There is no doubt that the key to the drama of Plato's life is to be found first of all in his relations with Socrates. Later it was the recurring memory of his dead teacher which formed its leitmotiv. What kind of man was Socrates, and in what does his essential significance consist? Socrates was the tertium quid, the third element sought for and seeking, in that Greek life which was already tottering to its very foundations. Upright, impartial, the mediator between the two other hostile parties, he was for that very reason the object of the implacable hatred of both. The point at issue was the very principle of the life of man. Ancient Greek life, as, indeed, all pagan life, rested originally on the twofold but invisible basis of religious and civil law.
The family gods, and society based on the family, are only two expressions, two aspects of the one principle of life. They have a common origin, viz.: the sanctify of the hearth and the inseparably connected cult of ancestors. When the community of the family our household was included in the broader and more powerful state, when they city occupied a position of higher and stronger than that of the family, it followed naturally that the city gods became supreme instead of those of the family our household.
In modern times attempts have been made, although not always with success, to take from the Divinity political functions, and from governments divine sanction. It is a difficult undertaking. In those early times it was not even considered. The fusion of primitive religion with politics or government was so peculiar, and since that time both elements have altered so greatly, that it is almost impossible for us to form any true idea of the state of things. As water in its obvious properties is in no way similar to either hydrogen or oxygen, considered separately, so the religious-political order of life in ancient times did not in any way suggest the thought of either religion or government in the modern sense of these words. And if the principal ancestral gods were in essence the guardians of the town, the human guards were also essentially divine: much more so, of course, than was the 'divine' swineherd Eumaeus of the Odyssey.
Such a conception of life could not long remain inviolate, ideal, and entire. It rested on the direct and unquestioning faith of the people in the reality and power of the ancestral and civic gods, and in the sanctity and divinity of the native city. And if either of the elements of the twofold faith should be shaken, the whole structure would crash at once. If the ancestral gods were without power or reality, whence did the ancestral laws derive their sanctity? If the ancestral laws were not sacred, what foundation was there for the ancestral religion they prescribed? It was necessary, therefore, that the twofold faith on which society rested should remain completely inviolable. But how was this to be effected? A faith, accepted as a fact through tradition only, is a very precarious, uncertain thing, exposed to sudden attack at all times and from all quarters. And God be thanked that this is so. A blind faith, based exclusively upon facts, is unworthy of the dignity of man. It is more proper to the devils, who believe and tremble, or to dumb beasts, who , of course, accept the law of their being without reflection or regret, without thought, or vain or foolish doubts.
I have spoken of beasts and devils, not for the sake of stylistic embellishment, but to recall the historical truth that religions, founded only on a blind belief in facts, and rejecting other and better bases, have always ended either in a devilish lust for blood, or in a brute-like absence of shame.
A BLIND and uncritical religion is above all offensive to its object, the Divinity, which certainly does not require such a thing from man upon whom it has conferred special gifts, by means of which the outward form of human life, superior to that of the animals-- that which we call culture-- was first created. Culture could not have existed without fire and agriculture. The great benefactors of mankind are Prometheus, Demeter, and Dionysus. But our father, Hermes Trismegistos, is rightly styled the 'Thrice Mightiest'. In bodily form of human society he set its living soul and vital power, philosophy, not, however, that man should receive eternal truth and bliss gratis and ready-made, but that man's toilsome road towards truth and bliss should be guarded on both sides, both against the superstitious fear of demons and the dull thoughtlessness of animals.
The services thus rendered by philosophy have been highly esteemed by those who have held the true and enlightened faith. To the adherents of an unenlightened faith Greek philosophy, as at a later time the Christian religion, appeared to be atheism. However, Thales the first patriarch of philosophy had already, according to an ancient report, declared that all is 'full of the Gods'. But this was too much for the zealots of the ancestral religion. What use had they for this plenitude of the Gods? They revered only their own gods, those needed in the present life, civic gods, and gods for war, and decidedly the divine contents of the 'all' was no concern of theirs.
Their gods were guaranteed by tradition and law, but where was the guarantee for the plenitude of the universal gods? The thought of Thales? And now the thought of other philosophers, of Xenophanes, of Anaxagoras, goes further and makes other discoveries. They reject every kind of plurality of gods, and in its place the first reveals the divinity as an absolute unity, and the second as the creative mind of the universe. To the conservative mind of the crowd and its rulers, this was an open attack on fundamentals, and called for a corresponding counter-action.
The philosophers were the first to bring about a complete cleavage in Greek life. Up to their time it was only possible for what we may call material parties to exist in the towns-- parties resulting from the collisions and conflicts of groups, forces and interests brought into being by unquestioned facts. There was no dispute respecting principles, for all alike acknowledged the one principle of life -- tradition. No one attacked it, and in the absence of subverters of principle, there could be no defenders. But the latter inevitably appeared as soon as the philosophers laid hands on the ark of traditional law and subjected its very contents to criticism. Everywhere in Greece two formal parties arose, the one, on principle, defending the existing basis of society; the other, also on principle, threatening to overthrow them. At first the Conservatives were everywhere victorious. Their principle rested on the instinct of self-preservation in the mass of the people, on all the force of reaction in the political organisms which, although already in a state of decay, had not reached dissolution. The very proximity of dissolution made all the more passionate the desire for preservation, through the fear it would not be realized. 'Do not dare touch this, or it will fall in ruins.' 'But is it worth preserving?' 'Do not dare to raise the question. Of course it is from the very fact that it exists, that we are accustomed to it, that it is ours; and, as long as we have power, woe to the philosophers.' The latter might reply to this: 'Great is the truth, and it will prevail.' But in the meantime Xenophanes spent all his life as a homeless wanderer, and it was only owing to his personal connections that Anaxagoras escaped execution, which in his case was commuted to exile. But in the fate of Anaxagoras the victory of philosophy could already be forseen.
Anaxagoras was the principal forerunner of Socrates. He came from the Ionian Clazomenae in Asia Minor to Athens, where he met with both glory and persecution. In his person he represents the passage of ancient philosophy from the place of its birth in mercantile Greek colonies to the true centre of Hellenic culture. Here, in spite of persecution, philosophy became a real social power of significance for all Hellas, and subsequently, for all the world and for all time.
IT WAS not a matter of mere chance that Greek philosophy originated in the colonies and flourished in Athens. The merchant seamen, who founded and maintained a multitude of Greek colonies, inevitably broke down the traditional seclusion of Greek life by bringing their native cities the knowledge of many strange things in other lands. They thus provided capable minds with the stimulus and material for a comparison of 'native' and 'foreign.' Judgment was inevitable- condemnation was possible. In any case, the direct faith in the absolute significance of the 'native' was undermined, and a philosophic aspiration for absolute truth was evoked. Moreover, the effect of the though aroused by the comparison of different systems existing together in the world received new power and justification in the city where the exclusiveness of the prevailing law of life was breaking down (in addition to the changes brought about by time), owing to the approval or rejection of legislation according to the changeable will of the majority, as was the case in the fickle democracy of Athens.
The relativeness of ancestral law was revealed to the colonial Greeks in space, and to the Athenians in time. If the enquiring seaman began to regard with scepticism the traditional ancestral order, because he had seen abroad too much that differed, the Athenian citizen, even if he did not go beyond his city walls, and never beheld anything 'foreign', was bound to doubt the worth and significance of the 'native', inasmuch as it changed too often before his eyes, and he himself had a hand in changing it. Such conditions do not prevent the love of country; it may be that they even increase one's love of it, as something very near, and pulsating with life. But the attitude of religious veneration towards the national laws, as being superior and absolute, inevitably changed completely at the first shock of critical thought. In this case the mockery of the worshipers of idols by the biblical writer might very well have been applied. The idolator, with his own hands, takes a piece of wood, marble, or metal, from it fashions a figure, and then offers unto it sacrifices and prayers as unto God. The law, as the result of the fickle will, opinion and caprice of men, no more deserves worship than does the material production of human hands.
ALL the power of criticism, which the older philosophy, that is the philosophy up to the time of Socrates, directed against the gods and ancestral laws, may be expressed in the single word 'relativeness.' 'What you consider absolute and therefore inviolable,' the philosophers said to their fellow citizens, ' is in fact very relative, and therefore subject to examination and judgment, and so far as its supposed absoluteness is concerned, it should be condemned and abolished.' The work of the philosophers, as is known, was not limited by this denunciatory and negative action. With their criticism of the supposed absolute they united attempts to define the truly absolute. Rejecting or relegating to a secondary plane the accepted traditional bases of human life, they stated what they affirmed to be the primal foundations, revealed by the reason of all life, both of the world and of the universe. Their system ranged from the air and water of the first Ionians to Empedocles' equilibrium of attractive and repellent forces, to the world-mind of Anaxagoras and the atoms and vacuum of Democritus.
In this there was truth, but in order to find it amid such a variety; in order to understand and appreciate all those diverse and apparently contradictory ideas as being parts of a growing and reasonable whole, a rare gift for theory and synthesis was necessary, which subsequently appeared in the persons of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. But, as was natural, prominence was given at first to the more accessible negative aspect of the philosophic process through which the Greek thought had passed. After an intellectual movement in Greece extending over two centuries, there arose a whole class of people possessing regularly developed powers of reflection, literary culture, and keen intellectual interests-- people who had lost all faith in the shaken traditional bases of national life, and who at the same time lacked the moral power of devoting themselves whole-heartedly to the search for true and better standards of life. These people, whom the keen public judgment at once both connected with, and also separated from philosophy by the special name of Sophists, eagerly seized upon the idea of relativeness, by which the philosophers had undermined an unenlightened faith. Exalting this idea to an unconditional general principle, the Sophists directed it against philosophy itself, making use of the apparent inconsistency of the multifarious philosophic doctrines. If a practical acquaintance with foreign countries beyond the sea, and the practice of democratic changes at home, had made known both in space and time the double relativeness of the traditional laws of life, and had thus provoked the philosophers to their negative criticism, the practice of philosophy itself, owing to the great variety of its systems, evidently rendered inevitable the application of the very same criticism to itself. From the relativeness of the philosophic systems the conclusion was bound to be drawn that all conceived laws of existence-- were unsubstantial. Not only the civil laws and beliefs-- so Sophists proclaimed-- but all things without exception are relative, conditional, unreliable; nothing is either good or bad, true or false in itself, but everything is so only according to conditions or circumstances, and, in the abscence of real and objective principles, the only guide in every matter is practical expediency, whose sole aim is success. No one can without reserve vouch for the justice of his opinions, but all without exception desire alike the realization of their aspirations and the triumph of their own opinions. Here then we have the only true business of life-- the pursuit of practical success by all available means, and as this aim can be attained only with the support of others, the chief task is the persuasion of others to adopt views necessary for one's own advantage. Therefore, the most important and most useful art is Rhetoric-- the art of persuasion by words.
he Sophists, who believed only in success, could not be overcome by intelligent argument, but only by actual failure on their part. They did not succeed in persuading Greece of the rightfulness of their absolute scepticism, nor did they succeed in their attempt to supplant philosophy by rhetoric. Socrates appeared, and he succeeded in covering the Sophists with derision and in opening new and glorious paths for philosophy. It is easy to understand the hatred of Socrates on the part of the Sophists. But at first sight it may appear strange that another party should join them, and even surpass them in this hatred.
Hostility would appear to be quite natural between those who stood for inviolability and of the traditional beliefs and rules of life, and those, who (like the Sophists) were above all negative: who denied without exception all guiding principles of society; who rejected even the possibility of the existence of such principles, that is, of any bases whatever for life and thought. And of course, there was hostility between the Conservatives and the Sophists, but on the whole it did not assume a tragic character. The Sophists flourished none the less, while the Conservatives directed all the fury of their persecution against the philosophers of a positive tendency-- upon those in short, who asserted that there was a good and a true meaning in the order of the world and of society. They first attacked Anaxagoras, who taught that the world is created and governed by a Sovereign Mind, and then in particular they full upon Socrates. Faced by those two men, the superficial enmity between the Conservatives and the Sophists came to an end. The two former antagonists joined forced in order to rid themselves of the equally hated embodiment of higher truth. They were united by the fact that they were both in the wrong.
Meanwhile, on the part of Socrates there was by no means an absolute, irreconcilable hostility to the views of the Sophists or to those of the defenders of ancestral tradition and law. He willingly and sincerely acknowledged the portion of truth possessed by each party. He was indeed the third, synthetic, reconciling principle between them. With the Sophists he stood for the right and necessity of critical and logical investigation. Like them he was opposed to a blind, unquestioning faith, and did not wish to admit anything before testing it. Owing to this disposition to critical enquiry, with more than anything else attracted attention, both the mob and inferior thinkers (like Aristophanes) straightway confounded Socrates with the Sophists. On the other hand, however, he recognized truth and reason both in the popular beliefs and in the practical authority of the ancestral laws.
His piety and his loyalty to the State he showed in very deed right up to the end. It is impossible to doubt his sincerity in the sacrifice to Aesculapius before his death; and, by his refusal to escape from prison after his condemnation, he put his duty to his native city before the preservation of his own life.
In the absence in either party of any antagonism due to principle, how are we to explain the irreconcilable hatred of Socrates felt by both? The point is that the antagonism in this case was not a matter of principle in any abstract, theoretical sense, but was concerned with practical life; it might be called personal in the deeper meaning of the word. Socrates, in the indirect and sometimes also in the direct purport of his discourses, said to both parties things which they positively could not bear to hear, and which they could not in any reasonable way refute.
To the Conservatives Socrates, as it were, said: 'You are perfectly right, and deserve every commendation for your desire to conserve the bases of society-- this is a matter of the highest importance. It is good that you are Conservatives. The misfortune, however, is that you are bad Conservatives. You neither know what or how to conserve. You flounder about and grope your way like blind men. Self-conceit is the cause of your blindness. However, your conceit, though wrong, and harmful to yourselves and others, should be pardoned, as it does not spring from ill-will, but is the result of your stupidity and ignorance.' What possible answer was there to this but prison and the cup of poison?
To the Sophists Socrates said: 'You do very well in considering and in testing by critical thought all that exists or does not exist; the pity is that you are bad thinkers, and have no idea whatever either of the aims or the methods of real criticism or dialectics.'
Socrates pointed out, and, what more, demonstrated beyond question the intellectual bankruptcy of his opponents. This, of course, was an unpardonable offence. Reconciliation was henceforth impossible. And even if Socrates never had directly accused the Athenian city fathers of being bad Conservatives, or the Sophists of being bad thinkers, the position would not have been changed. All the same he had accused both parties by his very personality, by his moral character, and by the positive significance of his speeches. He himself, as the personification of truly conservative and truly critical principles, was a living offence to bad conservatives and bad critics. Until he appeared, even if both parties were dissatisfied with one another, they were, on the other hand, serenely satisfied with themselves.
As long as the Conservatives could see in their opponents godless and irreligious men, they had the feeling of their own moral superiority, and in anticipation celebrated their victory. It might appear in very truth that they were defending faith and piety itself. There was an appearance of a dispute about principles and ideas, in which they represented the right and positive party. But when they came into conflict with Socrates, the position changed completely. They could not defend faith and piety, as such, against a man, who was himself a pious believer. It fell to them to defend not faith itself, but only the distinction between their faith and that of Socrates', and this distinction lay in the fact that Socrates' faith had vision, while theirs was blind. Thus the poor character of their faith was revealed, and in their eagerness in asserting this particular unchanging blind faith its weakness and insincerity became evident. On what ground could they defend absence of enlightenment in faith? Was it on the ground that every faith was bound to be unenlightened? But there, before them, was Socrates with an obvious refutation of such a supposition by the very fact of his enlightened and perceptive faith. It was clear that they defended unenlightenment, not in the interests of faith, but in other interests having no connection to faith. And, as a matter of fact, the Athenian Conservatives of that time, at least the more cultured among them, were men who had no faith. It could not be otherwise. When in the given society an intellectual movement had once begun-- when philosophy appeared and developed-- a direct faith requiring a childlike mind became impossible for everyone touched by the movement. What has passed away cannot be conserved, and the faith of 'obscurantes' is only a deceptive mask covering their actual unbelief. In the case of the more active and gifted men among the Athenian Conservatives, Aristophanes for instance, their true feelings broke through the mask; exposing the so- called impiety of the philosophers, Aristophanes at the very time by his coarse mockery of the goods displayed his own. What was conserved by such Conservatives, and what was their motive? It is clear it was not the fear of the Divine, but only fear for the old and familiar way of life which was up with a given religion.
Socrates by the very fact of his positive, fearless, and enlightened faith exposed the moral worthlessness of such an unbelieving and corrupt conservatism. And again, by the very fact of his absolutely critical and at the same time perfectly positive attitude toward actual life, he exposed the oral insolvency of the pseudo-criticism of the Sophist. As long as the Sophists had against them either the populace, or even people of a higher class who had taken little part in the philosophic movement and were unskilled in dialectics, so long it might appear that their tenets represented the rights of progress as against the general intertia; the rights of thought against an undeveloped mentality, and those of knowledge and enlightenment against ignorance. But when 'the wisest of the Greeks', a man who was certainly of greater intellectual power and dialectical skill than the Sophists, took up arms against their confusion of all the principles of life, everybody recognized that the purely negative character of their reasoning depended not of necessity on human thought, but at best on the imperfection and partiality of their views, and methods. It was clear that the impulse in their case did not lie in thought and criticism, but only in bad thought and bad criticism.
THUS the guilt of Socrates, apart from any direct quarrel with the Conservatives and the subverters, lay in the fact that his very point of view revealed the untenable position of both parties.
There was in him a ray of pure light revealing both the man himself and the darkness he did not share. Faced by the pseudo-conservatives, who asserted that one ought unconditionally and without reflection to accept the popular beliefs and to submit to the ancestral laws simply because they had been given, instituted and established in times past; and faced by the pseudo-thinkers, who taught that there was no need to submit to anything whatever, Socrates-- faced by this double falsehood-- asserted, in words and by his life: 'There is an absolute obligation, but only to that which is itself absolute-- which is by its nature excellent or worthy, and therefore is so at all times and in all places. It is this Absolute, which is the essential norm for the life of man, and is in, and by itself, the Good. It is alone truly desirable as man's highest blessings. Upon it alone, as upon absolute truth and the criterion of all truth, human society should be built. If the popular beliefs and the ancestral laws are in accordance, or compatible with the absolute norm of life, the ought to be accepted and obeyed. Therefore a precise valuation of everything traditional is required. There is need of consideration and criticism, not as art for art's sake, but in the quest of truths, with the real purpose of finding it.'
Socrates believed that there is an absolute good, and that only what is worthy of existence really exists. His faith, however, was not blind, but perfectly reasonable. This appears, firstly, by the very fact that all that exists should be in accordance with itself and possess meaning or be worthy of existence; and, secondly, his faith had a rational character because it sought its realization or justification in everything and so inevitably required the persistent activity of the reflecting mind.
Believing in the existence of the absolute good, Socrates did not furnish it in advance with any very close definitions; for him it was not given in a ready-made form, but was the object of search. One cannot, however, make search for a thing, unless one believes that it exists.
IN accordance with a reasonable faith, absolute good exists in and by itself. Its possession is not given to man without conditions; the conditions are indispensable. The goal lies in the future and can only be reached by a gradual process. Socrates pre-supposes only a general idea of that, which being excellent in and by itself, is able to render all else excellent. In order to actually to attain to that which alone is worthy of attainment, the first condition is to cast away all other differs, to consider all other things as irrelevant. 'I only know that I know nothing.' It was for this confession, as Socrates thought, that the Pythia proclaimed him the wisest of the Greeks. The first condition of true philosophy is spiritual poverty. As astonishing anticipation of the commandment of the first Gospel. Astonishing, too, is the agreement of the oracle of Delphi with the Sermon on the Mount, an agreement which was noted in the first centuries of Christianity by the Fathers of the Church.
A declaration of one's spiritual poverty in the midst of apparent wealth is, of course, a great spiritual achievement. But this achievement loses all its value if one stops short at it, as the sceptics do, whose humble admission of their own inadequacy turns into the opposite-- into self-satisfaction and pride. For such a transition there is need of a slight addition, unknown to Socrates and the Gospel: 'I know nothing, and there is no possibility or need of knowing anything.' The consolation is decidedly unfounded. True spiritual poverty cannot find consolation in itself: between it and consolation lies grief as its condition. 'Blessed are they that weep, for they shall be comforted.' And this weeping of the Gospel was not contradicted by Socrates' laughter, which did not express joy in his own property, but only condemnation of imaginary wealth. For Socrates, the declaration of his ignorance was but the first step in his search; in him spiritual poverty called forth spiritual hunger and thirst. 'Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled'-- another agreement of true philosophy with true religion; of Greek and Hebrew wisdom.
IF Socrates had confined himself to the confession of his ignorance, he would, of course, have been a very agreeable man both to the Conservatives and to the Sophists. The obscurantism of the former, and the idle talk of the latter alike called for ignorance-- ignorance of what is by its nature desirable and obligatory-- what is worth knowing and should be known. 'We know nothing, really' said the Conservatives 'and therefore we must blindly believe in the ancestral laws.' 'Yes,' affirmed the Sophists, 'nothing can be known, therefore we should strive for gain, success, and any power which gives gain and success.' Both parties in an arbitrary and unfair way hastened to exalt their obvious ignorance to the dignity of law, in order to deduce from it what they wanted, and to justify and impose upon others their mental darkness and empty verbiage.
And they might have succeeded-- to such an extent did their conclusions flatter the spiritual sloth and all the baser elements in human nature; and to such an extent, as it appeared, they were justified by the insolvency of the contradictory philosophic doctrines. But they 'reckoned without their host,' without Logos-- Hermes and his everlasting gift to mankind. Neither the persecution of the cities, nor the inconsistencies among the philosophers themselves terrified Philosophy, which by the lips of one man overpowered the unenlightened and idle clamour of the many-headed crowd. Incarnate in Socrates, she raised her voice in the streets and markets of Athens, and demonstrated to every individual the fact of his own ignorance. From this she deduced the conclusion-- disquieting indeed-- but the only one worthy of a man: 'He who knows of his own ignorance has already some knowledge and may have more. Thou knowest not-- then learn; thou hast not truth-- seek it; when thou seekest it, it is already by thy side, but with veiled face, and on the labour of thy mind the removal of the veil depends.'
In the face of the ceaseless spiritual wrestling of Socrates himself in the search for truth, by which the unenlightened inertia of the Conservatives and the idle activity of the Sophists stood alike convicted, this demand on man for a moral achievement deprived both parties of the possibility of self-satisfaction. But he who makes an attempt on the self- satisfaction of unenlightened or foolish people is at first an unruly man, then an intolerable fellow, and finally a criminal worthy of death.
As is well known, the charges against Socrates was that he did not honor the gods honoured by the city, but introduced other, strange divinities, and, in addition, that he perverted the young. In these false accusations the real point at issue can be clearly seen. It was impossible to bring against Socrates, as against Anaxagoras, a direct charge of atheism; his piety was evident. And even for his accusers it was not a matter of the gods in general, but only those honoured or legalized by the city. The real significance of the accusation was not that Socrates did not honour them-- as a matter of fact among other gods he honoured them also-- but that he honoured them, not because they were acknowledged by the city, but only because, or so far as there truly was, or might be, in them something of the divine; he honoured them according to their nature, according to their inner union with the absolute, and not according to convention. It was in this that his crime consisted. It was aggravated by his introduction of 'other strange divinities.' In this was expressed a real testimony to the positive character of Socrates' teaching, and particularly to his attitude to religion: he did not diminish the capital of the people's piety, but on the contrary added to it. Yet even this increase of faith was a crime, because here also Socrates proceeded according to the essential qualities of the divine manifestations recognized by him as true, without regard to their accidental circumstances, whether they were old or new, honoured by the city, or not. A third crime consisted in the fact that Socrates had an audience-- that he produced an effect on hearts and minds of yet impressionable. He perverted the young by undermining their reliance on, and respect for unenlightened and foolish guides-- blind leaders of the blind.
IT was the fate of Socrates to die as a criminal. This was a tragic blow at the very beginning of the Drama of Plato's life. As in some ancient tragedies, and also as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, this drama not only ends, but also begins with a tragic catastrophe. But how much deeper and more significant than poetic fiction is the historic fact! Let us consider Shakespeare's work. Incited by gross, selfish passions the villain murders the father of the young Hamlet. Natural feeling and the natural duty of avenging kindred blood called for the punishment of the murderer, and this duty is complicated for Hamlet by the criminal complicity of his mother in the terrible deed. Secret fratricide, the murder of husband, regicide, usurpation, double, threefold treachery-- all this in immediate proximity to the hero, and within himself a hopeless contradiction of will and judgment, of feeling and temperament. Here incontestably is a magnificent model of a tragic position, worthy of the greatest of poets.
It should be noted, however, that, although the drama takes place after many centuries of Christianity, it has no meaning except on the basis of the purely heathen idea of blood-vengeance as a moral duty. The drama is centred in the fact that Hamlet considered it his duty to avenge his father, while his irresolute character impeded the execution of this supposed duty. But this is only a special case: there is no general and essential necessity for a man professing a religion forbidding vengeance to follow ideas and precepts which require it.
Take away this idea of the duty of vengeance, natural in a heathen, but altogether unnatural in a Christian, and what basis for the drama remains? A man's father is basely murdered, his mother is estranged from him, and he himself is thrust away from his hereditary throne. How deep is his grief, how great his misfortune! But suppose that this man with intense conviction takes the standpoint, I will not say of the Christian, but even of the Buddhist or the follow of Tolstoy, then the only issue from his lamentable position is the simple and purely moral duty of resignation. He may accept this obligation in a manly way, or he may weakly repine at it, but in either case no remarkable and inevitable action, and, consequently, no tragedy will result from his misfortunes. It is evident that it is quite impossible to create a real tragedy from the position of a man who bears his misfortunes uncomplainingly, or even querulously, however great these misfortunes may be, or whatever the genius of the poet.
In order that the magnificent tragedy we know might follow from Hamlet's lamentable position, Shakespeare had to create particular conditions, which did not follow naturally from the given circumstances. In the first place all the horrible deeds perpetrated at Elsinor had to fall on the head of a man, who, in spite of the fact of his adherence to Christianity, sincerely believed in the duty of blood vengeance. If there had not been this belief; had Hamlet doubted his supposed duty of vengeance, remembering his real duty to forgive, all would have been over with the tragedy, and the significance of suffering in life would have been the only think associated with the lamentable facts. But was there any moral necessity for Hamlet to believe so firmly in the law of blood-vengeance, which man's highest conscience had by that time rendered obsolete?
Yet, even admitting the accidental power of a historically outgrown belief, we see that no tragedy would have followed if Hamlet had carried out his imaginary duty forthwith, had slain the villainous usurper and taken possession of his rightful throne. In that case the only thing for him to do would have been to marry Ophelia, as in Sumarokov's version, and the play would have ended, not with the stately lines spoken by Fortinbras, but with the tender words of Ophelia:
Go, my prince, into the temple,
Show thyself to the people.
And I will go and pay
My last duty to my dead.
THEREFORE, in addition to Hamlet's accidental belief in the law of blood-vengeance, the tragedy required yet another condition, i.e., Hamlet's general incapacity to put into execution any law; it required that this man should be a thinker only-- or, if preferred a reasoner-- and not a man of action. And so, what was external and casual, acquired a tragic interest owing only to the hero's individuality. 'But', it may be said, 'this is how it should be.' Not altogether. There have been tragedies founded mainly on a moral necessity, which, although not absolute, all the same depended on objective historical forces, and not on an individual character .
It is often overlooked that the theme in Hamlet is only a revival of the ancient theme of Orestes. As was the case with Hamlet, Orestes' noble father was murdered by a villainous relative, while his mother, the actual wife of the murdered man, had a large share in the guilty deed. In the latter case, the tragedy is created by the situation itself, independently of the individual character of the hero. Meekness, resignation, the forgiveness of enemies are altogether impossible in Orestes-- such ideas did not exist in his time. The natural law of family life still prevailed in the conscience of all men, but the tragedy lay in the fact that his very law on the eve of its decline fell into two branches. The family is all-powerful, but who represents the family, the mother or the father? Which natural bond is the true one, the matriarchal or the patriarchal? The centre of gravity of the tragedy is not in the personality of Orestes, but in an objective historical conflict of two laws jostling one another in the mind of man-- the laws of gynecocracy and androcracy. Here a tragedy follows naturally, no matter what kind of man Orestes may be, or what he may think: the two objective laws respecting the rights of mother and father confront him with their conflicting demands, and contend with one another within his breast.
It may be said that this advantage in ancient tragedy leads to a grave defect, i.e., a weakness in individual and subjective interest. This certainly is true, and aesthetics of general inevitability; and modern tragedy of individual character. But is the tragic in human life exhausted by these two classes? Is there any intrinsic basis for the assertion of that necessity one or other of them must predominate? Is there no possibility of such a tragic situation, that the shock of the most significant and universal conflict of principles may be seen in a strong and profound personality?
THERE is no moral necessity in that a drama should be inevitably one-sided. But where do we find the higher, synthetic, complete drama? I do not know of any in literature; but in actual history there was such a one, and it is precisely with this true drama, which surpasses both the ancient Orestes and the modern Hamlet, that we shall now deal.
Although it took place before the Christian era, the situation in this drama was none the less determined by spiritual considerations. A father, not by blood, but spiritual, the educator in wisdom, the kindest-hearted guide, has been put to death. So far the connection, though of a higher order, is personal. But there is something beyond the personal: it is a righteous man who has been slain. And he died not by a crime due to base personal motives, not by the hand of a covetous traitor, but by the solemn sentence of lawful power, by the will of his native city. Even this might have been accidental, if the righteous man had been legally put to death for some deed or other, which, though innocent was not essential to his righteousness. But it was precisely for his righteousness that he died-- for truth, for his determination to fulfill his moral duty to the end.
The fate of Socrates was decided by the following words he addressed to his judges: 'You, O men of Athens, I respect and love, but I must obey God rather than you. And as long as there is in me breath and strength, I shall not cease to practise philosophy, and to admonish and denounce you in my talk.'
The tragedy was not personal or subjective, it was not in the parting of disciple and master, of father and son. In any case Socrates could not have lived much longer. The tragedy lay in the fact that the best community to be found at that time in all humanity-- Athens-- could not endure the simple, naked truth that the life of the community was incompatible with the conscience of the individual; that an abyss of sheer, utter evil opened and swallowed up the righteous man; that the only fate for truth was death, and that life and active betook themselves to evil and falsehood.
How was it possible to live in this kingdom of evil, to live in the place where the righteous man was bound to die? Observe how much deeper and ore significant was this 'to be or not to be' which Plato had to utter over the legally and openly poisoned Socrates, than Hamlet's monologue evoked by the secret poisoning of his father.
Of course, the full tragic power of such a situation could only be felt by a character like Plato. Yet the real source of the tragic was not in the individual, not in the subjective, but in the profound, fatal and objective conflict between the extreme evil and the incarnation of truth. And this conflict was not determined by the stage reached in the development of society, as was the case with Orestes-- it was an absolute and universal conflict. The very principle of higher truth proclaimed by Socrates: 'I must obey God rather than you' was answered by the evil 'Thou must die, for the life of society is incompatible with the truth, both human and divine.'
When Hamlet uttered his 'to be, or not to be' he meant "Am I, Hamlet, to be or not to be?' The question was a personal one, and the whole monologue is full of the personal element. To Plato the question was: 'Is truth on earth to be or not to be?' It was a universal question although, of course, only a great character could appreciate its full significance. Here, then, we have a true correspondence, a real synthesis of the universal and the individual, of the subjective and objective principles in a drama; and this synthesis, which so far has not been embodied by any poet, took place in actual history.
Having explained or emphasized with the aid of a new comparison, the plot in the Drama of Plato's Life, we must now proceed to its further development, and to the final tragic catastrophe, which, if I am not mistaken, has not yet received sufficient attention.
BOTH Plato and Hamlet brought from the terrible circumstances of their early life really nothing more than a series of discourses. Hamlet's conversations are profound and ingenious. Those of Plato, with the objections and additions made by Aristotle and the Stoics, and with the deductions drawn by the Neo-Platonists, created a whole intellectual world, and entered into the historical development of Christianity at its main basis. And yet it must be said that the tragedy of Plato's life had not only a terrible beginning, but also a lamentable ending, just as should happen in a true tragedy. He came out of the trial of life not without glory, but without success. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, he did not marry his Ophelia; she was drowned. Finally Plato, like Hamlet, was a failure, although, of course, the ill-success of a great man confers on the world greater benefits than does a multitude of the most brilliant successes gained by ordinary people.
The effect produced on such a disciple as Plato by the sentence of death pronounced against Socrates may be imagined. He had conceived a strong attachment to the fascinating personality of his mater; he was imbued with the lofty spirit of his master's discourses; and by his very age (28 years) he was incapable of reconciling himself easily with the triumph of evil-- and with such a triumph, too! . . The pleasant familiarity with existence, by virtue of which men preserve life at the price of losing the meaning and the true reason of life, i.e., that which makes life worth living-- propter vitam vitae perdere causas-- such a familiarity Plato could not yet have acquired. The violence of the moral shock found expression in a serious illness, which prevented him from taking part in the master's last conversation with his disciples. After that he had to leave Athens for Megara, where in sad leisure he had to make his decision 'to be or not to be.'
THERE are good grounds for surmising that the idea of suicide presented itself to Plato. Yet the reasons which prevented him from harbouring such an idea are perfectly clear. The essence of Socrates' teaching, accepted with enthusiasm by his disciples, lay, as we know, in the assertion that there is, independently of events or situations an absolute essential Good, an Intelligence in existence. Such a belief, however, definitely excludes an act of despair like suicide. To give up, because of Socrates' tragic death, the very truth to which Socrates devoted his life, would have been an illogical contradiction and a psychological impossibility. There was no logical avoidance of the dilemma: either Socrates really was a teacher of truth, and accordingly it was right to follow him, and not kill oneself contrary to his teaching; or else he was not the herald of truth, and the his death, however mournful it might be, would lose all its special and fateful significance in the sphere of principles, in which case it would appear only as that of a man good and remarkable, who had gone astray and was in the wrong. In the fist case suicide would have been a forbidden act, and in the second a deed without sufficient reason.
Both the fact of the master's death, and the high degree of his mortal worth as revealed in the circumstances of that death, were bound to strengthen in Plato his love for the dead man, and this would not allow him to doubt the truth of his master's teaching or to betray that truth by a pusillanimous despair. If not permanently, then in any case at first, the influence of Socrates when dead, was bound to act on the conscious decisions of his disciple even more strongly than when he was alive.
There is a further psychological consideration which would not allow Plato to commit suicide. We may explain this by a comparison. Everyone will admit that it is a psychological impossibility for a man devoted, for instance, to material interests to determine to lay violent hands upon himself on account of the death of a sincerely loved relation, when the latter on his death has left him a rich inheritance. It is clear that the desire to profit by the inheritance would in such a many overpower the sorrow felt at the loss of one loved. Plato was a man of a different stamp, but the position remains the same. The death of Socrates left him, in addition to a great spirit, a great spiritual inheritance rendered still greater by that very death. The plenitude of youthful, intellectual forces, impregnated by the ideal wealth found in the life and death of Socrates, and raised to a new height by all the stress of a reverent love for the dead master, required a positive, creative outlet, and, occupying the whole spirit of Plato, left no room for any desperate resolutions. Moreover, the fateful question of the life or death of truth led his thought away from dull and narrow personal grief, charged with suicide, into spaciousness and light for fruitful action.
THE death of Socrates, when Plato had recovered from the shock, gave rise to a new view of the world-- platonic idealism. The primary foundation, the 'larger message' of this view was contained in the teaching of Socrates; the lesser message was furnished by his death; the genius of Plato deduced the conclusion which to the other disciples of Socrates had remained hidden.
That world, in which the righteous man had to die for truth, is not the true, positive world. Another world exists, where Truth lives. Here we have a foundation in actual experience for Plato's firm belief in a truly existing, ideal cosmos, distinct from and contrasting with the visible world of physical phenomena. It was Plato's fate to deduce his idealism-- and this generally has been but little observed-- not from the abstract reasoning by which he subsequently explained and demonstrated it, but from the profound emotional experience with which his new life began.
Socrates taught an absolute or self-existing Good, but he considered it chiefly, not as a contrast, but as a pre-supposition of our reality. To Plato, that reality, in which the death of Socrates was not an accidental event, but the expression of a law, the appearance of a norm in life-- such a reality presented itself before all in its negative aspect of a denial of goodness and truth. Before he perceived the contrast between the essentially existing and the illusionary, the apparent, the phenomenon; before he expressed the dialectical and metaphysical contrast, Plato, influenced by the teaching and especially by the death of Socrates, felt the ethical contrast between what ought to be and what actually was, between the true moral order and the organizational given to society.
To Plato, as to Hamlet, the world appeared as a garden overgrown with weeds. Plato's pessimism, however, was brought about, not by personal misfortunes, but by the fact that in this world truth and the righteous man could find no place.
To Socrates the order in actual life was conditional-- good, if it is agreed with essential good; and bad-- if it was inconsistent with it. But by the death of Socrates himself the question received a definite and general decision in the negative. By that very deed it was revealed that the existing order was in principle inconsistent with good; it was essentially bad. Accordingly it could not be accepted by a man who was seeking, no external success, pleasure, and imaginary advantages, but the truly good, or virtuous. Although it does not follow from such a view that life in general is impossible for true and virtuous men, it does, however, clearly follow that a practical and active life is impossible for them.
We see a kind of historical dialectics (in the Hegelian sense) expressed in Plato without the will or knowledge of Plato himself. Socrates abandoned the theoretical speculation about the universe which had formed the study of his predecessors, and brought philosophy down from heaven to earth, to the commonwealth of men. His spiritual successor, the heir to his genius and fame, was, however, fated pre-eminently to separate himself from life and social activity-- to anticipate in principle the ideal of Eastern monasticism.
The whole world is full of evil; the body is the grave and prison of the soul; society is the graver of wisdom and truth; life for the true philosopher is a constant death. But this death to the interests of life does not give place to vacuity, but to a better life of the mind which contemplates that which is in and by itself absolute. Good was what Socrates sought as a moral norm for practical social life. To Plato, however, it now became, for some time, the object of a purely theoretical interest as the supreme idea, the central point in another world which the mind was grasping.
PLATO, in accordance with his convictions, had to flee from the world. His compulsory flight from Athens is connected with this fact. [1] He settled for some years at Megara, along with other disciples of Socrates, and far removed from all activity, he devoted himself to pure theory, and to mathematical and dialectical problems and exercises.
In all probability it was from Megara, before his return to Athens, that Plato undertook his first journey oversea-- to Cyrene, Egypt, and perhaps even as far as Asia.
However this may be, even after his return to his native city (five years after the death of Socrates) he continued at first to lead the life of a philosopher remote from public affairs. The extremely pessimistic view of society and public activity expressed in the dialogues Gorgias, Meno, Phaedo and the second book of the Republic is an agreement with the character of certain other dialogues, which by the very nature of their problems testify to the aloof idealism of the Plato of that time. (Cratylus-- Of the Nature of Words; Theaecetus-- What is Knowledge? The Sophist-- The Relation between the Real and Unreal; Parmenides-- Of the One and the Many, or Ideas.)
If we take this idealism (based on the opposition between the mentally conceived domain of the truly existent, and the illusory stream of physical phenomena, the 'non- existence', which comprises all practical life and society), and if we directly compare this aloof point of view with Plato's later aspirations to social and political reformation-- with his persistent attempts not only to define the true laws of social relations, but even to embody these laws in the organizations of an actual model state-- then we cannot fail to see an obvious contradiction, an impassable gulf. This is not bridged by the subtle dialectical considerations in the Sophist and Parmenides, by virtue of which, even behind the 'non- existence', existence, in a certain sense, is recognized. The philosopher's attitude to this semi-existence remains even here definitely negative, incompatible with any serious, practical aspirations in this illusory world. It was not dialectical distinctions which were required to bridge the gulf, but a new point of view. This we find in Plato's two central dialogues, the Phaedros and the Symposium.
[1] Of course the compulsion was a moral one; no regular legal persecution of Socrates' disciples was attempted. They had, however, no confidence that they would be free to proclaim his ideas.
ANCIENT records, few in number, but agreeing in tenor, testify that Plato, before his meeting with Socrates, wrote love-verses, which he burned when he was carried away by the discourses of the 'wisest of the Greeks'. A few erotic poems which have come down to us connected with Plato's name, would point, if they are authentic, to relations of the future philosopher with definite persons of both sexes. This is inherently probable from both the psychologic and historic standpoint. But it is not these irresponsible manifestations of instinct which are interesting; it is the emotional crisis consciously experienced by Plato in the middle of his life and immortalized in the Phaedrus and the Symposium which arouses our attention.
I will not say anything of the outer biographical circumstances of this occurrence for many reasons, the main reason being that we know nothing whatever about it. But if history is silent respecting the personal details of this interesting romance, with whom, and in what manner it proceeded, the two dialogues mentioned testify sufficiently both to the fact itself and to its effect on Plato. Only this unknown but necessarily presupposed fact supplies the key to this subsequent change in Plato's outlook, and by it alone can the appearance and character of the Phaedrus and the Symposium be explained. These two works, by the bright and happy mood reflected in them, as well as by their very subjects, are quite distinct from Plato's other writings. Can it be any possibility by admitted that a philosopher, who up to that time had regarded all human activities and interests as 'non- existing', who was occupied in meditation on gnostic and metaphysical questions, should suddenly without reason, without some particular impulse, devote his best writings to love-- a subject which had not in any form appeared on his philosophical horizon-- and expound in them a new theory, for which no support can be found in his previous views, but which left deep and indelible, though indirect traces in all this later order of thought? The contents of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, which in their theory has no connection and are incompatible with the aloof idealism of the 'two worlds', can only be understood as a reformation, as a progress in that idealism called forth by the demands originating in a new experience in life. In saying this we assume that these two dialogue s belong to the middle period of Plato's life and work, as is accepted by the majority of learned authorities. It is true that Schleiermacher regarded the Phaedrus as Plato's first youthful work, although for this assumption, so fundamental for his position, he did not make any attempt at actual proof. On the other hand the modern philologist, Constantine Ritter, considers it possible on philological grounds, which however, do not appear convincing to anyone excepting himself to refer to the Phaedrus to Plato's old age. These two paradoxes are mutually destructive, and leave the general opinion unchanged.
On the first close acquaintance with the Phaedrus and Symposium the modern reader cannot fail to be somewhat disconnected and perplexed. The natural basis of amorous feelings and relations is here altogether different from what is generally regarded as the norm in modern life and literature. Where we assume there are relations of one kind only, the ancient Greeks, corrupted by Asiatic influences, allowed at least three kinds. One of the odes we have of the famous poetess Sappho of Lesbos commences with this address to the goddess of love: 'Immortal sovereign, many-hued Aphrodite.' It is this 'many-hued' quality of Aphrodite, taken for granted by Plato, which disconcerts his modern reader and admirer, accustomed as he is to refer certain matters, not to philosophy or poetry, but to the mental expert on the one hand, and to the penal code on the other. Of course, the actual abnormalities in this domain have even greater variety in the modern than in the classical world; but we are struck by the fact that the chief of them were looked upon by the Greeks not as morbid deviations, but as simple, natural and even preferable to what we now regard as natural.
To lay this reprehensible peculiarity on the charge of Plato-- we mean, of course, Plato the philosopher-- would, however, be unjust. Meeting with the 'many-hued' Aphrodite as fact legitimatized by general opinion, he himself as a matter of principle cast her aside in her entirety, without the distinction of her forms. All carnal love, without regard to its form, was looked upon by him as base and vulgar, unworthy of the calling of a true man. It was Aphrodite Pandemos, literally, the 'common' Aphrodite, that is, the cheap, the worthless, as distinguished from the true, or heavenly-- the Uranian Aphrodite.
It is true that for the earthborn man the two have but one root, that both grow up in the same material soil-- but what of that? We know that the most beautiful flowers and the most luscious fruits grow from earth, and, moreover, from earth that is dunged and is very unclean. This does not spoil their taste or scent, neither does it give fragrance to dung, which does not become noble owing to those noble growths which it serves.
To the agriculturist the analysis of various kinds of organic manure is of interest. For us in this case two facts only are of general importance: firstly, that every kind is alike the product of decomposition, and that only worms and not men can live and find nourishment in such decomposing matter; and secondly, that mean can and should by their spiritual labour extract from this putrefaction the most beautiful flowers and immortal fruits of life.
'Light out of darkness. The flowers of thy roses cannot rise above the dull clod unless their dark and hidden roots pierce into the gloomy lap of earth.'
Yes, indeed, such is the law of the soil. But what does it follow that darkness itself is no other than light? Or can it be that light is the direct and natural offspring of darkness, the child brought forth without struggle or labour by this gloomy mother alone, without the action of some paternal principle more nearly related to it, without the definite subjection of the lower to the higher?
It is not without reason, not in simple misunderstanding, that with Plato's name has been connected the idea of love-- lofty, pure and ideal-- in a word, 'Platonic'. On that erotic mud which, as it appears, in a fatal hour sucked in the soul of Plato, but could not long retain it, he grew with success, if not, indeed, the fruits of spiritual regeneration, at least the pure and gorgeous flower of his theory of love. Let us recall this theory. It will help us to understand and to estimate aright the central crisis in the drama of its author's life.
UNDER the influence of the death of Socrates, which revealed to the eyes of his disciple the whole gulf of evil in the world, there took shape in his mind, as stated, a dualistic idealism, which by its very nature contrasted all our reality with that which truly is and should be. . . . In the life of the body and of practical things there is nothing that is true and worthy; all that is true and worthy abides in its own pure ideality, beyond the bounds of this world of ours; it is 'transcendental' and there is no true bridge between the two worlds. Man himself, although belonging to both worlds, does not, however, form an inner bond between them; dualism annuls even the unity of man. The two heterogeneous parts of our present being are coupled only in an outer, accidental way. In the genuine or normal man, that is in the man who is wise and just, his true being is his contemplative mind. This is directed exclusively and entirely to the other world beyond. In truth, such a man lives only in the cosmos of Ideas. The illusory life on earth shared with other men is for him only a state of dying. When this temporal state is cut short, the accidental bond is broken finally and absolutely. The philosophic mind, liberated from the prison of life, shakes the dust off its feet and passes over, completely and without regret, into the ideal cosmos, where it enters into communion with the other pure spirits abiding there.
We have always been struck, when reading the dialogue, Phaedo, where this dualism is expressed with particular clearness, by a characteristic touch of callousness or lack of delicacy, for which, are convinced, Plato must be held responsible, and not Socrates. At one point in the conversation the dying sage clearly indicates and in another expressly states to his weeping disciples, that his parting from them does not grieve him in the least, because in the world beyond he counts on meeting and conversing with people who are much more interesting than they. If illness had not prevented Plato himself from being one of those weeping disciples, he would, we think, from sheer amour-propre, have taken care not to put into Socrates' mouth a consolation of so unceremonious a character. Although in this particular case dualistic idealism might have been expressed in a finer and choicer manner, its nature was well enough defined in Plato's mind. In the face of such views it is perfectly clear that there was no logical basis on which a positive bond between the two worlds could be established.
THE founder of idealism could not find any path connecting the essence of truth dwelling on heights accessible to the mind on this vale below, submerged by the flood of physical illusions. There was no bond between the hopeless wilderness of mortal life and the perfect plenitude of the Gods and Ideas. There was no bond for the intellect. But something independent of reason occurred. A power, intermediate between gods and mortals, appeared. It was neither god nor man, but a certain daemonical being, might and heroic. Its name was Eros, and its office was the construction of the bridge between heaven and earth, and between them and hell. Eros was not a god; he was the natural and supreme priest of the Divinity, that is, the mediator, the bridge-builder.
The youngest brother and heir of Greece, the Roman people, expresses the identity of these two notions by a single word, 'pontifex', which means both 'priest' and 'builder of bridges'-- not of course bridges across ordinary rivers, but across the Styx and Acheron, across Phlegethon and Cocytus. The sane universal people preserves the tradition that the true name of the Eternal City ought to be read in a priestly or pontifical way, i.e., from right to left, and then its meaning is changed from 'strength' to 'love'. (Doric 'Roma'==strength, and read in the original semitic manner gives 'Amor'.)
The intervention of this mighty daemon is essential to all that lives; in one way or another all has passed or will pass this bridge. The only question is how will man avail himself of this aid, what portion of the heavenly blessings will he carry into mortal life?
When Eros enters into an earthly being, he at once transforms it. The lover feels within himself a new power of the infinity; he has received a new and mighty gift. But then inevitably arise the rivalry and antagonism of these two parts or tendencies of the soul-- the higher and the lower. Which of them is to appropriate and turn to its own advantage the power of Eros, so as to become infinitely fertile or generative in its own domain and in its own direction? The lower soul desires an infinite creation on the physical plain only-- a negative, evil infinity, accessible solely to the victorious matter; a constant repetition of the same fugitive phenomena, an eternal hunger and thirst without satiation, a living emptiness never to be filled, an infinity and eternity of Tantalus, Sisyphus and the Danaides. The sensual soul drags down the winged Eros and puts a bandage over his eyes, in order that he should maintain life on the plane of material phenomena, preserving and fostering the law of evil infinity, and working as a servile tool for irrational immensity of material appetites.
But what will the infinite power of Eros give to the higher intelligent soul? Will it direct it to the contemplation of the truly existent, ideal, cosmos? But such contemplation is already proper to the mind by its very nature, and is practiced without the aid of Eros. And Eros himself is, by his nature, not a theoretical or contemplative power, but one which is infinitely creative. The nature and the results of the activity of Eros, when he is subject to the lower sensual soul, are sufficiently well known, not only to men, but also to animals and plants. But what then does he impart to the soul which has risen to something higher than the service of mortal life? Where can this soul produce its offspring-- not of Apollo, nor of Hermes, but of Eros? Not in the world of Ideas and of pure, divine minds, for that world is the abode of what is unchangeable; of what neither needs nor has the power of reproduction in its own eternal domain. But generation in the non-existent does not befit the winged and clear-sighted demi-god when he is free and not in bondage to the lower physical soul, which deprives him both of wings and vision. Therefore, for his true creative power there remains only that boundary line of the two worlds which is known by the name of The Beautiful.
According to Plato's definition the true work of Eros is to generate in Beauty. But what does this mean? If it were possible to assign to Plato the point of view of modern aesthetes, this definition might be understood as a stilted designation for artistic creative power, or for activity in art. But understood in this way the definition would be altogether inconsistent with our philosopher's way of thinking at various periods of his life. He might have recognized art, or rat her a certain elementary portion of art, as preliminary phenomenon of secondary importance due to Eros, but never as his chief and final work. From his ideal city he expels the most important forms of poetry, and also music (as we understand it) with the exception of war songs. Nowhere does he show any interest in the plastic arts. 'Birth in Beauty' is in any case something much more important than activity in art. What then is it precisely? We shall not find a direct answer to this question in Plato. In Diotima's inspired speech, repeated by Socrates in the Symposium, but originating, of course, not in Diotima or in Socrates, but in Plato himself, he reaches the logically clear and very promising thought that the work of Eros, even in the best souls, is a substantial task, just as real as generation in animals, but immeasurably higher in its significance, in correspondence with the true dignity of man as an intelligent, wise and upright being. Having reached this point, Plato loses his way, as it were, and begins to wander in obscure paths without issue. His theory of love, unmatched in the pagan world, profound and daring, remains incompletely stated. But what he has given us in it, and what has been learned since his day, permits us to finish Diotima's speech, and by this very method to understand why Plato did not state it fully. When we divine the true reason for this non- completion, we shall also see how it was reflected in Plato's later life.
IF Eros is a positive and substantial bond between two natures-- the divine and the mortal-- which are worlds apart, and in man are joined only in an external way, then what can be his true and definite work except the transformation of this same mortal nature into an immortal one? By the highest part of his being, by his intelligent soul, man, according to Plato, is already immortal. In this matter there is nothing more to be done, and Eros is here to no purpose. All that he can do is to impart immortality to that part of our nature, which by itself does not possess it-- which is wont to be swallowed up in the material stream of birth and death. Logically, Plato would be bound to arrive at such a conclusion. Both in the Phaedrus and in the Symposium he clearly and decisively distinguishes and contrasts the lower and the higher work of Eros-- his work in the animal man, and that in the true, super-animal man. In this connection it must be remembered that Eros, even in the higher man, acts, creates, generates, and does not merely think and contemplate. Accordingly here, too, his direct concern is not ideas accessible only to the mind, but the whole bodily life; the contrast between the two manifestations of Eros is that between a mortal and an immortal attitude to this life, with a corresponding contrast between the aims and results of actions within it. If the animal Eros, submitting to blind elemental attraction, reproduces life for a brief space in bodies which dies incessantly, the higher human Eros must have his true aim the ceaseless regeneration or resurrection of life in bodies rescued from the material process.
The Greek language is not poor in expressions denoting love, but we see that such a master of thought and word as Plato, when philosophizing respecting the higher phenomenon in the life of man, does not use the terms 'philia', 'agape', 'storge', but says precisely 'Eros', a word relating even to the lower, animal passion. From that it is clear that despite all the opposition in direction of these two movements of the soul-- the elemental animal, and the spiritual human-- there is no suppression of their real community in basis, in nearest object and in material. Love as an erotic emotion-- it matters not whether in its lower or its higher tendency-- is not like love for God, or philanthropy, or the love for parents or country, for brothers or friends. It is undoubtedly physical in its nature, and the only question is as to its purpose. Is it that the same elemental facts of emergence and disappearance, the same victory of deformity, death and corruption, may be unendingly repeated in the physical? Or is its aim the communication to the physical of actual life in beauty, immortality, and non-corruption?
Defining the real work of Eros as generation 'in beauty', Plato meant by it, not the physical generation of bodies, for mortal life, but the regeneration or resurrection of this life for immortality. Plato does not make this clear statement, and his lack of clearness on this point makes his theory of love no more than a beautiful double flower, which yields no seed.
EROS, the son of Poros and Penia (divine abundance and material poverty) when enslaved by his lower maternal nature, is in a state of fall and captivity where he wastes his strength and can do no more than cloak the deformity and frailty of his offspring by a momentary appearance of life and beauty. But what can he do when the paternal principle vanquishes his lower nature? What is the work of Eros the Victorious? What else could it be if not the victory over the process of death and decay? The triumph of the mind is in the direct contemplation of truth-- the triumph of love in the perfect restoration of life.
If Eros is the real mediator and pontifex bridge builder) between heaven, earth and hell, then his true aim is their complete and final union. How could he limit himself to giving only apparent and superficial beauty-- the beauty of the whited sepulchre; or only a momentary, perishable and dying life? Such niggardliness might come to him from his mother, but is he not the son of a wealthy father? And in what does this wealth consist if not in the overflowing plenitude of life and beauty? And why should he not grant these things to all that needs them-- to all that is perishable or dead? Moreover, the noble character inherited from his father will not allow him to take back his gifts.
The real task of love is actually to immortalize the object loved; to save it from death and decay, and to give it a new birth in beauty. The fatal shipwreck of the philosopher of love with regard to Eros could only be due to the fact that while approaching the theory of his task, he stopped short before it, without the resolution to grasp and accept it completely. No wonder that he later abandoned it altogether. After trying in sensation the power of both manifestations of Eros, he recognized the superiority of the one and yet failed to make it achieve and effective victory. Satisfied with his mental conception, he overlooked the duty of putting into practical effect-- of not leaving it merely as a thought. Forgetting his own avowal that Eros generates 'in beauty', that is, in a perceptible realization of the ideal, Plato left him to generate in theory only.
What was the cause of this failure? A very common one. Even he, who in theory towered over the majority of mortals, proved in real life to be an ordinary man. The clash between great demands and actual weakness is the more dramatic in Plato, precisely because he recognized these demands more clearly, and with his genius could have overcome his weakness with less difficulty than other men.
HELL, earth, and heaven-- all three observe man with special interest at that critical time when Eros takes up his abode within him. Each of these powers desires for its own ends to lay hold of those abundant forces which are revealed in man. Undoubtedly this time is the central and most important moment in our life. Not infrequently it is very shortlived. It may also be divided, repeated, or extended over years and decades. In the end, however, no one can avoid the fatal question: 'Where and to what purpose am I to give up those wings which Eros has given me?' It is a question of the highest importance in one's life: a question as to whose image or likeness will a man receive, or leave behind him?
Here five main courses are distinctly marked out. The first is the infernal way, of which we shall say nothing. The second, less horrible, but also unworthy of man, although often he follows it, is the way of animals, who accept Eros solely in his physical quality; who act as if the mere fact of a certain appetite were sufficient ground for its unrestricted and indiscriminate satisfaction. So simple a kind of thought and action is quite pardonable in animals, and in a man addicted to it succeeds eventually in resembling the beast of whom he conforms, even though he may not be subject to the metamorphosis after death accepted by Plato. The third, the really human way of Eros is that in which a reasonable measure of animal impulse is admitted-- within the limits necessary for the preservation and progress of the human race.
IF man by his nature could be nothing more than man; if the so-called 'human limitations' were not only an actual state, but also an infallible and final law, imposed on each and all, even then marriage would always be the highest way of love and the only one consistent with human dignity. But man differs from other creatures mainly by his desire and power of rising above himself. His distinguishing mark is precisely his capacity, his eager desire for infinite growth and ascent. And we know that from the dawn of history not all men have been satisfied with the purely human ways and forms of love. They were not satisfied even by the way of Eros-Hymen, which though generally necessary, honoured and blessed, is in its basis only physical and purely human. Their dissatisfaction existed although it generated in law, if not in beauty, and brought up new generations for the sake of the continuance of the human race-- so long as a continuance of this kind should be needed. Dissatisfaction with this legitimate way led in some men -- in the majority of cases-- to a lamentable return to lower, illegitimate ways, which had been abandoned by cultured humanity; it brought about a reversion to pre-historic, brutish practice, and even to the 'satanic abyss' of antediluvian times.
But some men, shunning the human way of marriage, honestly strove to replace it, not by base and unlawful ways, but by ways which were lofty and above the law. Of these the first (in general enumeration, the fourth) is actual asceticism or celibacy. This aspires to something more than a mere limitation of sensual impulses: its proper aim is their neutralization by the opposing forces of the spirit. Asceticism is a practice whose origin lies in the days of very early history. It has spread everywhere, at least as an intention and an attempt, if not a successful undertaking. It is, however, worthy of note that the most fully developed organization in this way known to history-- Christian monasticism-- was already associated with the involuntary admission that with all its great merits it was not the highest, final, super-human way of love.
And, in fact asceticism cannot be the highest way of love. Its aim is the defence of the power of the divine Eros against pillage by rebellious material chaos, the preservation of this strength pure and inviolate. Preservation in purity-- but for what purpose? The purification of Eros is advantageous and necessary, especially as he has succeeded in defiling himself so dreadfully in the many centuries of human history. But for the son of divine abundance purity alone is not sufficient. He demands full power for his active and creative genius.
Therefore, in addition to the four ways of love already indicated-- two cursed and two blessed-- there must be another, a fifth, the perfect and final way of love which truly regenerates and deifies. Here we can only point out the basic conditions which determine the principle and aim of this higher way. Since God created man, in his own likeness, and as male and female, it follows that the image and likeness of God (that which is capable of restoration) does not refer to the moiety, not to the half of man, but to man complete, i.e., to the positive union of the male and female principles-- a true androgyny-- without external fusion of forms, which would be a monstrosity, and without an inner separation of personality and life, which would be an imperfection and a principle of death. Another principle of death put aside by the higher way of love is the opposition between spirit and body. In this relation the whole man is concerned, and the true principle of his restoration is both spiritual and physical. But since it is impossible for the Divinity to regenerate the body and the spirit of man without the co-operation of man himself, it is just as impossible for man to create super-humanity out of himself, for this would be like lifting one's self up by one's own hair. It is clear that man can become divine only by the active power of an eternally existing Divinity and not of one coming into being, and that the way of the higher love, perfectly unity male and female, the spiritual and physical, is necessarily by its very principle a union or interaction of the divine and the human, or a divinely human process.
Love, in the sense of an erotic emotion, always has corporality as its proper object. Corporality, however, worthy of love, that is, beautiful and immortal, does not grow up of itself from the ground, nor does it fall read-made from heaven. It is acquired by the effort of a spiritually-physical and a divinely-human kind.
THE three ideas indicated, which determine the higher way of love-- those of androgyny, spiritual corporality, and divine humanity-- we find even in Plato, but only indistinctly expressed. The first is in the myth put into the mouth of Aristophanes (Symposium), the second in the definition of beauty (Phaedrus) and the third in the very idea of Eros as a mediating power between Divinity and mortal nature (Diotima's speech in the Symposium). But in Plato these three elements appear as fugitive imaginings. He did not connect them with one another and state them as the actual principle of the higher way in life. Therefore the end of this way-- the resurrection of dead nature to immortal life-- remained hidden before him, although it was the logical conclusion of his own thoughts. In conception he drew near to the creative work of Eros, understood his task in life as 'birth in beauty', but he did not give a precise definition of the scope of this task, not to speak of its actual performance.
Plato's Eros, whose nature and general destination were so beautifully described by the philosopher poet, did not accomplish this destination, did not unite heaven, earth and hell, did not construct any real bridge between them. Indifferent and with empty hands he flew away to the world of ideal theories. But the philosopher, also with empty hands, remained on earth-- on the bare earth, where truth has no dwelling place.
PLATO did not lay hold of the power of Eros for the actual work of regenerating himself or others. All remained as before in actual life, and we do not see that Plato himself in any way drew near to the divine, or even the angelic order. But all the same there remained within him a small portion of that abundance, which the son of Poros inherited from his father. Plato could no longer return to that aloof idealism which does not desire knowledge of life. It was not without result that he had experienced and reflected on that feeling, which by its intrinsic power, as a subjective state, removes-- if only for a time-- the barrier between the ideal world and actual life; which constructs a bridge, though it may be insubstantial only, between heaven and earth.
The world generally, and in a very intimate way, human society, became now for Plato the object not of negation or estrangement, but of an active interest. The contradiction between the actual and the demands of the ideal remained unchanged, but Plato looked upon it in a different way. Instead of fleeing from evil to the heights of contemplation, he wished to oppose it, to put rights the wrongs of the world, and to give help to its misery. And, as the true, radical correction and ample assistance-- through the regeneration of human nature-- proved to beyond his powers, he took up a more superficial but also more accessible task-- the task of reforming social relations.
He conceived of a model of a better society, and he expounded his plan in the ten books of the Republic [1]. But, alas, leaving in the philosopher's soul a new desire for life and politics, the faithless Eros bore away on his wings that creative power, without which the desire was bound to remain fruitless. Having turned away from the higher task, Plato did not prove equal to the lower. In spite of all his efforts he could not make of himself a social and political reformer. This was not due to the fact that he was too much of a Utopian but to the absence of a real progressive principle in his Utopias which were useless and without interest for mankind. What interest could be aroused by the proposal to organize a state modeled on Sparta rather than on Athens, when it was already being recognized that the Spartan as well as the Athenian civil state had proved a failure? Plato's scheme of the three social classes, corresponding to the three basic qualities of the soul, and the three basic virtues, may be considered correct, and in any case must be recognized as ingenious and excellent. This scheme is, however, so general and formal that the organization of medieval Europe might be included within it, in spite of the essential distinction between the elements, historical and moral, of ancient and medieval society. At the same time, it was precisely to what lay within collective life that Plato did not in substance turn with any moral question, and therefore no mention can be made of any actual reform or improvement in this life resulting from his inclination for politics. With all the depth and daring of a few disconnected thoughts, his ideal social organization, on the whole, strikes one by its superficial character and by the absence of truly ethical principles. Plato seems to have desired to legitimize and perpetuate as the normal state of things the chief moral ulcers of ancient life-- slavery, the distinction of Greek and Barbarian and warfare between them. To these was added, as a general rule and law, what in the actual life of the ancient cities was only an exceptional event-- coercive measures against poets and their expulsion from the state. It is still more important that Plato's ideal community in the mutual relations of the sexes returned to the savage way of life after the manner of beasts. Sufficiently characteristic-- as a philosophical reformation of society-- is the extension to women of compulsory military service, but still more characteristic is the ground for such a reform; as dogs guarding and defending a flock perform this duty without the distinction of male or female, it is clear that women ought to take part in war. Thus we see that the college of philosophers was to create the ideal state through good education on such actual bases as slavery, war, and the disorderly mingling of the sexes and generations.
[1] Parts of this work were written at an earlier time, but as a whole it undoubtedly belongs to the epoch in the philosopher's life with which we are dealing-- that between the rise of his erotic feeling and his unsuccessful political ventures in Sicily.
PLATO was not satisfied by his role as a theoretical creator of an ideal society. He wished at all costs to set about a practical realization of his plan. As his principle required that the model state should be governed by philosophers, he naturally turned to that school of philosophy which from its inception had cherished aspirations in sociology, and had played a conspicuous part in politics. He went to the Pythagoreans in Greater Greece (i.e., Southern Italy). The first result of this journey was Plato's increased knowledge of the Pythagorean teaching, which was reflected in his cosmological dialogue, Timeaus. But, on the other hand, Timaeus, as also another important work, Philebus, independently of Pythagorean influence, bears deep and evident traces of that general change in outlook which took place in Plato in connection with his erotic philosophy. Of the absolute opposition of the two worlds and the two lives there is now no mention; there remains only a relative opposition of the principles which form the universe. In Timeaus the central place is occupied by the world-soul, another name for Eros, which unites the ideal existence with the actual.
So far as Plato's practical designs were concerned, the Pythagoreans could afford him indirect assistance only. Their confederation, weakened and intimidated by the havoc wrought by the democrats, no longer ventured upon any serious political undertakings, and represented something like the mystical freemasonry which flourished in Russia at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Pythagoreans could only direct Plato to the court of the tyrant Dionysus (the Elder) at Syracuse, where they had some influence and connections. Although, according to Plato's earlier views, a tyranny, i.e., the power of a monarch, seized arbitrarily and with violence, is the very worst of all bad forms of government, he now adopted the opinion that the only practical way of establishing truth upon earth would be through the influence of the sage on the suitable or favourably disposed tyrant. Dionysus the Elder was indisputably a true and typical tyrant, but it was Plato's fate to come to doubt his favourable disposition when Dionysus sold him into slavery: an excellent lesson for the thinker, who, with all his lofty theories of truly existent good, could not arrive by thought at the simple truth that one man cannot be the mere chattel of another.
Plato did not profit by this lesson. Instead of bearing Socrates in mind, and reflecting on the essential moral laws of society, he made two more unsuccessful attempts to fashion for himself a favourably disposed tyrant in the person of Dionysus the Younger, the successor of the Elder of that name.
BEING definitely disillusioned at Syracuse, Plato turned in thought to Crete, the home of the sage Minos. In the execution of discovering there a favourably disposed tyrant, he wrote in twelve books his code of laws for the future model city in that island. This work, the last written by Plato, is in the highest degree remarkable. To begin with its outer form-- although it is written as a dialogue (in places not maintained) Socrates not only does not appear as usual as the chief character in action or in conversation, but his name is not even mentioned, just as if Plato had forgotten that he had ever existed. More important still is that by its contents his Laws is not a forgetting, but a direct renouncement of Socrates and his philosophy. We do not speak of the general low character of thought in these books; of the barbarity of the penal code with its offences involving the death penalty, with its persecution of sorcerers and exorcists. We do not speak of the revolting injustice of particular laws, as, for instance, those which fix the penalty of death in the case of the slave who fails to inform the authorities of any known breach of public order. Besides all this, a direct and complete renouncement of Socrates and philosophy is expressed in those walls, by virtue of which any man was subject to the death penalty who questioned or impaired the authority of the ancestral laws, both in their relation to the gods as well as in their relation to the public order. In this way Socrates' greatest disciple, who had been provoked to independent creative work in philosophy by his indignation at the legal murder of his master, towards the end definitely adopted the point of views of Anytos and Melitos, who had demanded the sentence of death on Socrates precisely because of the freedom of his attitude to the established religious and social order.
What a profound and tragic catastrophe, how complete the moral fall! The author of the Apologia, Gorgias and Phaedo, after half a century's cult of the wise and just man slain by the law, openly accepts and affirms in his Laws that very principle of blind, false and servile faith, through which the father of his better self had been put to death.
The death of Socrates, with all its dramatic force; the question -- is life worth living, when truth in its highest incarnation is legally put to death? the conclusion that the meaning of life lies in another, ideal world, and that our actual world is the kingdom of evil and disillusion; the appearance of Eros, casting a bridge between the two worlds and setting the task of their union, of the salvation and regeneration of the lower world; the weak evasion of this task and its substitution by another-- the correction and reform of society by wise political regulations through the action of a docile tyrant; and, finally, under the pretext of righting the wrong of the world, the triumphant confirmation of this wrong in the very same form through which the righteous man had been condemned and slain-- I do not know any tragedy more significant and more profound in all human history.
If Socrates had brought philosophy down from heaven and gave it into the hands of men, his greatest disciple raised it high above his head, and cast it down to the ground into the mud and filth of the street. Good it is that the vessel of wisdom is not an earthen pot. The unworthy questions and plans of the philosopher were broken into fragments, but the thoughts of his better days remained intact. The judgment of posterity has been not merely just, but even indulgent. We know Plato in the Phadeo, Theaetetus, Phaedrus, and the Symposium, in Philebus, Timeaeus and the best chapters in the Republic. His gross communism is pardoned as the accidental aberration of a great mind-- quandoque bonus dormitat et Plato-- and his Laws are read by no one except the specialist.
It is not in vain, however, that Plato's Laws has been preserved inviolate from among the great number of inferior works of antiquity which happily have perished. The work is important, firstly, from the standpoint of historical aesthetics, because the renouncement of Socrates immortalized within it gives to the drama of Plato's life an ending equal on the whole in tragic power to its beginning. Secondly, this testimony to Plato's great fall is important for the delineation of his personal character. It is said that he was called Plato, i.e., 'Broad' (his original name appears to have been Aristocles) owing to the breadth of his face, and, according to others, owing to the breadth of his spirit. His spiritual diapason was really very wide, and for the extent of its range, was bound to include even those low notes which resound in his latest work.
In conclusion it must be said that Socrates by his noble death exhausted the moral power of purely human wisdom, and reached its limits. To go further and higher than Socrates, not only in theory and aspiration, but in actual heroic deed, more than a man was needed. After Socrates, who by word and example taught how to die in a manner worthy of man, no one could go further and higher but He Who has power of resurrection to eternal life. The weakness and the fall of the 'divine' Plato are of importance, because they strongly emphasize and explain man's inability to achieve his destiny, i.e., to be a real superman, solely by the power of intellect, genius and moral will-- because they explain the necessity for the actual existence of the Divine Man.