In his twentieth year he attached himself to Sokrates, who was then at the height of his reputation as a moralist and dialectician. After the judicial murder of his master, 399, he withdrew from his native city, which, with a theological intolerance extremely rare in pagan antiquity, had already been disgraced by the previous persecution of another eminent teacher—Anaxagoras—the instructor of Euripides and of Perikles. Plato then resided for some time at Megara, at a very short distance from Athens, and afterwards set out, according to the custom of the eager searchers after knowledge of that age, on a course of travels.
He traversed the countries which had been visited by Pythagoras, but his alleged visit to the further East is as traditional as that of his predecessor. The most interesting fact or tradition in his first travels is his alleged intimacy with the Greek prince of Syracuse, the elder Dionysius, and his invitation to the western capital of the Hellenic world. The story that he was given up by his perfidious host to the Spartan envoy, and by him sold into slavery, though not disprovable, may be merely an exaggerated account of the ill-treatment which he actually received.
His grand purpose in going to Italy was, without doubt, the desire to become personally known to the eminent Pythagoreans whose headquarters were in the southern part of the Peninsula, and to secure the best opportunities of making himself thoroughly acquainted with their philosophic tenets. At that time the most eminent representative of the school was the celebrated Archytas, one of the most extraordinary mathematical geniuses and mechanicians of any age. Upon his return to Athens, at about the age of forty, he established his ever-memorable school in the suburban groves or “gardens” known as Ἀκαδημία—whence the well-known Academy by which the Platonic philosophy is distinguished, and which, in modern days, has been so much vulgarised. All the most eminent Athenians, present and future, attended his lectures, and among them was Aristotle, who was destined to rival the fame of his master. From about 388 to 347, the date of his death, he continued to lecture in the Academy and to compose his Dialogues.
In the intervals of his literary and didactic labours he twice visited Sicily; the first time at the invitation of his friend Dion, the relative and minister of the two Dionysii, the younger of whom had succeeded to his father’s throne, and whom Dion hoped to win to justice and moderation by the eloquent wisdom of the Athenian sage. Such hopes were doomed to bitter disappointment. His second visit to Syracuse was undertaken at the urgent entreaties of his Pythagorean friends, of whose tenets and dietetic principles he always remained an ardent admirer. For whatever reason, it proved unsuccessful. Dion was driven into exile, and Plato himself escaped only by the interposition of Archytas. Thus the only chance of attempting the realisation of his ideal of a communistic commonwealth—if he ever actually entertained the hope of realising it—was frustrated. Almost the only source of the biographies of Plato are the Letters ascribed to him, commonly held to be fictitious, but maintained to be genuine by Grote. The narrative of the first visit to Sicily is found in the seventh Letter.
We can refer but briefly to the nature of the philosophy and writings of Plato. In the notice of Pythagoras it has been stated that Plato valued very highly that teacher’s methods and principles. Pythagoreanism, in fact, enters very largely into the principal writings of the great disciple and exponent (and, it may safely be added, improver) of Sokrates, especially in the Republic and the Timæus. The four cardinal virtues inculcated in the Republic—justice or righteousness (Δικαιοσύνη), temperance or self-control (Εγκρατεία or Σωφροσύνη), prudence or wisdom (Φρονήσις), fortitude (Ἀνδρεία)—are eminently pythagorean.
The characteristic of the purely speculative portion of Platonism is the theory of ideas (used by the author in the new sense of unities, the original meaning being forms and figures), of which it may be said that its merit depends upon its poetic fancy rather than upon its scientific value. Divesting it of the verbiage of the commentators, who have not succeeded in making it more intelligible, all that need be said of this abstruse and fantastic notion is, that by it he intended to convey that all sensible objects which, according to him, are but the shadows and phantoms of things unseen, are ultimately referable to certain abstract conceptions or ideas, which he termed unities, that can only be reached by pure thinking. Hence he asserted that “not being in a condition to grasp the idea of the Good with full distinctness, we are able to approximate to it only so far as we elevate the power of thinking to its proper purity.” Whatever may be thought of the premiss, the truth and utility of the deduction may be allowed to be as unquestionable as they are unheeded. This characteristic theory may be traced to the belief of Plato not only in the immortality, but also in the past eternity of the soul. In the Phædrus, under the form of allegory, he describes the soul in its former state of existence as traversing the circuit of the universe where, if reason duly control the appetite, it is initiated, as it were, into the essences of things which are there disclosed to its gaze. And it is this ante-natal experience, which supplies the fleshly mind or soul with its ideas of the beautiful and the true.
The subtlety of the Greek intellect and language was, apparently, an irresistible temptation to their greatest ornaments to indulge in the nicest and most mystic speculation, which, to the possessors of less subtle intellects and of a far less flexible language, seems often strangely unpractical and hyperbolic. Thus while it is impossible not to be lost in admiration of the marvellous powers of the Greek dialectics, one cannot but at the same time regret that faculties so extraordinary should have been expended (we will not say altogether wasted) in so many instances on unsubstantial phantoms. If, however, the transcendentalism of the Platonic and other schools of Greek thought is matter for regret, how must we not deplore the enormous waste of time and labour apparent in the theological controversies of the first three or four centuries of Christendom—at least of Greek Christendom—when the omission or insertion of a single letter could profoundly agitate the whole ecclesiastical world and originate volumes upon volumes of refined, indeed, but useless verbiage. Yet even the ecclesiastical Greek writers of the early centuries may lay claim to a certain originality and merit of style which cannot be conceded to the “schoolmen” of the mediæval ages, and of still later times, whose solemn trifling—under the proud titles of Platonists and Aristotelians, or Nominalists and Realists, and the numerous other appellations assumed by them—for centuries was received with patience and even applause. Nor, unfortunately, is this war of Phantoms by any means unknown or extinct in our day. It was the lament of Seneca, often echoed by the most earnest minds, that all, or at least the greater part of, our learning is expended upon words rather than upon the acquisition of wisdom.[13]
Plato deserves his high place among the Immortals not so much on account of any very definite results from his philosophy as on account of its general tendency to elevate and direct human thought and aspirations to sublime speculations and aims. Of all his Dialogues, the most valuable and interesting, without doubt, is the Republic—the one of his writings upon which he seems to have bestowed the most pains, and in which he has recorded the outcome of his most mature reflections. Next may be ranked the Phædo and the Phædrus—the former, it is well known, being a disquisition on the immortality of the soul. In spite of certain fantastic conceptions, it must always retain its interest, as well by reason of its speculations on a subject which is (or rather which ought to be) the most interesting that can engage the mind, as because it purports to be the last discourse of Sokrates, who was expecting in his prison the approaching sentence of death. The Phædrus derives its unusual merit from the beauty of the language and style, and from the fact of its being one of the few writings of antiquity in which the charms of rural nature are described with enthusiasm.
The Republic, with which we are here chiefly concerned, since it is in that important work that the author reproduces the dietetic principles of Pythagoras, may have been first published amongst his earlier writings, about the year 395; but that it was published in a larger and revised edition at