“ And Plato, who, when most ideal, ever strives to keep touch with experience, is fully convinced of the reality of this lower truth, of this unphilosophic virtue. But he is long puzzled how to conceive of it. For, if knowledge is all in all, what are we to make of wisdom and goodness in those who do not know? Protagoras had boldly spoken of honour and right as a direct gift from Zeus, and Socrates, in the Io and Meno, is represented as adopting an hypothesis of inspiration in order to account for these unaccredited graces of the soul. ”

“ What is unjust? What is government? What is it to be a ruler of men?” In this form of question, however simple, the originality of Socrates is typified; and by means of it he laid the first stone, not only of the fabric of ethical philosophy, but of scientific method, at least in ethics, logic and psychology. Socrates never doubted that if men once knew what was best, they would also do it. They erred, he thought, from not seeing the good, and not because they would not follow it if seen. This is expressed in the Socratic dicta: “Vice is ignorance,” “Virtue is knowledge.” ”

“ He is the youngest, not the eldest of gods, living and moving delicately wherever bloom is and in the hearts of men—the author of all virtue and of all good works, obeyed by gods, fair and causing all things fair, making men to be of one mind at feasts—pilot, defender, saviour, in whose footsteps all should follow, chanting strains of love. ”

“ Yet no unprejudiced reader of the Phaedo can doubt that Plato, at the time of writing it, sincerely believed in a conscious personal existence after death. The words of Socrates, when he declares his hope of going to be with other friends, are absolutely unambiguous, and his reply to Crito's question, “How shall we bury you?” has a convincing force beyond all dialectic: “I cannot persuade Crito that I here am Socrates—I who am now reasoning and ordering discourse. He imagines Socrates to be that other, whom he will see by and by, a corpse.” ”

“ No longer asking, as in the Protagoras, Is virtue one or many? Plato rises to the conception of a scientific one and many, to be contemplated through dialectic—no barren abstraction, but a method of classification according to nature. This method is to be applied especially to psychology, not merely with a speculative, but also with a practical aim. For the “birth in beauty” of the Symposium is here developed into an art of education, of which the true rhetoric is but the means, and true statesmanship an accidental outcome. ”

“ Hence it became necessary to imagine a form of society in which the ideal man might find himself at home, a state to which the philosopher might stand in harmonious relationship, no longer as an alien sojourner, but as a native citizen, not standing aloof in lonely contemplation, but acting with the full consent of other men and ruling in the right of wisdom. Plato did not regard his own republic as a barren dream. ”

“ In the early education of the guardians a place is found for the unconscious virtue acquired through habit, which the Protagoras and Meno stumbled over and the Phaedo treated with disdain. In the ideal state, however, this lower excellence is no longer a wild plant, springing of itself through some uncovenanted grace of inspiration, but cultivated through an education which has been purified by philosophy so as to be in harmony with reason. ”

“ But through the bright haze of fancy and behind the mask of irony, Socrates still appears the same strong, pure, upright and beneficent human being as in the Apology, Crito and Phaedo.
The impassioned contemplation of the beautiful is again imagined as the beginning of philosophy. But the “limitless ocean of beauty” Phaedrus. is replaced by a world of supramundane forms, beheld by unembodied souls, and remembered here on earth through enthusiasm, proceeding by dialectic from multiform impressions to one rational conception, and distinguishing the “lines and veins” of truth. ”

“ The example of Socrates had fired him with an ideal of wisdom, courage, temperance and righteousness, which under various guises, both abstract and concrete, has appeared and reappeared in the preceding dialogues. But the more vividly he conceived of this ideal life, the more keenly he felt its isolation in the present world—that of the restored Athenian democracy. For to a Greek mind above all others life was nothing without the social environment, and justice, of all virtues, could least be realized apart from a community. ”

“ From that abiding root spring forth a multitude of thoughts concerning the mind and human things—turning chiefly on the principles of psychology, education and political reform—thoughts which, although unverified, and often needing correction from experience, still constitute Plato the most fruitful of philosophical writers. While general ideas are powerful for good or ill, while abstractions are necessary to science, while mankind are apt to crave after perfection, and ideals, either in art or life, have an acknowledged value, so long the renown of Plato will continue. ”

“ We who dwell about the Mediterranean Sea are like frogs at the bottom of a pool. In some higher place, under the true heaven, our souls may dwell hereafter, and see not only colours and forms in their ideal purity but truth and justice as they are. ”

“ But if Plato were cross-questioned as to the intrinsic value of habits so induced as a preservative for his pupils against temptation, he would have replied, “I do not pretend to have removed all difficulties from their path. Enough of evil still surrounds them to test their moral strength. I have but cleared the well-springs of the noxious weeds that have been fatal to so many, in order that they may have little to unlearn, and be exposed only to such dangers as are inevitable.” ”

“ Convinced through the conversations of Socrates that truth and good exist and that they are inseparable, persuaded of the unity of virtue and of its dependence upon knowledge, he set forth upon a course of inquiry, in which he could not rest until the discrepancies of ordinary thinking were not only exposed but accounted for, and resolved in relation to a comprehensive theory. In this “pathway towards reality,” from the consideration of particular virtues he passed to the contemplation of virtue in general, and thence to the nature of universals, and to the unity of knowledge and being. ”

“ So he went in search of some one wiser than himself, but could find none, though he found many who had conceit of wisdom. And he inferred that the god must mean “He is wisest who, like Socrates, is most aware of his own ignorance.” This unceasing quest has left him in great poverty, and has made him enemies, who are represented by Anytus, Meletus and Lycon. And their enmity is further embittered by the pleasure which young men take in seeing pretence unmasked, and in imitating the process of refutation. Hence has arisen the false charge that Socrates is a corrupter of youth. ”

“ Physical science never thinks of a power which orders everything for good, but expects to find another Atlas to sustain the world more strong and lasting than the reason of the best.
Socrates had turned from such philosophers and found for himself a way, not to gaze directly on the universal reason, but to seek an image of it in the world of mind, wherein are reflected the ideas, as, for example, the idea of beauty, through partaking of which beautiful things are beautiful. Assuming the existence of the ideas, he felt his way from hypothesis to hypothesis. ”

“ For the good has more than one aspect. The beautiful or noble when realized in action becomes the just. And to the question, What is just? are closely allied those other questions of Socrates—What is a state? What is it to be a statesman?
In the Gorgias Plato asserts the absolute supremacy of justice through the dramatic portraiture of Socrates in his opposition to the world; in the Republic he strives at greater length to define the nature of justice through the imaginary creation of an ideal community. ”

“ But it is not less true that the metaphysical aspirations from which Socrates had seemed to recall men's thoughts had been reawakened in consequence of the impulse which Socrates himself had given. From asking, Is virtue one? Can virtue be taught? Plato passes on to ask, What is unity? What are knowledge and being? From criticizing imperfect modes of teaching virtue, he has begun to speculate about the right and wrong uses of the intellect, and from dramatic portraits of the individual Protagoras or Gorgias goes on to the ideal delineation of the sophist. ”

“ Plato in the Laws desists finally from impersonating Socrates. But he is in some ways nearer to his master in spirit than when he composed the Phaedrus. The sympathy with common life, the acceptance of Greek religion, the deepening humanity, are no less essentially Socratic than the love of truth which breathes in every page. And some particular aspects of Socratism reappear, such as the question about courage [40] and that concerning the unity of virtue. ”

“ In all three dialogues he is equally asserting the supremacy of reason.
On the first vision of that transcendental knowledge [9] which is to be the key at once to truth and good, philosophy is apt to lose her balance, and to look with scorn upon “the trivial round, the common task,” and the respectable commonplaces of “ordinary thinking.” Yet, as Socrates is reminded by Protagoras, this unconscious wisdom also has a value. ”

“ Socrates will not attempt to rival the poet, and begins by stipulating that he may tell the truth. He accepts the distinction between Love and his works, but points out that, since desire implies want, and the desire of Love is toward beauty, Love, as wanting beauty, is not beautiful. So much being established in the Socratic manner, he proceeds to unfold the mystery once revealed to him by Diotima, the Mantinean wise woman. Love is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither wise nor foolish, neither god nor mortal. Between gods and mortals is the world of mediating spirits (τὸ δαιμόνιον) . ”

“ And if the dead had no existence, this could not be, since from nothing nothing can arise. Moreover, experience shows that opposite states come from their opposites, and that such a process is always reciprocal. Death certainly succeeds to life. Then life must succeed to death. And that which undergoes these changes must exist through all. If the dead came from the living, and not the living from the dead, the universe would ultimately be consumed in death.
This presumption is confirmed by the doctrine (here attributed to Socrates, cf. Meno) that knowledge comes from recollection. ”

“ But there was another and more deep-lying difference, which distinguished him not only from the contemporary sophists but from the thinkers of the previous age. This was the Socratic attitude of inquiry. The sceptical movement had confused men's notions as to the value of ethical ideas. [6] If “right is one thing in Athens and another in Sparta, why strive to follow right rather than expediency? The laws put restraint on nature, which is prior to them. Then why submit to law?” And the ingenuities of rhetoric had stirred much unmeaning disputation. ”

“ Socrates then renews his demonstration, proving that if the just man is wronged the evil lies with the wrongdoer, not with him, and that it is worst for the wrongdoer if he escape. And for avoidance of this greatest evil not rhetoric avails anything, nor any of the arts which save life (seeing that life may be used well or ill) , nor even such an art of politics as Themistocles, Cimon, or Pericles knew, but another science of politics which Socrates alone of the Athenians practises. ”

“ The art of writing is kindred to the art of speech. But Socrates maintains that oral teaching through the living contact of mind with mind has many advantages over written composition, which is, comparatively speaking, a dead thing. Men may write for amusement or to record the intercourse that has been. But the serious occupation of the true thinker and teacher is the communication of truth through vital converse with others like-minded—the creation of “thoughts that breathe” in spirits conscious of their value. ”

“ In examining the earlier philosophers he has already transgressed the limits prescribed by Socrates, and the effort to connect ideas has made him more and more conscious of the gap between the ideal and the actual. He cannot rest until he has done his utmost to fill up the chasm—calling in the help of imagination where reason fails him. ”

“ Hence in the Timaeus not the body only is made by the inferior gods, but they also create the lower and mortal parts of the human soul: the principle of anger which is planted in the breast, within hearing of reason, and that of appetite which is lodged below the diaphragm like an animal tied in a stall, with the stomach for a crib and the liver for a “soothsaying” looking-glass to soothe or terrify it when tempted to break loose. ”

“ These difficulties are real, and yet to deny ideas is to destroy philosophy. (As the paradoxical doubts in the Protagoras do not shake the faith of Socrates in the existence of good, so neither does Plato here intend for a moment to derogate from the belief in the existence of the One and the True.) ”

“ The only function of perception is to awaken in us some reminiscence of this ideal. By following the clue thus given, and by searching for clearer images of truth in the world of mind, we may hope to be emancipated from sensation, and to lay hold upon the sole object of pure reason. ”