Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/302

 NOTES AND COEEESPONDENCE. 301 nyvoia t) TOV l^ftvcr^fvov, is the essential and primary falsehood, TO ye a>s aXrjdats ^fv8ot, of which spoken falsehood, TO eV ro'ts Aoyots (whether poetical fiction or intentional lying), is a mere secondary image. The lie iii the soul is thus unquestionably treated as a greater evil than the intentional spoken lie. The former is regarded as the essence, the latter as the accident, and the latter as capable of existing without the former, for it is ov Trdvv aKparov lsev8os. Further, the lie in the soul is always involuntary : TO> Kvpia>raro> eaurajv ^(i/Sfvdai ovftfls fKcov (0ed. The antithesis is not completed in Rep. 382 by pronouncing TO eV TOLS yois ^(v8os to be voluntary, although this is .strongly implied in respect at least of the exceptional cases in which it may be fjtr] aiov pto-ovs. But no one who compares the two passages can doubt that it is the fKovcriov -^evdos of 535. And its voluntary character is certainly not restricted to the cases in which it is allowable ; for in them it is not hateful, while it is characterised as eicovo-iov -^evSos in the very sentence which emphatically pronounces it abominable. It is therefore un- questionably regarded in these two passages as voluntary pravity, and yet as secondary to and less terrible than ignorance, the state in which the mind itself is helplessly given over to the falsehood. Plato is appealing, in the first instance, to the plain fact that the very man who does not mind telling a lie will acutely resent having a lie told to him, i.e., regards being' de- ceived as an evil. Plato's expressions, however, in these two passages do certainly to my mind seem perverse, in so far as for the moment he neglects the bad will of the intentional lie and treats it as essentially a spoken mistake. But it is plain that the fundamental idea which Plato is illustrat- ing is much more profound than this : it is that the cause is worse or more real as an evil than the effect ; that the degradation and perversion of the whole mind, for which ignorance in his wider use of language is a term, is a more terrible thing than its emanation in a bad act, which, as accepted by that perverted mind, is in one sense voluntary. 1 do not think that Plato's general tendency to deny the existence of voluntary pravity substantially traverses the above result. Such a denial may aim at suppressing a fact or at modifying an explanation. Plato's doctrine in the Republic aims only at the latter ; whereas I should imagine that the views of the historical Socrates had rather the former bias. In the Republic, the existence of voluntary wickedness, wickedness arising from no intellectual miscalculation, but from the appetite and lust of the individual, is enforced with all the powers of language. In the description of the slave of lust (the ' tyrannical ' man), it is impossible not to recognise pravity which in any ordinary sense of language must be considered voluntary. And though Plato loves to recur to the idea of mere intellectual deception, as in the argument that the pleasures of sin are not genuine, it is obvious that all through this part of the Republic he tends to transform the idea of ' involuntary ' into the idea of ' voluntary, but not in the true sense,' i.e., not emanating from a complete and harmonious self. Thus the doctrine that vice is ignorance and so involuntary tends to pass into the doctrine that vice emanates from an irrational element, and so from a spurious will. ' Involuntary ' passes into ' not free ' and merely denies any explanation of vice which involves its issuing from the true or rational self. With a doctrine undergoing this amplification, it is not surprising that Plato should yield to common usage so far as to call a form of vice fKovcriov, i.e., willed but not freely willed. The key to all this part of the Republic is surely in the words (Rep. 577), *at rj Tvpavvovfj.tvr) apa ^vx^l fJKicrTa Troika-el, a av (3ovr]fi, wy Trfpl oTjs fiTTflv ^u^^r, the mind which is the slave of lust (rvpawovfjiivri) is, as he has just said, 86vrj, not IXfvQepa. The qualification wr irepl oXr/? K. r. X., shows in the plainest way that Plato