who together with Vesta represent the material vitality of the family (W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, London, 1911, lect. iv.). The protecting door-spirit was Janus; and in the Janus bifrons in the symbolic gate of the Forum Fowler sees a developed form of the spirit of the house-door. The lar was originally the presiding spirit, not of the house, but of an allotment, or the whole of the land of a familia, including that on which the house stood. The terminus was the boundary-mark of the land belonging to the familia, or the pagus (an association of farms and homesteads), and its care was marked by detailed religious ceremonies. The lustratio, or purification, of land, city, etc., was carried out by means of a solemn procession accompanied with sacrifice. And, as the ager of the city-state had its boundary made sacred by a lustratio, so the city had its pomarium, or boundaryline between the sacred and the profane, like that of the farm, within whose limits alone the auspicia of the city could be taken. See, further, art. LANDMARKS AND BOUNDARIES. and furnished the Indians with pelts for clothing as well as covering for their tents. The tribes regarded these animals as specially provided for the sustenance and welfare of the native people, and this gift was gratefully recognized in their religious rites. The Indians of the Plains had been attracted thither by the buffalo herds. Some of the tribes had come from the woods on the north, east, and west, where the game, although plentiful, was more or less difficult to secure; others had come up from the south for similar reasons. After the settlement of the white colonists on the Atlantic coast a new force was felt over the land. A gradual displacement of the native tribes formerly dwelling on the eastern littoral and its streams began and went on increasing, until it was felt as a westward pressure up to the eastern border of the Plains. This steady displacement, added to the influence of the white traders, the adventurers, and the opening up of the country,' brought to the Indians new diseases, intoxicants, and many other evils which greatly reduced their number. The horse reached the Plains with the expedition of Coronado in 1541. Later, strays multiplied rapidly, and finally formed the herds of wild horses that became the principal source of the Indian supply. What tribe introduced them on the Plains and used them for hunting is not known, but they were first met by tribes of the Siouan stock, among the Comanche, who were famous for their horsemanship, and from that tribe knowledge was obtained of the use and care of the horse. Not only did the horse modify hunting methods, but it introduced a new species of property, changed social customs, and fed to foraging expeditions and to wars. The earliest Teutonic word for temple means also wood, and the primitive shrine of the deity was a holy place untouched by human hand, a grove. A god may inhabit a mountain-top, a cave, or a river, but the general worship was a forest cultus, its seat a sacred tree (cf. Tac. Germ. ix.). This is not pure nature-worship, for the gods dwelt in these groves, although as yet no walls were built or images set up. Among the Saxons and Frisians the veneration of groves long survived the introduction of Christianity. At the beginning of the 11th cent. Bishop Unwan of Bremen had all such woods cut down in his diocese, and Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, i. 73 f.) tells us of a holy oak near Wormeln, Paderborn, to which even in his time the neighbouring peasants made a solemn proces-country, the changing conditions increased its sion every year. The earliest temples were built on the sites of the more ancient trees or groves, and, later, Christian churches were erected on the same spot, so that the old sacredness did not depart from the place, but merely passed into a higher relation. LITERATURE.-See, besides works already mentioned, C. J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, tr. J. S. Stally brass, 4 vols., PLAINS INDIANS. 1. Distribution and history. The region that gives a geographical name to this group of American Indians is of an irregular oblong shape, some 2500 miles from north to south and 1000 to 1500 miles from east to west. Roughly speaking, the Plains extend from the Rio Grande in S. W. United States to the Saskatchewan River in Canada, and from the base of the Rocky Mountains to Lake Winnipeg in Canada and the Missouri and the Mississippi in the United States. Down the long easterly slope of this broad stretch of land flow many streams that take their rise in the Western mountains. Trees border these numerous waterways, but the country is barren of forests. This was formerly the home of over twenty different tribes, belonging to six different linguistic stocks. They were as follows: (1) Algonquian: Arapaho, Blackfeet (or Siksika), Cheyenne, and Cree; (2) Athapascan: Apache; (3) Caddoan: Arikara and Pawnee; (4) Kiowan: Kiowa; (5) Shoshonean: Comanche; (6) Siouan: Assiniboin, Crow (or Absaroka), Dakota, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kansas, Mandan, Missouri, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Ponca, and Quapa. To and fro over the wide Plains formerly moved vast herds of buffalo, which gave abundant food Although the Plains was never a peaceful turbulence until it became a great battle-field as well as a hunting-ground. The greatest blow that the native life of the Indian ever received came during the first decades of the latter half of the 19th cent., when, in the interests of trade, the buffalo were slaughtered by the thousand, until within a few years they were practically extinct. What that catastrophe meant to the Indian it is difficult for one of our race fully to appreciate. The present writer can never forget the occasion, some thirty years ago, when its meaning was really borne in upon her. The aged Omaha keeper of the sacred rites that inaugurated the annual tribal buffalo-hunt consented to recite the rituals, for historic preservation; he stood alone in his little cabin before the graphophone to voice for the last time the words that told of the birth of the buffalo-herds. When he came to The social the promise given by Wakonda, in answer to man's appeal, that Among the Cheyenne there is an ancient ceremonial connected with four sacred arrows that have been preserved time out of mind, which was related to the teaching of the sanctity of life within the tribe. Little is known of this rite, as no one having any white blood has ever been allowed to witness it. See art. CHEYENNE. The tribes of the Caddoan linguistic stock had long been familiar with the cultivation of the maize which figured in their tribal rites. These were elaborate, and presented phases of anthropomorphism that were not met with elsewhere. The tribes of the Siouan linguistic stock dwelt on the eastern border of the Plains, along the banks of the Missouri River and the lower part of some of the tributaries of the Mississippi. The people lived in villages and cultivated maize, beans, and a few other plants; they went out to hunt buffalo and other game, returning home with their supply of meat and pelts. Early in the 17th cent. these tribes came into touch with French traders from the south, by way of the Mississippi, and across country to the north and east from the lakes and the St. Lawrence River. With the influx of wares during the 18th and 19th centuries, the native arts of weaving, pottery-making, and the manufacture of implements and weapons from stone, bone, and wood declined and finally ceased altogether. Under these influences hunting grew to be more or less a mercantile pursuit, and the religious rites formerly connected with it began to lose their power. During the latter half of the 19th cent. the life of the tribes became greatly modified and at its close hardly a tribe was practising its ancient vocations and rites, or was dependent for social order upon its tribal form of government. The entire country was under the control of the white race, railroads stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the mountains were no barriers, and portions of the Plains once regarded as a desert yielded to modern methods of land cultivation, so that the old life passed for ever out of sight. The native race survived under the new conditions, nor were their ancient beliefs wholly obliterated; these had too long been vital to the race to yield to mere external pressure. What those beliefs were has assumed new importance to the student of the development of the mind and thought of man while under the direct and sole tutelage of nature. The American Indians belong to an observant, thoughtful, out-of-door people who for generations have lived on intimate relations with an unmodified environment. All animals pursued their own untrammelled mode of life, only the dog being domesticated. With few exceptions, the plants were undisturbed in their manner of growth; there were no highways to break the wide expanse of grass, or bridges to span the streams. There was nothing to suggest any break in the continuity of the natural relation between man and his surroundings. It is difficult for one of our race to conceive of that once unbroken stretch of country, giving no sign of the master-hand of man or of his permanent occupancy. It was amid such untouched, unforced conditions that the American Indian attentively watched the various phases of life about him and pondered upon what he saw. 1 For a description of the Sun-dance see art. PHALLISM, § 2. Everywhere he seemed to discern that dual forces were employed to reproduce and so to perpetuate living forms. The fructifying power of the sun was needed to make the earth fruitful, and only on the union of the two, sky and earth, was life in its various forms made possible. Upon these two opposites he projected human relations and made them, to a degree, anthropomorphic; the sky became masculine, the earth feminine. Finally, by thinking along these lines, as his rituals reveal, he was led to conceive of the cosmos as a unit, permeated with the same life force of which he was conscious within himself-a force that gave to his environment its stable character, to every living thing on land and water the power of growth and of movement, to man not only his physical capacities but the ability to think, to will, to bring to pass. This unseen, undying, unifying force is called by the Omaha and cognate tribes Wakonda. Through Wakonda all things came into being, are ever related, and made more or less interdependent. Consequently, nature stood to the Indian as the manifestation of an order that had been instituted by Wakonda, of which man was an integral part. To this order he turned for guidance when establishing those means, religious and secular, that would ensure to him, individually and socially, safety and continuous life. Finding himself to be one of a wide-reaching cosmic family, the Omaha (and his cognates) planned the tribal organization upon the type of that family. The people were divided into two great sections, one to represent the sky, the other the earth. Each section was composed of a number of kinship groups, called by a general term meaning village.' (These are spoken of by our students as 'clans or 'gentes.') Each village stood for some one of the forms of life seen in Wakonda's instituted order. The sky was the abode of the sun, the stars, the winds, and the storm-cloud with its thunder and lightning, and to each village of that section was committed something regarded as symbolic of one of these manifestations. The earth, with its land and water, was the abode of the trees, grasses, and the various animals so closely allied to man and his needs, and to each village of that section was committed something typical or symbolic of one of these manifestations of life. In this way the tribal organization aimed at mirroring man's environment, as ordained by Wakonda, and was primarily religious in character, and secondarily political in its function. tribal rites were instituted to emphasize that which the tribal organization portrayed, and to provide means by which the people should together acknowledge the order inaugurated by Wakonda, of which man was a part. In these rites all the villages of the two sections had a share, as well as the symbols committed to their keeping, so that the people, standing in the appointed order, with one voice appealed to the invisible Wakonda for help to secure food, safety, and long life. The A few words are necessary regarding the symbolic objects committed to the villages, as there has been considerable misconception of these and the Indian's use of them. Each village, according to the section to which it belonged, had charge of one of these symbols. The term by which it was designated in the Omaha language meant that by which they make themselves known as a people.' It is to this object that the term 'totem' has been applied. The symbol, representing, as it did, one of the forms of life in the sky or on the earth, as created by Wakonda, had a sacred significance to the people of the village and held the central place in their ceremonies. It bound the people together by a sacred tie, made them distinctive among the other villages, and was a link between them and the invisible Wakonda. The symbol belonging to a village was always metaphorically referred to in the name of the village, and also in the personal name ceremonially given to every child born within the village. The symbol might be an animal (e.g., the buffalo) or a force (e.g., the wind), and the people might be spoken of by the name of the symbol of their village (e.g., the buffalo people, or the wind people). This form of speech never meant to imply that the people were descended from the buffalo or any other symbolic object. Certain articles were regarded as associated with the different symbols; these were always treated with marked respect, and the people of a village never touched the articles associated with their own sacred symbol. The tribal rites of the Omaha and cognates were composed of dramatic acts, the recitation of rituals, and the singing of ritualistic songs. In these are embodied the myths setting forth the genesis of man and his relation to nature. The stories, symbols, and metaphors are often highly imaginative and not infrequently touched with poetic feeling. These formed a nimbus about the rites that both illuminated and made elusive their meaning. In the tribal rites can be traced the gropings of the Indian's mind to find that power, greater than man, which was the source of visible nature, to discover a way for man to approach it and receive help from it, and to search for the meaning of the activities that were everywhere apparent. The religious and social ideas developed through this search, extending through generations, as evidenced in the rituals, were gradually evolved and formulated in the tribal rites, wherein were clearly set forth the importance of the perpetuation of human life and the recognition that Wakonda is ever present in all things that surround man. There were no specially designated persons in the tribe whose duty was to teach religion or ethics, nor were there any succinct, practical commandments as to the beliefs or actions. Religious and ethical teachings were embedded in the tribal and other rites. The duty of explanation and instruction to the laity, concerning the meaning and the teaching of these rites, devolved on the thoughtful elders of the tribe, who generally belonged to those eligible for the office of keeper and who formed a kind of hereditary priesthood. 3. Wakonda.-The term wakonda is not modern and does not lend itself to analysis. It is distinct from the word meaning 'spirit' and has nothing in common with it. Wakonda is not a synonym of 'Great Spirit,' of nature, or of an objective god, a being apart from nature. It is difficult to formulate the native idea expressed in this word. The European mind demands a kind of intellectual crystallization of conceptions which is not essential to the Indian and which, when attempted, is apt to modify the original meaning. Wakonda stands for the mysterious life-power permeating all natural forms and forces and all phases of man's conscious life. The idea of wakonda is therefore fundamental to the Indian's relation to nature and to all living forms, including man. While the conception of wakonda may appear vague, certain anthropomorphic attributes were ascribed to it, approximating to a kind of personality. Besides the insistence on truthfulness in word and deed, there were qualities involving pity and compassion, as shown in certain rites. All experiences of life were directed by wakonda-a belief that led to a kind of fatalism. LITERATURE.-HAI (= Bull. 30 BE (1907-10]); J. Mooney, Calendar Hist. of the Kiowa Indians, 17 RBEW (1898), pt. 1: p. 141 ff., 'The Ghost-Dance Religion,' 14 RBEW (1896), pt. 2; A. C. Fletcher, 'The Hako,' 22 RBEW [1904], pt. 2; A. C. Fletcher and F. La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe,' 27 RBEW PLANTS.-See TREES AND PLANTS. PLATO AND PLATONISM. -I. Life.Aristocles, known always in after life as Plato (IIλáтwv), was born at Athens (or, as some say, at Ægina) on 26th or 27th May 427 B.C. (or, as some say, 5th or 6th June 428 B. C.). He was well born, his father, Ariston, being of the family of Codrus, and his mother, Perictione, or Potone, of that of Solon; he was well bred; he was well-to-do. In his youth he received the customary education in music and gymnastic, and he performed the usual military service. He is said to have had poetical aspirations-dramatic, epic, lyric. In all proba bility he looked forward to a political career. Having been in early years introduced to the Heracleitean philosophy by Cratylus, he became acquainted about 407 with Socrates, and henceforward was one of his 'familiars' or associates' (éraîpo). Presumably Plato shared Socrates' political unorthodoxy; that is to say, he was a 'moderate' of the type of Theramenes, and, whilst he had no sympathy with Critias and the extreme oligarchs, desired à stringent reform of the unmixed democracy.' Accordingly, he was one of those Socratics who, on the death of their master in 399, withdrew from Athens and found a refuge with Eucleides at Megara. It is possible that Plato returned to Athens in or about 394. Then came a time of travel, when he is said to have visited Egypt, Cyrene, Magna Græcia, and Sicily. At Syracuse he made acquaintance with Dion, and with Dion's brother-in-law, the 'tyrant' Dionysius the Elder. It is said that Dionysius, taking offence at remarks made by Plato about the ethics of tyranny, revenged himself by delivering Plato to one Pollis, a Spartan diplomatist; that Pollis sold Plato in the market-place of Ægina, as though he were a prisoner taken in war; that Anniceris of Cyrene bought him and set him free; that Plato's friends proposed to repay to Anniceris the sum which he had expended; and that, when Anniceris declined their offer, the money was spent in the purchase of the garden of Academus. Whatever may be thought of this curious story, Plato, when he returned to Athens about 387, established, first in the gymnasium of Academus and afterwards in the garden hard by, the school known henceforward to all time as the Academy. Here he lived, thought, taught, and wrote. It may be conjectured that in the earlier days of the Academy Plato not only delivered formal lectures, but also gave personal instruction to his abler pupils, using his written dialogues as texts for catechetical teaching; and that he shared the common life of the school. But there is reason to believe that in later years he delegated the personal teaching to others, and that towards the end of his life his public lectures were few and far between. In 367 he made a second journey to Syracuse in the vain hope of winning the younger Dionysius to philosophy, and thus realizing his scheme of an ideal polity governed by a philosopher-king. A third journey to Sicily in 361, having for its object the reconciliation of Dionysius with his uncle, Dion, was conspicuously unsuccessful. Plato died at Athens in 347. 2. Writings. In the age of the emperor Tiberius the grammarian Thrasylus framed a Apology of Socrates, which purports to represent canon of Plato's writings, and included in it the the unpremeditated defence addressed by Socrates immediately following the death of Socrates; (2) the residence at Megara; and (3) the years 387-347. Subsequent inquirers, however much they differ in detail from one another and from Hermann, seem on the whole to agree in accepting his principle of interpretation. to his judges; the Epistles, a collection of letters supposed to have been written by Plato to his friends; and 34 dialogues on philosophical subjects. There has been, and there still is, controversy about the epistles, some thinking that all are genuine, others that some, and in particular vii. and viii., are genuine, and others again (with It will be convenient to note, first, the principal whom the present writer ranges himself) that all points in which the critics are agreed; secondly, are spurious. Doubts have been raised about the principal points in which they differ. The certain of the 34 dialogues; but no serious critic critics are for the most part agreed in recogniz of the present day questions any of the more con- ing a group of dialogues in which Plato, despite siderable of them. It is easy to see why Plato certain differences of nomenclature and method, gave to his writings a conversational form. has not yet advanced beyond the Socratic standSocrates had held that the teacher should elicit point; and it is obvious to assign these to an early and suggest rather than inculcate and dogmatize, date. Again, tradition ascribes to the Laws the and had therefore preferred spoken to written last place; and modern scholarship readily assents, discourse, question and answer to continuous ex- adding that the Timæus and the Critias come next position. Plato accepted his master's principle; before it. Further, on internal evidence it is and accordingly, though he deserted his example obvious to suppose that certain dialogues which so far as to make use of writing, he was careful are critical of educational methods-Protagoras, in so doing to imitate conversation. In most of Gorgias, Phædrus, Euthydemus, Symposium, and the dialogues Socrates is the chief speaker; but Meno-preceded the Republic, in which Plato proPlato's Socrates is an idealized Socrates, who has pounds his own educational theory. Thus far an urbanity foreign to the Socrates of history, there is little disagreement. But there is an and he sometimes propounds physical and meta- eager controversy about certain dialogues which physical doctrines which could not have found have been described as 'dialectical' or 'profavour with a philosophical agnostic. In the fessorial,' namely, the Parmenides, the Philebus, Parmenides Socrates takes the second place; in the Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Politicus, and the Sophist, the Politicus, and the Timæus he about their relation to the Republic, some regardretires into the background; and in the Laws he ing them as dialectical exercises preparatory to does not appear. The dialogues differ in structure, the dogmatic teaching of that great dialogue, inasmuch as the conversation is sometimes written whilst others find in them a style later than that down in the words of the supposed interlocutors; of the Republic, reasoned criticism of its metasometimes is reported by X, who has taken part physical doctrine, and substantial contributions to in the discussion or has been present at it; once a revised and reconstituted system. The present is reported by X, who heard the story from Y; writer, who holds that the five dialogues called and once is reported by X, who heard it from Y, dialectical or professorial look back to the Phado who heard it from Z. They differ also in literary and the Republic, forward to the Timæus, and character and treatment. Some are lively and together with the Timæus represent Plato's philodramatic; some are eloquent and poetical; some sophical maturity, would arrange the principal are severely dialectical. Though in general the dialogues in five groups corresponding to succonversational form is studiously maintained, cessive stages in Plato's intellectual development, there are upon occasion great stretches of con- namely: (I) Socratic dialogues, (2) educational tinuous discourse; and in particular there are dialogues, (3) Republic, Phado, Cratylus, (4) proimaginative interludes called myths (uco), which, fessorial dialogues, Parmenides, Philebus, Theœmaking no pretension to exactitude of statement, tetus, Sophist, Politicus, together with Timæus, claim notwithstanding to be substantially true, (5) Laws. An attempt must now be made to and, where experience fails, to fill a gap by pro- characterize these several stages of Plato's intelvisional hypotheses (Phado, 114 D). Thus, the lectual development, and to show how the principal making and the maintenance of the universe, pre-dialogues illustrate and elucidate them. historic society, the day of judgment, and the future state are mythically described. In a word, the myth is a profession of faith. The introductions prefixed to some of the dialogues and the description of the last hours of Socrates in the Phado are the very perfection of continuous narrative. The style is always the best possible for the occasion; for Plato's harp has many strings. 3. The grouping of the dialogues.-Assuming that, when Plato began to write, the fundamentals of his system were already settled, and that accordingly the order of the principal writings was determined by the needs and the conveniences of exposition, Schleiermacher, the father of the modern study of Platonism, recognized three groups of dialogues: elementary, transitional, and constructive. The Phædrus, he thought, was the earliest of the dialogues; the Republic, the Timæus, the Critias, and the Laws were the latest. On the other hand, K. F. Hermann, denying that the system came into existence full-grown, saw in the several dialogues the results and the evidence of Plato's doctrinal development, and distinguished three periods of his literary activity: (1) the years 1 Platons Werke, Berlin, 1855-62, 1. i. 32–36. 2 Geschichte und System der platonischen Philosophie, pt. i. (do. 1839) p. 384, etc. 4. The five stages of Plato's intellectual development.-(1) The Socratic dialogues.-About the middle of the 5th cent., say 450 B.C., the philosophers who sought knowledge for its own sake were faced and baffled by three questions: (a) What is being? (b) What is knowledge? (c) What is predication?; and, for the moment, philosophical inquiry seemed to be at a standstill. Democritus indeed had not abandoned the attempt to provide a scientific cosmology and cosmogony; and, towards the end of the century, the neoHeracleitean Cratylus, recognizing that, if all things are in flux, there is nothing to be perceived, looked to etymology for evidence of something permanent underlying the perpetual process of phenomena. But Democritus belonged to the past, and the etymological theory of Cratylus never established itself. Accordingly, in the latter half of the 5th cent. (450-400) the main stream of thought set strongly in the direction of philosophical agnosticism, and the intellectual aspirations of central Greece found expression for the most part in humanism-that is to say, the literary humanism of the Sophists and the ethical humanism of Socrates. Plato's youthful study of Heracleitean flux had made him a philosophical agnostic; for, even in early days, he must have recognized the futility of Cratylus's etymological theory. He was then ready to receive and assimilate the positivism of Socrates; and for a time he found a refuge in dialectical theory and practice. But, whereas Socrates had seen in the study of ethical consistency a sufficient occupation for his energies and had rested in it, Plato, taking his departure from the logic of consistency, proceeded to build, upon it, first, a philosophy, secondly, a science, and, thirdly, a sociology. Moral error, Socrates had thought, is largely due to the misapplication of general terms which, once affixed to a person or an act-possibly in a moment of passion or prejudice-stand in the way of a sober and serious judgment. In order to guard against error of this sort, and to secure in the individual at any rate consistency of thought, and, in so far, consistency of speech and action, Socrates spent his life in seeking, and helping others to seek, the what,' or the definition, of the words by which the moral quality of actions is described. This statement of the aim which Socrates had steadily pursued exactly describes the end which Plato proposed to himself in the Socratic dialogues of his first period. But Socrates had talked, and Plato wrote. Consequently, whereas Socrates, who talked, having satisfied himself that the exos, or cross-examination, had made the hearer aware of his ignorance, might, and did, point the way to a definition, Plato, who wrote, if he was not to sacrifice the advantage of the elenctic stimulus, was obliged to stop short of dogmatic reconstruction. E.g., in the Euthyphro Socrates invites his interlocutor to define 'piety' or 'holiness.' At first Euthyphro does not understand what Socrates means by a definition. Socrates explains. Then Euthyphro propounds in succession several definitions, and Socrates shows their insufficiency. Again and again confuted, but in no wise abashed, Euthyphro pleads an engagement, and the dialogue ends. We may perhaps conjecture that Plato intends to define piety or holiness as 'that part of justice which is concerned with the service of the gods'; but, in order that the reader may be compelled to think for himself, Plato carefully refrains from formulating his result. The Platonic dialogue of this period is, then, an exercise in Socratic dialectic; but, whereas the destructive process is set out at length, the constructive process is left to be supplied by the reader. Contrariwise, Xenophon, who, being apologist rather than educator, cares little for the Xerxos, and is chiefly anxious to justify his master's morality, neglects the destructive process and dwells upon the constructive results. Besides the Euthyphro (piety), the Charmides (temperance), the Laches (courage), the Lysis (friendship), and the Hippias Maior (beauty) are characteristic dialogues of the first or Socratic period. In this period Plato uses the terms 'form' (eldos) and 'idea' (idea) to mean the characteristic or characteristics included in a Socratic definition, i.e. 'the one in the many,' the element common to a plurality of things which we propose to call by the same name. But, inasmuch as the Socratic definition of a term of morality or art does not presume, either in or out of nature, any objective unity corresponding to it, the 'form' or 'idea' has no separate existence, it is not χωριστόν τι. In this stage, then, the forms or ideas are moral and æsthetic concepts framed by the individual in order that he may be consistent in thought, word, and deed, and that he and his interlocutor may not misunderstand one another. (2) The educational dialogues.—The dialogues of the second period show a notable advance upon the dialogues of the first both in their style and in their doctrine: in their style, for they are more complex, more literary, and more dramatic; and in their doctrine, for Socrates, the protagonist, propounds doctrines unknown to the Socrates of history, the Socrates of Xenophon, and the Socrates of Plato's Socratic writings. These dialogues are primarily concerned with the criticism of earlier and contemporaneous theories of education. Thus the Protagoras brings the educational methods of Protagoras and the Sophists face to face with the educational method of Socrates; the Gorgias and the Phædrus deal respectively with the moral and intellectual aspects of the forensic rhetoric of Gorgias and the political rhetoric of Isocrates; the Meno criticizes the makeshift method of those who, despising systematic teaching, regarded the practical politician as the true educator; the Euthydemus caricatures the contemporary eristic; and all these dialogues, together with the Symposium, whilst they demonstrate the superiority of Socratic dialectic to the current sophistries, show a growing consciousness of its limitations and insufficiency. If education is to do what we expect of it, surely it should have for its basis, not personal consis tency, but objective truth. Where, then, is truth' to be found? Not in objects of sense, which are confessedly imperfect, but in the type or form with which we instinctively compare them. In the words of John Stuart Mill":1 All the objects of sense are that which they are, in only an imperfect manner, and suggest to the mind a type of what they are, far more perfect than themselves; a "something far more deeply interfused," which eye has not seen nor ear heard, but of which that which can be seen or heard is an imperfect and often very distant resemblance.... What, then, could be more natural than to regard the types as real objects concealed from sense, but cognisable directly by the mind?... The self beautiful, the self-good, which not only were to all beautiful and good things as the ideal is to the actual, but united in themselves the separate perfections of all the various kinds of beauty and goodness-must not they be realities in a far higher sense than the particulars which are within sensible cognisance? particulars which indeed are not realities: for there is no particular good or beautiful or just thing, which is not, in some case that may be supposed, unjust, evil, and unbeautiful.' This paragraph is not indeed what Mill meant it to be, a complete and final summary of Plato's theory of ideas; but it cannot be bettered as a statement of the imaginative speculation out of which that theory was afterwards to grow; i.e. as a description of the process by which Plato arrived at the conception of a sole reality, eternal, immutable, perfect, whereof perishable, mutable, imperfect things are, in the language of Goethe, no more than likenesses.' For the exposition of this imaginative speculation in its primitive and poetical form the Phæd rus and the Symposium are all-important. There are, we are told in the Phædrus (247-250), certain real existences (ovтws ovтa), such as self-justice, self-temperance, self-knowledge, of whose transcendental perfection, revealed to us in a previous existence, we are reminded by their imperfect earthly counterparts. This rudimentary theory of being becomes a rudimentary theory of knowledge when we are further told in the Symposium (210 A ff.) that the lover of beauty rises from the sight of persons, souls, and institutions, which are imperfectly beautiful, through the corresponding universal or Socratic definition, to the knowledge of the eternally existent self-beautiful (avrò Ô ÉσTI kaλó). In a word, Plato postulates really existent unities, of which unities phenomenal pluralities are imperfect likenesses, and supposes the really existent unities to become known to us, through Socratic definitions, by means of reminiscence (áváμvnois). But he makes no attempt to explain how the imperfectly beautiful partícular is related to the perfect self-beautiful; nor does he define the content of the world of ideas. In this second period, then, the forms or ideas are moral and æsthetic unities, eternal, substantial, separately existent; but we are not told how their particulars participate in them, nor what the things are which have ideas corresponding to them. 1 Dissertations and Discussions, London, 1867, iii. 348. |