never can be, because the solution of it depends upon internal evidence only. To ' the height of this great argument' I do not propose to ascend. But one little fact, not irrelevant to the present discussion, will show how hopeless is the attempt to explain Plato out of the writings of Aristotle. In the chapter of the Metaphysics quoted by Dr. Jackson (I. 6), about two octavo pages in length, there occur no less than seven or eight references to "Plato, although nothing really corresponding to them can be found in his extant writings : — a small matter truly ; but what a light does it throw on the character of the entire book in which they occur! We can hardly escape from the conclusion that they are not .statements of Aristotle respecting Plato, but of a later generation of Aristotelians respecting a later generation of Platonists.[1]
(2). There is no hint in Plato's own writings that he was conscious of having made any change in the Doctrine of Ideas such as Dr. Jackson attributes to him, although in the Republic the platonic Socrates speaks of ' a longer and a shorter way ' (iv. 435 ; vi. 504), and of a way in which his disciple Glaucon ' will be unable to follow him ' (vii. 533) ; also of a way of Ideas, to which he still holds fast, although it has often deserted him (Philebus 16 C, Phaedo 97-108), and although in the later dialogues and in the Laws the reference to Ideas disappears, and Mind claims her own (Phil. 31, 65; Laws xii. 965 B). No hint is given of what Plato meant by the ' longer way ' (Rep. iv. 435 D), or ' the way in which Glaucon was unable to follow ' (ib. vii. 533 A); or of the relation of Mind to the Ideas. It might be said with truth that the conception of the Idea pre- dominates in the first half of the Dialogues, which, according
- ↑ Cp. the striking remark of the great Scaliger respecting the Magna Moralia : — llaec non sunt Aristotelis, tamen utiltir aiictoy Aristotelis nomine tanquavi suo.
