Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/540

 526 J. A. STEWART: Soul ') is fundamental. 1 Where ' Intellect ' comes in is where Means conducive to the Type of Life posited as End by Organism are sought for. Now, I am far from wishing to argue that, because the doctrine which Prof. Burnet attributes to Plato is not true, he is wrong in attributing it. Plato may have held this erroneous doctrine, and there are, doubtless, passages which can be plausibly interpreted as showing that he did hold it. But unwillingness to believe that a man of Plato's calibre is wrong in a matter of such fundamental importance as the nature of our apprehension of the ' Good ' makes one pause and look round for fuller evidence. This paper has already run to such length that I must not do more than merely indicate the results of my circumspection. (a) In Republic 509 B, in the locus classicus about the i'8e'a rayaQov, it is Said to be lireKtiva rrjs ouo-ias. Now ovcria is the object of scientific knowledge. The Good, therefore, is beyond knowledge. It is assumed in knowledge : the assumption in knowledge is that its objects are worth knowing that the knowledge of them conduces to the welfare of a Type of Life which posited itself as End before ' knowledge ' entered its service. (b) Again, in Theeetetus 185 A-186 C, 'categories,' as we may call them, are distinguished under the two heads of ouo-i'a Being, and ax^eAcia Value, and Good and Evil, Beauty and Deformity are placed under the latter head. Since the I/M^T) avr?; realises its ' cate- gories ' in judgments, we have here the distinction between ' theoretic ' and ' value ' judgments recognised as fundamental, and the a priori character of the two ' value- judgments ' affirmed. In the Theatetus, then, just as in the Republic, the ' Good ' is distinguished carefully from ovo-ia the proper object of ' knowledge '. (c) And what are we to think of Plato's insistence on Ipws as indispensable to the pursuit of knowledge tXoo-oia ? The ' Good ' and the ' Beautiful ' are objects of Knowledge only so far as they are indicated by Love. To say that they are " known by Intellect alone "is, I fear, ' not Platonic '. I must not trespass any further on the Editor's valuable space, 1 Prof. Burnet says : " The Vegetative Soul is confined to the feelings of pleasure and pain attendant on bodily evacuation and repletion ". It is the Sensitive Soul which experiences these feelings. The Vegetative Soul is unconscious. But I am not aware that the distinction between Vegetative Soul and Sensitive Soul is anywhere formulated by Plato as it is by Aristotle. That Plato himself viewed Myth in connexion with what I call the 'Vegetative Soul,' I should no more think of asserting than I should think of asserting that Swedenborg himself referred his visions to the cause which the modern psychologist might find for them. My object was simply to ask my readers to look at Myth especially as illustrated in Plato in the light of a view of its nature and function to which modern psychology is now, for the first time, pointing ; certainly not to suggest that Plato himself held that view. Hence Prof. Burnet's remarks : " Aristotle thinks more nobly of the ' Vegetative Soul ' than Plato does," and "There is no trace in Plato of any such doctrine as Prof. Stewart's " are not to the point.