A History of Greek Philosophy / PLATO

Page 25

In these ‘thoughts of God’ was the root or essence which gave reality to the things of sense; they were the Unity which realised itself in multiplicity. It is because things partake of the Idea that we give them a name. The thing as such is seen, not known; the idea as such is known, not seen.

The whole conception of Plato in this connection is based on the assumption that there is such a thing as knowledge. If all things are ever in change, then knowledge is impossible; but conversely, if there is such a thing as knowledge, then there must be a continuing object of knowledge; and beauty, goodness, reality are then no dreams. The process of apprehension of these ‘thoughts of God,’ these eternal objects of knowledge, whether occasioned by sensation or not, is essentially a process of self-inquiry, or, as he in one stage called it, of Reminiscence. The process is the same in essence, whether going on in thought or expressed in speech; it is a process of naming. Not that names ever resemble realities fully; they are only approximations, limited by the conditions of human error and human convention. There is nevertheless an inter-communion between ideas and things. We must neither go entirely with those who affirm the one (the Eleatics), nor with those who affirm the many (the Heracliteans), but accept both. There is a union in all that exists both of That Which Is, and of that concerning which all we can say is that it is Other than what is. This ‘Other,’ through union with what is, attains to being of a kind; while on the other hand, What Is by union with the ‘Other’ attains to variety, and thus more fully realises itself.

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