 504

— De Cœlo. See On the Heavens.

— De Interpretatione, in The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics (Greek and English). Trans. Harold P. Cooke and Hugh Tredennick. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938, 114-78.

referred to: 489, 492-3, 492n-493n

— Historia Animalium (Greek and English). Trans. A. L. Peck. 3 vols. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965-70.

referred to: 486

— The Metaphysics (Metaphysica) (Greek and English). Trans. Hugh Tredennick. 2 vols. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1933.

note: the quotations all derive from Grote; those at 489-90 and 498 are indirect.

quoted: 380n, 489-90, 497-8

referred to: 476, 488, 497-502

— The Nicomachean Ethics (Greek and English). Trans. H. Rackham. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1926.

referred to: 486, 504-5

— On the Heavens (Greek and English). Trans. W. K. C. Guthrie. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939.

referred to: 476

— On Sophistical Refutations, in On Sophistical Refutations, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, On the Cosmos (Greek and English). Trans. E. S. Forster and D. J. Furley. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955, 10-154.

note: the quotation at 478 is a translation from Grote.

quoted: 400, 478

referred to: 505, 507

— Organon.

note: the Organon consists of The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topica and On Sophistical Refutations.

referred to: 477, 486, 505

— The Physics (Greek and English). Trans. Philip H. Wickstead and Francis M. Cornford. 2 vols. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

referred to: 483

— The Poetics, in Aristotle, The Poetics, “Longinus,” On the Sublime, Demetrius, On Style (Greek and English). Trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe and W. Rhys Roberts. London: Heinemann: New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1927, 4-116.

referred to: 504

— Politics (Greek and English). Trans. H. Rackham. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1932.

referred to: 504-5

— Sophistici Elenchi. See On Sophistical Refutations.

— Topica, in Posterior Analytics, Topica (Greek and English). Trans. Hugh Tredennick and E. S. Forster. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960, 272-738.

referred to: 482, 505

Aristoxenus.Elements of Harmony.

note: as the references derive from Grote (Plato, I, 217n), no ed. is cited.

referred to: 386n, 421n

Artaxerxes II (Mnemon). Referred to: 323

Aspasia.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 335

Bacchylides. Referred to: 315n

Bacon, Francis. Referred to: 12, 93, 310n, 341, 483, 497

— De Augmentis Scientiarum, in The Works of Francis Bacon. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. 14 vols. London: Longman, et al., 1857-74, I, 415-840.

note: for ease of reference this ed., which is in JSM’s library, Somerville College, is used, though JSM’s references antedate it. Most of JSM’s phrasal quotations are paraphrases, and that at 482 is undoubtedly summary, so no collation is given (cf. Novum Organum, same reference). The quotations at 12-13 and 93 are indirect.

quoted: 12-13, 12n-13n, 93, 482

referred to: 33

12n.7-13n.3 Siquidem . . . delitescere aliquid] Qui enim modum acute introspexerit quo ros iste æthereus scientiarum, similis illi de quo loquitur poëta,

—aërei mellis cœlestia dona,

colligatur, (cum et scientiæ ipsæ ex exemplis singulis, partim naturalibus partim artificialibus, tanquam prati floribus et horti, extrahantur,) reperiet profecto animum suapte sponte et nativa indole Inductionem solertius conficere, quam quæ describitur a dialecticis; siquidem . . . delitescere aliquod (620)

— Novum Organum, in ibid., I, 119-365.

note: for ease of reference this ed., which is in JSM’s library, Somerville College, is used, though JSM’s references antedate it. No collation is given for 482 which is undoubtedly summary (cf. De Augmentis, same reference). The quotation at 93 is indirect, as is that at 370, which is in a quotation from Bain.

quoted: 93, 310n, 370, 379, 380, 480, 482, 485

referred to: 411

310n.11-12 “Opinio copiæ” . . . “maxima causa inopiæ est.”] Atque cum opinio copiæ inter maximas causas inopiæ sit; quumque ex fiducia præsentium vera auxilia negligantur in posterum; ex usa est, et plane ex necessitate, ut ab illis quæ adhuc inventa sunt in ipso operis nostri limine (idque relictis ambagibus et non dissimulanter) honoris et admirationis excessus tollatur; utili monito, ne homines eorum aut copiam aut utilitatem in majus accipiant aut celebrent. (125)

310n.13-14 notiones temere a rebus abstractas.] Itaque si notiones ipsæ (id quod basis rei est) confusæ sint et temere a rebus abstractæ, nihil in iis quæ superstruuntur est firmitudinis. (158)

310n.23-4 “intellectus sibi permissus,”] Quod vero attinet ad notiones primas intellectus; nihil est eorum quæ intellectus sibi permissus congessit, quin nobis pro suspecto sit, nec ullo modo ratum, nisi novo judicio se stiterit et secundum illud pronuntiatum fuerit. (138)

379.22 naturam rei in ipsa re perscrutatur.] Nemo enim alicujus rei naturam in ipsa re fœliciter perscrutatur, sed ampliande est inquisitio ad magis communia. (180)

380.22 notiones temerè à rebus abstractæ] [see entry at 310n.13-14]

480.23 rejectiones et exclusiones debitas] At Inductio quæ ad inventionem et demonstrationem scientiarum et artium erit utilis naturam separare debet, per rejectiones et exclusiones debitas; ac deinde, post negativas tot quot sufficiunt, super affirmativas concludere; quod adhuc factum non est, nec tentetum certe, nisi tantummodo a Platone, qui ad excutiendas definitiones et ideas, hac certe forma inductionis aliquatenus utitur. (205)

485.24 “ex . . . sunt pronuncians,”] Inductio enim quæ procedit per enumerationem simplicem res puerilis est, et precario concludit, et periculo exponitur ab instantia contradictoria, et plerumque secundum pauciora quam par est, et ex . . . sunt, pronunciat. (205)

Bailey, Samuel.A Letter to a Philosopher, in reply to some recent attempts to vindicate Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, and in further elucidation of its unsoundness. London: Ridgway, 1843.

reviewed: 265-9

quoted: 266, 267, 268

referred to: 255n, 265

266.26-7 ‘inexplicable how any . . . intelligence’ . . . ‘except] [paragraph] How any . . . intelligence, with such explicit declarations before him, could write in the following strain is inexplicable, except (49)

267.9 ‘material or physical lines,’ since ‘imaginary or hypothetical lines] [paragraph] It will be acknowledged by all that the major premiss of the first syllogism, if it has any meaning at all, must signify material or physical lines. If it meant anything else, it would be palpably inadmissible, since imaginary or hypothetical lines (36)

268.25 ‘bluntness,’ ‘confidence,’ or ‘arrogance,’] If they [Mill and Ferrier] do not always avoid an approach to a needless tone of bluntness and asperity, perhaps of arrogance; if the suaviter in modo is principally wanting, as commonly happens, when its absence is not compensated by the fortiter in re; if confidence is sometimes most conspicuous where diffidence would have been most appropriate—these are faults we all of us naturally fall into when we come in our turn to seat ourselves in the critical chair. (4)

— A Review of Berkeley’s Theory of Vision, designed to show the unsoundness of that celebrated speculation. London: Ridgway, 1842.

reviewed: 247-65

quoted: 251, 252, 253, 255, 256, 261, 264, 265

251.26-7 “outness” . . . “immediately . . . sight?”] Outness, he affirms, is not immediately . . . sight, but only suggested to our thoughts by certain visible ideas and sensations attending vision. (20)

252.3-7 [paragraph] Outness . . . vision. . . . By a . . . for.] [no paragraph; see above 251.26] [ellipsis indicates 1-page omission] He tells us, in the passage already quoted, that by a . . . for. (20-1)

252.16-18 “but . . . object;”] He maintains, that because the internal feeling has been found to be accompanied by the external one, it will, when experienced alone, not only suggest the external sensation, but . . . object. (21)

252.19-21 [paragraph] “It . . . asserted,” . . . “without . . . process:”] [no paragraph] It . . . asserted, without . . . process. (21)

252.31-2 “converted . . . object,”] [see above 252.16-18]

253.18-21 [paragraph] Distance of . . . shorter;] [paragraph] “It is, I think, agreed by all, that distance of . . . shorter.” (38; Bailey is quoting Berkeley’s An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, q.v.)

253.22-3 “must appear . . . point.”] “If we consider that the distance of any object from the eye is a line turned endways to it, and that this line must consequently appear . . . point, we shall be sensible that distance from the eye cannot be the immediate object of sight, but that all visible objects must naturally be perceived as close upon the organ, or more properly, perhaps like all other sensations, as in the organ which perceives them.” (39; Bailey is quoting Adam Smith’s “Of the External Senses,” q.v.)

253.29 “see the rays of light”] [paragraph] If this is to be considered as a true interpretation of Berkeley’s language, his sole argument is founded on the fallacy that we see the ends of the rays of light coming from an object to the retina, but not the length of the rays. (39-40)

255.12 “universal impressions of mankind.”][paragraph] As this is a doctrine wholly contrary to the universal and natural impressions of mankind, we should expect it to be supported by an appeal to facts of every description likely to throw light upon the subject. (37)

256.10-13 [paragraph] Virtually . . . plane. . . . Solid . . . solid:”] This is virtually . . . plane—an argument in which there is no connection between premises and conclusion. Let us, however, take it literally as it is put. Solid . . . solid. (44-5)

261.7 [paragraph] It is manifest [ . . . ,] by] [no paragraph] It is manifest by (29)

261.7 many young animals] many of them (29)

261.10-11 dropped; the young . . . crocodiles, says Sir Humphry Davy, hatched] dropped. “The young . . . crocodiles,” says Sir Humphry Davy. “hatched (29)

261.12 water; the] water. The (29)

261.13 hatched.] hatched*.” [footnote: *Life of Sir H. Davy, by John Davy, M.D., vol. ii, p. 80.](29)

264.22-3 [paragraph] “There is] [no paragraph] In the whole of this celebrated narrative there is (183)

264.27-35 [paragraph] He . . . time.] [no paragraph] “He . . . time.” (178; Bailey is quoting Cheselden; he omits the closing quotation marks)

265.19 “when . . . eye;”] [paragraph] Mr. Ware’s patient was a boy seven years old (Master W—), and antecedently to the operation could distinguish colours when . . . eye, but not forms*. [footnote: *Philosophical Transactions for 1801, p. 382.] (193)

Bain, Alexander.The Emotions and the Will. London: Parker, 1859.

reviewed: 341-73, esp. 361-71

quoted: 362, 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 368-9, 369-70, 371, 371-2

362.27 “the] [paragraph] I. We shall begin with the (58)

362.27 vent of emotion] vent of emotion (58)

362.28 outburst;”] outburst. (58)

362.33-4 “the extensive] [paragraph] IV. The extensive (58)

362.34-5 Tender Affections.”] Tender Affections constitute a well-marked order or family of emotion.” (58)

365.9 “the] These [two fundamental component elements of the Will] are, first, the (327)

365.11 feelings;”] feelings; and, secondly, the link between a present action and a present feeling, whereby the one comes under the control of the other. (327)

365.33 “nothing . . . incumbrance”] I consider the word ‘necessity’ as nothing . . . incumbrance in the sciences of the present day.* [footnote omitted] (549)

366.6 [paragraph] A] [no paragraph] A (555)

366.14 fallacy. . . . For the] fallacy. I am not inquiring minutely at present into all the meanings of the term consciousness, a task reserved for the dissertation that is to conclude this volume; it is enough to remark, that for the (555)

366.14 word [consciousness] implies] word implies (555)

366.30 nature; on] nature. On (556)

366.33 exception. . . . If] [ellipsis indicates 1-page omission] (556-7)

367.2 “the . . . moment:”] The only case of this sort that I am able to specify is the testimony that each individual gives as to the . . . moment. (558)

368.13 An intellectual] We shall see that an intellectual (568)

368.13 is indispensable] is likewise indispensable (568)

368.17 on an] on our (569)

368.28 “the] In all such cases the (570)

368.28 tested] tested (570)

368.29 actions”] actions, and the subject matter of it is some supposed fact, or occurrence, of nature. (570-1)

368.42 [paragraph] I] [no paragraph] I (585)

369.14 validity. . . . We] validity. This does not exclude the operations termed induction, deduction, analogy and probable inference; because these are to be pursued exactly to the length that experience will justify, and no farther. We (586)

369.14 after trials] after many trials (586)

369.16 same. . . . It] same. I cut down a tree and put a portion of it into water observing that it floats; I then infer that another portion would float, and that the wood of any other tree of the same species would do so likewise. It (586)

369.22 operations.] [long footnote, referring to JSM’s Logic, omitted] (586)

369.43 [paragraph] A] [no paragraph] A (582)

370.3 scepticism. . . . We] [ellipsis indicates 3-sentence omission] (582-3)

370.3 it [belief] as] it rather as (583)

370.5 The “anticipation] ‘The anticipation (583)

370.12 undertaken. . . . The] undertaken. In an opposite condition of things, where intellect and knowledge have made very high progress, and constitutional activity is feeble,—a sceptical, hesitating, incredulous temper of mind is the usual characteristic. The (583)

370.16 cases most] cases the most (583)

370.17 correction. . . . Sound] [ellipsis indicates 3-sentence omission] (583)

370.20 race. . . . The] race. Observation is unanimous on the point. The (583-4)

371.7 [paragraph] There] [no paragraph] There (615)

371.13 awakens] wakens (615)

371.34 concerned.] concerned. *[footnote omitted] (161)

371.41 [paragraph] To] [no paragraph] To (638)

372.26 no impression] no one impression (639)

372.34 knowledge of] knowledge to [printer’s error?] (640)

— Mental and Moral Science. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868.

note: the appendices, separately paginated, are in the first volume; the reference is to App. A, “History of Nominalism and Realism,” 1-24, and App. B, “The Origin of Knowledge,” 34-48, which Grote contributed to Bain’s volumes, and which were reprinted, slightly modified, in Grote’s Aristotle as Appendices I and II.

referred to: 476

— The Senses and the Intellect. London: Parker, 1855.

note: see also 3rd ed., below.

reviewed: 341-73, esp. 352-61

quoted: 356-8, 358-9, 359-60, 360, 361

356.22 an organ] our organs (292)

356.23 instincts. The] instincts. (See his chapter on Instincts, Essays on the Active Powers.) The (293)

356.28 eating. This] eating. [paragraph] This (293)

356.38-9 years of life. . . . [paragraph] But] year of life. At the moment of birth, voluntary action is all but a nonentity. [paragraph] 28. According to this view, therefore, there is a process of acquirement in the establishing of those links of feeling and action that volition implies: this process will be traced and exemplified in the following Book, and also, at some future time, in a detailed discussion of the whole subject of volition. But (293)

357.13-14 action. . . . [paragraph] If] [ellipsis indicates 4-sentence omission] (294)

357.23 movement. . . . The] movement. Once assume that the two waves occur together in the same cerebral seat—a wave of painful emotion, and a wave of spontaneous action tending to subdue the pain,—there would arise an influence out of the former to sustain and prolong the activity of the latter. The (295)

357.47-8 spontaneity. . . . [paragraph] By] [ellipsis indicates 1-paragraph omission] (295-6)

357.48 acquisition, coming under the law of association, the] acquisition, which I shall afterwards dwell upon, the (296)

358.7 “notes of observation] The following are notes of observations (404n)

358.8-9 of their birth] after birth (404n)

358.12 attitude; a] attitude. A (405n)

358.26-7 of its limbs] with two limbs (405n)

358.43 was yet] was as yet (405n)

359.14-15 progress, and locomotion] progress. Locomotion (406n)

359.24-5 mouth. . . . [paragraph] The] mouth. [paragraph] I am not able to specify minutely the exact periods of the various developments in the self-education of those two lambs, but the above are correct statements to the best of my recollection. The (406n)

359.25 three] these (406n)

359.27 sensation] sensations (406n)

360.4 Present] Present (451)

360.4 like] Like (451)

361.14-16 “where . . . state”] It remains for us yet to consider the case where . . . state. (544)

361.18-19 “the . . . trains,”] the . . . trains. [a heading] (562)

361.20 “obstructive association.”] obstructive associations. [a heading] (564)

361.22-3 “combinations . . . experience,”] By means of association, the mind has the power to form combinations . . . experience. (571)

— 3rd ed. London: Longmans, Green, 1868.

referred to: 476,502; see Grote, “Psychology of Aristotle.”

Bekker, Immanuel.

referred to: 39; see Plato, Platonis et quæ vel Platonis. . . .

Bentham, Jeremy. Referred to: 61, 387, 405

— Book of Fallacies. London: Hunt, 1824.

note: in Works, ed. John Bowring (Edinburgh: Tait, 1843), II. The work was edited by Peregrine Bingham.

referred to: 31

Berkeley, George. Referred to: 348, 465

— The Works of George Berkeley, D. D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne, including many of his writings hitherto unpublished, With Prefaces, Annotations, his Life and Letters, and an Account of his Philosophy. Ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871.

note: though the references and quotations, 247-69 passim, to An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision antedate this ed., it is used for ease of reference.

reviewed: 451-71

— Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher, in Works, II, 13-339.

referred to: 465-6

— The Analyst: A discourse addressed to an infidel mathematician, in Works, III, 253-98.

referred to: 467

— Commonplace Book, in Works, IV, 419-502.

referred to: 453

— A Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics, in Works, III, 299-336.

referred to: 467

— An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, in Works, I, 25-112.

quoted: 251, 253

referred to: 247-69 passim, 453-7

251.26 “outness”] 46. From what we have shewn, it is a manifest consequence that the ideas of space, outness, and things placed at a distance are not, strictly speaking, the object of sight; they are not otherwise perceived by the eye than by the ear. (I, 55)

253. 18-21 Distance . . . shorter;] 2. It is, I think, agreed by all that distance . . . shorter. (I, 35)

— Passive Obedience, or the Christian doctrine of not resisting the Supreme Power, in Works, III, 103-39.

referred to: 468

— Querist, in Works, III, 351-405.

quoted: 469

469.13-14 “a ticket . . . this power.”] And whether its true and just idea be not that of a ticket . . . transfer such power? (III, 391)

— Siris: A chain of Philosophical reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of Tar-water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising one from another, in Works, II, 359-508.

quoted: 470

referred to: 463

470.16 connection or] connexion and (II, 479)

— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. The design of which is plainly to demonstrate the reality and perfection of Human Knowledge, the incorporeal nature of the Soul, and the immediate providence of a Deity: in opposition to Sceptics and Atheists. Also to open a method for rendering the sciences more easy, useful, and compendious, in Works, I, 255-360.

quoted: 459, 465n, 466

459.18 “shared] My endeavours tend only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth which was before shared (I, 359)

459.18 philosophers:] the philosophers:—(I, 359)

459.19-20 those things . . . real things;] [in italics] (I, 359)

459.20-1 the things . . . mind.] [in italics] (I, 359)

465n.7-8 “to apply . . . perceived”] Words are of arbitrary imposition; and, since men are used to apply . . . perceived, and I do not pretend to alter their perceptions, it follows that, as men have said before, several saw the same thing, so they may, upon like occasions, still continue to use the same phrase without any deviation either from propriety of language, or the truth of things. (I, 343-4)

465n.8-9 “philosophers . . . identity,”] But if the term same be used in the acceptation of philosophers, . . . identity, then, according to their sundry definitions of this notion (for it is not yet agreed wherein that philosophic identity consists), it may or may not be possible for divers persons to perceive the same thing. (I, 344)

465n.9 “all . . . word.”] But who sees not that all . . . word? to wit, whether what is perceived by different persons may yet have the term same applied to it? (I, 344)

465n.10 “Suppose] Or, suppose (I, 344)

465n.16 abstracted idea of identity] [in italics] (I, 344)

466.17 “sceptics and atheists”] [see title]

— A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences, with the grounds of scepticism, atheism, and irreligion, are inquired into, in Works, I, 131-238.

quoted: 460, 461, 463

460.8 “that] To this I answer, that (I, 184)

460.20 “not excited from within”] [see above, 514.9-14]

461.1 spirit does] spirit actually does (I, 157)

461.16-17 “the configuration . . . corpuscles,”] To say, therefore, that these are the effects of powers resulting from the configuration, . . . corpuscles, must certainly be false. (I, 168)

461.19 “but] For, since they and every part of them exist only in the mind, it follows that there is nothing in them but what is perceived: but (I, 168)

461.24 anything. Whence] anything: neither can it be the resemblance or pattern of any active being, as is evident from sect. 8. Whence (I, 168)

463.7 “atheism and scepticism.”] [see full title]

Bible. New Testament. Referred to: 437

— I Corinthians.

note: the quotation (of 2:9) is indirect.

quoted: 421

— Luke.

note: the indirect quotation (of 23:34) is in a quotation from Thirlwall’s translation of Niebuhr.

quoted: 242

— Matthew.

note: the indirect quotation (of 23:24) is in a quotation from Thirlwall’s translation of Niebuhr.

quoted: 243

— Old Testament. Referred to: 437

— I Samuel.

note: the reference, which is in a quotation from Bacon, is to Chap. 16.

referred to: 13n

Boeckh, August.Ueber die vierjährigen Sonnenkriese der Alten, vorzüglich den Eudoxischen. Berlin: Reimer, 1863.

note: the quotation (from p. 150), in JSM’s translation, derives from Grote.

quoted: 388-9

388.39-389.1 “he . . . lectures.”] [translated from Grote’s quotation:] Dort lebte er als Sophist, sagt Sotion: das heisst, er lehrte, und hielt Vorträge. (Grote, Plato, I, 123n; Boeckh, 150.)

Boethius.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 489

Brentano, Franz.Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom νου̑ς ποιητικός. Mainz: Kirchheim, 1867.

referred to: 504

— Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung, 1862.

referred to: 494-5

Brown, Thomas. Referred to: 19, 247, 341, 352, 491

— Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 4 vols. Edinburgh: Tait; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1820.

note: concerning the reference at 352, it may be noted that Brown frequently uses the term “mental physiology.”

referred to: 261, 352, 360

Buckland, Frank. Referred to: 486

Burgerdicius. See Burgersdyk, Francis.

Burgersdyk, Francis.Institutionam logicarum libri duo. Cambridge: Field, 1660.

note: in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

referred to: 27n

Burke, Edmund.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 325

Butler, Samuel.Hudibras. Ed. Zachary Grey. 2 vols. London: Vernor and Hood, et al., 1801.

note: in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

quoted: 30

30.31 —“All] For rhetoric, he could not ope / His mouth, but out there flew a trope: / And when he happen’d to break off / I’ th’ middle of his speech, or cough, / H’ had hard words ready to shew why, / And tell what rules he did it by; / Else, when with greatest art he spoke, / You’d think he talk’d like other folk: / For all (Part I, Canto I, lines 80-90; I.12-13)

Byron, George Gordon.

note: the references derive from Grote.

referred to: 279

— The Works of Lord Byron. Ed. Thomas Moore. 17 vols. London: Murray, 1832-33, XI.

note: formerly in JSM’s library, Somerville College. The quotation is a translation from Goethe, which was possibly made by Goethe himself and sent by him to Byron (see Byron’s Works, XI, 71n, immediately preceding the passage from which the quotation is taken); Moore also gives the reference to the German printed version in Kunst und Altherthum; the reference given on 279 is to the edition of Goethe’s Werke in JSM’s library, Somerville College. Actually JSM takes the quotation from Grote’s “Grecian Legends and Early History”; cf. the collation s.v.

quoted: 279

referred to: 280

279.15 [paragraph] He [Byron] has] [no paragraph] He has (72)

279.15 him. There] him. He has repeatedly portrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating. There (72)

279.16 and in] and which, in (72)

279.18 or presence] or actual presence (72)

279.19 lady.] lady.* [footnote omitted; it is from this footnote that Grote quotes Moore’s comment which is quoted (from Grote) by JSM at 279.10-13] (72)

279.21 to whom suspicion] on whom any suspicion (72)

279.22 after. This] after. [paragraph] This (72)

— “Manfred,” in ibid., XI, 2-75.

note: the reference, which concerns Goethe’s comments on Byron, derives from Grote’s “Grecian Legends and Early History,” q.v.

referred to: 279

Cæsar, Claudius.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grey used by Grote.

referred to: 285n

Cæsar, Julius.

note: the references are in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 284

Calixtus II (Pope). Referred to: 283

Callias (son of Hipponicus).

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 154

Callicles.

note: the references at 97-150 passim are to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias, in which Callicles is a character.

referred to: 97-150 passim, 396, 397n

Carlyle, Thomas. Referred to: 387, 433

— “Novalis,” in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. 5 vols. London: Fraser, 1840, II.

note: this ed. probably was in JSM’s library, Somerville College. The quotation is from von Hardenberg (q.v.), but there can be little doubt that JSM took it from Carlyle.

quoted: 466

Cephalus.

note: the references at 222 are to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Parmenides, in which Cephalus is a character.

referred to: 222

Chærephon.

note: the references at 97-150 passim are to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias, in which Chærephon is a character; that at 155 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 97-150 passim, 155

Charlemagne. Referred to: 283-4

Charles II (of England). Referred to: 467

Charmides.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Charmides, in which Charmides is a character.

referred to: 175-8, 185-6

Cheselden, William. “An Account of some Observations made by a young Gentleman, who was born blind, or lost his Sight so early, that he had no Remembrance of ever having seen, and was couch’d between 13 and 14 Years of Age,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, XXXV (1728), 447-50.

note: the quotation and references derive from Bailey; Cheselden’s “Account” is reprinted by Fraser in his edition of Berkeley’s Works (q.v.), I, 444-6.

quoted: 264

referred to: 263-4, 267, 267n-268n, 454, 457 .

264.27 He] When he first saw, he was so far from making any Judgment about Distances, that he thought all Objects whatever touch’d his Eyes, (as he express’d it) as what he felt, did his Skin; and thought no Objects so agreeable as those which were smooth and regular, tho’ he could form no Judgment of their Shape, or guess what it was in any Object that was pleasing to him: He (448)

264.32 relate. Having] relate; Having (448)

264.35 “So, puss, I . . . time.”] So Puss! I . . . Time. (448)

Christ. See Jesus.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Referred to: 510

— Letters to Atticus (Latin and English). Trans. E. O. Winstedt. 3 vols. London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1912.

note: this ed. used for ease of reference. The Elzevir ed. of 1642 is in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

quoted: 378

378.28 “Socratici viri”] O Socrates et Socratici viri! numquam vobis gratiam referam. (III, 230; xiv.9)

Cimon (Kimon).

note: the references at 133, 141, 143 are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias; that at 334 is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 133, 141, 143, 334, 435

Cleisthenes (Kleisthenes).

note: the reference at 326 is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 326-7

Cleomenes (Kleomenes) (of Sparta).

note: the reference at 300 is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 300, 337n

Cleon. Referred to: 323, 331

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions. 2 vols. in 1. London: Rest Fenner, 1817.

note: this ed. in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

referred to: 354

— “Notes on John Smith,” in The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge. 4 vols. London: Pickering, 1836-39, III, 415-19.

note: this ed. in JSM’s library, Somerville College. The quotation is indirect.

quoted: 463

Comte, Auguste. Referred to: 443

Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de. Referred to: 93, 94, 95, 355, 445

Conington, John. “Grote’s History of Greece,” Edinburgh Review, XCIV (July, 1851), 204-28.

referred to: 309n

Cooper, Anthony Ashley.

note: i.e., the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury.

referred to: 466

Corinna. Referred to: 315, 315n

Cousin, Victor. Referred to: 443

— Cours de philosophie. Histoire de la philosophie du dix-huitième siècle. École sensualiste—Locke. 2 vols. Brussels: Hauman, 1836.

note: this ed. in JSM’s library, Somerville College.

referred to: 345

— Fragments philosophiques. Paris: Sautelet, 1826.

referred to: 355

— Trans. Œuvres de Platon. See under Plato.

— See also Plato, Lachès, ou du courage, in Œuvres, trans. Cousin.

Crackanthorp. See Crakanthorp.

Crakanthorp, Richard.Logicæ libri quinque: de prædicabilibus, de prædicamentis, de syllogismo, de syllogismo demonstrativo, de syllogismo probabili. London: Teage, 1622.

note: JSM’s spelling is Crackanthorp; his reference to Cap. 5 is mistaken, the passage being in Cap. 6.

quoted: 26

referred to: 27n

26.34 “implicat manifestam contradictionem,”] Hoc enim cogitare implicat manifestam contradictionem: nam in eo ipso quòd est rationalis, habet in se radicem ac necessariam causam à quâ fluit, & in quâ implicite continetur potentia ridendi: quare si quis cogitare posset hominem carere hâc potentia, æque cogitare posset hominem esse rationâlem, & non esse rationalem, vel esse Hominem & non esse hominem. (29)

Cratylus (Kratylus).

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 429

Critias.

note: the references at 175-86 passim are to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Charmides, in which Critias is a character.

referred to: 166n, 175-86 passim, 327, 385

Critobulus.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167, 171

Criton.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167, 171

Crœsus. Referred to: 295, 299

Ctesippus.

note: the references at 210-21 passim are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Lysis, in which Ctesippus is a character.

referred to: 210-21 passim

Cyrus. Referred to: 311

Damon.

note: the references are in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Laches.

referred to: 197, 206, 208

Darius.

note: the reference at 80 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus; that at 121 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias; that at 213 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Lysis.

referred to: 80, 121, 213

Davy, Humphry. See Davy, John.

Davy, John, ed. The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy. 9 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1839-40.

note: the reference (actually an indirect quotation), which is in a quotation from Bailey, is to a passage from Humphry Davy’s notebooks quoted in John Davy’s “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy,” Vol. I of The Collected Works.

referred to: 261

Demetrius Phalereus. Referred to: 336n

Democritus (Demokritus). Referred to: 44n, 428

Demodocus.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167

De Morgan, Augustus. Referred to: 468

Demosthenes.

note: the reference at 243 is in a quotation from Niebuhr; that at 298 is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 243, 298, 312-13, 317

— Contra Lacritum (“Against Lacritus”), in Private Orations (Greek and English). Trans. A. T. Murray. 3 vols. London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936, I, 278-314.

referred to: 389

— De Corona, in De Corona and De Falsa Legatione (Greek and English). Trans. C. A. Vince and J. H. Vince. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1926, 18-228.

referred to: 312

Descartes, René. Referred to: 341, 451

Diogenes Laertius.Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Greek and English). Trans. R. D. Hicks. 2 vols. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1925.

note: the “Life of Socrates” referred to at 242 is in Vol. I, 148-76. One of the passages quoted at 44n is also quoted at 425.

quoted: 44n, 425

referred to: 242, 382

Dion.

note: the reference at 243 is in a quotation from Niebuhr.

referred to: 243, 311

Dionysius (the elder, of Syracuse). Referred to: 311

Dionysius (the younger, of Syracuse).

note: the reference at 243 is in a quotation from Niebuhr.

referred to: 243, 311

Dionysius (of Halicarnassus). On Literary Composition: Being the Greek Text of De Compositione Verborum (Greek and English). Trans. W. Rhys. London: Macmillan, 1910.

note: this ed. used for ease of reference.

referred to: 386

Dionysodorus. Referred to: 393

Du Trieu, Philippus.Manuductio ad logicam, sive dialectica studiosæ juventuti ad logicam præparandæ. London: printed McMillan, 1826.

note: this reprint, which was formerly in JSM’s library, Somerville College (Grote’s copy is in the University of London Library), of the 1662 edition (Oxford: Oxlad and Pocock; also formerly in JSM’s library, Somerville College) was made for the group, including JSM, studying at Grote’s house in the 1820s (see Autobiography, ed. Stillinger, 74).

referred to: 20, 20n, 27n

Edward I (of England).

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 284

Eginhard.Early Lives of Charlemagne by Eginhard and the Monk of St. Gall. Trans. and ed. by A. J. Grant. London: Chatto and Windus, 1922.

note: the reference is general; this ed. is cited merely for the title.

referred to: 283

Elizabeth I (of England).

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grote.

referred to: 301

Empedocles (Empedokles). Referred to: 210, 380

Epaminondas. Referred to: 311, 332

Ephialtes. Referred to: 327

Epicurus. Referred to: 61, 477

Epigenes.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 167

Eryximachus.

note: the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus.

referred to: 86

Eucleides (Eukleides) (the Megaric). Referred to: 378

Euclid. Referred to: 26

Euclides (the archon). Referred to: 309

Eudoxus. Referred to: 388

Euœnus (of Paros).

note: the reference at 85 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus; that at 155 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 85, 155

Euripides.

note: the reference at 86 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus; that at 160n is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 86, 160n, 317

— Antiope.

note: this drama is not extant; the reference is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias.

referred to: 122

Euthydemus. Referred to: 393

Euthyphron.

note: the references are to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Euthyphron, in which Euthyphron is a character.

referred to: 187-96 passim

Fabyan, Robert.The New Chronicles of England and France. In Two Parts. Named by Himself the Concordance of Histories. Ed. Henry Ellis. London: Rivington, 1811.

note: the reference, which is in a quotation from Grote, is general; this ed. cited merely for the title.

referred to: 284

Ferrier, James Frederick. Referred to: 343

—“Berkeley and Idealism,” Blackwood’s Magazine, LI (June, 1842), 812-30.

referred to: 266

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Referred to: 345, 387

Fourier, Charles. Referred to: 329, 387

Fraser, Alexander Campbell, ed. The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne, including many of his writings hitherto unpublished, With Prefaces, Annotations, his Life and Letters, and an Account of his Philosophy. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871.

reviewed: 451-71; see also Berkeley, Works.

quoted: 470

470.21-5 “the . . . remarkable,” . . . “every . . . thought. It . . . letters.”] On the whole, the . . . remarkable; although curiously it has been much overlooked even by those curious in the history and bibliography of British philosophy. Every . . . thought. There is the unexpectedness of genius in its whole movement. It . . . letters, and it draws this Platonic spirit from a thing of sense so commonplace as Tar. (II, 343-4)

Funccii. See Funck.

Funck, Johann.Chronologia. Hoc est, omnium temporum et annorum ab initio mundi, usque ad annum a nato Christo 1552. Wittenberg: Hoffmann, 1601.

note: the reference is in a quotation from Grey that JSM quotes from Grote’s History. The reference to anno mundi 4017 is on p. 94 of this edition. The reference to anno mundi 3105 is not in this, or the 1st ed. (Basil, 1554); it is, however, the date given in Holinshed’s Chronicles (in the History, Bk. II, Chap. v).

referred to: 285n

Galileo, Galilei. Referred to: 483

Geoffrey of Monmouth.The British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth. In 12 Books. Trans. A. Thompson. A new ed. rev. and collected by A. J. Giles. London: Bohn, 1842.

note: the reference, which is in a quotation from Grote, is general; this ed. cited merely for the title.

referred to: 284

George I (of England). Referred to: 467

George II (of England). Referred to: 467

Gibbon, Edward.The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 6 vols. London: Strahan and Cadell, 1776-88.

referred to: 337n

Glaucon. Referred to: 396

Goethe, Wolfgang von. “Manfred, a dramatic poem by Lord Byron,” in Werke. 55 vols. Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1828-33, XLVI, 216-20.

note: this ed. in JSM’s library, Somerville College. In this ed. the essay appears in the section “Englische Literatur.” The quotation (in translation) and references are taken from Grote’s “Grecian Legends and Early History”; Grote took them from Moore (s.v. Byron, Works).

quoted: 279

referred to: 280

Gorgias (of Leontium).

note: the reference at 85 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Phædrus; those at 97-150 are to JSM’s translation of Plato’s Gorgias, in which Gorgias is a main character; that at 154 is in JSM’s translation of Plato’s Apology.

referred to: 85, 97-150 passim, 154, 394

Grafton, Richard.Grafton’s Chronicle; or, History of England, from the Year 1189 to 1558 inclusive. London: Johnson, 1809.

note: the reference, which is in a quotation from Grote, is general; this ed. cited merely for the title.

referred to: 284

Grey, Zachary.Critical, Historical and Explanatory Notes on Shakspeare. 2 vols. London: Manby, 1754.

note: the quotation is in a quotation from Grote.

quoted: 285n

Grote, George.Aristotle. Ed. Alexander Bain and G. Croom Robertson. 2 vols. London: Murray, 1872.

note: at 476 Mill is referring to Appendix I, pp. 243-68, and Appendix II, pp. 284-300, of the Aristotle, which were first published, in slightly different form, as appendices to Bain’s Mental and Moral Science (1868), q.v.

reviewed: 475-510

quoted: 478, 489, 492-3, 494, 496, 497, 498, 499, 500n, 501n, 508, 509

478.4-6 “A . . . of theory . . . traditions,”] To him [Tisias] succeeded Thrasymachus, next Theodorus, and various others; from each of whom partial improvements and additions were derived, until at length we have now (it is Aristotle that speaks) a . . . of rhetorical theory . . . traditions. (II, 131) [cf. 478^g-g,h]

478.10-11 application. . . . The syllogism] application. [ellipsis indicates 4-sentence omission] The Syllogism (II, 132-3)

489.7 “how much] If I had time to carry the account farther, I should have been able to show how much (I, vii)

494.3-5 “first . . . predication. . . . We . . . is”] So, too, we . . . is. We see by this last remark, how distinctly Aristotle assigned a double meaning to est: first . . . predication. (I, 181-2)

496.22-4 “displays . . . Ideas,” . . . “and] In this account of Memory and Reminiscence, Aristotle displays . . . Ideas. But these principles are operative not less in memory than in reminiscence; and (II, 217)

497.16 the axioms] But, along with these, Aristotle includes another matter also: viz., the critical examination of the Axioms (II, 140)

497.18 foremost] firmest (II, 140)

498.2-3 (“and . . . Middle”)] Thus it is, that he introduces us to the Maxim of Contradiction, and . . . Middle. (II, 141)

498.12 goes] Yet he nevertheless goes (II, 143)

498.19 first. . . . In] first. Still, though in (II, 143)

498.21 Principii.” . . . “Aristotle] Principii, Aristotle (II, 143)

498.25 words.] words, defining them in a manner significant alike to himself and to others,—each word to have either one fixed meaning, or a limited number of different meanings, clear and well defined. (II, 144)

500n.24 “true to the believer, false to the disbeliever”] He proclaimed that each man was a measure for himself alone, and that every opinion was true to the believer, false to the disbeliever; while they criticize him as if he had said—Every opinion is alike true and false; thus leaving out the very qualification which forms the characteristic feature of his theory. (II, 150-1)

501n.7-8 “the autonomy . . . himself;”] This is an appeal to other men, as judges each for himself and in his own case: it is a tacit recognition of the autonomy . . . himself. (II, 150)

508.1-3 “First . . . exercise.” . . . “Secondly] First . . . exercise; and, if a methodized procedure be laid down, both parties will be able to conduct it more easily as well as more efficaciously. Secondly (II, 391)

508.7-12 modify.” . . . “Thirdly] modify. Thirdly (I, 391)

508.26-509.1 sides.” . . . “When] sides. When (I, 63-4)

509.5 one another] each other (I, 64)

509.7 defence. The same] defence. [paragraph] This same (I, 64)

— “Grecian Legends and Early History,” Westminster Review, XXXIX (May, 1843), 285-328.

note: the article is ostensibly a review of B. G. Niebuhr’s Griechische Heroen Geschichten; it is reprinted in Grote’s Minor Works (London: Murray, 1873), 75-134, where the relevant passage occurs on 80 ff. JSM’s Byron, Goethe, and Moore references (q.v.) derive from this passage, in which Grote quotes Moore and Goethe (in translation), the Goethe passage deriving from Moore.

quoted: 279, 279-80, 280-1, 286-7

referred to: 279

279.10-13 “numerous fictions” . . . “palmed upon the world” as his “romantic . . . existed,”] To these exaggerated, or wholly false, notions of him, the numerous fictions palmed upon the world of his romantic . . . existed, have no doubt considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character long current on the Continent, that it may be questioned whether the real ‘flesh and blood’ hero of these pages—the social, practical-minded, and, with all his faults and eccentricities, English Lord Byron—may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his foreign admirers, appear but an ordinary, unromantic, and prosaic personage.” (289; Grote is quoting Moore’s Life of Byron, q.v.)

279.15 He [Byron] has] He has (289; here and for the next four entries, Grote is quoting from Goethe as translated in Moore’s edition of Byron)

279.16 and in] and which (we cite the translation as we find it) in (289)

279.17 Astarte] Astarté (289)

279.19-23 When . . . after.] [in italics] (289)

279.21 to whom] on whom (289)

280.1 hero] hero (290)

280.9 vox. Some] vox: some (290)

280.9 forward and] forward or (290)

280.16 god] God (291)

280.17 omniloquent Zeus] Omniloquent Zeus* [footnote omitted] (291)

280.42 being] having been (293)

281.7 nearer the] nearer to (293)

287.3 exhibit.”] exhibit—γιγνομενα μὲν, κὰι ἀεὶ ἐσόμενα, ἕως ἂν ἡ ἀυτὴ ϕύσις τω̑ν ἀνϕρώπων ἠ̑: (305)

— History of Greece. 12 vols. London: Murray, 1846-56.

note: in JSM’s library, Somerville College, heavily (for JSM) annotated, esp. in Vols. I and II, but throughout, even in Vol. XII (1856), which he did not review. Vols. I and II (1846) are the subject of JSM’s first major review (273-305 above); Vols. IX and X (1852), and XI (1853) are ostensibly the subject of his second major review (309-37 above), but he also deals in large part with the intervening volumes (III and IV, 1847; V and VI, 1849; VII and VIII, 1850), which he had reviewed in the Spectator (see the Textual Introduction, lxxxv-lxxxvi above). Grote’s work is divided into two very unequal parts: Part I, “Legendary Greece” (Vol. I; Vol. II, 1-277), and Part II, “Historical Greece” (Vol. II, 279-615; Vols. III-XII).

reviewed: 273-305 (Vols. I & II), 309-37 (Vols. IX, X, XI)

quoted: 274, 275n, 277-8, 284-5, 287, 292-3, 296, 296-7, 297, 297-8, 298, 298-9, 300-1, 301-2, 303, 311, 316-17, 318-19, 319-20, 325-6, 334-6

referred to: 377, 378, 383, 388, 510

274.30-2 “First, to . . . readers, the general picture of the Grecian world,”] [paragraph] It is that general picture which an historian of Greece is required first to . . . readers;—a picture not merely such as to delight the imagination by brilliancy of colouring and depth of sentiment, but also suggestive and improving to the reason. (I, vii)

274.33 “The historian,” he says, “will] Not omitting the points of resemblance as well as of contrast with the better-known forms of modern society, he will (I, vii)

274.35-6 stationary; and to set forth the action] stationary. He will develope the action (I, vii)

274.38 inferior] superior (I, viii) [treated as typographical error]

275n.8 “feminine” . . . “masculine”] And it must be confessed that what may be called the feminine attributes of the Greek mind—their religious and poetical vein—here [in the first two volumes] appear in disproportionate relief, as compared with the masculine capacities—with those powers of acting, organising, judging, and speculating, which will be revealed in the forthcoming volumes. (I, xvii; see the Textual Introduction, lxxxvi above)

277.30 ground] grounds (I, 572)

277.33 cotemporary] contemporary (I, 572)

277.35-6 improbabilities. It] improbabilities; it (I, 572)

278.2-3 fact. [paragraph] The ] fact. [no paragraph; 3-page omission; paragraph] The (I, 573, 576)

278.5 the presumption] the usual presumption, (I, 576)

278.11 inapplicable,] [footnote omitted] (I, 576)

278.17-18 course. [paragraph] It] course. How active and prominent such tendencies were among the early Greeks, the extraordinary beauty and originality of their epic poetry may teach us. [paragraph] It (I, 577)

278.20 truth.] [footnote omitted which contains reference to Grote’s “Grecian Legends and Early History,” q.v.] (I, 577)

278.26 eagerly believed] eagerly welcomed (I, 578)

278.34 world—legends] world, and of which no country was more fertile than Greece—legends (I, 578)

284.22 nations. With] nations: with (I, 639)

284.24 faith. The] faith: the (I, 639)

284.24 downwards,] downward (I, 639)

284.27 Kings] kings (I, 639)

284n.4 p.131] p.131, note. [corresponding to p.128n in the ed. here cited] (I, 639n)

284n.5 Francus, the son] Francus son (I, 640n)

284.36 Agamemnon.] [footnote omitted] (I, 640)

285.4 deface] efface (I, 640)

285.5 deeds. They] deeds: they (I, 640)

285.6 their setting] thus setting [printer’s error?] (I, 640)

285.7 generally. Yet, in spite] generally². [footnote and 1 1/2 pages omitted] [paragraph] Yet in spite of the general belief of so many centuries—in spite of the concurrent persuasion of historians and poets—in spite of the declaration of Milton, extorted from his feelings rather than from his reason, that this long line of quasi-historical kings and exploits could not be all unworthy of belief—in spite (I, 640-2)

285.10 King] king (I, 642)

285n.3 anachronisms] anachronisms (I, 642n)

285n.4 anno mundi . . . anno mundi] anno mundi . . . anno mundi (I, 642n)

287.19-22 “Though . . . story;”] For though . . . story. (I, 570)

292.6 The] [no paragraph] The (II, 235)

292.13 Iliad.] [footnote omitted] (II, 235)

292.20 Achillêis. [paragraph] Nothing] [concluding sentence of paragraph, and further 2 pages omitted] (II, 236-8)

292.23 calamities of] calamities to (II, 238)

292.31 to be] to me (II, 239)

292.36 books,] [16-paragraph footnote omitted] (II, 239)

292.41 and following] and in the following (II, 243)

293.7 strives] shines [printer’s error?] (II, 244)

293.10 wounds;] [footnote omitted] (II, 244)

293.13 spoil] to spoil (II, 244)

293.14 heroes. I] heroes: I (II, 244)

293.16 excess and] excess of [printer’s error?] (II, 244)

296.10-14 “that . . . necessity;”] The tenth book, or Doloneia, though adapted specially to the place in which it stands, agrees with the books between the first and eighth in belonging only to the general picture of the war, without helping forward the march of the Achillêis; yet it seems conceived in a lower vein, and one is unwilling to believe that . . . necessity¹. [footnote omitted] (II, 267-8)

296.36-297.1 “the . . . Achilles,”] Nor is the reasoning of Nitzsch of much force to rebut the presumptions hence arising; for the . . . Achilles, and would have no painful feeling, requiring to be relieved, in leaving off at the moment in which it is gratified. (II, 266)

297.14-15 antipathy, and] antipathy, or [printer’s error?] (II, 108)

297.16 existence;”] existence. (II, 108)

297.17-19 “the . . . The Laws . . . sympathies.”] In view of the latter [the citizen of historical Athens], the . . . “The Laws” . . . sympathies: but of this discriminated conception of positive law and positive morality³ [footnote omitted], the germ only can be detected in the Homeric poems. (II, 110-11)

298.2 produced. Didactic] produced: didactic (II, 105)

298.27 possessors. But] possessors: for the pass of Thermopylæ between Thessaly and Phocis, that of Kithærôn between Bœotia and Attica, or the mountainous range of Oneion and Geraneia along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positions which an inferior number of brave men could hold against a much greater force of assailants. But (II, 298)

298.40-1 city communities] city-communities¹ [footnote omitted] (II, 299)

299.6 æsthetical. . . .] æsthetical. For these reasons, the indefinite multiplication of self-governing towns, though in truth a phænomenon common to ancient Europe as contrasted with the large monarchies of Asia, appears more marked among the ancient Greeks than elsewhere: and there cannot be any doubt that they owe it, in a considerable degree, to the multitude of insulating boundaries which the configuration of their country presented. (II, 299)

299.7 same [geographical] causes] same causes (II, 299)

299.13 men. . . .] men: moreover the contrast between the population of Greece itself, for the seven centuries preceding the Christian æra, and the Greeks of more modern times, is alone enough to inculcate reserve in such speculations. (II, 300)

299.18 rocks] rocks¹ [footnote omitted] (II, 300)

300.20 [paragraph] Taking [paragraph] The present is not the occasion to enter at length into that combination of causes which partly sapped, partly overthrew, both the institutions of Lycurgus and the power of Sparta; but taking (II, 527)

300.29 of the] of their (II, 527)

301.8 of inequality] of all inequality (II, 528)

301.13 receded. . . . We] receded. It was thus that the fancies, longings, and indirect suggestions of the present assumed the character of recollections out of the early, obscure, and extinct historical past. Perhaps the philosopher Sphærus of Borysthenês (the friend and companion of Kleomenês¹ [footnote omitted] and the disciple of Zeno the Stoic), author of works now lost both on Lycurgus and Socrates and on the constitution of Sparta, may have been one of those who gave currency to such an hypothesis; and we (II, 529)

301.13 that [this hypothesis] would] that if advanced, it would (II, 529)

301.18 Poor-law] Poor Law (II, 530)

301.28 Lived] From the early age of seven years throughout his whole life, as youth and man no less than as boy, the Spartan citizen lived (II, 505)

301.35 night] nights (II, 505)

301.35-6 belonged. . . . [paragraph] The] belonged. [ellipsis indicates 11-page omission] [no paragraph] The (II, 505, 516)

301.39 character] character¹ [footnote omitted] (II, 517)

302.3 conceived] conceive (II, 517)

302.8 war] war¹ [footnote omitted] (II, 518)

302.10 abroad. . . . When] abroad. Such exclusive tendency will appear less astonishing if we consider the very early and insecure period at which the Lycurgean institutions arose, when none of those guarantees which afterwards maintained the peace of the Hellenic world had as yet become effective—no constant habits of intercourse, no custom of meeting in Amphiktyony from the distant parts of Greece, no common or largely frequented festivals, no multiplication of proxenies (or standing tickets of hospitality) between the important cities, no pacific or industrious habits anywhere. When (II, 518)

302.14 them . . . the] them—we shall not be surprised that the language which Brasidas in the Peloponnesian war addresses to his army in reference to the original Spartan settlement, was still more powerfully present to the mind of Lycurgus four centuries earlier—“We are a few in the midst of many enemies, we can only maintain ourselves by fighting and conquering².” [footnote omitted] [paragraph] Under such circumstances, the (II, 518-19)

302.30 us] us¹ [footnote omitted] (II, 519)

303.18-20 founder;” . . . “of] founder. Now this was one of the main circumstances (among others which will hereafter be mentioned) of (II, 477)

311.22 “despot’s progress.”] [paragraph] Thus was consummated the fifth or closing act of the despot’s progress, rendering Dionysius master of the lives and fortunes of his fellow-countrymen. (X, 616)

316.41-317.1 “that . . . Demos of Pnyx,”*] A hundred years hence, we shall find that sentiment unanimous and potent among the enterprising masses of Athens and Peiræeus, and shall be called upon to listen to loud complaints of the difficulty of dealing with “that . . . Dêmus of Pnyx”—so Aristophanes¹ [footnote gives, inter alia, the same text and reference as JSM’s footnote] calls the Athenian people to their faces, with a freedom which shows that he at least counted on their good temper. (IV, 138)

318.2 than imitators] than mere imitators [concerning all the variant readings from here to 319.3 see JSM’s footnote, 319n] (VI, 193)

318.3 its aim] its permanent aim (VI, 193)

318.4 one;] man: (VI, 193)

318.4-6 while in . . . by worth] while looking to public affairs and to claims of individual influence, every man’s chance of advancement is determined not by party-favour but by real worth (VI, 193)

318.6 his particular] his own particular (VI, 193)

318.7 back] back² [footnote omitted] (VI, 193)