Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/536

 522 J. A. STEWART: mind whereby it 'makes nature,' 'moulds environment,' so as to serve the purposes of human life. It is really in such Dialogues as the Charmides, Laches, Euthyphron, Crito, to which may be added the Meno and Cratylus, that the Doctrine of Ideas, as Method of Science, is best illustrated ; and much harm has been done by the quite gratuitous assumption that the e78os which holds so important a place in these Dialogues is not the ' Platonic Idea '. The ' Pla- tonic Idea,' we are told, is not a concept-in-use, but a ' separate substance,' and does not meet us till we come to later Dialogues. But the truth is that wherever there is scientific explanation, wher- ever ' context ' is thought out, the ' Platonic Idea ' is there. This being so, we must put aside as due to neglect of the psychology and methodological significance of the Doctrine of Ideas the view of Prof. Jackson and his followers that there are no ' Ideas ' of qualities, physical or moral, no ' Ideas ' of o-*cevao-Ta, no ' Ideas ' of p.a.6r)p.a.TiKd, that even the ' Categories ' of the Thecetetus and So- phistes are not ' Ideas ' the list of ' Ideas ' being emptied till only ' natural kinds ' are left. While recognising the service which Prof. Natorp has rendered by insisting on the methodological significance of the Doctrine of Ideas ignored by the other expositors whom I have mentioned, I have to find fault with him for assuming that the Doctrine has only that significance. His psychological basis does not include the psychology of that Experience on which Art and Eeligion depend for their inspiration. For that Experience the ' Idea ' is not a ' point of view ' taken by the mind in ' Discourse, ' but a ' real presence ' confronting ' Contemplation '. In ' Discourse ' the mind is always 'on the move,' looking at particulars now from this, now from that, convenient point of view. Wonder does not enter into one's experience here ; rather the sense of ' getting on, ' of ' removing difficulties,' of ' solving new problems '. But in 'Contemplation' the mind ' rests,' wondering, in the presence of one ' eternal ' object. The ' eternal Idea ' is revealed in some welcome some familiar, or beautiful, object of sense literally in the object of sense : not as another object which the object of sense ' resembles,' but as that very object of sense itself transfigured, become a wonder. It is not a Skylark that Shelley hears and sees, but the Skylark. It is as induced and maintained by the representations the /ii^/xara of the Fine Arts especially by those of Painting and Poetry that this Contemplation of the ' eternal Idea ' as a ' real presence ' in the object of sense, is most accessible to the observation of the Psychologist. It is here (where, I may say in passing, the psy- chology of ' emotional memory ' is likely to occupy an important place), not in further examination of the letter of Plato's text, that the Platonic vapova-ia awaits its explanation. Had Prof. Natorp 's psychology taken account of this Variety of Experience, for which the ' Idea ' is not a ' point of view ' in ' Discourse ' but a ' real presence' confronting 'Contemplation,' he could not have spoken as if the Phcedrus Myth were a regrettable episode in Plato's other-