Christianity And Greek Philosophy Or The Relation Between Spont

Chapter 14

Chapter 144,466 wordsPublic domain

That we may reach a comprehensive view of this "sublimest of sciences," we shall find it necessary to consider--

1st. _What are the powers or faculties by which we obtain knowledge, and what are the limits and degrees of human knowledge?_

2d. _What is the method in which, or the processes and laws according to which, the mind operates in obtaining knowledge?_

3d. _What are the ultimate results attained by this method? what are the objective and ontological grounds of all real knowledge?_

The answer to the first question will give the PLATONIC PSYCHOLOGY; the answer to the second will exhibit the PLATONIC DIALECTIC; the answer to the last will reveal the PLATONIC ONTOLOGY.

I. PLATONIC PSYCHOLOGY.

Every successful inquiry as to the reality and validity of human knowledge must commence by clearly determining, by rigid analysis, what are the actual phenomena presented in consciousness, what are the powers or faculties supposed by these phenomena, and what reliance are we to place upon the testimony of these faculties? And, especially, if it be asserted that there is a science of absolute Reality, of ultimate and essential Being, then the most important and vital question is, By what power do we cognize real Being? through what faculty do we obtain the knowledge of that which absolutely _is_? If by sensation we only obtain the knowledge of the fleeting and the transitory, "_the becoming_" how do we attain to the knowledge of the unchangeable and permanent, "the _Being_?" Have we a faculty of universal, necessary, and eternal principles? Have we a faculty, an interior eye which beholds "_the intelligible_," ideal, spiritual world, as the eye of sense beholds the visible or "_sensible world_?"[521]

Plato commences this inquiry by first defining his understanding of the word dynamis--_power_ or _faculty_. "We will say _faculties_ (dynameis) are a certain kind of real existences by which we can do whatever we are able (_e.g._, to know), as there are powers by which every thing does what it does: the eye has a _power_ of seeing; the ear has a _power_ of hearing. But these powers (of which I now speak) have no color or figure to which I can so refer that I can distinguish one power from another. _In order to make such distinction, I must look at the power itself, and see what it is, and what it does. In that way I discern the power of each thing, and that is the same power which produces the same effect, and that is a different power which produces a different effect_."[522] That which is employed about, and accomplishes one and the same purpose, this Plato calls a _faculty_.

[Footnote 521: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 522: Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxi.]

We have seen that our first conceptions (_i.e._, first in the order of time) are of the mingled, the concrete (to synkechymenon), "the multiplicity of things to which the multitude ascribe beauty, etc.[523] The mind "contemplates what is great and small, not as distinct from each other, but as confused.[524] Prior to the discipline of _reflection_, men are curious about mere sights and sounds, love beautiful voices, beautiful colors, beautiful forms, but their intelligence can not see, can not embrace, the essential nature of the Beautiful itself.[525] Man's condition previous to the education of philosophy is vividly presented in Plato's simile of the cave.[526] He beholds only the images and shadows of the ectypal world, which are but dim and distant adumbrations of the real and archetypal world.

Primarily nothing is given in the abstract (to kegôrismenon), but every thing in the concrete. The primary faculties of the mind enter into action spontaneously and simultaneously; all our primary notions are consequently synthetic. When reflection is applied to this primary totality of consciousness, that is, when we analyze our notions, we find them composed of diverse and opposite elements, some of which are variable, contingent, individual, and relative, others are permanent, unchangeable, universal, necessary, and absolute. Now these elements, so diverse, so opposite, can not have been obtained from the same source; they must be supplied by separate powers. "Can any man with common sense reduce under one what _is infallible_, and what is _not infallible?_"[527] Can that which is "_perpetually becoming_" be apprehended by the same faculty as that which "_always is?_"[528] Most assuredly not.

[Footnote 523: Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.]

[Footnote 524: Ibid., bk. vii. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 525: Ibid., bk. v. ch. xx.]

[Footnote 526: Ibid., bk. vii. ch. i., ii.]

[Footnote 527: "Republic," bk. v. ch. xxi.]

[Footnote 528: Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.; also "Timæus," § 9.]

These primitive intuitions--the simple perceptions of sense, and the _à priori_ intuitions of the reason, which constitute the elements of all our complex notions, have essentially _diverse objects_--the sensible or ectypal world, seen by the eye and touched by the hand, which Plato calls doxastên--_the subject of opinion_; and the noetic or archetypal world, perceived by reason, and which he calls dianontikên--_the subject of rational intuition or science_. "It is plain," therefore, argues Plato, "that _opinion_ is a different thing from _science_. They must, therefore, have a different _faculty_ in reference to a different object--science as regards that which _is_, so as to know the nature of real _being_--opinion as regards that which can not be said absolutely to be, or not to be. That which is known and that which is opined can not possibly be the same,... since they are naturally faculties of different things, and both of them are faculties--_opinion_ and _science_, and each of them different from the other."[529] Here then are two grand divisions of the mental powers--a faculty of apprehending universal and necessary Truth, of intuitively beholding absolute Reality, and a faculty of perceiving sensible objects, and of judging according to appearance.

[Footnote 529: Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxi., xxii.]

According to the scheme of Plato, these two general divisions of the mental powers are capable of a further subdivision. He says: Consider that there are two kinds of things, the _intelligible_ and the _visible_; two different regions, the intelligible world and the sensible world. Now take a line divided into two equal segments to represent these two regions, and again divide each segment in the same ratio--both that of the visible and that of the intelligible species. The parts of each segment are to represent differences of clearness and indistinctness. In the visible world the parts are _things_ and _images_. By _images_ I mean shadows,[530] reflections in water and in polished bodies, and all such like representations; and by _things_ I mean that of which images are resemblances, as animals, plants, and things made by man.

You allow that this difference corresponds to the difference of _knowledge_ and _opinion_; and the _opinionable_ is to the _knowable_ as the _image_ to the _reality_.[531]

[Footnote 530: As in the simile of the cave ("Republic," bk. vii. ch. i. and ii.).]

[Footnote 531: The analogy between the "images produced by reflections in water and on polished surfaces" and "the images of external objects produced in the mind by sensation" is more fully presented in the "Timæus," ch. 19.

The eye is a light-bearer, "made of that part of elemental fire which does not burn, but sheds a mild light, like the light of day.... When the light of the day meets the light which beams from the eye, then light meets like, and make a homogeneous body; the external light meeting the internal light, in the direction in which the eye looks. And by this homogeneity like feels like; and if this beam touches any object, or any object touches it, it transmits the motions through the body to the soul, and produces that sensation which we call _seeing_.... And if (in sleep) some of the strong motions remain in some part of the frame, they produce within us likenesses of external objects,... and thus give rise to dreams.... As to the images produced by mirrors and by smooth surfaces, they are now easily explained, for all such phenomena result from the mutual affinity of the external and internal fires. The light that proceeds from the face (as an object of vision), and the light that proceeds from the eye, become one continuous ray on the smooth surface."]

Now we have to divide the segment which represents intelligible things in this way: The one part represents the knowledge which the mind gets by using things as images--the other; that which it has by dealing with the ideas themselves; the one part that which it gets by reasoning downward from principles--the other, the principles themselves; the one part, truth which depends on hypotheses--the other, unhypothetical or absolute truth.

Thus, to explain a problem in geometry, the geometers make certain hypotheses (namely, definitions and postulates) about numbers and angles, and the like, and reason from them--giving no reason for their assumptions, but taking them as evident to all; and, reasoning from them, they prove the propositions which they have in view. And in such reasonings, they use visible figures or diagrams--to reason about a square, for instance, with its diagonals; but these reasonings are not really about these visible figures, but about the mental figures, and which they conceive in thought.

The diagrams which they draw, being visible, are the images of thoughts which the geometer has in his mind, and these images he uses in his reasoning. There may be images of these images--shadows and reflections in water, as of other visible things; but still these diagrams are only images of conceptions.

This, then, is _one_ kind of intelligible things: _conceptions_--for instance, geometrical conceptions of figures. But in dealing with these the mind depends upon assumptions, and does not ascend to first principles. It does not ascend above these assumptions, but uses images borrowed from a lower region (the visible world), these images being chosen so as to be as distinct as may be.

Now the _other_ kind of intelligible things is this: that which the _Reason_ includes, in virtue of its power of reasoning, when it regards the assumptions of the sciences as (what they are) assumptions only, and uses them as occasions and starting-points, that from these it may ascend to the _Absolute_, which does not depend upon assumption, the origin of scientific truth.

_The reason takes hold of this first principle of truth_, and availing itself of all the connections and relations of this principle, it proceeds to the conclusion--using no sensible image in doing this, but contemplates the _idea alone_; and with these ideas the process begins, goes on, and terminates.

"I apprehend," said Glaucon, "but not very clearly, for the matter is somewhat abstruse. _You wish to prove that the knowledge which by the reason, in an intuitive manner, we may acquire of real existence and intelligible things is of a higher degree of certainty than the knowledge which belongs to what are commonly called the Sciences_. Such sciences, you say, have certain assumptions for their basis; and these assumptions are by the student of such sciences apprehended not by sense, but by a mental operation--by conception.

"But inasmuch as such students ascend no higher than assumptions, and do not go to the first principles of truth, they do not seem to have true knowledge, intellectual insight, intuitive reason, on the subjects of their reasonings, though the subjects are intelligible things. And you call this habit and practice of the geometers and others by the name of JUDGMENT (dianoia), not reason, or insight, or intuition--taking judgment to be something between opinion, on the one side, and intuitive reason, on the other.

"You have explained it well," said I. "And now consider these four kinds of things we have spoken of, as corresponding to four affections (or faculties) of the mind. INTUITIVE REASON (noêsis), the highest; JUDGMENT (dianoia)(or _discursive reason_), the next; the third, BELIEF (pistis); and the fourth, CONJECTURE, or _guess_ (eikasia); and arrange them in order, so that they may be held to have more or less certainty, as their objects have more or less truth."[532] The completeness, and even accuracy of this classification of all the objects of human cognition, and of the corresponding mental powers, will be seen at once by studying the diagram proposed by Plato, as figured on the opposite page.

[Footnote 532: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx. and xxi.]

The foregoing diagram, borrowed from Whewell, with some modifications and additions we have ventured to make, exhibits a perfect view of the Platonic scheme of the _cognitive powers_--the faculties by which the mind attains to different degrees of knowledge, "having more or less certainty, as their objects have more or less truth."[535]

1st. SENSATION (aisthêsis).--This term is employed by Plato to denote the passive mental states or affections which are produced within us by external objects through the medium of the vital organization, and also the cognition or vital perception or consciousness[536] which the mind has of these mental states.

2d. PHANTASY (phantasia).--This term is employed to describe the power which the mind possesses of imagining or representing whatever has once been the object of sensation. This may be done involuntarily as "in dreams, disease, and hallucination,"[537] or voluntarily, as in reminiscence. Phantasmata are the images, the life-pictures (zographêna) of sensible things which are present to the mind, even when no external object is present to the sense.

[Footnote 535: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. xix.]

[Footnote 536: "In Greek philosophy there was no term for 'consciousness' until the decline of philosophy, and in the latter ages of the language. Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of other philosophers, had no special term to express the knowledge which the mind has of the operation of its own faculties, though this, of course, was necessarily a frequent matter of consideration. Intellect was supposed by them to be cognizant of its own operations.... In his 'Theætetus' Plato accords to sense the power of perceiving that it perceives."--Hamilton's "Metaphysics," vol. i. p. 198 (Eng. ed.).]

[Footnote 537: "Theætetus," § 39.]

The conjoint action of these two powers results in what Plato calls _opinion_ (doxa). "Opinion is the complication of memory and sensation. For when we meet for the first time with a thing perceptible by a sense, and a sensation is produced by it, and from this sensation a memory, and we subsequently meet again with the same thing perceived by a sense, we combine the memory previously brought into action with the sensation produced a second time, and we say within ourselves [this is] Socrates, or a horse, or fire, or whatever thing there may be of such a kind. Now this is called _opinion_, through our combining the recollection brought previously into action with the sensation recently produced. And when these, placed along each other, agree, a true opinion is produced; but when they swerve from each other, a false one."[538] The dixa of Plato, therefore answers to the experience, or the _empirical knowledge_ of modern philosophy, which is concerned only with appearances (phenomena), and not with absolute realities, and can not be elevated to the dignity of _science_ or real knowledge.

We are not from hence to infer that Plato intended to deny all reality whatever to the objects of sensible experience. These transitory phenomena were not real existences, but they were _images_ of real existences. The world itself is but the image, in the sphere of sense, of those ideas of Order, and Proportion, and Harmony, which dwell in the Divine Intellect, and are mirrored in the soul of man. "Time itself is a moving image of Eternity."[539] But inasmuch as the immediate object of sense-perception is a representative image generated in the vital organism, and all empirical cognitions are mere "conjectures" (eikasiai) founded on representative images, they need to be certified by a higher faculty, which immediately apprehends real Being (to on). Of things, as they are in themselves, the senses give us no knowledge; all that in sensation we are conscious of is certain affections of the mind (pathos); the existence of self, or the perceiving subject, and a something external to self, a perceived object, are revealed to us, not by the senses, but by the reason.

[Footnote 538: Alcinous, "Introduction to the Doctrine of Plato," p. 247.]

[Footnote 539: "Timæus," § 14.]

3d. JUDGMENT (dianoia, logos), _the Discursive Faculty, or the Faculty of Relations_.--According to Plato, this faculty proceeds on the assumption of certain principles as true, without inquiring into their validity, and reasons, by deduction, to the conclusions which necessarily flow from these principles. These assumptions Plato calls hypotheses (ypotheseis). But by hypotheses he does not mean baseless assumptions--"mere theories--"but things self-evident and "obvious to all;"[540] as for example, the postulates and definitions of Geometry. "After laying down hypotheses of the odd and even, and three kinds of angles [right, acute, and obtuse], and figures [as the triangle, square, circle, and the like], he _proceeds on them as known, and gives no further reason about them_, and reasons downward from these principles,"[541] affirming certain judgments as consequences deducible therefrom.

[Footnote 540: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx.]

[Footnote 541: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xx.]

All judgments are therefore founded on _relations_. To judge is to compare two terms. "Every judgment has three parts: the subject, or notion about which the judgment is; the predicate, or notion with which the subject is compared; and the copula, or nexus, which expresses the connection or relation between them.[542] Every act of affirmative judgment asserts the agreement of the predicate and subject; every act of negative judgment asserts the predicate and subject do not agree. All judgment is thus an attempt to reduce to unity two cognitions, and reasoning (logizesthai) is simply the extension of this process. When we look at two straight lines of equal length, we do not merely think of them separately as _this_ straight line, and _that_ straight line, but they are immediately connected together by a comparison which takes place in the mind. We perceive that these two lines are alike; they are of equal length, and they are both straight; and the connection which is perceived as existing between them is a _relation of sameness or identity._[543] When we observe any change occurring in nature, as, for example, the melting of wax in the presence of heat, the mind recognizes a causal efficiency in the fire to produce that change, and the relation now apprehended is a _relation of cause and effect_[544] But the fundamental principles, the necessary ideas which lie at the basis of all the judgments (as the ideas of space and time, of unity and identity, of substance and cause, of the infinite and perfect) are not given by the judgment, but by the "highest faculty"--"the _Intuitive Reason_,[545] which is, for us, the source of all unhypothetical and absolute knowledge.

[Footnote 542: Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 134.]

[Footnote 543: "Phædo," §§ 50-57, 62.]

[Footnote 544: "Timæus," ch. ix.; "Sophocles," § 109.]

[Footnote 545: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xxi.]

The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discursive Reason, Plato does not regard as "real Science." "It is something between Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on the other."[546]

[Footnote 546: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xxi.]

4th. REASON (nous)--_Intuitive Reason_, is the organ of self-evident, necessary, and universal Truth. In an immediate, direct, and intuitive manner, it takes hold on truth with absolute certainty. The reason, through the medium of _ideas_, holds communion with the world of real Being. These ideas are the _light_ which reveals the world of unseen realities, as the sun reveals the world of sensible forms. "_The idea of the good_ is the _sun_ of the Intelligible World; it sheds on objects the light of truth, and gives to the soul that knows, the power of knowing."[547] Under this light, the eye of reason apprehends the eternal world of being as truly, yes more truly, than the eye of sense apprehends the world of phenomena. This power the rational soul possesses by virtue of its having a nature kindred, or even homogeneous with the Divinity. It was "generated by the Divine Father," and, like him, it is in a certain sense "_eternal_."[548] Not that we are to understand Plato as teaching that the rational soul had an independent and underived existence; it was created or "generated" in eternity,[549] and even now, in its incorporate state, is not amenable to the conditions of time and space, but, in a peculiar sense, dwells in eternity; and therefore is capable of beholding eternal realities, and coming into communion with absolute beauty, and goodness, and truth--that is, with God, the _Absolute Being_.

[Footnote 547: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xix.; see also ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 548: The reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic notion of _"eternity" as a fixed state out of time existing contemporaneous with one in time_, to appreciate the doctrine of Plato as stated above. If we regard his idea of eternity as merely an indefinite extension of time, with a past, a present, and a future, we can offer no rational interpretation of his doctrine of the eternal nature of the rational essence of the soul. An eternal nature "generated" in a "past" or "present" time is a contradiction. But that was not Plato's conception of "eternity," as the reader will discover on perusing the "Timæus" (ch. xiv.). "God resolved to create a moving image of eternity, and out of that eternity which reposes in its own _unchangeable unity_ he framed an eternal image moving according to numerical succession, which we call _Time_. Nothing can be more inaccurate than to apply the terms, _past, present, future_, to real Being, which is immovable. Past and future are expressions only suitable to generation which proceeds through time." Time reposes on the bosom of eternity, as all bodies are in space.]

[Footnote 549: "Timæus," ch. xvi., and "Phædrus," where the soul is pronounced archê de agenêton.]

Thus the soul (psychê) as a composite nature is on one side linked to the eternal world, its essence being generated of that ineffable element which constitutes the real, the immutable, and the permanent. It is a beam of the eternal Sun, a spark of the Divinity, an emanation from God. On the other side it is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its emotive part[550] being formed of that which is relative and phenomenal. The soul of man thus stands midway between the eternal and the contingent, the real and the phenomenal, and as such, it is the mediator between, and the interpreter of, both.

[Footnote 550: thymeides, the seat of the nobler--epithymêtikon, the seat of the baser passions.]

In the allegory of the "Chariot and Winged Steeds"[551] Plato represents the lower or inferior part of man's nature as dragging the soul down to the earth, and subjecting it to the slavery and debasement of corporeal conditions. Out of these conditions there arise numerous evils that disorder the mind and becloud the reason, for evil is inherent to the condition of finite and multiform being into which we have "fallen by our own fault." The present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The soul is now dwelling in "the grave we call the body." In its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the rational element is "asleep." "Life is more of a dream than a reality." Men are utterly the slaves of sense, the sport of phantoms and illusions. We now resemble those "captives chained in a subterraneous cave," so poetically described in the seventh book of the "Republic;" their backs are turned to the light, and consequently they see but the shadows of the objects which pass behind them, and they "attribute to these shadows a perfect reality." Their sojourn upon earth is thus a dark imprisonment in the body, a dreamy exile from their proper home. "Nevertheless these pale fugitive shadows suffice to revive in us the reminiscence of that higher world we once inhabited, if we have not absolutely given the reins to the impetuous untamed horse which in Platonic symbolism represents the emotive sensuous nature of man." The soul has some dim and shadowy recollection of its ante-natal state of bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.

[Footnote 551: "Phædrus," § 54-62.]

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Has had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar, Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home."[552]

[Footnote 552: Wordsworth, "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," vol. v.]

Exiled from the true home of the spirit, imprisoned in the body, disordered by passion, and beclouded by sense, the soul has yet longings after that state of perfect knowledge, and purity, and bliss, in which it was first created. Its affinities are still on high. It yearns for a higher and nobler form of life. It essays to rise, but its eye is darkened by sense, its wings are besmeared by passion and lust; it is "borne downward, until at length it falls upon and attaches itself to that which is material and sensual," and it flounders and grovels still amid the objects of sense.

And now, with all that seriousness and earnestness of spirit which is peculiarly Christian, Plato asks how the soul may be delivered from the illusions of sense, the distempering influence of the body, and the disturbances of passion, which becloud its vision of the real, the good, and the true?

Plato believed and hoped this could be accomplished by _philosophy_. This he regarded as a grand intellectual discipline for the purification of the soul. By this it was to be disenthralled from the bondage of sense[553] and raised into the empyrean of pure thought "where truth and reality shine forth." All souls have the faculty of knowing, but it is only by reflection, and self-knowledge, and intellectual discipline, that the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty--that is, to the vision of God. And this intellectual discipline was the _Platonic Dialectic_.

[Footnote 553: Not, however, fully in this life. The consummation of the intellectual struggle into "the intelligible world" is death. The intellectual discipline was therefore meletê thanatou, _a preparation for death_.]