CHAPTER V.

PLATO AS A REFORMER pages 214-274

I. Recapitulation, 214—Plato’s identification of the human with the divine, 215—The Athanasian creed of philosophy, 216—Attempts to mediate between appearance and reality, 216—Meaning of Platonic love, 217—Its subsequent development in the philosophy of Aristotle, 218—And in the poetry of Dante, 219—Connexion between religious mysticism and the passion of love, 219—Successive stages of Greek thought represented in the _Symposium_, 220—Analysis of Plato’s dialectical method, 221—Exaggerated importance attributed to classification, 222—Plato’s influence on modern philosophy, 223.

II. Mediatoral character of Plato’s psychology, 223—Empirical knowledge as a link between demonstration and sense perception, 224—Pride as a link between reason and appetite, 224—Transition from metaphysics to ethics: knowledge and pleasure, 225—Anti-hedonistic arguments of the _Philébus_, 226—Attempt to base ethics on the distinction between soul and body, 227—What is meant by the Idea of Good? 228—It is probably the abstract notion of Identity, 229.

III. How the practical teaching of Plato differed from that of Socrates, 229—Identification of justice with self-interest, 230—Confusion of social with individual happiness, 231—Resolution of the soul into a multitude of conflicting impulses, 232—Impossibility of arguing men into goodness, 233.

IV. Union of religion with morality, 234—Cautious handling of the popular theology, 234—The immortality of the soul, 235—The Pythagorean reformation arrested by the progress of physical philosophy, 237—Immortality denied by some of the Pythagoreans themselves, 237—Scepticism as a transition from materialism to spiritualism, 238—The arguments of Plato, 239—Pantheism the natural outcome of his system, 240.

V. Plato’s condemnation of art, 241—Exception in favour of religious hymns and edifying fiction, 241—Mathematics to be made the basis of education, 242—Application of science to the improvement of the race, 242—Inconsistency of Plato’s belief in heredity with the doctrine of metempsychosis, 243—Scheme for the reorganisation of society, 244—Practical dialectic of the _Republic_, 245.

VI. Hegel’s theory of the _Republic_, 246—Several distinct tendencies confounded under the name of subjectivity, 247—Greek philosophy not an element of political disintegration, 250—Plato borrowed more from Egypt than from Sparta, 253.

VII. The consequences of a radical revolution, 254—Plato constructed his new republic out of the elementary and subordinate forms of social union, 254—Inconsistencies into which he was led by this method, 254—The position which he assigns to women, 256—The Platonic State half school-board and half marriage-board, 258—Partial realisation of Plato’s polity in the Middle Ages, 259—Contrast between Plato and the modern Communists, 259—His real affinities are with Comte and Herbert Spencer, 261.

VIII. Reaction of Plato’s social studies on his metaphysics, 262—The ideas resolved into different aspects of the relation between soul and body, 263—Dialectic dissolution of the four fundamental contrasts between reality and appearance, 263—Mind as an intermediary between the Ideas and the external world, 265—Cosmogony of the _Timaeus_, 265—Philosophy and theology, 267.

IX. Plato’s hopes from a beneficent despotism, 268—The _Laws_, 269—Concessions to current modes of thought, 270—Religious intolerance, 271—Recapitulation of Plato’s achievements, 272—Fertility of his method, 273.