the world and give ourselves to diligent reflection.
That is, by dil igen t reflection, we are a ble to_recalt\
mojx~£iigLjnj>n^_^^ \

<^HXesj3omdjn^^ and!

at last we are able to rise in this way to a contem-



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXV

plation of the Highest Idea, that is, God. On this
point read the parable given in Book VII. of the
Republic.

As we are misled by the senses, when we seek
knowledge through them, so we are misled by thenr^^fc^^
in regard to the conduct of individual and social^-*^; U
life. The senses are the source of all our sinning.
We should die to the body and the things of the
body and turn our souls altogether toward the ideal,/
being. By contemplation of and obedience to th^^T^-t^
ideal being we shall be made more and more good^_ a ^ w ^
and beautiful in this life, and after death we shall
reenter the ideal world where we shall be in the
company of perfect souls. As our individual life, so
our political life should be wholly directed by the
divine truth. This is possible only through the
guidance of men who have purified themselves from
the world, and by long consecration have come to
see the divine truth. That is, the State should be
governed by the wisest and best, and all others will
find their true interest in obeying them.

Plato s attitude totvard the life of his time : Prob-
ably very few of those who read this book will ac-
cept Plato's doctrine of ideas in the form in which
he presented it. However that may be, no one
should fail to see that what Plato stood for most
centrally, along with the prophets and apostles of
every age, was the re ality and power of the truth .v^^y^
He believed in the truth ; that the truth is one and^J^/"^
eternal ; that the truth rules all things both greata^K^^
and small in the world and in the lives of men ; that^— i^>
men need the truth and no other thing to compass
them about in infancy with influences that make for



*-*-WWWm- WW*"-*,



XXVI GENERAL INTRODUCTION

righteousness, and to rise in their souls as clear
knowledge and as holy purpose, with their growth
into manhood. This central faith in the re ality and
power of truth dete rmi ned Plato ' s attitude toward
ever y important question tha t_met him, — toward the
old philosophy, toward the theories and practices
of the Sophists, toward the business, art, religion,
and politics of his nation, and toward the con-
duct of his own life. Let us look at each of these
points.
/3c^^fcJJie^ : Plato did not join the

Sophists and the general public in scorn of the old
philosophers. He_believed ' that their long search
for the truth had not been altogether in vain. He
]}ejie_y_£d^;hat some of them were worth the deepest
study he could give them. He made extensive and
expensive journeys to meet living disciples of the
various schools of philosophy. There is a tradition
that he paid a sum equal to about $1,600 for one small
book on the teachings of Pythagoras. It is at any
rate certain that he was a profound student of Py-
thagoras, of Parmenides, of Heracleitus, and doubt-
less of other old masters. He was not afraid that such
study of his predecessors would affect his own orig-
inality. No passage can be recalled which shows
that he was jealous of any of his predecessors or
^anxious to prove his own superiority. In the The-
astetus there is a reference to one of the old masters
which seems to be not ironical, but characteristic
of Plato's genuine reverence for the greater philoso-
phers. " I have a kind of reverence," he says, " for
the great leader himself, Parmenides, venerable and
awful as in Homeric language he may be called :



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXV11

him I should be ashamed to approach in a spirit un-
worthy of him."
ju^ni The Sophists^ Plato was unceasingly hostile to the
doctrines and practices of the Sophists. He clearly
saw that the So phists w e re not all upon the sameX^ -
level. The best and the worst of them one may be-
come acquainted with in two of the dialogues given
in this volume — Ruth yd em us and Pr otag oras. Eu-^5f^t«D-J
thydemus and his brother, Dionysodorus, are exhib-/. £~.#K.
ited as substantially a pair of confidence men. They '

are ignorant, shallow, unscrupulous tricksters. Their
game is the half-grown youth who has much money
and little judgment. When they have dazzled and
corrupted and robbed the boy, their work is done.
In the dialogue, Plato scorches these men with his
irony, and holds them up to public shame as merci-
lessly as Aristophanes did in the comedy their kind
to which I have referred.

In the Protagoras we are introduced to Sophists^ y^y
of a very different kind. Protagoras, Hippias, and /'

Prodicus were men who had earned distinction by
attainments which are honored in almost all civilized
countries. They were masters of the learning and
of the arts of the time. Judged by any ordinary
standard, the Sophists of this class would receive an
honorable if not an eminent place in the history of
culture. It is held by some scholars that Plato was
not just to them. It is possible that he was not,
although, indeed, he shows very clearly that he was
by no means ignorant of their many gifts and accom-
plishments. The reason for his unfailing antago-
nism to every kind of Sophist is not ignorance of
their attainments, as judged by ordinary standards.



XXV111 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

He utterly ref uses to judge them by o rdinary
**-&£. a^j standards. Eve rythin g ; is eternally judged by o ne
^^U&*- HiSdi^ t he absolute truth . Judged by this stand-
f^^u^fp ard, the most accomplished Sophist stands self-
condemned. He does not believe in the absolute
truth. He does not seek to know it. He does not
seek to obey it. He has no faith in anything except
the power of artifice. His learning, since it never
leads toward the absolute truth, is " the art of giving,
by quibbling criticism, an appearance of knowl-
edge." His rhetoric is not a true but a spurious
art, which does not seek to supply true food for the
soul, but only to concoct highly spiced dishes which
shall pamper and corrupt the people.
.Ayvc^iL/ *f Athen s? 1 . What did Plato think of his own city, —
its art, its religion, its politics? If you glance again
at the brief account which has been given of the
many glories of Athens at that time, or, better, if
you become thoroughly acquainted with the history
of Athens, you may well think that any Athenian
had a right to be proud of his birthplace, — its com-
mercial and political prosperity, its temples, its clas-
sic drama, its impressive religious ceremonials. In-
deed, if you get to know and love the " glory that
was Greece," you may be inclined to anger against
any one who would dare to criticise it. Be angry
if you will, but Plato, who grew up in the midst of
that glory wj^itsj^moxs^le^s_cTit^c. He made his
criticisms in the exquisitely graceful Athenian
fashion, but in substance they are as stern as if
he had been Jeremiah or John Knox. The reason
^^^jv^for this severe judgment^ as in the case of the
Sophists, is that he knows only one standard of



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXIX

judgment, the absolute truth. The paintings, the'
songs, the stories, the dramas, are full of what is
beautiful to the senses, but to the soul they are for,
the most part ugly and evil. When they tell of the :
gods and heroes they are full of lies. When they)
pretend to portray the virtues temperance andt
courage, they misrepresent and mislead. This in-\
fluence is for the most part corrupting, and they
should all be banished from education and from the/
State, except such as really lead the soul toward the/
truth.

In a like spirit Plato criticised the business and po-<^£*^^^
litical life of his time. The people are wasting their 4 ^*^^^
life for that which is not bread. Some want military t

glory, some want money, some want pleasure. All
these wants lead more or less rapidly to ruin in this
world and the next. The people need one thing —
to be under the power of the truth. They need wise
and righteous men, who have, by years of search,
come to know the truth, to direct the state and the
activities of its citizens. Only in such a state can
there be true health and happiness for the people.



PLATO AS DRAMATIST.

I do not call Plato a dramatist merely because h
wrote in dialogue. A dialogue is not always dra
matic. The speakers may be only masks, through
which one hears always the author's voice. Plato
himself often writes in this style. In such cases we
presently see through the masks and discover that
the dialogue is only an essay.

There is proof of Plato's dramatic gift in the




XXX GENERAL INTRDOUCTION

H4B ^9ol g ra P^ic pictures of Greek life which make the set-
'^'Ctd&fp ting of his dialogues. But this would have slight im-
portance, if those pictures were found to be only a
sort of artistic coating for his philosophical pill.
/ The justification for calling Plato £j L j ln^ati^ be-

Z7*" comes more substantial when one finds a dialogue

^*°K*¥} whose slor}^JllusJtrates_the theme_discussed. Take,
for example, The Symposium. The theme is love.
One after another of the banqueters praises love in
a new way. At length Socrates unfolds his own
view. Suddenly in bursts a crowd of revelers,
drowning all discussion and scattering ail serious
thought. When the leader of the revel learns what
the banqueters have been doing, he also will make a
speech. But he will choose his own subject. He
will make a speech about Socrates. The interrup-
tion and the speech are very interesting, but what
of that? It would be interesting \i Bildad, the Shu-
hite, should comfort Job with a fiddle. Why should
Plato, any more than the author of Job, interrupt
sublime discourse by a farce ? A little closer inspec-
tion, however, shows that the interruption is not
real, that the subject is not changed, that the de-
bauched revelers and the story which Alcibiades
tells of his relations with Socrates, together illus-
trate the whole range of beastly, human, and divine
love which it is the purpose of the dialogue to
portray. In the Phaedo, Phasdrus, and elsewhere,
there are other fine examples of Plato's skill in mak-
ing the story of one spirit with the argument.
V But the full justification for calling Plato a dram -
atisi docs not rest upon such occasional examples
of his art. If this were all, we should only say that




GENERAL INTRODUCTION xxxi

Plato is a philosopher who sometimes shows that
he might have been a dramatist. Plato is a drama -
tist because of this ; It is never enough for him to
knozv the absolute solution of any problem. He wishes
also to i know, with the sympathetic 'imagination, just
how men of every sort look at that problem. In
most of his dialogues, not all, Plato somewhere
seeks to work his way toward the absolute truth
by rigid systematic thinking. Thej^_Ji£Js_rjurely
pjiilo^opjisi. There the dialogue is only form,
and the speakers courteously make way for the
argument. But in no dialogue is this the only thing
done. All sorts and conditions of men are intro-
duced — a slave boy, a confidence man, an ignorant
braggart, a rake, a youth eager for learning, a pro-
fessor of things-in-general, a physician, a poet, a
business man, a philosopher — a great range of peo-
ple, historical and fictitious, representing every
phase of the life of his time. These people are not
masks. Some of them feel even to us as real as
Shakespeare's Mercutio, or Polonius, or Dogberry.
Often they are given their way with the argument.
Often within the same dialogue first one and then
another type of man takes the lead and fixes the plane
of the conversation. Now they tussle at the prob-
lem like puppy dogs (Republic, VII., 539), Socrates
tussling gayly with the rest. Now some one smoth-
ers discerning inquiry with a fine oration, and per-
haps Socrates matches this with another of the same
sort. Now an eager youth plunges courageously
into a discussion beyond his depth, and Socrates
follows him with joyful applause, often without a
hint that there are depths in the problem which the



xxxii GENERAL INTRODUCTION

youth has not sounded. In many cases the dialogue
ends with the question at issue unsettled. In such
cases one sees that Plato's purpose in that dialogue
is noJ^toj>ejLfor^

rn£njnjy^ig|>vle_jo^ The former were the

*"^*£' ac hieve men t of a philosophe r; the latter is the
^achie vement of a dramatis t whose drama is the whole
spiritual journey of mankind. If I may borrow a
figure from Pilgrim's Progress, I shall say that Plato,
the Philosopher, had sight of the Celestial City ; but
that Plato, the Dramatist, kept also in view the long
way back to the City of Destruction. He knew all the
way stations upon that road, how many there are,
how far apart, and how in one or another of them —
in Vanity Fair, in the Valley of Humiliation, in the
Slough of Despond, in the Arbor of the Enchanted
Ground — men dance or curse or pray or lie in peril-
ous sleep far from the Celestial City.

PLATO THE LOVERJ

This title is not a new invention. In several ways
Plato distinctly claimed it for himself. For one
thing, he called himself philo-sophos, lover of wisdom.
This title meant two things. It meant for one thing
that he would not be called sophos, wise. This was
not mock humility. In one sense Plato was not
humble. He was a proud man. He believed that
he had found the way toward truth while most men
wander blind and helpless in other ways. He be-
lieved that he had found some essential truth which
the world must accept or perish for lack of. When
he had these things in mind, he spoke with the dog-



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXxiii

matic authority of a prophet. But just because he
saw so far into the truth of things, he § a w more
clearly than most men ever do, ^h^tjh^wh^lej^uih
jsjiot j p be compassed_ in thi s life , that none is Wise
but God. And just because he felt so deeply the
need of actual truth, to live by, now, he turned
from all pretense of wisdom with instinctive hatred.
There will be nothing new in this to any one who
has learned Plato from his own writings. In most
dialogues, the Platonic Socrates is more genuinely
docile than his antagonists or disciples. On the day
of his death, he warned those about him against
letting their love of him add undue weight to his
arguments, and bade them withstand him might and
main, where he seemed astray. 1

But the title philo-sophos meant more with Plato
than a recognition that he was not like God, — wise.
Above all things this title meant that he was quite
literally a lover of wisdom, that his desire to be
wise was a passion. In order to prepare one's self to
appreciate Plato's passion for the Absolute Good,
one might read some of those passages in the Bible
which express the longing of the soul for God. The
Psalmist says, " As the hart panteth for the water
brooks, so longeth my soul for Thee." " My soul
longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the
Lord ; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living
God." Moses declares that the first and greatest

1 A fashionable amusement of this century is to bait philosophers. It may
be that philosophers as a class deserve and need this chastisement. As a
rule, however, those who, professing to speak for common sense or for ex-
act science, deride philosophical inquiry into the problems of life, will give
you the solution to any such problem while standing on one leg. Such
men make queer figures in presence of Socrates.



XXXIV GENERAL INTRODUCTION

commandment is " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, -and
with all thy strength," and to this Christ adds,
" and with all thy mind." The emotional tone of
these and such passages is characteristically dif-
ferent from that of Plato, but his language is not
less strong. One can imagine his quoting and
approving all these passages. 1 In the Phasdrus and
Symposium, Plato represents l ove as a jpri ncipje
wjn^cji^^mj^esj^r^^

§ion_jrp_ Jojhe j^u Jjestjonging for absolute truth . I n
all its forms it is intense, a mania, an ecstasy. In its
highest form, it is holy fire in which the earthly
soul is consumed and the heavenly soul is reborn.

But Plato is more than philo-sophos, lover of wis-
dom. With the same intensity and for the same
reason he is phil-anthropos, lover of men. Love, says
the wise woman, Diotima, in the Symposium, is not
love of the beautiful' and good only. Love is essen-
tially love of " birth in beauty." " Some," she goes
on, " beget earthly children, but some are more
creative in their souls." " He who in youth has the

(seeds of temperance and justice implanted in him
desires to implant them in others." Above all,
when he finds a fair and noble and well-nourished
soul, " h^js__fuJJ^_oX_srje^cJi__a^
nature anxLpursuj ts of a g ood_man,,and he tries to
educate him, and they are married by a far closer
tie and have closer friendship than those who beget
mortal children, for the children who are their com-

1 As nearly as I can characterize the difference, it is this ; Plato is not
himself so lost in the ecstatic longing which he describes as the Psalmist
seems to be.



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXV

mon offspring are fairer and more immortal." In
such deep fashion would Plato, the pagan, realize
the maxim, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

PLATO THE TEACHER.-lv^l4.*tc^^

Socrates and Plato have universal fame as teach-
ers. Their fame is usually attributed to their de-
velopment of the so-called Socratic m ethod of teach-â„¢****- J
ing. That device requires, therefore, special consid- eration. y

S^crates_and_ P jato belie ved that the truth i sfr^i,^
latent in I he^soul ; ^that to waken this latent trutli^^^jfc*
into clear consciousness is very difficult p*that the
highest means of achieving this end is systematic
reflection ; and that systematic reflection in its step-
by-step approach to clear knowledge takes naturally
the verbal form of a series of questions and answers.
They used this device in their own most difficult in-
vestigations, and with their most mature disciples.
They sometimes used it with less mature disciples,
and even with illiterate persons. (So, for example,
in a passage from the Meno, much quoted in educa-
tional journals, Socrates, by a series of questions,
leads an illiterate slave boy to see for himself the
truth of a simple geometrical proposition.) They
us ed the de vic^jtjimejjrjmjcally, that is, for the
purpose of revealing to an antagonist the contradic-
tions between his different assertions. Finally, it is
not to be denied that they sometimes used the de -
Xic^_ia_a_^n£nnej_j^

and it would be difficult to prove that in all such
cases the sophistry is ironical.



XXX VI GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The Socratic method, more or less perfectly un-
derstood, has had great influence upon professional
Pedagogy. In many schools for the professional
training of teachers, and in many schools in charge
of teachers professionally trained, systematic ques-
v£ tioning of this sort is looked upon as ideal teaching ;
'^'•'and there is no lack of conscientious endeavor to
prepare for use in recitation, series of questions
which shall lead the child mind to take the logical
steps which given occasions require. One who
doubts the value of such systematic questioning
• may usually be converted by hearing a single typi-
cal recitation conducted by a master of the art.
The power of such a recitation to touch, move,
chasten, and direct the soul is so evident, that if
Socrates and Plato had taught us nothing but how
to do such work their fame as teachers would be
justified.
: & < ~~*£C SL If, however, systematic questioning were the
I^L£r^ whole Socratic art, we should be obliged to say that
"^^that art stands in unfavorable contrast with many
other arts and occupations. For in most arts and oc-
cupations, systematic procedure is not the sole or
highest ideal. On the contrary, it is the open secret
of successful men generally that sj^tejxuiuistjbo^jtp
cjjj^naslanj£e^ A great business man knows that the
method of running a railroad and the method of
running a kerosene wagon cannot be interchanged
with profit to either, and perhaps uses both methods
at the same time for the benefit of the same corpo-
ration {e.g., The Standard Oil Company). A great
lawyer knows well the power of technicality, but
also when to leave the little men chopping logic



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXvii

over legal trivialities, and rest his case upon a com-
mon sense principle which the highest courts will
declare to be the law. A great general conforms to
the rules of military science when he is fighting
British Regulars, and abandons those rules when he
is fighting Indians in ambush. (Compare Washing-
ton in the Revolution and Washington at Brad-
dock's Defeat.) A great statesman has a task not
unlike that of the teacher. He has to deal with hu-
man beings. He has to lead them if he can, froni^,
their present position to a higher. He has to in-
struct, persuade, convert, — achieve with the folk es-
sentially the same things that the teacher has tc
achieve with the smaller folk. In doing this work
he does not underestimate the educational value of
formalities, of platforms, statutes, decisions, and ex-
ecutive acts. He knows the power of logical argu-
ment in print or on the stump, and indeed the oc-
casional value of Socratic questioning as a weapon
in debate. (See, for example, the use of formal ques-
tions in the Lincoln-Douglass debate.) But no mas-
ter statesman wins his place as leader, teacher,
father of the folk, by any sort of systematic pro-
cedure. He meets men face to face. He looks
them through to the marrow. He is subtle as a
lover to find the right word or the right silence.
He wins men for his idea by winning them for him-
self. As Tennyson says : " He lays his mind upon
them, and they believe in his belief."

In presence of such ideals and achievements among
men of affairs, what can be said of systematic So-
cratic questioning as the sole or highest ideal for
teaching ? Is there nothing in a child but logical



XXXV111 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

apparatus ? Are all the informal ways by which
statesmen from Moses to Lincoln have led the folk
too informal and unscientific for little folk ? Is that
surely the best way of " leading the child mind to
take the necessary steps," by which you would not
dare try to elicit the necessary steps, if you were
applying for a position, — or a wife ? Whatever-the
modern professor of didactics may think of these
things, it is certain that the power of Socrates him-
self did^not lie wholly in his gift for catechising.
He did not cast a spell over the men of his genera-
tion — business men, soldiers, politicians, philoso-
phers, and rakes — simply by subjecting them to
logical inquisition. If Plato affirmed this of his
master, those who know human nature would not
believe it. But Plato says nothing of the sort. Let
us turn from the hand-books on didactics to Plato
for an account of the real Socratic Art.

In Phasdrus, 271-272, Plato says that the orator
(and the orator in this case is essentially a teacher)
should have three degrees of knowledge of the soul.

1. He should know the " true nature of the soul,
how she acts or is acted upon." If Plato's philoso-
phy of teaching had stopped here, perhaps he would
Jiave supposed that his systematic questioning was

ie whole art of teaching. But he went farther.

2. The orator or teacher should know the several
1 classes of men, and " why one sort of soul is per-
suaded by one argument, and another not."

3. He is to become acquainted with men in actual
life, and " be able to follow them with all his wits
about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts
of his masters." lie must in this way at last be able,



GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXIX

when confronting an actual man, to say, " This is the
man who needs this argument to be convinced of this
thing." " When he has attained the knowledge of
all this and knows when he should speak, and when
he should abstain from speaking, when he should
make use of pithy sayings, pathetic appeals, aggra-
vated effects and all the other figures of speech, when
he knows the times and seasons of all these things,
then, and not till then, is he perfect master of the art."
This wonderfully inclusive Ps ychology of Educa-
tion.e mbracing at the one extrem e the essential nat-
ure j3f the soul and at the other the infinitely varied
rjeculiarit ies__QJL individuals, was n ot with Plato a