Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/365

 364 D. G. RITCHIE : and characteristic difference. Plato thinks of birth as an " eclipsing curse" : he thinks of the soul as passing through cycles of existence. Fechner is thinking of a continuous development. The idea of a Cycle conditions all the thinking of Plato, and of Aristotle too, both in regard to the individual and in regard to society. We may indeed say that the con- ception of continuous progress is absent alike from their Ethics and their Politics. This argument from the alternation of opposites is how- ever not allowed to stand alone. It is at once supplemented by the doctrine of Kecollection. Mr. Archer-Hind insists that these must be considered as making up together only one argument, avTa-rroSoa-is proving the existence of the soul, avdiAvrjais its possession of intelligence (consciousness) apart from the present bodily life. We may note that Plato him- self (73 A, wcrre K al ravrrj dddvarov rj TJrvYfl TL eoivev elvai) seems to treat them as distinct arguments. But the question is not of much importance. In truth all the arguments lead up finally to the argument from the theory of ideas, and this reference to the doctrine of Kecollection already brings in that theory. We have previously considered this doctrine of Recollection and seen that it necessarily implies only the presupposition in knowledge of an eternal element, i.e., an element not dependent on temporal conditions : it implies the eternal character of thought, not the continued duration of the individual human person, although Plato himself, at least at some part of his life, may quite well have interpreted it in connexion with an actual belief in continued personal, or at least individual, existence. 2. The next argument is, that the soul being simple and not composite is indissoluble : it cannot perish by being decomposed. It may be supposed that this is the same argu- ment which has been largely used since Plato's time and which is criticised by Kant 1 viz., that the soul is permanent because it is a simple substance. But the conception of the soul as ' substance ' is an addition to Plato's view which we do not find in Plato himself. 2 If we are to compare this position of Plato's with any modern position, we might rather compare it with a view such as results from Kant's 1 Crit. of Pure, Reason, 'Transcend. Dial.,' look ii., "Refutation of the Argument of Mendelssohn for the Substantiality or Permanence of the Soul". 2 It might indeed seem to receive countenance from the words in 92 D, wcnrep avrrjs f<TTiv TJ oiicrla f^oucra rrv (7T(i)vvp.lav rfjv TOV o tcmv, which appear In make absolute existence the substance of the soul. But if the words mean this, they stand in contradiction to all that is said elsewhere in Plato. And Schanz is probably justified in altering avrf)s, of the MSS., into 01/7-77.