good, and subordinated to it. They are not more certain than facts, but
they are equally certain (Phaedo). They are both personal and impersonal.
They are abstract terms: they are also the causes of things; and they are
even transformed into the demons or spirits by whose help God made the
world. And the idea of good (Republic) may without violence be converted
into the Supreme Being, who 'because He was good' created all things
(Tim.).

It would be a mistake to try and reconcile these differing modes of
thought. They are not to be regarded seriously as having a distinct
meaning. They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations,
aspirations after an unknown world. They derive their origin from a deep
religious and contemplative feeling, and also from an observation of
curious mental phenomena. They gather up the elements of the previous
philosophies, which they put together in a new form. Their great diversity
shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think. They have not
yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them, though he also
criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others are always talking
about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and that they are not
peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.). But in his later writings
he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them. As he proceeds he makes
for himself new modes of expression more akin to the Aristotelian logic.

Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common meaning
or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he treats of the
ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is the spirit of
idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many names and taken
many forms, and has in a measure influenced those who seemed to be most
averse to it. It has often been charged with inconsistency and
fancifulness, and yet has had an elevating effect on human nature, and has
exercised a wonderful charm and interest over a few spirits who have been
lost in the thought of it. It has been banished again and again, but has
always returned. It has attempted to leave the earth and soar heavenwards,
but soon has found that only in experience could any solid foundation of
knowledge be laid. It has degenerated into pantheism, but has again
emerged. No other knowledge has given an equal stimulus to the mind. It
is the science of sciences, which are also ideas, and under either aspect
require to be defined. They can only be thought of in due proportion when
conceived in relation to one another. They are the glasses through which
the kingdoms of science are seen, but at a distance. All the greatest
minds, except when living in an age of reaction against them, have
unconsciously fallen under their power.

The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and clearest,
and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first and then
comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere, e.g. in the
Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the criticism of them in
the Parmenides, the personal form which is attributed to them in the
Timaeus, the logical character which they assume in the Sophist and
Philebus, and the allusion to them in the Laws. In the Cratylus they dawn
upon him with the freshness of a newly-discovered thought.

The Meno goes back to a former state of existence, in which men did and
suffered good and evil, and received the reward or punishment of them until
their sin was purged away and they were allowed to return to earth. This
is a tradition of the olden time, to which priests and poets bear witness.
The souls of men returning to earth bring back a latent memory of ideas,
which were known to them in a former state. The recollection is awakened
into life and consciousness by the sight of the things which resemble them
on earth. The soul evidently possesses such innate ideas before she has
had time to acquire them. This is proved by an experiment tried on one of
Meno's slaves, from whom Socrates elicits truths of arithmetic and
geometry, which he had never learned in this world. He must therefore have
brought them with him from another.

The notion of a previous state of existence is found in the verses of
Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus. It was the natural answer
to two questions, 'Whence came the soul? What is the origin of evil?' and
prevailed far and wide in the east. It found its way into Hellas probably
through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and mysteries. It was
easier to think of a former than of a future life, because such a life has
really existed for the race though not for the individual, and all men come
into the world, if not 'trailing clouds of glory,' at any rate able to
enter into the inheritance of the past. In the Phaedrus, as well as in the
Meno, it is this former rather than a future life on which Plato is
disposed to dwell. There the Gods, and men following in their train, go
forth to contemplate the heavens, and are borne round in the revolutions of
them. There they see the divine forms of justice, temperance, and the
like, in their unchangeable beauty, but not without an effort more than
human. The soul of man is likened to a charioteer and two steeds, one
mortal, the other immortal. The charioteer and the mortal steed are in
fierce conflict; at length the animal principle is finally overpowered,
though not extinguished, by the combined energies of the passionate and
rational elements. This is one of those passages in Plato which, partaking
both of a philosophical and poetical character, is necessarily indistinct
and inconsistent. The magnificent figure under which the nature of the
soul is described has not much to do with the popular doctrine of the
ideas. Yet there is one little trait in the description which shows that
they are present to Plato's mind, namely, the remark that the soul, which
had seen truths in the form of the universal, cannot again return to the
nature of an animal.

In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of ideas is sought for in a
previous state of existence. There was no time when they could have been
acquired in this life, and therefore they must have been recovered from
another. The process of recovery is no other than the ordinary law of
association, by which in daily life the sight of one thing or person
recalls another to our minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from any
part of knowledge we may be led on to infer the whole. It is also argued
that ideas, or rather ideals, must be derived from a previous state of


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