Plato is always a student and teacher of ethical psychology. The “Republic” is an investigation as to the exact nature and definition of justice. The avowed purpose in outlining the ideal State is to descry, writ large therein, the quality which we cannot clearly see in the microcosm, man. To take for granted the essential identity between the individual life and the career of a State is an example of Plato’s splendid poetic audacity. Socrates’ favorite pupil, here fully in accord with the real Socrates, firmly believed that accurate knowledge in such matters was the only secure road to character: that knowledge, reasoned knowledge, is essentially one with virtue, and that ignorance is the true source of folly, of sin, of misery. Aristotle assures us that the real Socrates discovered inductive reasoning and showed the value of general definitions; both weighty contributions to true philosophy. Yet we may be sure that in the “Republic,” the masterpiece of Plato’s later maturity, the chief contribution is from the author’s own creative imagination.
In many of the dialogues we are taught that man’s soul is triple in its nature. The most magnificent illustration of this doctrine is the myth of the “Phædrus,” where the baser appetite and the nobler passionate impulse appear as a pair of steeds, one usually bent on thwarting, the other on aiding, the charioteer, who is, of course, the Will. In the “Republic” this triple division reappears, the workers and the soldiers of the State being alike under the guidance of the counsellors.
Again, Plato firmly believes that our life is a banishment of the soul from an infinitely higher and happier existence, and that each may hope to rise again, when worthy, to the sphere from which he has fallen through sin. Naturally blended with this creed is the belief in reincarnation, in metempsychosis; a faith not peculiar to any land or age. So the Hindu to-day hopes to escape at last, after many lives lived out with innocence, from the merciless “wheel of things.” Some memory, even, of the higher sphere, the soul may still retain. Here Wordsworth’s loftiest ode will help to explain the faith of Plato.
Most famous perhaps of all Plato’s beliefs is the doctrine of the Ideas. No quality, no attribute, no material form, even, exists in our world of sense in its perfection. Out of many
