dialogue. "The greater service rendered This view is farther developed so as to (by Plato in the 'Sophist') to mental science, is the recognition of the communion of classes, which, although based by him on his account of not-being is independent of this. He clearly saw that the isolation of ideas or classes is the annihilation of reasoning. Thus, after wandering in many diverging paths, we return to common sense (vol iii. p. 459). Moreover, in admitting the idea of motion into the ideal world, Plato was planting the germ of a theory capable of superseding his own. The idea of progress or development is perhaps to be traced in earlier dialogues; but only, as we saw, under a mythical form. The "return to common sense," that is to say, the attainment by philosophy of a mode of conceiving one or more of the phases of experience, gives in this case an idea which reaches further than that of classification, and which was infinitely more difficult to ancient thinkers. give four orders or elements of existence: (1) limit or definite numerical relation; (2)the unlimited, or more and less; (3) the mixture of the two (the product or result of applying a law of measure to measurable quantity, e.g. health, beauty, harmony, favourable climate); and (4) the cause or producer of the mixture. The first three are kinds: there may be many species of each, but all comprehended under a single notion. The last is mind or reason- - that which furnishes our bodies with life and wise treatment, and, as we may argue by analogy, is the cause and deviser of the orderly and beautiful universe. The theory in this form shows several of the latest tendencies of Platonism. The representation of the cause of existence as rational and half-personal — a soul of the universe parallel to the human soul - agrees with the passage in the "Sophist which (as we have seen) ascribes The "Sophist" is expressly represented motion and intelligence to the highest beby Plato as a continuation of the "Theæte-ing, and prepares us for the cosmogony of tus." The main element of connexion is the "Timæus." The prominence given to "not being," the confusion, as Mr. Jowett the conception of limit is a step to the reptranslates it into modern language, of ne- resentation of the Ideas as numbers the gation and falsehood. There are other in- Pythagorean shape which Plato's theory dications, however, in the "Theætetus' finally appears to have assumed. On that Plato had begun to examine afresh the side of ethics the same conception, the vague and thin generalizations which as that of "measure and "the mean," underlie such words as being, whole, like- is a link of connexion with the "Statesness, sameness, motion, and that he was man," and with the ethical system of Arseeking to bring them into agreement with istotle. his Ideas. And amid the wealth of suggestions which characterizes that dialogue, we find something not really different from generalization," by which Plato is laying the foundation of a rational psychology (vol. iii. p. 356, cf. Theæt. p. 186 D, and Parm. 132 A). 66 The relation of the "Philebus" to the "Sophist" and "Parmenides" is difficult to determine, because in it the dialectical element is subordinated to the ethical and physical. Mr. Jowett speaks of it as earlier: in the well-known passage about One and the Many (Phileb. pp. 14 c-17 A), he discerns the "germs of the attack upon the ideas, and the transition to a more rational philosophy" (vol. iii. p. 255). Zeller sees in the same passage a brief statement of results already attained in the "Parmenides." Each Idea, it is laid down, includes the One and a finite plurality, i.e. the notion of a higher kind, and those of lower kinds, into which the higher may be divided and it also "has in its nature the finite (in the general notions), and the infinite or unlimited (in the particulars). The dialogue called the "Laws," which occupies most of Mr. Jowett's fourth volume, is perhaps the part of Plato which is least generally known. As a literary work it is certainly inferior to the "Republic;" and its great length, coupled with a style which those who are familiar with Plato still find obscure, has led to this comparative neglect. Yet it offers, in some respects, the most interesting subjects of study. No part of Plato, and, it may be said, no ancient writing, sums up so well the highest religious thoughts of heathenism. The anticipation of the subsequent course of philosophy which is often so remarkable in Plato is especially so in the "Laws;" and the treatment of some practical questions-for example, that of the different kinds of involuntary actions — is at least as satisfactory as that of Aristotle. In its relation to earlier forms of Platonism the dialogue is of peculiar interest. Between the two types of society which Plato has hitherto contrasted that which ought to be and that - he now interposes a third, that which is which may be. Instead of the bold specu- and of raising up its own prophets with lation and the sweeping censure of exist- their cheap wisdom; the contest between ing things which mark his earlier works, popularity and higher things, fought out he is found treating antiquity with scru- in the minds of those to whom the capacpulous veneration, anxious to collect and ity has been given of directing the course build into a single structure all that the of human affairs; the causes by which the wisdom of legislators or immemorial cus- possible statesman or teacher is perverted tom has made most sacred. The ethical into the demagogue or the solitary enthuspirit which pervades the work is not less siast; the hopes of a new order of things lofty than that of other parts of Plato; by the reception, among men at large, of but it is gentle and tolerant. The hopeful ideas which are to be first worked out by tone inspired by the fancy of giving laws great thinkers: - these are the materials to an infant community is curiously mixed of which Plato has formed the warp and with the sobriety, the sense of illusion, the woof of his philosophy; and they are still "browner tinge inseparable from the full of meaning. In other respects, the attiautumn of life. The defence of the genu- tude and tendencies of Plato must be ineness of the "Laws" which Mr. Jowett judged with more exclusive reference to offers is not only satisfactory, but exem- contemporary politics, and we may have to plifies admirably the principles which admit that he himself needs the help of ought to govern such cases. As a po- some of the pleas which he urges, in the lemic, it is happily almost superfluous, "Republic," on behalf of his order. He the critics being nearly unanimous in ad- was not only opposed to the popular govmitting the work to be Plato's.* ernment and the wide political toleration which prevailed at Athens, but he hardly recognizes the merit even of statesmen who, like Pericles, certainly did not err by too great submission to the fancies of the multitude. He would have trusted rather to a strict and all-embracing discipline, administered by a small number of rulers, such as that which had powerfully impressed the Greek imagination through the great part in history played by Sparta. The same bias prevailed widely among speculative politicians, and perhaps was justified by the unhappy circumstances of the time. In an age of unsettlement and fierce sion, when the Greek States were tossing about and "like ships foundering at sea," it was natural to look upon all movement either as the fitful ebb and flow of unreasoning impulses or as part of a ceaseless and inevitable change for the worse. It is characteristic, too, of those who have dwelt too exclusively upon the abstract notions of science to be "absolutist," confident in the value of their ideal, and impatient of the limitations of practice. The doctrine of development or progress has taught the world two great lessons-not indeed of knowledge, but of Socratic wisdom in ignorance: faith in the future, and toleration of the present. We have learned to hope, though we cannot demonstrate, that we live in a world which grows better, as Plato would say, "under the hands of time," through the ceaseless working of infinite and silent agencies. Such a reflection should not lead to a spirit of fatalism, but rather to the feeling that, in judging of the efforts and tendencies around us, we should tolerate where we "sur Much might still be said, especially in connexion with the "Laws," of the historical value of Plato: of the interest, that is to say, which his philosophy has, not merely as a stage in the discovery of truth, but as the reflection in the world of abstractions of a great and critical period of human history. "Il faut réfléchir," says Montesquieu, la Politique d'Aristote et sur les deux Républiques de Platon, si l'on veut avoir une juste idée des lois et des mœurs des anciens Grecs." And the peculiar vividness and sympathy with Greek life which distinguishes the work of the latest historian of Greece (Dr. Ernst Curtius) is due in great measure to the appreciative study of these ideals. In many ways, too, the lessons are of universal application. The Platonic formulas are broad aspects, presented to the distant view of the philosopher, of relations which belong to all known periods, as well as of those which especially characterized the Greece of Plato's own time. The fundamental contrast so constantly dwelt upon between "reality" and "appearance" is an expression of the struggle carried on at all times by the progressive element of true ideas against the vast slough of common opinion which ever threatens to engulf the better thoughts and strivings of men. The power which this opinion has of becoming embodied in sham ideas or generalizations of its own, * Neither Mr. Jowett nor Dr. Thompson seems to have noticed that Zeller has long since withdrawn the doubts which at one time he expressed of the genuineness of the "Laws." See his "Gesch. d. Philosophie," ii. pp. 638, n. 2. pas cannot dogmatize. We may learn from what Plato has done, and from what he hoped to do, that the genuine pursuit of truth may be most fruitful in the direction least suspected by the inquirer himself, and that the errors which he condemns and would wish to destroy may contain the germs of still greater but more distant truth. From The Cornhill Magazine. A REMINISCENCE OF ETON LIFE. body esteemed Jickling. His house-fellows were ashamed of him, and regarded him as a black sheep in their small, eminently tidy fold; our tutor viewed him with a cool and careful eye. If it had been put to anybody in the school whom it would have been the least desirable fellow to mess with, hold a "lock-up" with, or indeed, be intimately associated with in any way, the answer would have been Jickling;" and this impression was more than doubled by the cynicism, not to say effrontery with which Jickling bore off his shortcomings. For of shame at his own unworthiness Jickling possessed none. AT that time, when the school, not hav- Thus I had not been five minutes in his ing yet swollen to its present bulky pro-company on the night of my arrival, before portions, contained only six hundred and he informed me not a little to my confifty fellows, and Harrow, its arch-rival, sternation, when I understood what he something like half that number; when meant that he expected to be "swished' the new school-buildings on the Slough on the very next morning for having, in road were not yet dreamed of, and both the train down from Paddington, blown a fourth form and lower school attended ser- mouthful of peas into the face of an envice in the College Chapel like their supe- gine-driver, and been "nailed" in the act riors in the other divisions; when the Col- by a master who had got into the carriage lege Chapel itself was a cold and bleak next his at Ealing; and this communicasanctuary, with but three or four stained- tion was quite of a piece with Jickling's glass windows and no brass candelabra; habitual. confidences respecting himself. and when the College dining-hall, yet He was continually playing a part in those bleaker than the Chapel, had no stained- short but painful interviews with the head glass windows at all, no tesselated pave- master that are conducted in the presence ment, no polished wainscot, yawning fire- of the sixth-form præpostor and two place, gilt scutcheons or stately portraits; "holders down;" and nobody would have when, instead of the Bucks constabulary ventured to assert that he came out from who now patrol its streets day and night, these interviews otherwise than hardened there limped solitary old Tom Bott, in his in spirit - however it might be in person light-blue livery, with the Eton arms on and steadfastly minded to be peccant his left sleeve and the Waterloo medal on again as soon as he had the opportunity. his breast; and when, in a word, Eton was He was one of those unfortunate boys who not quite the place it is now, nor yet so seem pre-doomed to go wrong. Though different but that present Etonians may provided with good clothes enough, his easily imagine what manner of a spot it dress was always shabby and ill-matched, was; - then, in those days, when Dr. the trousers of one suit doing duty with Goodford ruled over the upper school, and the waistcoat of another; and though he Mr. Coleridge over the lower, and when was supplied with money sufficient, and Spankie, the tart-man, still sold his wares more than sufficient, for all his needs, yet opposite Mrs. Drury's boarding-house -1, he never had a sixpence, and was always the present writer, was sent to Eton, and in debt. Desperate passages of arms became, after the usual fortnight's grace, would take place between him and the the fag of Asheton, a fellow in the eight in Spankie already mentioned, as he endeavthe upper division of the fifth form, and a captain of my tutor's house. Lock-up (subaud.) boat. The lock-up boat is a I think it better to premise, however, private skiff chartered for the boating-season at a cost of 5. It is distinguished from the chancethat this tale is not destined to commemo- boat " in that the subscriber to the latter pays 27. 10s rate adventures of my own, but those of a but must take his chance of any boat that happens to be unhired at the time he wants to row or scull fellow-fag called Jickling-Jickling, who and has not the exclusive right to any particular had already been at the school a year when boat. The cost of a "lock-up" may be shared by I arrived there, and was by common con-word "lock-up," taken in another sense, indicates two friends, that of a chance boat cannot be. The sent accounted the most idle, unkempt, incapable, and, in a general way, the least promising among the six hundred and fifty It is a painful thing to say, but no of us. the hour at which boys must be back to their tutors' houses of an evening. This hour varies according to the season- - the extremes being 8.45 P.M. at midsummer, and 5 P.M. during November and December. He left a name at which the world grew pale, oured to glide unobserved past that wor- from the master, and enjoined to write out thy at school-hours, and not only with Ovid's "Medea to Jason" in a legible Spankie, but with all the other tart-men, hand, and bring it the next day at one Spankie's colleagues, who lined the low o'clock. As to Jickling's verses they stood wall which bisects the College part of High on a par with his prose performances, and Street and forms a bulwark to the school-were a continuous source of distorted yard. No sooner, indeed, did Jickling nightmares to our unhappy tutor, whose heave in sight, with his necktie all awry, duty it was to correct and put some sort his hat brushed the wrong way, and his of shape into them. It was currently repockets bulged out with fives'-balls, stumps ported that, having to turn into hexameof half-eaten pears, and blotted panas (i.e. ters the two lines, Punishment MSS.) than Spankie himself, brown-trousered Levi, Spankie's next neighbour and vis-à-vis, red-faced, strawhatted Jobie, whose basket was a step further on, grey-coated old Brion, who wheeled about a whole vehicle full of confectionary, and certain desultory vendors, who sold apples peripatetically, would set up a chorus of howls and appeals, that would be taken up at the very school-gate itself by blue-cloaked Mrs. Pond-more familiarly "Missus"-who, seated on a low stool, retailing fruit and dormice, would shrilly call upon Jickling for pence long overdue. In school, Jickling was as unsatisfactory as out of it. When called up to construe, he never knew where to go on often he had brought the wrong book; and, somehow, he generally contrived to get himself weighted with a sentence to write out and translate the lesson before he had fairly started. And when he had started, who shall describe the torrent of solecism, false quantities, and hideous errors of translation that flowed imperturbably from his mouth? With a coolness utterly and unquestionably beyond rivalling, he would declare that bis was the dative plural of bos, and sum the accusative singular of sus, and that the correct rendering of basis virtutum constantia was "constancy is the basest of the virtues." Sometimes indeed, under immediate and forcible threats of condign punishment, he would so far prepare his lesson as to go through it twice attentively with a "crib' before proceeding into school, and on such occasions, his memory not being retentive, he would generally treat his hearers to something in this style: (Reading.) "Nux ego juncta viæ cum sim sine crimine vitæ, (Construing.) "Nux ego I a nut, juncta via joined to the road-way, cum sim sine crimine since I am without crime, petor am sought for, prætereunte as I go by, a populo saris by the Saxon people." And so on, until pulled up by a dismayed howl and certainly this would have been rather above than below the average of his ordinary productions. Needless to add that, although Jickling was in lower fourth, that is, in the last division of the upper school, he had only arrived there after failing to pass his first examination out of the lower school. It was even rumoured that he would have been rejected the second time had it not been for the Macchiavellic determination of the lower master to get rid of him at any price, as a boy whose incurable idleness was contagious, and likely to corrupt the whole form. So there was Jickling, at the very bottom of his division - a boy of about twelve, with lank hair of a muddy flaxen colour; fingers permanently ink-stained; Balmoral boots that were never laced; and a curious white face, that looked inquiringly at you, out of a pair of eyes so wild, shifty, and defiant in their expression, that it was a wonder Nature had not taken them to put into the head of a polecat. Now that Jickling should have flourished in our midst was a circumstance astonishing enough, seeing that of all the staid and proper youngsters I have ever met with, we Etonians were certainly the most exemplary; but that he should have been the fag of such a fellow as Asheton was a downright puzzle; for Asheton being captain of the house, and entitled to four fags, might have chosen any one he pleased and was under no compulsion whatever to select Jickling, who blacked his toast for him, spilled the gravy of sausages over his trousers, and when sent to carry a note, invariably took it to the wrong place. There could have been no community of thought or sympathy between Asheton and Jickling; for the two were simply as opposite to each other as white is to black, ance or coal to sugar. What Jickling did folded silk umbrella, were things to see' wrong, Asheton did well; and what Ashe-admire, and copy; the more so as Asheton ton did well, Jickling was morally certain was always trim, always speckless, always to do wrong. Asheton was a quiet and glossy, whatever befell-even though, for finished type of that class of boys who at instance, he had been rowing up to MonEton are termed "swells " a subtle de-key Island, and had reached Windsor signation, the exact meaning of which it is Bridge on his return, with only seven minnot very easy to explain to outsiders. A utes in which to land, dress, and run down boy was not a swell because he dressed to College, to answer to the calling of his well, or played cricket well, or boated well, name at two-o'clock "Absence". a ciror was high up in the school. All this had cumstance of not unfrequent occurrence, to be touched off with certain social quali- and always particularly trying to the ties, and a great I was going to say "swell" temperament. It would be diffialmost exaggerated-air of personal dig- cult to convey an idea of the extent to nity, before the swell was complete. which we young shavers respected AsheStumpes maximus, the best bat in the ton; but mind, I say respected not liked; eleven, who would alternately slash an for Asheton would no more have familiarinnings of sixty and be bowled out first ized with a lower boy in-doors, or taken ball; who slouched about the streets with notice of him in the streets, than a colonel his hands in his pockets, and nodded good- would chum with a private soldier; and naturedly to lower boys of his acquaint- our feelings towards him were consequentStumpes was a very pleasant fel- ly much of the same reverential order as a low, and immensely popular, but he was no soldier's might be towards an officer who swell. Cashman, again, whose father was kind and just, but cold and a little of owned five millions sterling, and stuffed a a martinet. When I have added that in fifty-pound note in each of his son's waist- his school-work Asheton shone pretty coat-pockets in sending him back to school much as he did in athletics, that is, uniafter holidays Cashman was anything formly and moderately well, without startyou please: well dressed, well bejew-ling brilliancy that, for example, after elled, generous and conceited, but nobody an examination, his name was generally to called him a swell, neither was he one. be found between the fifteenth and the Asheton, on the other hand, was a swell twenty-fifth on the list (out of seventy or nem con. He was not surpassingly excel- eighty), and that in the half-yearly trials lent in anything, but he was good at every- or "collections" he was habitually in the thing, and might be relied on in every-second class - I shall, I think, have said thing. He pulled a capital oar, without all that is needful to fill up his portrait. great dash, but conscientiously and in fine To sum up: Without being one of those form; he, moreover, bowled and batted overpoweringly good youths whom we are well enough to hold his own with credit in bound to admire in books, and whom, in any match that took place in that part of private life, we do so deeply and ardently the playing fields called "Aquatics," and long to see flogged, he was a slightly prim, reserved for "wet bobs," or fellows whose accomplished, and honourable young Brithabitual vocation was the river. At fives on, whom our tutor did well to enjoin us and football he was also counted among smaller boys to imitate, and whom we certhe first; but in these and all other pas- tainly should have striven to imitate times the great merit of him was that whether he had enjoined it or no. his play was sure. As he had played body would have said of Asheton (at least, to-day, so would he play to-morrow; there not we his fags, who were apt to judge of was nothing unequal in him, no wavering, things superficially) that he was one of no unexpected breaking down at a mo- those fellows who blossom out into Pitts, ment when all the hopes of his friends Cannings, Wellingtons, or other of those were centered on his performance. Per- swell Etonians whose busts in marble sonally he was neatness itself. About adorn the upper school-room; but he was eighteen years old, lightly built, and a boy who might develop, when the due rather above middle height, he had a season came, into an unimpeachable M.P., handsome aristocratic face of essentially a Chairman of Quarter Sessions void of English mould, though, perhaps, a little reproach, or, if he took to soldiering, too serious for his age, and a figure that into an officer who, in victory or dewas fitly set off by the absolutely faultless feat, would make an unbragging stand style in which he dressed. His white cravat, with his men against quintuple odds, tied as only Etonians used to tie them; and die, firm to his post, with cool intrehis speckless linen, glossy hat, and trimly pidity. No |