III The Platonic Ontology
The grand object of all philosophic inquiry in ancient Greece was to attain to the knowledge of real Being—that Being which is permanent, unchangeable, and eternal. It had proceeded on the intuitive conviction, that beneath all the endless diversity of the universe there must be a principle of unity—below all fleeting appearances there must be a permanent substance—beyond all this everlasting flow and change, this beginning and end of finite existence, there must be an eternal Being, which is the cause, and which contains, in itself, the reason of the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency which pervades the universe. And it had perpetually asked what is this permanent, unchangeable, and eternal substance or being?
Plato had assiduously labored at the solution of this problem. The object of his dialectic was “to lead upward the soul to the knowledge of real being,” 591 and the conclusions to which he attained may be summed up as follows:
1st. Beneath all SENSIBLE phenomena there is an unchangeable subject-matter, the mysterious substratum of the world of sense, which he calls the receptacle (ἱποδοχή) the nurse (τιθήνη) of all that is produced. 592
It is this “substratum or physical groundwork” which gives a reality and definiteness to the evanescent phantoms of sense, for, in their ceaseless change, they can not justify any title whatever. It alone can be styled “this” or “that” (τόδε or τοῦτο); they rise no higher than “of such kind” or “of what kind or quality” (τοιοῦτον or ὁποιονοῦν τι). 593 It is not earth, or air, or fire, or water, but “an invisible species and formless universal receiver, which, in the most obscure way, receives the immanence of the intelligible.” 594 And in relation to the other two principles (i.e., ideas and objects of sense), “it is the mother” to the father and the offspring. 595 But perhaps the most remarkable passage is that in which he seems to identify it with pure space, which, “itself imperishable, furnishes a seat (ἕδραν) to all that is produced, not apprehensible by direct perception, but caught by a certain spurious reasoning, scarcely admissible, but which we see as in a dream; gaining it by that judgment which pronounces it necessary that all which is, be somewhere, and occupy a certain space.” 596 This, it will be seen, approaches the Cartesian doctrine, which resolves matter into simple extension. 597
Footnote 591: (return) “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. xii. and xiii.
Footnote 592: (return) “Timæus,” ch. xxii.
Footnote 593: (return) “Timæus,” ch. xxiii.
Footnote 594: (return) Ibid., ch. xxiv.
Footnote 595: (return) Ibid., ch. xxiv.
Footnote 596: (return) Ibid., ch. xxvi.
Footnote 597: (return) Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 171.
It should, however, be distinctly noted that Plato does not use the word ὓλη—matter. This term is first employed by Aristotle to express “the substance which is the subject of all changes.” 598 The subject or substratum of which Plato speaks, would seem to be rather a logical than a material entity. It is the condition or supposition necessary for the production of a world of phenomena. It is thus the transition-element between the real and the apparent, the eternal and the contingent; and, lying thus on the border of both territories, we must not be surprised that it can hardly be characterized by any definite attribute. 599 Still, this unknown recipient of forms or ideas has a reality; it has “an abiding nature,” “a constancy of existence;” and we are forbidden to call it by any name denoting quality, but permitted to style it “this” and “that” (τόδε καὶ τοῦτο). 600 Beneath the perpetual changes of sensible phenomena there is, then, an unchangeable subject, which yet is neither the Deity, nor ideas, nor the soul of man, which exists as the means and occasion of the manifestation of Divine Intelligence in the organization of the world. 601
Footnote 598: (return) “Metaphysics,” bk. vii. ch. i.
Footnote 599: (return) Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 178.
Footnote 600: (return) “Timæus,” ch. xxiii.
Footnote 601: (return) Ibid., ch. xiiii
There has been much discussion as to whether Plato held that this “Receptacle” and “Nurse” of forms and ideas was eternal, or generated in time. Perhaps no one has more carefully studied the writings of Plato than William Archer Butler, and his conclusions in regard to this subject are presented in the following words: “As, on the one hand, he maintained a strict system of dualism, and avoided, without a single deviation, that seduction of pantheism to which so many abstract speculators of his own school have fallen victims; so, on the other hand, it appears to me that he did not scruple to place this principle, the opposite of the Divine intelligence, in a sphere independent of temporal origination.... But we can scarcely enter into his views, unless we ascertain his notions of the nature of Time itself. This was considered to have been created with the rest of the sensible world, to finish with it, if it ever finished—to be altogether related to this phenomenal scene. 602 ‘The generating Father determined to create a moving image of eternity (αἰῶνος); and in disposing the heavens, he framed of this eternity, reposing in its own unchangeable unity, an eternal image, moving according to numerical succession, which he called Time. With the world arose days, nights, months, years, which all had no previous existence. The past and future are but forms of time, which we most erroneously transfer to the eternal substance (ἀίδιον οὐσίαν); we say it was, and is, and will be, whereas we can only fitly say it is. Past and future are appropriate to the successive nature of generated beings, for they bespeak motion; but the Being eternally and immovably the same is subject neither to youth nor age, nor to any accident of time; it neither was, nor hath been, nor will be, which are the attributes of fleeting sense—the circumstances of time, imitating eternity in the shape of number and motion. Nor can any thing be more inaccurate than to apply the term real being to past, or present, or future, or even to non-existence. Of this, however, we can not now speak fully. Time, then, was formed with the heavens, that, together created, they may together end, if indeed an end be in the purpose of the Creator; and it is designed as closely as possible to resemble the eternal nature, its exemplar. The model exists through all eternity; the world has been, is, and will be through all time.’ 603 In this ineffable eternity Plato places the Supreme Being, and the archetypal ideas of which the sensible world of time partakes. Whether he also includes under the same mode of existence the subject-matter of the sensible world, it is not easy to pronounce; and it appears to me evident that he did not himself undertake to speak with assurance on this obscure problem.” 604 The creation of matter “out of nothing” is an idea which, in all probability, did not occur to the mind of Plato. But that he regarded it as, in some sense, a dependent existence—as existing, like time, by “the purpose or will of the Creator”—perhaps as an eternal “generation” from the “eternal substance,” is also highly probable; for in the last analysis he evidently desires to embrace all things in some ultimate unity—a tendency which it seems impossible for human reason to avoid.
Footnote 602: (return) See ante, note 4, p. 349.
Footnote 603: (return) “Timæus,” ch. xiv.
Footnote 604: (return) Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 171-175.
2d. Beneath all mental phenomena there is a permanent subject or substratum which he designates THE IDENTICAL (τὸ αὐτό)—the rational element of the soul—“the principle of self-activity” or self-determination. 605
There are three principles into which Plato analyzes the soul—the principle of the Identical, the Diverse, and the Intermediate Essence. 606 The first is indivisible and eternal, always existing in sameness, the very substance of Intelligence itself, and of the same nature with the Divine. 607 The second is divisible and corporeal, answering to our notion of the passive sensibilities, and placing the soul in relation with the visible world. The third is an intermediate essence, partaking of the natures of both, and constituting a medium between the eternal and the mutable—the conscious energy of the soul developed in the contingent world of time. Thus the soul is, on one side, linked to the unchangeable and the eternal, being formed of that ineffable element which constitutes the real or immutable Being, and on the other side, linked to the sensible and the contingent, being formed of that element which is purely relative and contingent. This last element of the soul is regarded by Plato as “mortal” and “corruptible,” the former element as “immortal” and “indestructible,” having its foundations laid in eternity.
Footnote 605: (return) “Laws,” bk. x. ch. vi. and vii.; “Phædrus,” § 51; “άρχὴ κινήσεως.”
Footnote 606: (return) “Timæus,” ch. xii.; ταὐτον, θάτερον, and οὐσία or τὸ σνµµισγόµενον.
Footnote 607: (return) “Laws,” bk. v. ch. i.
This doctrine of the eternity of the free and rational element of the soul must, of course, appear strange and even repulsive to those who are unacquainted with the Platonic notion of eternity as a fixed state out of time, which has no past, present, or future, and is simply that which “always is”—an everlasting now. The soul, in its elements of rationality and freedom, has existed anterior to time, because it now exists in eternity. 608 In its actual manifestations and personal history it is to be contemplated as a “generated being,” having a commencement in time.
Now, that the human soul, like the uncreated Deity, has always had a distinct, conscious, personal, independent being, does not appear to be the doctrine of Plato. He teaches, most distinctly, that the “divine,” the immortal part, was created, or rather “generated,” in eternity. “The Deity himself formed the divine, and he delivered over to his celestial offspring [the subordinate and generated gods] the task of forming the mortal. These subordinate deities, copying the example of their parent, and receiving from his hands the immortal principle of the human soul, fashioned subsequently to this the mortal body, which they consigned to the soul as a vehicle, and in which they placed another kind of soul, mortal, the seat of violent and fatal affections.” 609 He also regarded the soul as having a derived and dependent existence. He draws a marked distinction between the divine and human forms of the “self-moving principle,” and makes its continuance dependent upon the will and wisdom of the Almighty Disposer and Parent, of whom it is “the first-born offspring.” 610
Footnote 608: (return) See ante, note 4, p. 349, as to the Platonic notions of “Time” and “Eternity.”
Footnote 609: (return) “Timaeus,” ch. xliv.
Footnote 610: (return) See the elaborate exposition in “Laws,” bk. x. ch. xii. and xiii.
That portion of the soul which Plato regarded as “immortal” and “to be entitled divine,” is thus the “offspring of God”—a ray of the Divinity “generated” by, or emanating from, the Deity. He seems to have conceived it as co-eternal with its ideal objects, in some mysterious ultimate unity. “The true foundation of the Platonic theory of the constitution of the soul is this fundamental principle of his philosophy—the oneness of truth and knowledge. 611 This led him naturally to derive the rational element of the soul (that element that knows), that possesses the power of νόησις from the real element in things (the element that is)—the νοούµενον; and in the original, the final, and, though imperfectly, the present state of that rational element, he, doubtless, conceived it united with its object in an eternal conjunction, or even identity. But though intelligence and its correlative intelligibles were and are thus combined, the soul is more than pure intelligence; it possesses an element of personality and consciousness distinct to each individual, of which we have no reason to suppose, from any thing his writings contain, Plato ever meant to deprive it.” 612 On the contrary, he not only regarded it as having now, under temporal conditions, a distinct personal existence, but he also claimed for it a conscious, personal existence after death. He is most earnest, and unequivocal, and consistent in his assertion of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The arguments which human reason can supply are exhibited with peculiar force and beauty in the “Phædo,” the “Phædrus,” and the tenth book of the “Republic.” The most important of these arguments may be presented in a few words.
Footnote 611: (return) See Grant’s “Aristotle,” vol. i. pp. 150, 151.
Footnote 612: (return) Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 209, note.
1. The soul is immortal, because it is incorporeal. There are two kinds of existences, one compounded, the other simple; the former subject to change, the latter unchangeable; one perceptible to sense, the other comprehended by mind alone. The one is visible, the other is invisible. When the soul employs the bodily senses, it wanders and is confused; but when it abstracts itself from the body, it attains to knowledge which is stable, unchangeable, and immortal. The soul, therefore, being uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, must be indissoluble—that is to say, immortal. 613
Footnote 613: (return) “Phædo,” §§ 61-75.
2. The soul is immortal, because it has an independent power of self-motion—that is, it has self-activity and self-determination. No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be conceived as the originator of free and voluntary movement.
Now that which can not move itself, but derives its motion from something else, may cease to move, and perish. “But that which is self-moved, never ceases to be active, and is also the cause of motion to all other things that are moved.” And “whatever is continually active is immortal.” This “self-activity is,” says Plato, “the very essence and true notion of the soul.” 614 Being thus essentially causative, it therefore partakes of the nature of a “principle,” and it is the nature of a principle to exclude its contrary. That which is essentially self-active can never cease to be active; that which is the cause of motion and of change, can not be extinguished by the change called death. 615
3. The soul is immortal, because it possesses universal, necessary, and absolute ideas, which transcend all material conditions, and bespeak an origin immeasurably above the body. No modifications of matter, however refined, however elaborated, can give the Absolute, the Necessary, the Eternal. But the soul has the ideas of absolute beauty, goodness, perfection, identity, and duration, and it possesses these ideas in virtue of its having a nature which is one, simple, identical, and in some sense, eternal. 616 If the soul can conceive an immortality, it can not be less than immortal. If, by its very nature, “it has hopes that will not be bounded by the grave, and desires and longings that grasp eternity,” its nature and its destiny must correspond.
In the concluding sections of the “Phædo” he urges the doctrine with earnestness and feeling as the grand motive to a virtuous life, for “the reward is noble and the hope is great.” 617 And in the “Laws” he insists upon the doctrine of a future state, in which men are to be rewarded or punished as the most conclusive evidence that we are under the moral government of God. 618
Footnote 614: (return) “Phædrus,” §§ 51-53.
Footnote 615: (return) “Phædo,” §§ 112-128.
Footnote 616: (return) Ibid., §§ 48-57, 110-115.
Footnote 617: (return) Ibid., §§ 129-145.
Footnote 618: (return) The doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, can scarcely be regarded as part of the philosophic system of Plato. He seems to have accepted it as a venerable tradition, coming within the range of probability, rather than as a philosophic truth, and it is always presented by him in a highly mythical dress. Now of these mythical representations he remarks in the “Phædo” (§ 145) that “no man in his senses would dream of insisting that they correspond to the reality, but that, the soul having been shown to be immortal, this, or something like this, is true of individual souls or their habitations.” If, as in the opinions of the ablest critics, “the Laws” is to be placed amongst the last and maturest of Plato’s writings, the evidence is conclusive that whatever may have been his earlier opinions, he did not entertain the doctrine of “Metempsychosis” in his riper years. But when, on the one hand, the soul shall remain having an intercourse with divine virtue, it becomes divine pre-eminently; and pre-eminently, after having been conveyed to a place entirely holy, it is changed for the better; but when it acts in a contrary manner, it has, under contrary circumstances, placed its existence in some unholy spot.
This is the judgment of the gods, who hold Olympus.
“O thou young man,” [know] “that the person who has become more wicked, departs to the more wicked souls; but he who has become better, to the better both in life and in all deaths, to do and suffer what is fitting for the like.”—“Laws,” bk. x. ch. xii. and xiii.
4. Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND, the First Principle of all Principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe, the ultimate Substance from which all other things derive their being and essence, the First and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe, who is called by way of pre-eminence and excellence the Supreme Good, THE GOD (ὁ θεός), “the God over all,” (ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός).
This SUPREME MIND, 619 Plato taught, is incorporeal, 620 unchangeable, 621 infinite, 622 absolutely perfect, 623 essentially good, 624 unoriginated, 625 and eternal. 626 He is “the Father, and Architect, and Maker of the Universe,” 627 “the efficient Cause of all things.” 628 “the Monarch and Ruler of the world,” 629 “the sovereign Mind that orders all things, and pervades all things,” 630 “the sole Principle of all things,” 631 and “the Measure of all things,” 632 He is “the Beginning of all truth,” 633 “the Fountain of all law and justice,” 634 “the Source of all order and beauty,” 635 “the Cause of all good;” 636 in short, “he is the Beginning, the Middle, and End of all things.” 637
Footnote 619: (return) “Phædo,” §§ 105-107.
Footnote 620: (return) Diogenes Laertius, “Lives,” bk. iii. ch. 77.
Footnote 621: (return) “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xix.; “Timæus,” ch. ix.
Footnote 622: (return) “Apeleius,” bk. i. ch. v.
Footnote 623: (return) “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xx.
Footnote 624: (return) “Timæus,” ch. x.; “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xviii.
Footnote625: (return) “Timæus,” ch. ix.-x.
Footnote 626: (return) Ibid., ch. xii.
Footnote 627: (return) Ibid., ch. ix.
Footnote 628: (return) “Phædo,” § 105.
Footnote 629: (return) “Laws,” bk. x. ch. xii.; “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.; “Philebus,” § 50.
Footnote 630: (return) “Philebus,” §51.
Footnote 631: (return) “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xix.
Footnote 632: (return) “Laws,” bk. iv. ch. viii.
Footnote 633: (return) “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xxi.
Footnote 634: (return) “Laws,” bk. iv. ch. vii.
Footnote 635: (return) “Philebus,” § 51; “Timæus,” ch. x.
Footnote 636: (return) “Republic,” bk. ii. ch. xviii.; “Timæus,” ch. x.
Footnote 637: (return) “Laws,” bk. iv, ch. vii.
Beyond the sensible world, Plato conceived another world of intelligibles or ideas. These ideas are not, however, distinct and independent existences. “What general notions are to our own minds, ideas are to the Supreme Reason (νοῦς ßασιλεύς); they are the eternal thoughts of the Divine Intellect.” 638 Ideas are not substances, they are qualities, and there must, therefore, be some ultimate substance or being to whom, as attributes, they belong. “It must not be believed, as has been taught, that Plato gave to ideas a substantial existence. When they are not objects of pure conception for human reason, they are attributes of the Divine Reason. It is there they substantially exist.” 639 These eternal laws and reasons of things indicate to us the character of that Supreme Essence of essences, the Being of beings. He is not the simple aggregate of all laws, but he is the Author, and Sustainer, and Substance of all laws. At the utmost summit of the intellectual world of Ideas blazes, with an eternal splendor, the idea of the Supreme Good from which all others emanate. 640 This Supreme Good is “far beyond all existence in dignity and power, and it is that from which all things else derive their being and essence.” 641 The Supreme Good is not the truth, nor the intelligence; “it is the Father of it.” In the same manner as the sun, which is the visible image of the good, reigns over the world, in that it illumes and vivifies it; so the Supreme Good, of which the sun is only the work, reigns over the intelligible world, in that it gives birth to it by virtue of its inexhaustible fruitfulness. 642 The Supreme Good is GOD himself, and he is designated “the good” because this term seems most fittingly to express his essential character and essence. 643 It is towards this superlative perfection that the reason lifts itself; it is towards this infinite beauty the heart aspires. “Marvellous Beauty!” exclaims Plato; “eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase and diminution... beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or face: which does not reside in any being different from itself, in the earth, or the heavens, or in any other thing, but which exists eternally and absolutely in itself, and by itself; beauty of which every other beauty partakes, without their birth or destruction bringing to it the least increase or diminution.” 644 The absolute being—God, is the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the complete ideal of all beauty. God is, par excellent, the Beautiful.
Footnote 638: (return) Thompson’s “Laws of Thought,” p. 119.
Footnote 639: (return) Cousin, “Lectures on the History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. 415. “There is no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against common sense, and if such be the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle was right in opposing it. But such a theory is only a chimera which Aristotle created for the purpose of combating it.”—“The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” p. 77.
Footnote 640: (return) “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.
Footnote 641: (return) “Ibid.,” bk. vi. ch. xviii. and xix.
Footnote 642: (return) “Republic,” bk. vii. ch. iii.
Footnote 643: (return) Ritter’s “History of Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 275.
Footnote 644: (return) “Banquet,” § 35. See Cousin, “The True, the Beautiful, and the Good,” Lecture IV., also Lecture VII. pp. 150-153; Denis, “Histoire des Théories et Ideés Morales dans l’Antiquité,” vol. i. p. 149.
God is therefore, with Plato, the First Principle of all Principles; the Divine energy or power is the efficient cause, the Divine beauty the formal cause, and the Divine goodness the final cause of all existence.
The eternal unity of the principles of Order, Goodness, and Truth, in an ultimate reality—the ETERNAL MIND, is thus the fundamental principle which pervades the whole of the Platonic philosophy. And now, having attained this sublime elevation, he looks down from thence upon the sensible, the phenomenal world, and upon the temporal life of man; and in the light of this great principle he attempts to explain their meaning and purpose. The results he attained in the former case constitute the Platonic Physics, in the latter, the Platonic Ethics.