CHAPTER XVI

PLATO (_continued_)

_Metaphysics and psychology--Reason and pleasure--Criticism of the
ideas--Last ideals_

We now come to a series of highly important dialogues, marked as a
whole by a certain diminution in the purely artistic attraction, having
less of vivid characterisation, less humour, less dramatic interest,
less perfect construction in every way, but, on the other hand,
peculiarly interesting as presenting a kind of after-criticism of his
own philosophy. In them Plato brings his philosophic conceptions into
striking relation with earlier or rival theories such as the Eleatic,
the Megarian, the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic, and touches in these
connections on many problems of deep and permanent import.

The most remarkable feature in these later dialogues is the
disappearance, or even in some cases the apparently hostile criticism,
of the doctrine of Ideas, and consequently of Reminiscence as the
source of knowledge, and even, apparently, of Personal {155}
Immortality, so far as the doctrine of Reminiscence was imagined to
guarantee it. This, however, is perhaps to push the change of view too
far. We may say that Plato in these dialogues is rather the
psychologist than the metaphysician; he is attempting a revised
analysis of mental processes. From this point of view it was quite
intelligible that he should discover difficulties in his former theory
of our mental relation to the external reality, without therefore
seeing reason to doubt the existence of that reality. The position is
somewhat similar to that of a modern philosopher who attempts to think
out the psychological problem of Human Will in relation to Almighty and
Over-ruling Providence. One may very clearly see the psychological
difficulties, without ceasing to believe either in the one or the other
as facts.

Throughout Plato's philosophy, amidst every variation of expression, we
may take these three as practically fixed points of belief or of faith,
or at least of hope; _first_, that Mind is eternally master of the
universe; _second_, that Man in realising what is most truly himself is
working in harmony with the Eternal Mind, and is in this way a master
of nature, reason governing experience and not being a product of
experience; and _thirdly_ (as Socrates said before his judges), that at
death we go to powers who are wise and good, and to men departed who in
their day shared in the divine wisdom and goodness,--that, in short,