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‘Theaetetus’ is again the subject. But the two appearance, because there was no such thing as sentences differ in quality, for the first says of falsehood. At length falsehood has been discov-you that which is true, and the second says of ered by us to exist, and we have acknowledged you that which is not true, or, in other words, that the Sophist is to be found in the class of attributes to you things which are not as though imitators. All art was divided originally by us they were. Here is false discourse in the short-into two branches—productive and acquisitive.
est form. And thus not only speech, but thought And now we may divide both on a different prin-and opinion and imagination are proved to be ciple into the creations or imitations which are both true and false. For thought is only the proof human, and those which are of divine, origin.
cess of silent speech, and opinion is only the si-For we must admit that the world and ourselves lent assent or denial which follows this, and and the animals did not come into existence by imagination is only the expression of this in some chance, or the spontaneous working of nature, form of sense. All of them are akin to speech, but by divine reason and knowledge. And there and therefore, like speech, admit of true and are not only divine creations but divine imita-false. And we have discovered false opinion, tions, such as apparitions and shadows and re-which is an encouraging sign of our probable flections, which are equally the work of a divine success in the rest of the enquiry.
mind. And there are human creations and hu-Then now let us return to our old division of man imitations too,—there is the actual house likeness-making and phantastic. When we were and the drawing of it. Nor must we forget that going to place the Sophist in one of them, a doubt image-making may be an imitation of realities arose whether there could be such a thing as an or an imitation of appearances, which last has 39
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been called by us phantastic. And this phantastic the maker of the shorter is the Sophist, whose may be again divided into imitation by the help art may be traced as being the of instruments and impersonations. And the latter may be either dissembling or unconscious,
/contradictious
either with or without knowledge. A man can-
/dissembling
not imitate you, Theaetetus, without knowing
/without knowledge
you, but he can imitate the form of justice or
/human and not divine
virtue if he have a sentiment or opinion about
/juggling with words
them. Not being well provided with names, the
/phantastic or unreal
former I will venture to call the imitation of sci-
/art of image-making.
ence, and the latter the imitation of opinion.
The latter is our present concern, for the Soph-c
c
c
ist has no claims to science or knowledge. Now the imitator, who has only opinion, may be ei-IN COMMENTING ON THE DIALOGUE in which Plato most ther the simple imitator, who thinks that he nearly approaches the great modern master of knows, or the dissembler, who is conscious that metaphysics there are several points which it will he does not know, but disguises his ignorance.
be useful to consider, such as the unity of oppo-And the last may be either a maker of long sites, the conception of the ideas as causes, and speeches, or of shorter speeches which compel the relation of the Platonic and Hegelian dialectic.
the person conversing to contradict himself. The The unity of opposites was the crux of ancient maker of longer speeches is the popular orator; thinkers in the age of Plato: How could one thing 40
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be or become another? That substances have cated of everything, or nothing of anything. To attributes was implied in common language; that these difficulties Plato finds what to us appears heat and cold, day and night, pass into one an-to be the answer of common sense—that Not-be-other was a matter of experience ‘on a level with ing is the relative or other of Being, the defining the cobbler’s understanding’ (Theat.). But how and distinguishing principle, and that some ideas could philosophy explain the connexion of ideas, combine with others, but not all with all. It is re-how justify the passing of them into one another?
markable however that he offers this obvious re-The abstractions of one, other, being, not-being, ply only as the result of a long and tedious en-rest, motion, individual, universal, which succes-quiry; by a great effort he is able to look down as sive generations of philosophers had recently
‘from a height’ on the ‘friends of the ideas’ as discovered, seemed to be beyond the reach of well as on the pre-Socratic philosophies. Yet he is human thought, like stars shining in a distant merely asserting principles which no one who heaven. They were the symbols of different could be made to understand them would deny.
schools of philosophy: but in what relation did The Platonic unity of differences or opposites they stand to one another and to the world of is the beginning of the modern view that all sense? It was hardly conceivable that one could knowledge is of relations; it also anticipates the be other, or the same different. Yet without some doctrine of Spinoza that all determination is ne-reconciliation of these elementary ideas thought gation. Plato takes or gives so much of either of was impossible. There was no distinction be-these theories as was necessary or possible in tween truth and falsehood, between the Sophist the age in which he lived. In the Sophist, as in and the philosopher. Everything could be predi-the Cratylus, he is opposed to the Heracleitean 41
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flux and equally to the Megarian and Cynic de-Aristotle’s Architectonic, which seems, however, nial of predication, because he regards both of to have passed into an imaginary science of es-them as making knowledge impossible. He does sence, and no longer to retain any relation to not assert that everything is and is not, or that other branches of knowledge. Of such a science, the same thing can be affected in the same and whether described as ‘philosophia prima,’ the in opposite ways at the same time and in respect science of ousia, logic or metaphysics, philoso-of the same part of itself. The law of contradic-phers have often dreamed. But even now the tion is as clearly laid down by him in the Repub-time has not arrived when the anticipation of lic, as by Aristotle in his Organon. Yet he is aware Plato can be realized. Though many a thinker that in the negative there is also a positive ele-has framed a ‘hierarchy of the sciences,’ no one ment, and that oppositions may be only differ-has as yet found the higher science which arrays ences. And in the Parmenides he deduces the them in harmonious order, giving to the organic many from the one and Not-being from Being, and inorganic, to the physical and moral, their and yet shows that the many are included in the respective limits, and showing how they all work one, and that Not-being returns to Being.
together in the world and in man.
In several of the later dialogues Plato is occu-Plato arranges in order the stages of knowl-pied with the connexion of the sciences, which edge and of existence. They are the steps or in the Philebus he divides into two classes of pure grades by which he rises from sense and the and applied, adding to them there as elsewhere shadows of sense to the idea of beauty and good.
(Phaedr., Crat., Republic, States.) a superintend-Mind is in motion as well as at rest (Soph.); and ing science of dialectic. This is the origin of may be described as a dialectical progress which 42
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passes from one limit or determination of must be verified; the abstract principles must thought to another and back again to the first.
be filled up and connected with one another. In This is the account of dialectic given by Plato in Plato we find, as we might expect, the germs of the Sixth Book of the Republic, which regarded many thoughts which have been further devel-under another aspect is the mysticism of the oped by the genius of Spinoza and Hegel. But Symposium. He does not deny the existence of there is a difficulty in separating the germ from objects of sense, but according to him they only the flower, or in drawing the line which divides receive their true meaning when they are incor-ancient from modern philosophy. Many coinci-porated in a principle which is above them (Re-dences which occur in them are unconscious, public). In modern language they might be said seeming to show a natural tendency in the hu-to come first in the order of experience, last in man mind towards certain ideas and forms of the order of nature and reason. They are as-thought. And there are many speculations of sumed, as he is fond of repeating, upon the con-Plato which would have passed away unheeded, dition that they shall give an account of them-and their meaning, like that of some hiero-selves and that the truth of their existence shall glyphic, would have remained undeciphered, be hereafter proved. For philosophy must begin unless two thousand years and more afterwards somewhere and may begin anywhere,—with out-an interpreter had arisen of a kindred spirit and ward objects, with statements of opinion, with of the same intellectual family. For example, in abstract principles. But objects of sense must lead the Sophist Plato begins with the abstract and us onward to the ideas or universals which are goes on to the concrete, not in the lower sense contained in them; the statements of opinion of returning to outward objects, but to the 43
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Hegelian concrete or unity of abstractions. In the lectic. No philosophy which is worth understand-intervening period hardly any importance would ing can be understood in a moment; common have been attached to the question which is so sense will not teach us metaphysics any more full of meaning to Plato and Hegel.
than mathematics. If all sciences demand of us They differ however in their manner of regard-protracted study and attention, the highest of ing the question. For Plato is answering a diffi-all can hardly be matter of immediate intuition.
culty; he is seeking to justify the use of common Neither can we appreciate a great system with-language and of ordinary thought into which phi-out yielding a half assent to it—like flies we are losophy had introduced a principle of doubt and caught in the spider’s web; and we can only dissolution. Whereas Hegel tries to go beyond judge of it truly when we place ourselves at a common thought, and to combine abstractions distance from it. Of all philosophies Hegelianism in a higher unity: the ordinary mechanism of lan-is the most obscure: and the difficulty inherent guage and logic is carried by him into another in the subject is increased by the use of a techni-region in which all oppositions are absorbed and cal language. The saying of Socrates respecting all contradictions affirmed, only that they may the writings of Heracleitus—‘Noble is that which be done away with. But Plato, unlike Hegel, no-I understand, and that which I do not understand where bases his system on the unity of opposites, may be as noble; but the strength of a Delian although in the Parmenides he shows an Hegelian diver is needed to swim through it’—expresses subtlety in the analysis of one and Being.
the feeling with which the reader rises from the It is difficult within the compass of a few pages perusal of Hegel. We may truly apply to him the to give even a faint outline of the Hegelian dia-words in which Plato describes the Pre-Socratic 44
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philosophers: ‘He went on his way rather regard-always existed implicitly and unconsciously, and less of whether we understood him or not’; or, to which the mind of the world, gradually disenas he is reported himself to have said of his own gaged from sense, has become awakened. The pupils: ‘There is only one of you who under-present has been the past. The succession in time stands me, and he does not understand me.’
of human ideas is also the eternal ‘now’; it is Nevertheless the consideration of a few gen-historical and also a divine ideal. The history of eral aspects of the Hegelian philosophy may help philosophy stripped of personality and of the to dispel some errors and to awaken an interest other accidents of time and place is gathered up about it. (i) It is an ideal philosophy which, in into philosophy, and again philosophy clothed in popular phraseology, maintains not matter but circumstance expands into history. (iii) Whether mind to be the truth of things, and this not by a regarded as present or past, under the form of mere crude substitution of one word for another, time or of eternity, the spirit of dialectic is al-but by showing either of them to be the comple-ways moving onwards from one determination ment of the other. Both are creations of thought, of thought to another, receiving each successive and the difference in kind which seems to di-system of philosophy and subordinating it to that vide them may also be regarded as a difference which follows—impelled by an irresistible neces-of degree. One is to the other as the real to the sity from one idea to another until the cycle of ideal, and both may be conceived together un-human thought and existence is complete. It folder the higher form of the notion. (ii) Under lows from this that all previous philosophies another aspect it views all the forms of sense which are worthy of the name are not mere opin-and knowledge as stages of thought which have ions or speculations, but stages or moments of 45
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thought which have a necessary place in the outward form, (3) combining the I and the not-world of mind. They are no longer the last word I, or the subject and object, the natural order of of philosophy, for another and another has suc-thought is at last found to include the leading ceeded them, but they still live and are mighty; ideas of the sciences and to arrange them in re-in the language of the Greek poet, ‘There is a lation to one another. Abstractions grow together great God in them, and he grows not old.’ (iv) and again become concrete in a new and higher This vast ideal system is supposed to be based sense. They also admit of development from upon experience. At each step it professes to carry within their own spheres. Everywhere there is a with it the ‘witness of eyes and ears’ and of com-movement of attraction and repulsion going on—
mon sense, as well as the internal evidence of its an attraction or repulsion of ideas of which the own consistency; it has a place for every science, physical phenomenon described under a similar and affirms that no philosophy of a narrower type name is a figure. Freedom and necessity, mind is capable of comprehending all true facts.
and matter, the continuous and the discrete, The Hegelian dialectic may be also described cause and effect, are perpetually being severed as a movement from the simple to the complex.
from one another in thought, only to be perpetu-Beginning with the generalizations of sense, (1) ally reunited. The finite and infinite, the abso-passing through ideas of quality, quantity, mea-lute and relative are not really opposed; the fi-sure, number, and the like, (2) ascending from nite and the negation of the finite are alike lost presentations, that is pictorial forms of sense, to in a higher or positive infinity, and the absolute representations in which the picture vanishes is the sum or correlation of all relatives. When and the essence is detached in thought from the this reconciliation of opposites is finally com-46
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pleted in all its stages, the mind may come back a contradiction in terms as the end of strife; to again and review the things of sense, the opin-be told that contradiction is the life and main-ions of philosophers, the strife of theology and spring of the intellectual world is indeed a para-politics, without being disturbed by them. What-dox to them. Every abstraction is at first the ever is, if not the very best—and what is the best, enemy of every other, yet they are linked to-who can tell?—is, at any rate, historical and ra-gether, each with all, in the chain of Being. The tional, suitable to its own age, unsuitable to any struggle for existence is not confined to the ani-other. Nor can any efforts of speculative think-mals, but appears in the kingdom of thought.
ers or of soldiers and statesmen materially The divisions which arise in thought between quicken the ‘process of the suns.’
the physical and moral and between the moral Hegel was quite sensible how great would be and intellectual, and the like, are deepened and the difficulty of presenting philosophy to man-widened by the formal logic which elevates the kind under the form of opposites. Most of us live defects of the human faculties into Laws of in the one-sided truth which the understanding Thought; they become a part of the mind which offers to us, and if occasionally we come across makes them and is also made up of them. Such difficulties like the time-honoured controversy distinctions become so familiar to us that we of necessity and free-will, or the Eleatic puzzle regard the thing signified by them as absolutely of Achilles and the tortoise, we relegate some of fixed and defined. These are some of the illu-them to the sphere of mystery, others to the book sions from which Hegel delivers us by placing us of riddles, and go on our way rejoicing. Most men above ourselves, by teaching us to analyze the (like Aristotle) have been accustomed to regard growth of ‘what we are pleased to call our 47
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minds,’ by reverting to a time when our present dis-For it may encumber him without enlightening tinctions of thought and language had no existence.
his path; and it may weaken his natural facul-Of the great dislike and childish impatience of ties of thought and expression without increas-his system which would be aroused among his ing his philosophical power. The mind easily be-opponents, he was fully aware, and would often comes entangled among abstractions, and loses anticipate the jests which the rest of the world, hold of facts. The glass which is adapted to dis-
‘in the superfluity of their wits,’ were likely to tant objects takes away the vision of what is near make upon him. Men are annoyed at what and present to us.
puzzles them; they think what they cannot eas-To Hegel, as to the ancient Greek thinkers, phi-ily understand to be full of danger. Many a scep-losophy was a religion, a principle of life as well tic has stood, as he supposed, firmly rooted in as of knowledge, like the idea of good in the Sixth the categories of the understanding which Hegel Book of the Republic, a cause as well as an ef-resolves into their original nothingness. For, like fect, the source of growth as well as of light. In Plato, he ‘leaves no stone unturned’ in the in-forms of thought which by most of us are re-tellectual world. Nor can we deny that he is un-garded as mere categories, he saw or thought necessarily difficult, or that his own mind, like that he saw a gradual revelation of the Divine that of all metaphysicians, was too much under Being. He would have been said by his opponents the dominion of his system and unable to see to have confused God with the history of phi-beyond: or that the study of philosophy, if made losophy, and to have been incapable of distina serious business (compare Republic), involves guishing ideas from facts. And certainly we can grave results to the mind and life of the student.
scarcely understand how a deep thinker like 48
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Hegel could have hoped to revive or supplant the ject, and that any conception of space or matter old traditional faith by an unintelligible abstrac-or time involves the two contradictory attributes tion: or how he could have imagined that phi-of divisibility and continuousness. We may pon-losophy consisted only or chiefly in the catego-der over the thought of number, reminding our-ries of logic. For abstractions, though combined selves that every unit both implies and denies by him in the notion, seem to be never really the existence of every other, and that the one is concrete; they are a metaphysical anatomy, not many—a sum of fractions, and the many one—a a living and thinking substance. Though we are sum of units. We may be reminded that in na-reminded by him again and again that we are ture there is a centripetal as well as a centrifu-gathering up the world in ideas, we feel after all gal force, a regulator as well as a spring, a law of that we have not really spanned the gulf which attraction as well as of repulsion. The way to the separates phainomena from onta.
West is the way also to the East; the north pole Having in view some of these difficulties, he of the magnet cannot be divided from the south seeks—and we may follow his example—to make pole; two minus signs make a plus in Arithmetic the understanding of his system easier (a) by and Algebra. Again, we may liken the succes-illustrations, and (b) by pointing out the coinci-sive layers of thought to the deposits of geologi-dence of the speculative idea and the historical cal strata which were once fluid and are now order of thought.
solid, which were at one time uppermost in the (a) If we ask how opposites can coexist, we series and are now hidden in the earth; or to the are told that many different qualities inhere in successive rinds or barks of trees which year by a flower or a tree or in any other concrete ob-year pass inward; or to the ripple of water which 49
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appears and reappears in an ever-widening circle.
tion of mind and body a necessity, not only of Or our attention may be drawn to ideas which speculation but of practical life? Reflections such the moment we analyze them involve a contra-as these will furnish the best preparation and diction, such as ‘beginning’ or ‘becoming,’ or give the right attitude of mind for understand-to the opposite poles, as they are sometimes ing the Hegelian philosophy.
termed, of necessity and freedom, of idea and (b) Hegel’s treatment of the early Greek think-fact. We may be told to observe that every nega-ers affords the readiest illustration of his meantive is a positive, that differences of kind are re-ing in conceiving all philosophy under the form solvable into differences of degree, and that dif-of opposites. The first abstraction is to him the ferences of degree may be heightened into dif-beginning of thought. Hitherto there had only ferences of kind. We may remember the com-existed a tumultuous chaos of mythological fancy, mon remark that there is much to be said on but when Thales said ‘All is water’ a new era both sides of a question. We may be recom-began to dawn upon the world. Man was seek-mended to look within and to explain how oppo-ing to grasp the universe under a single form site ideas can coexist in our own minds; and we which was at first simply a material element, may be told to imagine the minds of all man-the most equable and colourless and universal kind as one mind in which the true ideas of all which could be found. But soon the human mind ages and countries inhere. In our conception of became dissatisfied with the emblem, and after God in his relation to man or of any union of the ringing the changes on one element after an-divine and human nature, a contradiction ap-other, demanded a more abstract and perfect pears to be unavoidable. Is not the reconcilia-conception, such as one or Being, which was 50
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absolutely at rest. But the positive had its nega-division of logic, physic, and ethics, foreshadowed tive, the conception of Being involved Not-being, in Plato, was finally established by Aristotle and the conception of one, many, the conception of a the Stoics. Thus, according to Hegel, in the course whole, parts. Then the pendulum swung to the of about two centuries by a process of antago-other side, from rest to motion, from Xenophanes nism and negation the leading thoughts of phi-to Heracleitus. The opposition of Being and Not-losophy were evolved.
being projected into space became the atoms and There is nothing like this progress of opposites void of Leucippus and Democritus. Until the in Plato, who in the Symposium denies the pos-Atomists, the abstraction of the individual did sibility of reconciliation until the opposition has not exist; in the philosophy of Anaxagoras the passed away. In his own words, there is an ab-idea of mind, whether human or divine, was surdity in supposing that ‘harmony is discord; beginning to be realized. The pendulum gave for in reality harmony consists of notes of a another swing, from the individual to the uni-higher and lower pitch which disagreed once, versal, from the object to the subject. The Soph-but are now reconciled by the art of music’
ist first uttered the word ‘Man is the measure (Symp.). He does indeed describe objects of sense of all things,’ which Socrates presented in a new as regarded by us sometimes from one point of form as the study of ethics. Once more we review and sometimes from another. As he says at turn from mind to the object of mind, which is the end of the Fifth Book of the Republic, ‘There knowledge, and out of knowledge the various is nothing light which is not heavy, or great which degrees or kinds of knowledge more or less ab-is not small.’ And he extends this relativity to stract were gradually developed. The threefold the conceptions of just and good, as well as to 51
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great and small. In like manner he acknowledges posed by Hegel himself (Wallace’s Hegel), who that the same number may be more or less in remarks that ‘the form of the maxim is virtu-relation to other numbers without any increase ally self-contradictory, for a proposition implies or diminution (Theat.). But the perplexity only a distinction between subject and predicate, arises out of the confusion of the human facul-whereas the maxim of identity, as it is called, A ties; the art of measuring shows us what is truly
= A, does not fulfil what its form requires. Nor great and truly small. Though the just and good does any mind ever think or form conceptions in in particular instances may vary, the idea of good accordance with this law, nor does any existence is eternal and unchangeable. And the idea of conform to it.’ Wisdom of this sort is well paro-good is the source of knowledge and also of Be-died in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, ‘Clown: For ing, in which all the stages of sense and knowl-as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen edge are gathered up and from being hypoth-and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King eses become realities.
Gorboduc, “That that is is”...for what is “that” Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now but “that,” and “is” but “is”?’). Unless we are consider the value of this invention of Hegel.
willing to admit that two contradictories may There can be no question of the importance of be true, many questions which lie at the thresh-showing that two contraries or contradictories old of mathematics and of morals will be in-may in certain cases be both true. The silliness soluble puzzles to us.
of the so-called laws of thought (‘All A = A,’ or, The influence of opposites is felt in practical in the negative form, ‘Nothing can at the same life. The understanding sees one side of a ques-time be both A, and not A’) has been well ex-tion only—the common sense of mankind joins 52
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one of two parties in politics, in religion, in phi-ing these opposite sides or views—men are deter-losophy. Yet, as everybody knows, truth is not mined by their natural bent to one or other of wholly the possession of either. But the charac-them; they go straight on for a time in a single ters of men are one-sided and accept this or that line, and may be many things by turns but not aspect of the truth. The understanding is strong at once.
in a single abstract principle and with this lever Hence the importance of familiarizing the mind moves mankind. Few attain to a balance of prin-with forms which will assist us in conceiving or ciples or recognize truly how in all human things expressing the complex or contrary aspects of there is a thesis and antithesis, a law of action life and nature. The danger is that they may be and of reaction. In politics we require order as too much for us, and obscure our appreciation of well as liberty, and have to consider the propor-facts. As the complexity of mechanics cannot be tions in which under given circumstances they understood without mathematics, so neither can may be safely combined. In religion there is a the many-sidedness of the mental and moral tendency to lose sight of morality, to separate world be truly apprehended without the assis-goodness from the love of truth, to worship God tance of new forms of thought. One of these forms without attempting to know him. In philosophy is the unity of opposites. Abstractions have a again there are two opposite principles, of im-great power over us, but they are apt to be par-mediate experience and of those general or a tial and one-sided, and only when modified by priori truths which are supposed to transcend other abstractions do they make an approach to experience. But the common sense or common the truth. Many a man has become a fatalist be-opinion of mankind is incapable of apprehend-cause he has fallen under the dominion of a single 53
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idea. He says to himself, for example, that he more comprehensive. But in order to avoid para-must be eith