Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/371

 370 D. G. RITCHIE : Greek language does not admit of a distinction between validity and being. 1 Plato's ideas are not to be thought of as equivalent to Leibniz's monads, though Leibniz himself strangely thought so (Epist. ad Hanschium, 1707, Ed. Erd- mann, p. 445). Bather they are the equivalent in Plato to what we call laws of nature. The Idea of the Good is in Plato's system ' God ' ; and Leibniz makes God the monad of monads. But is not this just the final inconsistency in Leibniz's system ? If we are to explain a universe of monads, God must be the totality and unity of the relations between the monads ; but this is a reconciliation which Leibniz did not adopt. (2) The soul has not indeed the same absolute significance or value that the ideas have, but it has a signi- ficance or value which the composite man or animal has not. It is, as has already been argued, ' nearer to ' or ' more akin to ' the ideas, because it is what knows and so is ultimately of the same nature with what is known, i.e., the ideas. The identity of the knowing and the known is thus the logical truth at the bottom of the ideal theory, as we have already seen in the special case of the doctrine of Kecollection. The soul not being an idea, may we say that there is an idea of the soul ? We talk of souls as we talk of other classes or kinds of existences ; so that, according to the view of the ideal theory which we have in the Republic, there ought to be an idea of the soul. Plato certainly never uses the phrase. But Mr. Archer-Hind thinks it necessary in the argument in the Plwedo to assume this " metaphysical monstrosity " as he calls it. " We have," he says, " the following terms; (1) the idea of life, (2) the idea of soul, which carries the idea of life to particular souls, (3) the particular soul, which vivifies the body, (4) the body in which is displayed this vivifying power." In the argument soul is treated of as parallel to the triad (the abstract three), and Plato does use the phrase rj TWV rpiwv ISea (104 D) ; so that there would seem no escape from this conclusion. But surely, if we are to argue from the view of the theory of ideas in the Republic, Plato does not place the abstract conceptions of mathematics on the same level with the ideas, but in an intermediate region between the particular things of sense and the ideal world. The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers served Plato as sug- gestion and starting-point for his theory of ideas ; and the relation of abstract numbers to concrete numbered things 1 When Aristotle says : 6 ira<ri8oKfl TOVT flvai^a^v (Eth. Nic. . 2, 4) lu- means that universal opinion has n-nrfh or ruli'/itif, that there is in it (an dement of) rationality, as in the parallel passage in Eth. Xic. vii. 13, 6, Travra $ucret f fl Tl