Part 3 (2/2)

The particulars, therefore, of which an induction is made in order to produce science, must be so simple, that they may be immediately apprehended, and that the universal may be predicated of them without hesitation. The particulars of the experimentalists are not of this kind, and therefore never can be sources of science truly so called.

Of this, however, the man of experiment appears to be totally ignorant, and in consequence of this, he is likewise ignorant that parts can only be truly known through wholes, and that this is particularly the case with parts when they belong to a whole, which, as we have already observed, from comprehending in itself the parts which it produces, is called a whole prior to parts. As he, therefore, would by no means merit the appellation of a physician who should attempt to cure any part of the human body, without a previous knowledge of the whole; so neither can he know any thing truly of the vegetable life of plants, who has not a previous knowledge of that vegetable life which subsists in the earth as a whole prior to, because the principle and cause of all partial vegetable life, and who still prior to this has not a knowledge of that greater whole of this kind which subsists in nature herself; nor, as Hippocrates justly observes, can he know any thing truly of the nature of the human body who is ignorant what nature is considered as a great comprehending whole. And if this be true, and it is so most indubitably, with all physiological inquiries, how much more must it be the case with respect to a knowledge of those incorporeal forms to which we ascended in the first part of this Introduction, and which in consequence of proceeding from wholes entirely exempt from body are partic.i.p.ated by it, with much greater obscurity and imperfection? Here then is the great difference, and a mighty one it is, between the knowledge gained by the most elaborate experiments, and that acquired by scientific reasoning, founded on the spontaneous, unperverted, and self-luminous conceptions of the soul. The former does not even lead its votary up to that one nature of the earth from which the natures of all the animals and plants on its surface, and of all the minerals and metals in its interior parts, blossom as from a perennial root. The latter conducts its votary through all the several mundane wholes up to that great whole the world itself, and thence leads him through the luminous order of incorporeal wholes to that vast whole of wholes, in which all other wholes are centred and rooted, and which is no other than the principle of all principles, and the fountain of deity itself. No less remarkable likewise, is the difference between the tendencies of the two pursuits, for the one elevates the soul to the most luminous heights, and to that great ineffable which is beyond all alt.i.tude; but the other is the cause of a mighty calamity to the soul, since, according to the elegant expression of Plutarch, it extinguishes her princ.i.p.al and brightest eye, the knowledge of divinity. In short, the one leads to all that is grand, sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little, groveling[14] and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and unceasing molestation.

----------------- [14] That this must be the tendency of experiment, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, is evident from what Bacon, the prince of modern philosophy, says in the 104th Aphorism of his Novum Organum, that ”baseless fabric of a vision.” For he there sagely observes that wings are not to be added to the human intellect, but rather lead and weights; that all its leaps and flights may be restrained. That this is not yet done, but that when it is we may entertain better hopes respecting the sciences. ”Itaque hominum intellectui non plumae addendae, sed plumb.u.m potius, et pondera; ut cohibeant omnem saltum et volatum. Atque hoc adhuc factum non est; quum vero factum fuerit, melius de scientiis sperare licebit.” A considerable portion of lead must certainly have been added to the intellect of Bacon when he wrote this Aphorism.

If such then are the consequences, such the tendencies of experimental inquiries, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, and daily experience[15] unhappily shows that they are, there can be no other remedy for this enormous evil than the intellectual philosophy of Plato. So obviously excellent indeed is the tendency of this philosophy, that its author, for a period of more than two thousand years, has been universally celebrated by the epithet of divine. Such too is its preeminence, that it may be shown, without much difficulty, that the greatest men of antiquity, from the time in which its salutary light first blessed the human race, have been more or less imbued with its sacred principles, have been more or less the votaries of its divine truths. Thus, to mention a few from among a countless mult.i.tude. In the catalogue of those endued with sovereign power, it had for its votaries Dion of Siracusian, Julian the Roman, and Chosroes the Persian, emperor; among the leaders of armies, it had Chabrias and Phocion, those brave generals of the Athenians; among mathematicians, those leading stars of science, Eudoxus, Archimedes[16] and Euclid; among biographers, the inimitable Plutarch; among physicians, the admirable Galen; among rhetoricians, those unrivaled orators Demosthenes and Cicero; among critics, that prince of philologists, Longinus; and among poets, the most learned and majestic Virgil. Instances, though not equally ill.u.s.trious, yet approximating to these in splendour, may doubtless be adduced after the fall of the Roman empire; but then they have been formed on these great ancients as models, and are, consequently, only rivulets from Platonic streams. And instances of excellence in philosophic attainments, similar to those among the Greeks, might have been enumerated among the moderns, if the hand of barbaric despotism had not compelled philosophy to retire into the deepest solitude, by demolis.h.i.+ng her schools, and involving the human intellect in Cimmerian darkness. In our own country, however, though no one appears to have wholly devoted himself to the study of this philosophy, and he who does not will never penetrate its depths, yet we have a few bright examples of no common proficiency in its more accessible parts.

----------------- [15] I never yet knew a man who made experiment the test of truth, and I have known many such, that was not atheistically inclined.

[16] I have ranked Archimedes among the Platonists, because he cultivated the mathematical sciences Platonically, as is evident from the testimony of Plutarch in his Life of Marcellus, p. 307. For he there informs us that Archimedes considered the being busied about mechanics, and in short, every art which is connected with the common purposes of life, as ign.o.ble and illiberal; and that those things alone were objects of his ambition with which the beautiful and the excellent were present, unmingled with the necessary. The great accuracy and elegance in the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes, which have not been equaled by any of our greatest modern mathematicians, were derived from a deep conviction of this important truth. On the other hand modern mathematicians, through a profound ignorance of this divine truth, and looking to nothing but the wants and conveniences of the animal life of man, as if the gratification of his senses was his only end, have corrupted pure geometry, by mingling with it algebraical calculations, and through eagerness to reduce it as much as possible to practical purposes, have more anxiously sought after conciseness than accuracy, facility than elegance of geometrical demonstration.

The instances I allude to are Shaftesbury, Akenside, Harris, Petwin, and Sydenham. So splendid is the specimen of philosophic abilities displayed by these writers, like the fair dawning of same unclouded morning, that we have only deeply to regret that the sun of their genius sat before we were gladdened with its effulgence. Had it shone with its full strength, the writer of this Introduction would not have attempted either to translate the works, or elucidate the doctrines of Plato; but though it rose with vigor, it dispersed not the clouds in which its light was gradually involved, and the eye in vain anxiously waited for it's meridian beam.

In short, the principles of the philosophy of Plato are of all others the most friendly to true piety, pure morality, solid learning, and sound government. For as it is scientific in all its parts, and in these parts comprehends all that can be known by man in theology and ethics, and all that is necessary for him to know in physics, it must consequently contain in itself the source of all that is great and good both to individuals and communities, must necessarily exalt while it benefits, and deify while it exalts.

We have said that this philosophy at first shone forth through Plato with an occult and venerable splendor; and it is owing to the hidden manner in which it is delivered by him, that its depth was not fathomed till many ages after it's promulgation, and when fathomed, was treated by superficial readers with ridicule and contempt. Plato indeed, is not singular in delivering his philosophy occultly: for this was the custom of all the great ancients; a custom not originating from a wish to become tyrants in knowledge, and keep the mult.i.tude in ignorance, but from a profound conviction that the sublimest truths are profaned when clearly unfolded to the vulgar. This indeed must necessarily follow; since, as Socrates in Plato justly observes, ”it is not lawful for the pure to be touched by the impure;” and the mult.i.tude are neither purified from the defilements of vice, nor the darkness of twofold ignorance. Hence, while they are thus doubly impure, it is as impossible for them to perceive the splendors of truth, as for an eye buried in mire to survey the light of day.

The depth of this philosophy then does not appear to have been perfectly penetrated except by the immediate disciples of Plato, for more than five hundred years after its first propagation. For though Crantor, Atticus, Albinus, Galen and Plutarch, were men of great genius, and made no common proficiency in Philosophic attainments, yet they appear not to have developed the profundity of Plato's conceptions; they withdrew not the veil which covers his secret meaning, like the curtains which guarded the adytum of temples from the profane eye; and they saw not that all behind the veil is luminous, and that there divine spectacles[17] every where present themselves to the view. This task was reserved for men who were born indeed in a baser age, but, who being allotted a nature similar to their leader, were the true interpreters of his mystic speculations. The most conspicuous of these are the great Plotinus, the most learned Porphyry, the divine Jamblichus, the most acute Syria.n.u.s, Proclus the consummation of philosophic excellence, the magnificent Hierocles, the concisely elegant Sall.u.s.t, and the most inquisitive Damascius. By these men, who were truly links of the golden chain of deity, all that is sublime, all that is mystic in the doctrines of Plato (and they are replete with both these in a transcendent degree), was freed from its obscurity and unfolded into the most pleasing and admirable light. Their labors, however, have been ungratefully received. The beautiful light which they benevolently disclosed has. .h.i.therto unnoticed illumined philosophy in her desolate retreats, like a lamp s.h.i.+ning on some venerable statue amidst dark and solitary ruins. The prediction of the master has been unhappily fulfilled in these his most excellent disciples. ”For an attempt of this kind,” says he,[18] ”will only be beneficial to a few, who from small vestiges, previously demonstrated, are themselves able to discover these abstruse particulars. But with respect to the rest of mankind, some it will fill with a contempt by no means elegant, and others with a lofty and arrogant hope, that they shall now learn certain excellent things.” Thus with respect to these admirable men, the last and the most legitimate of the followers of Plato, some from being entirely ignorant of the abstruse dogmas of Plato, and finding these interpreters full of conceptions which are by no means obvious to every one in the writings of that philosopher, have immediately concluded that such conceptions are mere jargon and revery, that they are not truly Platonic, and that they are nothing more than streams, which, though, originally derived from a pure fountain, have become polluted by distance from their source. Others, who pay attention to nothing but the most exquisite purity of language, look down with contempt upon every writer who lived after the fall of the Macedonian empire; as if dignity and weight of sentiment were inseparable from splendid and accurate diction; or as if it were impossible for elegant writers to exist in a degenerate age. So far is this from being the case, that though the style of Plotinus[19] and Jamblichus[20] is by no means to be compared with that of Plato, yet this inferiority is lost in the depth and sublimity of their conceptions, and is as little regarded by the intelligent reader, as motes in a sunbeam by the eye that gladly turns itself to the solar light.

-------------- [17] See my Dissertation on the Mysteries.

[18]See the 7th Epistle of Plato.

[19] It would seem that those intemperate critics who have thought proper to revile Plotinus, the leader of the latter Platonists, have paid no attention to the testimony of Longinus concerning this most wonderful man, as preserved by Porphyry in his life of him. For Longinus there says, ”that though he does not entirely accede to many of his hypotheses, yet he exceedingly admires and loves the form of his writing, the density of his conceptions, and the philosophic manner in which his questions are disposed.” And in another place he says, ”Plotinus, as it seems, has explained the Pythagoric and Platonic principles more clearly than those that were prior to him; for neither are the writings of Numenius, Cronius, Moderatus, and Thrasyllus, to be compared with those of Plotinus on this subject.” After such a testimony as this from such a consummate critic as Longinus, the writings of Plotinus have nothing to fear from the imbecile censure of modern critics. I shall only further observe, that Longinus, in the above testimony, does not give the least hint of his having found any polluted streams, or corruption of the doctrines of Plato, in the works of Plotinus. There is not indeed the least vestige of his entertaining any such opinion in any part of what he has said about this most extraordinary man. This discovery was reserved for the more acute critic of modern times, who, by a happiness of conjecture unknown to the ancients, and the a.s.sistance of a good index, can in a few days penetrate the meaning of the profoundest writer of antiquity, and bid defiance even to the decision of Longinus.

[20] Of this most divine man, who is justly said by the emperor Julian to have been posterior indeed in time, but not in genius even to Plato himself, see the life which I have given in the History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology, in the second vol. of my Proclus on Euclid.

As to the style of Porphyry, when we consider that he was the disciple of Longinus, whom Eunapius elegantly calls ”a certain living library, and walking museum,” it is but reasonable to suppose that he imbibed some portion of his master's excellence in writing. That he did so is abundantly evident from the testimony of Eunapius, who particularly commends his style for its clearness, purity, and grace. ”Hence,” he says, ”Porphyry being let down to men like a mercurial chain, through his various erudition, unfolded every thing into perspicuity, and purity.”

And in another place he speaks of him as abounding with all the graces of diction, and as the only one that exhibited and proclaimed the praise of his master. With respect to the style of Proclus, it is pure, clear and elegant, like that of Dionysius Halicarna.s.sus; but is much more copious and magnificent; that of Hierocles is venerable and majestic, and nearly equals the style of the greatest ancients; that of Sall.u.s.t possesses an accuracy and a pregnant brevity, which cannot easily be distinguished from the composition of the Stagirite; and lastly, that of Damascius is clear and accurate, and highly worthy a most investigating mind.

Others again have filled themselves with a vain confidence, from reading of commentaries of these admirable interpreters, and have in a short time considered themselves superior to their masters. This was the case with Ficinus, Picus, Dr. Henry Moore, and other pseudo Platonists, their contemporaries, who, in order to combine Christianity with the doctrines of Plato, rejected some of his most important tenets, and perverted others, and thus corrupted one of these systems, and afforded no real benefit to the other.

But who are the men by whom these latter interpreters of Plato are reviled? When and whence did this defamation originate? Was it when the fierce champions for the trinity fled from Galilee to the groves of Academus, and invoked, but in vain, the a.s.sistance of Philosophy? When

The trembling grove confessed its fright, The wood-nymphs started at the sight; Ilissus backward urg'd his course, And rush'd indignant to his source.

Was it because that mitred sophist, Warburton, thought fit to talk of the polluted streams of the Alexandrian school, without knowing any thing of the source whence those streams are derived? Or was it because some heavy German critic, who knew nothing beyond a verb in mi, presumed to grunt at these venerable heroes? Whatever was its source, and whenever it originated, for I have not been able to discover either, this however is certain, that it owes its being to the most profound Ignorance, or the most artful Sophistry, and that its origin is no less contemptible than obscure. For let us but for a moment consider the advantages which these latter Platonists possessed beyond any of their modern revilers. In the first place, they had the felicity of having the Greek for their native language, and must therefore, as they were confessedly, learned men, have understood that language incomparably better than any man since the time in which the ancient Greek was a living tongue. In the next place, they had books to consult, written by the immediate disciples of Plato, which have been lost for upwards of a thousand years, besides many Pythagoric writings from which Plato himself derived most of his more sublime dogmas. Hence we find the works of Parmenides, Empedocles, the Electic Zeno, Speusippus, Xenocrates, and many other ill.u.s.trious philosophers of the highest antiquity, who were either genuine Platonists or the sources of Platonism, are continually cited by these most excellent interpreters, and in the third place they united the greatest purity of life to the most piercing vigor of intellect. Now when it is considered that the philosophy to the study of which these great men devoted their lives, was professedly delivered by its author in obscurity; that Aristotle himself studied it for twenty years; and that it was no uncommon thing, as Plato informs us in one of his Epistles, to find students unable to comprehend its sublimest tenets even in a longer period than this,--when all these circ.u.mstances are considered, what must we think of the arrogance, not to say impudence, of men in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, who have dared to calumniate these great masters of wisdom? Of men, with whom the Greek is no native language; who have no such books to consult as those had whom they revile; who have never thought, even in a dream, of making the acquisition of wisdom the great object of their life; and who in short have committed that most baneful error of mistaking philology for philosophy, and words for things? When such as these dare to defame men who may be justly ranked among the greatest and wisest of the ancients, what else can be said than that they are the legitimate descendants of the suitors of Penelope, whom, in the animated language of Ulysses,

Laws or divine or human fail'd to move, Or shame of men, or dread of G.o.ds above: Heedless alike of infamy or praise, Or Fame's eternal voice in future days,[21]

----------------- [21] Pope's Odyssey, book xxii, v. 47, &c.

But it is now time to present the reader with a general view of the works of Plato, and, also to speak of the preambles, digressions, and style of their author, and of the following translation. In accomplis.h.i.+ng the first of these, I shall avail myself of the synopsis of Mr. Sydenham, taking the liberty at the same time of correcting it where it appears to be erroneous, and of making additions to it where it appears to be deficient.

The dialogues of Plato are of various kinds; not only with regard to those different matters, which are the subjects of them; but in respect of the manner also in which they are composed or framed, and of the form under which they make their appearance to the reader. It will therefore, as I imagine, be not improper, in pursuance of the admonition given us by Plato himself in his dialogue named Phaedrus[22] and in imitation of the example set us by the ancient Platonists to distinguish the several kinds; by dividing them, first, into the most general; and then, subdividing into the subordinate; till we come to those lower species, that particularly and precisely denote the nature of the several dialogues, and from which they ought to take their respective denominations.

---------------- [22] Whoever is unable to divide and distinguish things into their several sorts or species; and, on the other hand, referring every particular to its proper species, to comprehend them all in one general idea; will never understand any writings of which those things are the subject, like a true critic, upon those high principles of art to which the human understanding reaches. We have thought proper, here, to paraphrase this pa.s.sage, for the sake of giving to every part of so important a sentence its full force, agreeably to the tenor of Plato's doctrine; and in order to initiate our readers into a way of thinking, that probably many of them are as yet unacquainted with.

The most general division of the writings of Plato, is into those of the Sceptical kind, and those of they Dogmatical. In the former sort, nothing is expressly either proved or a.s.serted, some philosophical question only is considered and examined; and the reader is left to himself to draw such conclusions, and discover such truths as the philosopher means to insinuate. This is done, either in the way of inquiry, or in the way of controversy and dispute. In the way of controversy are carried on all such dialogues, as tend to eradicate false opinions; and that, either indirectly, by involving them in difficulties, and embarra.s.sing the maintainers of them; or directly, by confuting them. In the way of inquiry proceed those whose tendency is to raise in the mind right opinions; and that either by exciting to the pursuit of some part of wisdom, and showing in what manner to investigate it; or by leading the way, and helping the mind forward in the search. And this is effected by a process through opposing arguments.[23]

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