Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/363

 362 D. G. EITCHIE : work in the French revolution ; and yet none the less it was, in certain of its aspects, only an attempt to translate his ideas into facts. Luther might have been horrified at the modern theology and philosophy of Germany ; and yet they are the direct product of his revolt from ecclesiastical authority. No man, not even the greatest and wisest, can fully understand the significance of what he is doing. Thus, while admitting and insisting that Aristotelianism is 'the truth,' or, in other words, gives the philosophical inter- pretation of Platonism, we must not suppose that Plato him- self would have admitted it. We must distinguish between the Platonism of Aristotle and Platonism as it existed for the mind of Plato himself. Hence, however much we feel, with Hegel, that the mythical element, the picture-thinking, is not of the essence of Platonism, we must not go on to say, with Teichmiiller, that Plato himself did not hold any of it at all. To say this is to imply that Plato had an exoteric and an esoteric philosophy, and that when he argued for the immortality of the soul he was deliberately deceiving his readers by ' a noble lie,' such as he allows his rulers to use towards the lower classes in the state. But surely such a ' deception ' is quite foreign to Plato's spirit. No philosopher does his thinking more openly before the public. Because, as we have shown, the truth of the doctrine of Recollection is to be found in that theory of knowledge which presupposes an identity of Thought and Being, it does not follow that Plato himself did not figure to himself the soul as having existed previously to birth and as recovering again in this life some part of the knowledge it had possessed before. However conscious Plato was that such language, in terms of time, was inadequate to express the exact truth, the frequent use of such language must be taken as showing a habit of thinking and not merely an artificial mode of expression. n. Let us now consider separately the arguments for immor- tality in the Phaedo. It has been much debated how many they are. 1 They may be conveniently treated as three in number, though all really form steps in one great argument. 1 It may be convenient to state briefly the distribution of the arguments according to Prof. Gedde.s and Mr. Archer-Hind respectively, their editions being those most likely to be in the hands of the English reader. Geddes. Archer-Hind. I. dvrmr68o(ns (70 C 72 D). 1 j II. avapvTjcris (72 E 76 D). ) III. The soul is simple, not composite in nature II. (78 B 80 E).