the present moment. enough simply to follow the passing impulse. The immediate pleasure obtained by gratifying an impulse may be more than balanced by a succeeding pain. The mind must be trained by philosophy to estimate and compare pleasures and pains, to master its impulses where their indulgence would lead to an overplus of pain, to be able promptly to discern and to act upon the possibilities offered by every situation of life, keeping itself ever calm and free, unfettered by the prejudices and superstitions of the vulgar. Accordingly it was the boast of Aristippus, no less than of Antisthenes, ‘mihi res, non me rebus subjungere conor'. His apophthegms and witticisms were scarcely less famous than those of Diogenes. The following may suffice as specimens.

But for such enjoyment it is not

(Mullach, Fr. 6,) asked what good he had gained from philosophy, he replied 'to converse freely (@appaλéws) with all.' Fr. 8 and 15, asked why philosophers seek the rich and not the rich philosophers, he replied, 'because the former know what they need, the latter do not. The physician visits his patient, but no one would prefer to be the sick patient rather than the healthy physician.' Fr. 30, when reproached for his intimacy with Lais, he defended himself in the words. ἔχω Λαΐδα ἀλλ ̓ οὐκ ἔχομαι. Fr. 53, ‘He is the true conqueror of pleasure, who can make use of it without being carried away by it, not he who abstains from it altogether.' Fr. 50, Dionysius reminded him, on his begging for money, how he had once said that a philosopher could never be in want. said he, 'and we will discuss that point afterwards.'

'Give the money,'

1 See Horace Epp. 1. 17. 13-32.

The money being given, he said, 'You see it is true, I am not in want.' (Compare with this the manner in which he got his wants supplied in shipwreck, Fr. 61.)

Among the more prominent members of this school was Theodorus, surnamed the Atheist, who lived towards the close of the 4th century, B.C. Objecting to the doctrine of his predecessor on the ground that it did not leave sufficient scope to wisdom, since pleasure and pain are so much dependent on outward circumstances, he put forward as the chief good, not the enjoyment of passing pleasure, but the maintaining of a calm and cheerful frame of mind. The anecdotes related of him have quite a Stoic ring. Thus, when Lysimachus threatened to crucify him, he answers 'keep your threats for your courtiers: it matters not to Theodorus whether his body decays in the earth or above the earth.' Euhemerus, the rationalizing mythologist so much quoted by the Fathers, is said to have been a pupil of his. His contemporary, Hegesias, called Teibávaros from his gloomy doctrine, considered that, as life has more of pain than pleasure, the aim of the wise man should be not to obtain pleasure, but to steel himself against pain. Thus in the end the Cyrenaic doctrine blends with the Cynic.

Plato', the 'deus philosophorum' (Cic. N. D. 11 32), was born of a noble family at Athens 428 B.C. and, like his brothers, Glaucon and Adimantus, and his relations Critias and Charmides, became a disciple of Socrates in 408 B.C. After the death of his master he left Athens and lived at Megara with Euclides. From thence he

1 The best complete edition is Stallbaum's with Latin notes, the best English translation Jowett's in 5 vols. Oxford, 1875.

visited Cyrene, Egypt, Magna Graecia and Sicily. After nearly ten years of travelling he took up his residence again at Athens in 389 B. C. and began to lecture in the gymnasium of the Academia. At the request of Dion he revisited Sicily in 367 with a view of winning over Dionysius the Younger to the study of philosophy, and again in 361 in the hope of reconciling him to Dion; but he was unsuccessful in both attempts, and indeed seems to have been himself in considerable danger from the mercenaries of the tyrant. He died in his eightieth year, B. C. 347.

Building on the foundation of Socrates, he insists, no less than his master, on the importance of negative Dialectic, as a means of testing commonly received opinions; indeed most of his Dialogues come to no positive result, but merely serve to show the difficulties of the subject discussed and the unsatisfactory nature of the solutions hitherto proposed'. As he makes Socrates the spokesman in almost all the Dialogues, it is not always easy to determine precisely where the line is to be drawn between the purely Socratic and the Platonic doctrine, but the general relation of the one to the other may be stated as follows.

In his theory of knowledge Plato unites the Socratic definition with the Heraclitean Becoming and the Eleatic Being. Agreeing with Heraclitus that all the objects of the senses are fleeting and unreal in themselves, he held

1 These are classified by Thrasyllus as λόγοι ζητητικοί, dialogues of search, in opposition to the Moyo úpηyntɩkoí, dialogues of exposition. Among the sub-classes of the former are the ualevтikol (obstetric), and πειραστικοί (testing).

2 See Aristotle Met. A 6. 987, M 4. 1078.

that they are nevertheless participant of Being in so far as they represent to us the general terms after which they are named. Thus we can make no general assertion with regard to this or that concrete triangular thing: it is merely a passing sensation: but by abstraction we may rise from the concrete to the contemplation of the Ideal triangle, which is the object of science, and concerning which we may make universal and absolutely true predications. If we approach the Ideal from below, from the concrete particulars, it takes the form of the class, the common name, the definition, the concept, the Idea; but this is an incomplete view of it. The Ideal exists apart from, and prior to, all concrete embodiment. It is the eternal archetype of which the sensible objects are the copies. It is because the soul in its pre-existent state is already familiar with this archetype, that it is capable of being reminded of it when it sees its shadow in the phenomenal existences which make up the world of sense'. All learning is reminiscence. What

1 The reader will remember the magnificent ode in which Wordsworth has embodied Plato's sublime conception. The fact which underlies it was well illustrated by the late Prof. Sedgwick, commenting on Locke's saying that "the mind previous to experience is a sheet of white paper" (the old rasa tabula), "Naked he comes from his mother's womb, endowed with limbs and senses indeed, well fitted to the material world, yet powerless from want of use: and as for knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank; yet has this blank been already touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colours which surround it, it takes not its tinge from accident, but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious pattern." Discourse, p. 53. The Common-sense Philosophy of the Scotch and the à priori judgments of Kant are other forms of the same doctrine.

2 Cf. Meno, p. 81, and Grote's Plato II. p. 7, 'Socrates illustrates

cannot be traced back to this intuitive consciousness in the soul itself is not knowledge, but mere opinion. Dialectic is the means by which the soul is enabled to recover the lost consciousness of the Ideal. The highest Ideal, which is the foundation of all existence and all knowledge, is the Ideal Good or Goodness ( idéa Tоû áуalov), personified in God. He, as the Creator or Demiurgus, formed the universe by imprinting the ideas on formless chaotic Matter. The process of creation is described in the Timaeus under the form of a myth, Plato holding, like Parmenides, that it was not possible to arrive at more than a symbolical adumbration of physical truth. The cause and ground of creation is the goodness of God, who seeks to extend his own blessedness as widely as possible. He begins his work by constructing the soul of the world out of the two elements before him, the immutable harmonious Ideals and changing discordant Matter. This soul he infuses into the mass of matter, which thereupon crystallizes into the geometrical forms of the four elements, and assumes the shape of a perfect sphere rotating on its axis. The Kosmos thus created is divine, imperishable and infinitely beautiful. Further, each

the position, that in all our researches we are looking for what we have once known but have forgotten, by cross-examining Meno's slave; who, though wholly untaught, and never having heard any mention of geometry, is brought by a proper series of questions to give answers out of his own mind furnishing the solution of a geometrical problem. From the fact that the mind thus possesses the truth of things which it has not acquired in this life, Socrates infers that it must have gone through a pre-existence of indefinite duration.' The same argument is used in the Phaedo to prove the immortality of the soul.