art. It is, to him, nothing but a means
towards philosophy. And this is the tap-root of his entire view of the
subject.

{234}

7. Critical Estimate of Plato's Philosophy,

If we are to form a just estimate of the value of Plato's philosophy,
we must not fritter away our criticism on the minor points, the
external details, the mere outworks of the system. We must get at the
heart and governing centre of it all. Amid the mass of thought which
Plato has developed, in all departments of speculation, that which
stands out as the central thesis of the whole system is the theory of
Ideas. All else is but deduction from this. His physics, his ethics,
his politics, his views upon art, all flow from this one governing
theory. It is here then that we must look, alike for the merits and
the defects of Plato's system.

The theory of Ideas is not a something sprung suddenly upon the world
out of Plato's brain. It has its roots in the past. It is, as
Aristotle showed, the outcome of Eleatic, Heracleitean, and Socratic
determinations. Fundamentally, however, it grows out of the
distinction between sense and reason, which had been the common
property of Greek thinkers since the time of Parmenides. Parmenides
was the first to emphasize this distinction, and to teach that the
truth is to be found by reason, the world of sense being illusory.
Heracleitus, and even Democritus, were pronounced adherents of reason,
as against sense. The crisis came with the Sophists, who attempted to
obliterate the distinction altogether, and to find all knowledge in
sensation, thus calling forth the opposition of Socrates and Plato. As
against them Socrates pointed out that all knowledge is through
concepts, reason: and Plato added to this that the concept is not a
mere rule of thought but a metaphysical reality. This was the
substance of the theory of Ideas. {235} Every philosophy which makes a
systematic attempt to solve the riddle of the universe necessarily
begins with a theory of the nature of that absolute and ultimate
reality from which the universe is derived. This absolute reality we
will call simply the Absolute. Plato's theory is that the Absolute
consists of concepts. To say that the Absolute is reason, is thought,
is concepts, is the universal--these are merely four different
expressions of the same theory. Now this proposition, that the
Absolute is reason, is the fundamental thesis of all idealism. Since
Plato's time there have been