Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/412

 398 CRITICAL NOTICES : conscious players for the shadow-picture which is this world's illusion. We say confidently that the shadows which are all that the bound prisoners see correspond to the concrete particulars of the visible world, that Plato's wall runs on the caveward side of a road passing the mouth of the cave, and that the paxpav of 514 A refers not to the dimensions of the cave from front to back, but to the breadth of its mouth. The mouth is wide and the breadth at the mouth is the same as at the front where the row of prisoners is bound. The curoSos might be wide but wider or narrower than the main part of the cave, or it might be of uniform width with the cave and yet not wide enough for any simultaneous variety of irapa^epovr^ and o-Kfvao-ru. Hence neither phrase is otiose. In 590 B we have no sort of doubt that the snaky element is appetitive and not concerned with the ^//oeiSes at all. The con- struction of the article only gives a sort of unity to the non-rational soul as made up of spirit and concupiscence. The 'degenerate kinds ' of flu/xos by which Dr. Adam explains simply do not exist in Plato. The effect of bad nurture upon spirit (441 A, as limited by 440 B, and illustrated by 411 B) can only be interpreted as atrophy, never as perversion. Auo-KoAia is not a low type of (9i^6s, but a type of character deficient in $u/xos. Like conscience Plato's Ovfjios may be numbed, it cannot be vitiated. In 437 D, ingenious as Dr. Adam's note is, we cannot think that the relevance of the argument depends upon a cast forward to 438 A. Rather it is a reply to a possible objection that, inasmuch as there is an opposition between appetites, the canon that what may be found in contradiction cannot be identical might be taken to prove that appetite is not one but many, and that the ' parts ' of the soul are not three but indefinite in number, with disastrous results to the parallel of state and individual. Nay, says Plato in effect, the opposition of appetites is only in virtue of their TTfioo-yiyvo/Aem, and contrary Tr^otrytyvo/xera, whose opposition alone could be fundamental, do not coexist in the same soul. Different appetites are only opposed then accidentally. In 511 D we are quite satisfied alike with the construction with fcairot, and with the explanation which has been expressed in print most concisely by Prof. Campbell. The higher vorfrn, i.e., all ideas short of the Good, are not //.em dpxv? in Plato's sense as Dr. Adam alleges (vol. ii., p. 87). The ground of the view lies perhaps in Dr. Adam's conviction (ad 505 A) that the Good is to be identified with God, mainly ' on the principle that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another'. Despite of some passages pointing to identification 379 B, C is one, even though the Idea of Good is not yet in question this seems doubtful. In the Timceus that which in our view corresponds to the Idea of Good, whatever Cambridge Platonism may say to the contrary, is distinguished from God. And things which are unequal to the same thing are unequal to one another.