John Stuart Mill

“ Such terms as Nature, Law, Freedom, Necessity, Body, Substance, Matter, Church, State, Revelation, Inspiration, Knowledge, Belief, are tossed about in the wars of words as if everybody knew what they meant, and as if everybody used them exactly in the same sense ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Grote's criticism, by defining virtue with reference to the good only οἷ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are not applicable to the typical just man— to such a person as Aristeides, who is no dialectician, sears 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 Plate and of the historical Sokrates, that virtue is a branch of knowledge, and that no one is unjust willingly. ”

“ 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 ditiiculties than Aristotle to the modern mind; more of our knowledge of the master, than of the pupil, is only apparent, and requires to be unlearned; and much more use has been made of what the later philosopher can teach us, than of the earlier. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How are we to explain these three ditferent modes of handling the same question by the same philosopher? If the question about Non-Ens can be disposed of in the summary way which we read in the Kratylus, what is gained by the string of unsolved puzzles in the Theætêtus, or by the long discursive argument in the Sophistês, ushering in a new solution no way satisfactory? ”

“ 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 reachcd. ”

“ 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 pretendcd 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 conviet of ignorance ; and this is the exact position of Plato with regard to the Sophists. ”

“ Now, this doctrine is dealt with in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Kratylus. In the Theætêtus, Sokratês examines it at great length, and proposes several different hypotheses to explain how a false proposition might be possible, but ends in pronouncing them all inadmissible. He declares himself incompetent, and passes onto something else. Again, in the Sophistês, the same point is taken up, and discussed there also very copiously. The Eleate in that dialogue ends by finding a solution which satisfies him — (viz., that τὸ μὴ ὄν = ιὸ ἕτερον τοῦ ὄντος) . ”

“ 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 111 all times known to us, certainly has not brought either the teachers or the practical men of any time to the Platonic test. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Aristeidcs was not. the kind of man of whom Plate 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. [11] Page:Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. ”

“ Dialccties, thus understood, is one branch of an art Which is a main portion of the Art of Living—that of not believing except on sufiicient evidence; its function being that of compelling a man to put his belief into precise terms, and take a defensiblc position against all the objections that can be made to it. ”

“ He objects, that the laws cannot be the standard of virtue, since the communities which enact thom often change their mind, and abrogate the laws they have made. To which Sokrates ↑ Grote, vol. iii. pp. 138-159. The only vestige we find in Plato of the conception of moralny which refers to the general happiness, is when, in answering the remark that the guardians of his ideal republic, being denied all the interents to which human life is generally devoted,would have a poor and undesirable existence, he says, “ Perlmps it may turn out that theirs would be the happiest of all ”