Timaeus — Plato

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Ixxviii

Analysis 477-480.

Republic V. by fiicultics I mean powers unseen and distinguishable only by the Analysis. difference in their objects, as opinion and knowledge differ, since the one is liable to err, but the other is unerring and is the mightiest of all our faculties. If being is the object of knowledge, and not-being of ignorance, and these are the extremes, opinion 47^ must lie between them, and may be called darker than the one and brighter than the other. This intermediate or contingent matter is and is not at the same time, and partakes both of existence and of non-existence. Now I would ask my good 47< friend, who denies abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a many beautiful and a many just, whether everything he sees is not in some point of view different — the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust? Is not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative terms which pnss into one another ? Everything is and is not, as in the old riddle — 'A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird with a stone and not a stone.' The mind cannot be fixed on either alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable 48( objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of things, is not a philosopher, but a lover of opinion only. . . .

Introduction.

The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the community of property and of family are first maintained, and the transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers. For both of these Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in some chance words of Book IV (424 A), which fall unperceived on the reader's mind, as they are supposed at first to have fallen on the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus. The ' paradoxes,* as Morgenstern terms them, of this book of the Republic will be reserved for another place ; a few remarks on the style, and some explanations of difficulties, may be briefly added. First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of scheme or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the third and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. All that can be said of the extravagance of Plato's proposals is anticipated by himself. Nothing is more admirable than the

The 'tabic of affinities'

Ixxix

hesitation with which he proposes the solemn text * Until kings Republic v. are philosophers,' &c. ; or the reaction from the sublime to the introducridiculous, when Glaucon describes the manner in which the new ^'°^- truth will be received by mankind. Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of the communistic plan.

Nothing is told us of the application of communism to the lower classes; nor is the tabic of prohibited degrees capable of being made out. It is quite possible that a child born at one hymeneal festival may marry one of its own brothers or sisters, or even one of its parents, at another.

Plato is afraid of incestuous unions, but at the same time he does not wish to bring before us the fact that the city would be divided into families of those born seven and nine months after each hymeneal festival.

If it were worth while to argue seriously about such fancies, we might remark that while all the old affinities are abolished,., the newly prohibited affinity rests not on any natural or rational principle, but only upon the accident of children having been born in the same month and year. Nor does he explain how the lots could be so manipulated by the legislature as to bring together the fairest and best.

The singular expression (460 E) which is employed to describe the age of five-and-twenty may perhaps be taken from some poet. In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the nature of philosophy derived from love are more suited to the apprehension of Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to modern tastes or feelings (cp.V.474, 475). They are partly facetious, but also contain a germ of truth.

That science is a whole, remains a true principle of inductive as well as of metaphysical philosophy; and the love of universal knowledge is still the characteristic of the philosopher in modern as well as in ancient times.

At the end of the fifth book Plato introduces the figment of con- h tingent matter, which has exercised so great an influence both on ^-Kf the Ethics and Theology of the modern world, and which occurs J here for the first time in the history of philosophy. He did not remark that the degrees of knowledge in the subject have nothing corresponding to them in the object.

With him a word must answer to an idea; and he could not conceive of an opinion which was an opinion about nothing. The influence of analogy led him to invent ^ parallels and conjugates ' and to overlook facts. To us