;PROFESSOR JOWETT'S TRANSLATION OF PLATO.*
[SECOND NOTICE.]
15IAxv readers will be disposed to regret that Professor Jowett has not prefixed to his translation of the Platonic dialogues a general introduction, containing a sketch of the philosopher's system. As it is, they will only be able to gain a complete conception of his teaching by reading through the introductions to seven-and- twenty separate dialogues, in some cases extending to considerable length. But the absence of such a general view is quite in accordance with the stand-point from which Mr. Jowett has regarded his author, and points to one of the principal merits of the work. We have had too much already about the Platonic " system ;" respectable historians of philosophy have given us elaborate expositions of his " doctrines ;" and even writers of the calibre of Schleiermacher have professed themselves able to detect a vast and consistent scheme, matured even before the death of Socrates, and underlying and gradually developed by successive dialogues, following each other in scientific order. But a jester -method of criticism has shown the fruitlessness of every attempt to discover a consistency which cannot in the nature of things exist. Mr. Maurice and Mr. Grote, though regarding the Pla- tonic dialogues from widely differing points of view, agree in teaching us to abandon the idle search. With the former, " to demonstrate the utter impossibility of such a system, to cut up the notion and dream of it by the roots, is the work and glory of Plato ;" and Mr. Grote's acute and unsparing analysis has shown us how large a portion of his writings must be regarded purely as dialogues of search, how free the play is which he allows to his dialectics in the quest of truth, and how mutually inconsistent are many of his conclusions. Mr. Jewett, like the latter illustrious scholar, has come to the study of each individual dialogue soot with the purpose of finding in it, or thrusting into it, the tenets of a preconceived " system," but rather to discover what the philosopher meant at the time of writing it. This is surely the only legitimate way of treating writings which extend in all probability over a period of fifty years of literary and philosophi- cal activity. We lose thereby the harmony of a consistent body of doctrine, but we gain what is far mare important, the history of a life of thought. Mr. Jowett is not afraid of recognizing many internal contradictions, or of showing us how a theory, at one time regarded as the very keystone of the palace of truth, is at another passed over in silence, or even explicitly controverted. Hence it follows that he agrees with Mr. 'Grote almost invariably in accepting the genuineness of dialogues which the scepticism of many German scholars has impugned solely on the ground of internal evidence. If he finds in the Parnzmides a powerful and, indeed, unanswerable disproof of the doctrine of ideas, he does not, therefore, reject it because of the importance which Plato attaches to this doctrine in the Republic or the Pius lo. Nor does he regard the Laws as necessarily spurious, because the political views expounded in them vary in essential points from the theories defended in the Republic. We should have been very glad, by the way, of a statement of the grounds: on which he so decidedly con- demns the Epistles. We are aware that the same view is main- tained by Ast, and other distinguished German scholars ; but, to say nothing of the unanimous testimony of the ancient critics, and Bentley's undoubting acceptance of them, when their genuineness is maintained on historical grounds by Mr. Grote, and on the ground of their style by the most sensitive Atticist of a sceptical school, C. G. Cobet, we cannot lightly reject them. But this is a digression. It is evident that if the historical develop- ment rather than the scientific results of Plato's thought is the main object of interest to the commentator, the order in which the dialogues were written comes to be of primary importance. Here we cannot attain to the certainty which we should desire. With regard to many of the dialogues, an approxi- mation to their true chronological position is all that we can hope for. Yet internal evidence, untrustworthy as a rule in deciding the question of genuineness, is here of essential assistance to us. In the earlier dialogues we have a mixture of jest and earnest, in which no definite result is obtained, but some Socratic or Plato- * The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English, with Analysis and Introluelioru. By B. Jowett, M.A., Master of Billiol College, Regius Professor of Greek in the Dniversity of Oxford. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871. nic truths are allowed dimly to appear. Popular ideas are tested, and the difficulty of forming general notions which shall stand the
test of the Socratic elenchus is brought out by repeated examples. Then follows the period of the full development of Plato's pecu- liarly characteristic doctrines : the figure of the historical Socrates is changed, as in the Ph mdrus and the Republic, for one which, re- sembling him in external appearance, is in his teaching simply a mouth-piece for the theories of his disciple. The doctrine of Ideas and of Reminiscence, both of them foreign to the master, assume a prominent position in the arguments which are assigned to him ; while his negative elenchus is sometimes quietly put aside, or even positively condemned. This is the time of Plato's highest excel- lence. In the writings of this period we find " the luminous and poetical flow, ' smoother than a river of oil,' the dramatic verisimi- litude, the life and variety of the characters, the dialectic subtlety, the Attic purity, the exquisite urbanity," which give to his writ- ings their wondrous charm. Then comes the time of his declin- ing genius ; the grace and beauty are in no small measure gone; the search for truth is exchanged for the exposition of dogma; the lively humour and sportive illustrations are no more to be found, and their place is but ill supplied by a wider experience of life, and a profounder insight into the causes and nature of human misery. The Pltilebus and the Politic us mark the transition to this stage, which is fully reached in the Laws. Through the various phases of this gradual growth and decay Mr. Jowett conducts his readers with masterly skill.
The order of the dialogues, as printed in his translation, corre- sponds, on the whole, to the order in which he believes them to have been written, though not without exceptions ; the Phxdrus., for instance, he would place decidedly later than the other dialogues among which he classes it. They are regarded from a point of view almost directly opposed to that of Mr. Grote. The tendency, though not the avowed intention, of Mr. Grote's great work is to measure Plato by the standard of our modern logic and philosophy, and especially by the principles of sensationalism in metaphysics and utilitarianism in ethics. It is almost impossible to overrate the service which he has done in clearing away the loose and uncritical declamation which Plato's admirers were wont to pour forth about the harmony and grandeur of his system of philosophy. And we owe him especial thanks for the irre- sistible force with which he has shown that many of Plato's writings are purely dialogues of search ; that he proposes enigmas which he is not prepared himself to solve ; that he refutes the theories and the definitions of others, without having anything better to place in their stead. But with all the acuteness and the sound common-sense which make Mr. Grote's discussion of Plato so valuable, we cannot help feeling that something yet is wanting, and this is just that intuitive sympathy of a kindred mind which we find in Mr. Jowett. He has learnt very much from Mr. Grote, and thoroughly agrees with him in treating the dialogues as independent, pervaded by a common spirit, but not linked together by any unity of design, or always possessing even an internal unity of their own. But how different Mr. Jowett's general point of view is from that of Mr. Grote will appear from the following sentences of the preface :—
The aim of the introduction in these volumes has been to represent Plato as the father of idealism, who is not to be measured by the stand- ard of utilitarianism or any other modern philosophical system. He is the poet or maker of ideas, satisfying the wants of his own age, provid- ing the instruments of thought for future generations. He is no dreamer, but a great philosophical genius struggling with the unequal conditions of light and knowledge under which he is living. He may be illustrated by the writings of moderns, but he must be interpreted by his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy. We are not concerned to de- termine what is the residuum of truth which remains for ourselves. His truth may not be our truth, and nevertheless may have an extra- ordinary value and interest for us."
In every one of the more important introductions we have proofs of Mr. Jowett's singular fitness for that especial kind of interpre- tation at which he has aimed. Nothing is harder for us to under- stand than the stage of human development when notions and forms of thought which have now become common-place were faintly dawning upon the minds of men, and hailed as grand discoveries ; yet there were times when the primary data of modern logic were quite unknown, and even inconceivable. To appreciate aright more than one of Plato's dialogues, we must remember that they were written just when language was first beginning to perplex and entangle thought, when fallacies that are now transparent presented very real difficulties, when the living spirit of the earliest philosophies was dying down into verbal quibblings and meaningless disputations. We need to see how the phrases that had represented genuine thought in the mouths of lieracleitus and the earlier Elea- 'tics had come to be detached entirely from their context, and now were simply barren and empty abstractions. Mr. Jowett never fails to keep before us in his introductions the intellectual conditions sander which Plato was working. It is, we think, one of the principal defects inseparable from his tendency to modernize the language of his translation, that we are apt to lose sight of these conditions when reading the dialogue. If it is of primary im- portance for the right understanding of the spirit and object of the argument that we should bear in mind that it was the language of a Greek four centuries before Christ, and at least a generation before the birth of formal logic, it is little praise to the translation to say (as has been said of Mr. Jowett's book) that it never re- minds us that it is a translation. But the introductions do much more for us than merely to counterbalance the effect of the style of the version. We are never allowed to forget that the acquisi- tion of a general notion was a real mental achievement in the days of Plato ; that the art of framing a definition was all but unknown, that words like " nature," " custom," " the good," " the honour- able," had an ambiguous and wavering meaning. The very first ques- tion which Plato appears to have attacked, " after many prepara- tions and oppositions, both of. the character of men and aspects of the truth, especially of the popular and philosophical aspect, and after many interruptions and detentions by the way which are quite as agreeable as the argument," is one which no one would either ask or answer in modern times, "Can virtue be taught?" The earlier and more especially Socratic dialogues are concerned with this question under its various phases, but the question is not solved in any of them ; the theory of reminiscence which is used in the Meno as the key of the difficulty is afterwards tacitly dropped, and the great intellectual puzzle of Plato's time— the nature of knowledge and of good, and their rela- tion to one another and to human life—is examined from shifting points of view, and nowhere satisfactorily settled. But, to use a distinction rendered familiar to us by Wordsworth, Plato's writings belong much more to the literature of power than to the literature of knowledge,—ad impellendum sails, ad edocendum parum. If his teaching makes great men, it is, as Mr. Mill well says, by his combination of moral enthusiasm and logical discipline. This combination appears in its fullest and richest form in the noble dialogues which may be said to form the second group. Here the theory of ideas attains its complete development, and is closely connected by many various links with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The figure of the Platonic, if not of the historical Socrates, assumes its most dramatic form. The philo- sopher's speculations take their widest range and are clothed in their utmost grace of style in the Republic. But even in this greatest of his works, we see the constructive tendencies gradually rising above the dialectic and elenctic. " The Socratic method is nominally retained ; and every inference is either put into the mouth of the respondent, or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates. But anyone can see that this is a mere form, the affectation of which grows wearisome as the work advances." Then follow the dialogues, where. " the style begins to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract ideas great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phxdrus, and perhaps even on the Republic. But there is a corre- ponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of con- fusion and incompleteness in the general design." The theory of ideas first becomes psychological rather than transcendental, then is altogether controverted. The passionate enthusiasm of the earlier dialogues is replaced by the sitcom lumen of colder dis- quisition. The final style, as we have seen already, is represented by the Laws, where a greater insight into human nature and a greater reach of practical wisdom fail to reconcile ua to the want of character, power, and lively illustration, to the dogmatism that is substituted for the free play of reason in the search for truth, to the appearance of that mystic Pythagorean element, which in the teaching of his immediate successors shrouded his nobler ethical and spiritual doctrines in its misty folds.
Such is a rapid sketch, often in Mr. Jowett's own words, of what he conceives to be the general course of Plato's mental development. Our limits here will not allow us to touch even briefly on the way in which he fills up the outline. In the case of each dialogue we have the leading traits of the dramatis persona gathered and grouped into most graphic pictures for us (see especially the introduction to the Republic). We have a full analysis of the argument, with its weak and its strong points admirably discussed. And last, not least, we have many most suggestive thoughts on the numberless points of interest, which are incidentally touched upon
in the discursive freedom of Plato's dialogue. Compared with the similar discussions in Mr. Grote's work, they may seem to be sometimes hazy and undefined. But this is owing to the extent to which the commentator shares the manysidedness of the mind of
his author. Like Plato, Mr. Jowett is unable to look at a question only from a single stand-point. All manner of cross- lights are allowed to stream in upon it, and the consequence is that if no one aspect of it is brought into the greatest clearness possible, on the other hand, no side is suffered to remain altogether in the shade. Of this no better instance could be given than the way in which Mr. Jowett has treated the questions of the community of goods and the harmfulness of poetry, started incidentally in the Republic. It would be perhaps too much to say that in Mr. Jowett we have at last the ideal exponent of Plato. But we believe that the scholarly world will be unanimous in recognizing in him a genial sympathy with his author's spirit and aims, a quick intuition into his varied phases of meaning, an appreciation of his intellectual surroundings, and a power of helpful exposition, which are hitherto quite unrivalled.
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