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"You fellows had better get yourselves off the ground, for we are going to have a storm tonight," advised Butler. "Walter is sleepin out a new hypothesis, and endeavoured to commend it to others with more or less of sustaining reason. There appears to have been little of negation or refutation in their procedure. None of them tried to disprove the received point of view, or to throw its supporters upon their defence. Each of them unfolded his own hypothesis, or his own version of affirmative reasoned truth, for the adoption of those with whom it might find favour.

The dialectic age had not yet arrived. When it did arrive, with Sokrates as its principal champion, the topics of philosophy were altered, and its process revolutionised. We have often heard repeated the Ciceronian dictum--that Sokrates brought philosophy down from the heavens to the earth: from the distant, abstruse, and complicated phenomena of the Kosmos--in respect to which he adhered to the vulgar point of view, and even disapproved any enquiries tending to rationalise it--to the familiar business of man, and the common generalities of ethics and politics. But what has been less observed about Sokrates, though not less true, is, that along with this change of topics he introduced a complete revolution in method. He placed the negative in the front of his procedure; giving to it a point, an emphasis, a substantive value, which no one had done before. His peculiar gift was that of cross-examination, or the application of his Elenchus to discriminate pretended from real knowledge. He found men full of confident beliefs on these ethical and political topics--affirming with words which they had never troubled themselves to define--and persuaded that they required no farther teaching: yet at the same time unable to give clear or consistent answers to his questions, and shown by this convincing test to be destitute of real knowledge. Declaring this false persuasion of knowledge, or confident unreasoned belief, to be universal, he undertook, as the mission of his life, to expose it: and he proclaimed that until the mind was disabused thereof and made painfully conscious of ignorance, no affirmative reasoned truth could be presented with any chance of success.

Such are the peculiar features of the Sokratic dialogue, exemplified in the compositions here reviewed. I do not mean that Sokrates always talked so; but that such was the marked peculiarity which distinguished his talking from that of others. It is philosophy, or reasoned truth, approached in the most polemical manner; operative at first only to discredit the natural, unreasoned intellectual growths of the ordinary mind, and to generate a painful consciousness of ignorance. I say this here, and I shall often say it again throughout these volumes. It is absolutely indispensable to the understanding of the Platonic dialogues; one half of which must appear unmeaning, unless construed with reference to this separate function and value of negative dialectic. Whether readers may themselves agree in such estimation of negative dialectic, is another question: but they must keep it in mind as the governing sentiment of Plato during much of his life, and of Sokrates throughout the whole of life: as being moreover one main cause of that antipathy which Sokrates inspired to many respectable orthodox contemporaries. I have thought it right to take constant account of this orthodox sentiment among the ordinary public, as the perpetual drag-chain, even when its force is not absolutely repressive, upon free speculation.

. You do not possess "perfect knowledge," until you are able to answer, with unfaltering promptitude and consistency, all the questions of a Sokratic cross-examiner--and to administer effectively the like cross-examination yourself, for the purpose of testing others.

Moreover, I deal with each dialogue as a separate composition. Each represents the intellectual scope and impulse of a peculiar moment, which may or may not be in harmony with the rest. Plato would have protested not less earnestly than Cicero, against those who sought to foreclose debate, in the grave and arduous struggles for searching out reasoned truth--and to bind down the free inspirations of his intellect in one dialogue, by appealing to sentence already pronounced in another preceding. Of two inconsistent trains of reasoning, both cannot indeed be true--but both are often useful to be known and studied: and the philosopher, who professes to master the theory of his subject, ought not to be a stranger to either. All minds athirst for reasoned truth will be greatly aided in forming their opinions by the number of points which Plato suggests, though they find little which he himself settles for them finally.

There have been various critics, who, on perceiving inconsistencies in Plato, either force them into harmony by a subtle exeg?sis, or discard one of them as spurious. I have not followed either course. I recognise such inconsistencies, when found, as facts--and even as very interesting facts--in his philosophical character. To the marked contradiction in the spirit of the Leges, as compared with the earlier Platonic compositions, I have called special attention. Plato has been called by Plutarch a mixture of Sokrates with Lykurgus. The two elements are in reality opposite, predominant at different times: Plato begins his career with the confessed ignorance and philosophical negative of Sokrates: he closes it with the peremptory, dictatorial, affirmative of Lykurgus.

To Xenophon, who belongs only in part to my present work, and whose character presents an interesting contrast with Plato, I have devoted a separate chapter. To the other less celebrated Sokratic Companions also, I have endeavoured to do justice, as far as the scanty means of knowledge permit: to them, especially, because they have generally been misconceived and unduly depreciated.

The present volumes, however, contain only one half of the speculative activity of Hellas during the fourth century B.C. The second half, in which Aristotle is the hero, remains still wanting. If my health and energies continue, I hope one day to be able to supply this want: and thus to complete from my own point of view, the history, speculative as well as active, of the Hellenic race, down to the date which I prescribed to myself in the Preface of my History near twenty years ago.

The philosophy of the fourth century B.C. is peculiarly valuable and interesting, not merely from its intrinsic speculative worth--from the originality and grandeur of its two principal heroes--from its coincidence with the full display of dramatic, rhetorical, artistic genius--but also from a fourth reason not unimportant--because it is purely Hellenic; preceding the development of Alexandria, and the amalgamation of Oriental veins of thought with the inspirations of the Academy or the Lyceum. The Orontes and the Jordan had not yet begun to flow westward, and to impart their own colour to the waters of Attica and Latium. Not merely the real world, but also the ideal world, present to the minds of Plato and Aristotle, were purely Hellenic. Even during the century immediately following, this had ceased to be fully true in respect to the philosophers of Athens: and it became less and less true with each succeeding century. New foreign centres of rhetoric and literature--Asiatic and Alexandrian Hellenism--were fostered into importance by regal encouragement. Plato and Aristotle are thus the special representatives of genuine Hellenic philosophy. The remarkable intellectual ascendancy acquired by them in their own day, and maintained over succeeding centuries, was one main reason why the Hellenic vein was enabled so long to maintain itself, though in impoverished condition, against adverse influences from the East, ever increasing in force. Plato and Aristotle outlasted all their Pagan successors--successors at once less purely Hellenic and less highly gifted. And when Saint Jerome, near 750 years after the decease of Plato, commemorated with triumph the victory of unlettered Christians over the accomplishments and genius of Paganism--he illustrated the magnitude of the victory, by singling out Plato and Aristotle as the representatives of vanquished philosophy.

PRE-SOKRATIC PHILOSOPHY.

Speculative Philosophy in Greece, before and in the time of Sokrates.

Change in the political condition of Greece during the life of Plato 1

Early Greek mind, satisfied with the belief in polytheistic personal agents, as the real producing causes of phenomena 2

Belief in such agency continued among the general public, even after the various sects of philosophy had arisen 3

Thales, the first Greek who propounded the hypothesis of physical agency in place of personal. Water, the primordial substance, or 4

Anaximenes--adopted Air as --rise of substances out of it, by condensation and rarefaction 7

Pythagoras--his life and career--Pythagorean brotherhood--great political influence which it acquired among the Greco-Italian cities--incurred great enmity, and was violently put down 8

The Pythagoreans continue as a recluse sect, without political power 9

The Monas--, or principle of Number--geometrical conception of number--symbolical attributes of the first ten numbers, especially of the Dekad 11

Pythagorean Kosmos and Astronomy--geometrical and harmonic laws guiding the movements of the cosmical bodies 12

Music of the Spheres 14

Eleatic philosophy--Xenophanes 16

His doctrine of Pankosmism; or Pantheism--the whole Kosmos is Ens Unum or God--, or destruction of the Kosmos by fire 32

His doctrines respecting the human soul and human knowledge. All wisdom resided in the Universal Reason--individual Reason is worthless 34

Herakleitus at the opposite pole from Parmenides 37

Construction of the Kosmos from these elements and forces--action and counteraction of love and enmity. The Kosmos alternately made and unmade 38

Empedoklean predestined cycle of things--complete empire of Love Sphaerus--Empire of Enmity--disengagement or separation of the elements--astronomy and meteorology 39

Formation of the Earth, of Gods, men, animals, and plants 41

Physiology of Empedokles--Procreation--Respiration--movement of the blood 43

Doctrine of effluvia and pores--explanation of perceptions--intercommunication of the elements with the sentient subject--like acting upon like 44

Sense of vision 45

Senses of hearing, smell, taste 46

Empedokles declared that justice absolutely forbade the killing of anything that had life. His belief in the metempsychosis. Sufferings of life, are an expiation for wrong done during an antecedent life. Pretensions to magical power 46

Complaint of Empedokles on the impossibility of finding out truth 47

Theory of Anaxagoras denied--generation and destruction--recognised only mixture and severance of pre-existing kinds of matter 48

First condition of things all--the primordial varieties of matter were huddled together in confusion. or reason, distinct from all of them, supervened and acted upon this confused mass, setting the constituent particles in movement 49

Movement of rotation in the mass, originated by on a small scale, but gradually extending itself. Like particles congregate together--distinguishable aggregates are formed 50

Nothing can be entirely pure or unmixed; but other things may be comparatively pure. Flesh, Bone, &c., are purer than Air or Earth 51

Theory of Anaxagoras, compared with that of Empedokles 52

Suggested partly by the phenomena of of animal nutrition 53

Chaos common to both Empedokles and Anaxagoras: moving agency, different in one from the other theory 54

Plato and Aristotle blame Anaxagoras for deserting his own theory 56

Astronomy and physics of Anaxagoras 57

His geology, meteorology, physiology 58

The doctrines of Anaxagoras were regarded as offensive and impious 59

Diogenes of Apollonia recognises one primordial element 60

Air was the primordial, universal element 61

Physiology of Diogenes--his description of the veins in the human body 62

Kosmology and Meteorology 64

Leukippus and Demokritus--Atomic theory 65

Relation between the theory of Demokritus and that of Parmenides 66

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