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Pater's Plato and Platonism Plato and Platonism: a Series of Lectures by Walter Pater. London and New York. Macmillan and Co. 1893. 8s. 6d.

Lewis Campbell

The Classical Review / Volume 7 / Issue 06 / June 1893, pp 263 - 266 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00197938, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00197938

How to cite this article: Lewis Campbell (1893). The Classical Review, 7, pp 263-266 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00197938

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 12 Apr 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 263 tends to make appear duller and and also to Isocrates (see a comparison of more limited in imagination than he ac- Hiero i. vii. with the de Pace § 111 foil.). tually is.] [These parallelisms are interesting and set III. (—p. 136).— and Xenophon. one thinking, but I do not think that An attempt to prove that the intimacy Richter proves his point of plagiarism. He between 2. and H. is mythical. Diog. L. and forgets what a large stock of common ideas his authorities Dinarchus &c, invented it. were current concerning Soci'ates and other There is nothing in Xenophon himself to matters for writers of all sorts to draw convince us of its reality. upon, nor does he allow sufficiently for the [There is something, I think, in the subtle influence of mind upon mind.] warmth of attachment shown by H. to the V. (—p. 152).—On the composition of memory of 5- In any case R.'s disproofs of Xenophon's writings. With the exception the tradition derived from Xenophon him- of Anab. and Gyneg. (which are outside the self are negative. His discussion of Mem. discussion) the collective works fall within T. v., the conversation between % and B.C. 370—350 circa. Pericles (the younger), is very good : it is [This seems to me to crowd the works probably fictitious, though for myself I into too small a space or rather to curtail should fix some interval between B.C. 421— Xenophon's literary activity unduly. I 416 as its ' ideal' date, TOVS ye vvv irpu>- should fix his literary floruit at least ten or TsuovTas would be a somewhat unhappy fifteen years earlier. phrase surely for the Lacedaemonians after VI. (—p. 154).—[I am not satisfied by Leuctra. Again it is Herr Richter rather than the suggestion that Xenophon was driven to Xenophon who is wrong about the generals literature by aspera pauperies after being at Arginusae (Mem. A, i. 18 v. Hell. i. 7, 30), ousted from Skillus, and that he ' stumped ' p. 135 and p. 62,' nur von neun.' Xenophon, the country reading his works and filling his by a slip of the tongue perhaps, says ewia pockets as a 'wandernder Sophist.' That when he should strictly have said OKTW, since there are signs of oral delivery in many of Conon of course was not indicted and the compositions is certain: and that the Archestratus was dead.] original form of publication was oral is not IV. (—p. 149).—As to Xenophon's sources improbable. Herr Richter's promised de- for his philosophical works. He is mainly velopment of this section of his studies indebted to Plato for the ' Socratica,' Herr should be interesting. Thanks are due to Richter thinks, and next to him to him for this instalment.] Antisthenes (here R. follows Diimmler), H. G. DAKYNS.

PATER'S PLATO AND PLATONIXM.

Plato and 1'lalonwm: a Series of Lectures prepared for similar tours deforce. Yet it by WALTER PATER. London and New is not without a feeling of pleased and York. Macmillan and Co. 1893. 8s. Qd. exhilarating surprise that they will alight on such pages of the present volume as that ' Nil tetigit quod non ornavit' is the common- in which the character and mind of Zeno place which rises to the lips on taking up the Eleatic are delineated (p. 23), or those this last and largest of Mr. Pater's ' Appre- which explain perhaps more luminously ciations.' 'Last year he gave us Raphael than has been done hitherto the value in a comely guise and now he presents which Plato set on Dialectic (pp. 161—164). Plato to us, no doubt as suitably apparelled.' The following statement, one of cardinal But as we read onward we are charmed and import, deserves to be quoted at length, interested in a more serious manner than both for the felicity of its expression, and heretofore. The book is in fact a brilliant for its undeniable truth :— critical essay of the kind which, in Mr. ' Platonism is not a formal theory or body ot Pater's view, is, ever since Montaigne theories, but a tendency, a group of tendencies—a employed it, the best vehicle for modern tendency to think or feel, and to speak, about certain philosophic thought. Readers of Marius things in a particular way, discernible in Plato's dialogues as reflecting the peculiarities, the marked the Epicurean, who remember the subtle peculiarities, of himself and his own mental com- exposition there of Cyrenaicism will be plexion. Those tendencies combine and find their 264 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. complete expression in what Plato'3 commentators, quiet intensity of religious feeling. Some- rather than Plato, have called the ' theory of ideas,' thing of this mode of sentiment appears in itself indeed not so much a doctrine or theory, as a way of regarding or speaking of general terms, such the comparison of Ionian pessimism to the as Useful or Just; of abstract notions,-like Equality ; moodiness of adolescence, ' when it is forced of ideals, such as Beauty, or The Perfect City; of all suddenly to bethink itself and for a moment those terms or notions, in short, which represent feels already old, feels the temperature of under general forms the presentations of our indi- vidual experience ; or, to use Plato's own frequent the world about it sensibly colder ' :—also expression, borrowed from his Eleatic teachers, which in the frequent adaptation of Scriptural reduce "the Many to the One.'"—P. 136. expressions. A pleasing result of the writer's power of religious sympathy is his The author's characterization of the just and penetrating view of the religious ' historic method' may also be repeated vein in Socrates. here :— The Essayist has many privileges, which ' Dogmatic and eclectic criticism alike have in our Mr. Pater's genius turns to good account. own century, under the influence of Hegel and his He may isolate and draw out tendencies, he predominant theory of the ever-changing "Time- Spirit" or Zeit-geist, given way to a third method of may accentuate contrasts, he may seize on criticism, the historic method, which bids us replace salient features, he may press analogies ; he the doctrine, or the system, we are busy with, or need not shrink from iteration, nor from such an ancient monument of philosophic thought as glaring discrepancies (which it is the reader's The Republic, as far as possible in the group of con- ditions, intellectual, social, material, amid which it business to harmonize); he may steep his was actually produced.' work in the atmosphere of a pervading sentiment, without incurring blame for It is in some ways fortunate for Mr. ' subjectivity.' He may use words in new Pater's readers that he has not thought it or foreign senses (' assistant' p. 85, ' ami- necessary to confine himself within the able ' p. 158, ' TrapaXuTrofneva ' p. 257), and cogent limits which the method so prescribed may indulge, after Hegel's fashion (p. 88), might seem to impose. He has made a in fanciful etymologies :—even an occasional strong and earnest effort on his own account pun (like that on carriere ouverte p. 96) thus to understand and realize Plato. But may be permitted him. He need not pro- in setting forth his conception he has freely fess to have overtaken a voluminous and availed himself of the wealth of illustra- wearisome 'literature.' He is not tied, as tion readily afforded by his own full and the mere interpreter is, to the avoidance of fertile mind. His readers are insensibly minute errors, which take little from the drawn within a magic circle of quintessen- essential value of his work. He can concen- tial flame that has been fed with all the trate attention on the form, without being choicest products of art and literature. haunted by distracting anxieties on account Not one century alone is present here. of material exactitude. Much rather, all the centuries, the bloom of every civilization, flowers culled from The matter of the book before us has, every soil, are intertwined to form the much of it, been common property for about delicately broidered framework. Talk of forty years, commencing from the time TToLKikia! Why here are Isaiah and the when the historic method was first seriously children of Sion, Louis the IXth, Fra applied to criticism. But it is not the less Damiano of Bergamo, the Gregorian Chant, a solid gain to possess this bright and genial St. Ouen and Notre Dame de Bourges (con- exposition of truths which we have long fessedly a ' far cry' from ), Mon- potently believed. For, however he may taigne and Thackeray, Dante and Berkeley, try to veil his gift, Mr. Pater is essentially Wordsworth and Henry Vaughan—not to a poet. And if Goethe and Hermann mention Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, Descartes offered to discourse on Homer, who would and Bacoh (whose business in such affairs is not be tempted to exclaim ' Dear Gottfried, more obvious)—contributing their several we will gladly listen to you t'uravOis,—on tones to the production of this symphony some other day' 1 The siren voice of Mr. in prose! These cross-lights, as from Pater will be heard, where that of the ' storied windows richly dight' on forms of unkempt Heraclitean 'Sibyl' could not alabaster, shed a manifold radiance on the penetrate. That is why such sentences as firm outlines of the solid central work, these are of peculiar value :— which is also permeated by a remote ' Think, for a moment, of the difference, as Hegelian influence and by the writer's regards mental attitude, between the naturalist who personal idiosyncrasy, in which refined deals with things through ideas, and the layman (so aesthetic sensitiveness is blended with a to call him) in picking up a shell on the sea-shore ; what it is that the subsumption of the individual THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 265 into the species, its subsequent alliance to and co- non-experienced, the beauty, for instance, which is ordination with other species really does for the not for the bodily eye. Yet the author of this furnishing of the mind of the former. The layman, philosophy of the unseen was,—Who can doubt it though we need not suppose him inattentive, or who has read but a page of him ? this, in fact, is unapt to retain impressions, is in fact still but a what has led and kept to his pages many who have child ; and the shell, its colours and convolution, no no turn for the sort of questions Plato actually more than a dainty, very easily destructible toy to discusses :—The author of this philosophy of the him. Let him become a schoolboy about it, so to unseen was one, for whom, as was said of a very speak. The toy he puts aside ; his mind is drilled different French writer, "the visible world really perforce, to learn about it ; and thereby is exercised, existed." Austere as he seems, and on well-con- he may think, with everything except just the thing sidered principle really is, his temperance or austerity, itself, as he cares for it; with other shells, with aesthetically so winning, is attained only by the some general laws of life, and for a while it might the chastisement, the control of a variously interested, seem that, turning away his eyes from the " vanity " a richly sensuous nature.'—P. 114. of the particular, he has been made to sacrifice the concrete, the real and living product of nature, to a Plato's writings form an exceedingly mere dry and abstract product of the mind. But when he comes out of school, and on the sea-shore complex whole, and it is not surprising that again finds a fellow to his toy, perhaps a finer speci- each new writer on the subject, approaching men of it, he may see what the service of that it at a different angle, should accentuate converse with the general has really been towards a different aspect, diverging perhaps in each the concrete, towards what he sees,—in regard to the particular thing he actually siees.' .... 'What case somewhat from the ' entire point.' To broad-east light he enjoys !—that scholar, confronted Mr. Grote's apprehension, the Protagoras, with the sea-shell, for instance, or with some enigma was of all the dialogues intellectually the of heredity in himself or another, with some condition most mature. Mr. Pater appears to dwell of a particular soul, in circumstances which may never precisely so occur again. . . . He not only with most complacency on the Phaedrus, sees, but understands (thereby only seeing the more) Symposium and Charmides. And I venture and will therefore, also remember' .... 'So to think that, of the eternal triad, Beauty, much by way of apology' (!) 'for general ideas.'— Goodness, Truth, the first obtains more im- Pp. 142—144. portance with him than in the long run The last words are characteristically with Plato, —that of the terms composing significant. Mr. Pater is really charmed his motto (<£iA.oo-o<£i'a, /J-OVO-LK^) he lays undue with Plato; but there are other and rival emphasis on the second. In saying that charms which he will not forego. Some of Beauty alone has a visible antitype, Plato the discrepancies to which I before alluded did not mean to subordinate Wisdom to may be thus accounted for. He admires Beauty. It is true that under Plato's Marcus Aurelius (p. 242), yet he is influence Mr. Pater declares himself as the struck with a 'mortal coldness' (p. 40) in upholder of a ' dry beauty,'—of severe sim- thinking of him. ' Monotheism ' has his plicity in art and life. But is the conno- good word upon occasion ; yet he finds it tation of ' KaXov ' when applied to conduct ' repellent.' At one moment Form is every- any longer coextensive with that of ' beau- thing and Matter nothing (p. 4), though by tiful ' 1 Or is not the Puritanism of the and by precipitancy of Form without Republic (especially in Book x.) even more Matter is shown to be a mark of Sophistry thoroughgoing than our author imagines, (p. 101). In writing on metaphysical sub- and is it quite fair to infer from isolated jects he appears like some strong-winged positions in Book i. that Art is to be for butterfly which now mounts into the pure Art's sake alone, and not rather for the azure, now flits about the tree-tops, but sake of Life t — Meanwhile the book anon is sure to be found hovering amongst before us is in every sense of the words an the fragrant garden-flowers. The words of unmistakable TOKOS iv Ka\u>. Descartes come back to us as we read :— Plato's attitude towards mysticism is ' Nee aliter quam captivus, qui forte imagi- another point where Mr. Pater's view naria libertate fruebatur in somniis, quum appears hardly adequate. Not regress, but postea suspicari incipit se dormire, timet progress seems to me the distinguishing excitari, blandisque illusionibus lente con- note of Platonism. There is an important nivet; sic sponte labor in veteres opiniones.' difference (well displayed in Professor What most fascinates him in Plato is Caird's fine chapter on ' God as the end precisely the coexistence in him of the of knowledge') between Spinoza's ' Oni- supreme visual faculty with the severity of nis determinatio est negatio' and Plato's abstract reasoning :—• ' Omnis negatio est determinatio.' The Phaedo indeed counsels withdrawal from ' It is in the blending of diverse elements in the the world, the meditation of death. But mental constitution of Plato that the peculiar Platonic quality resides. Platonism is in one sense an em- this is not the lesson of the Symposium, nor phatic witness to the unseen, the transcendental, the the spirit of the prayers at marriage 266 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. festivals in the Republic, nor the motto of if it be a fine one, may gain in value by the great victory of primaeval Athens over what is cut away ' p. 257. Atlantis. The translations of illustrative passages The incidental chapter on Lacedaemon are extremely close and have a strong flavour has been universally admired. It is a prose of the original. For the purpose of guiding poem, in which all that is most valuable of students to a perception of the Greek, they K. O. Miiller's great work has been con- are admirably conceived. It is a matter of densed, so as to bring out the significance of which I write with diffidence, but I venture Plato's reaction towards Laconism. But (1) to doubt whether to the ' English reader' was the actual dividing line between Ionian they are likely to convey the feeling of and Dorian so wide and deep as Pericles and spontaneity,—of conversational ease and Mr. Pater would have us think, or had the freedom, as of a wind blowing where it Dorian consciously that sense of the beauty listeth, which is an inseparable attribute of of austerity which Mr. Pater attributes to Plato's style :—whether their very, ingenuity him 1 (2) Granting that Pythagoreanism does not give them a certain air of quaint- found a congenial habitat in Dorian cities, ness and remoteness. See for example p. is there any ground for supposing that 95 ' that private education...likes them '; p. Laconian culture ' held ' in any way directly 38 'Have you anything...being unmixedly.' of Pythagoras? (3) Why are the Perioeci The most successful of these versions, per- passed over almost silently 1 May not they haps, is that of Protag. 343, prefixed to as well as the Helots have contributed to Lecture VIII. relieve the monotony of Spartan dis- The subject of ' Plato and Platonism ' is cipline :—for instance by fine work in not yet exhausted. Mr. Pater has brought iron :—of which the ' street of the smiths ' his delicate spectroscope to bear upon that in Tripolitza reminds the traveller of ' bright particular star,' has registered its to-day? prismatic colouring, and ascertained the I have already hinted,—I trust in no elementary constitution of this distant world. pedantic sense,—that there are occasional But if we could come nearer, should we not oversights (' TrapaXtnro^va ') which in an- know more 1 And there is one means of other edition one would be glad to see coming nearer which has hardly yet been removed. On p. 82 ' Cebes' (bis) should realized, still less applied. Plato's industry have been ' Phaedo.' On p. 84 Socrates is extended over half a century. Could the credited with the argument of Simmias, and problem raised by Schleiermacher be even the words avev airoSeigews K.T A., in which partly solved, and the order in which the Simmias acknowledges the weakness of his dialogues were written approximately ascer- own position, are taken for the expression tained, our conception of the evolution of of Socrates' own ' immovable personal con- this master mind might be in some ways viction.' 'The fling round the bat' (what- modified ; his points of contact with earlier ever that picturesque phrase may mean) is and contemporary thought and the manner no equivalent for TTJS ySoX^s wept (or irepl) rijs of his reaction from them might appear more vvKTfpiSo's, nor does Trap' aWrjXa (TKOTTOVVTC; evidently. The assumption, which scholars signify ' using our eyes in common' (p. in an increasing number are beginning to 162). Plato's school was not ' in the quiet accept as proved,—that the dialectical dia- precincts of the Academus' (p. 134), nor is logues as well as the Timaeus are inter- oLKoXovdelv TOV \oyov a Greek construction.mediate between the Republic and the Laws, Let me hasten to set against these trivial —seems destined to play no inconsiderable flaws some expressions of more than common part in future Platonic studies. For example, beauty :—' the principle of outline ' p. 98 ; whatever may be ultimately thought of Mr. ' youth...willing to undergo much for the Henry Jackson's theories, it will some day mere promise of some good thing it can be reckoned to his credit that he made this scarcely even imagine ' p. 89) ; 'Time... is assumption the starting-point of his labori- itself a kind of artist, trimming pleasantly ous investigation. for us what survives of the rude world of the past' p. 250 ; ' the diamond, we are told, LEWIS CAMPBELL.