Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/32

 

 

to the order adopted in this work, ends with the Repubhc, the 'conception of Mind' and a way of speaking more in agreement with modern terminology, in the latter half. But there is no reason to suppose that Plato's theory, or, rather, his various theories, of the Ideas underwent any definite change during his period of authorship. They are substantially the same in the twelfth Book of the Laws (962, 963 foil.) as in the Meno and Phaedo ; and since the Laws were written in the last decade of his life, there is no time to which this change of opinions can be ascribed. It is true that the theory of Ideas takes several different forms, not merely an earher and a later one, in the various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas, existing by participation or by imitation, one and many, in different parts of his writings or even in the same passage (cp. Vol. II. p. 13 foil). They are the universal definitions of Socrates, and at the same time ' of more than mortal knowledge' (Rep. vi. 485). But they are always the negations of sense, of matter, of generation, of the particular : they are always the subjects of know- ledge and not of opinion ; and they tend, not to diversity, but to unity. Other entities or intelligences are akin to them, but not the same with them, such as mind, measure, limit, eternity, essence (cp. Philebus sub fin. ; Timaeus passim) : these and similar terms appear to express the same truths from a different point of view, and to belong to the same sphere with them. But we are not justified, therefore, in attempting to identify them, any more than in wholly opposing them. The great oppositions of the sensible and intellectual, the unchangeable and the transient, in whatever form of words expressed, are always maintained in Plato. But the lesser logical distinctions, as we should call them, whether of ontology or predication,