This point of view excludes scientific observation and experiment as methods for the attainment of knowledge. The experimenter’s mind is not «gathered into itself,» and does not aim at avoiding sounds or sights. The two kinds of mental activity that can be pursued by the method that Plato recommends are mathematics and mystic insight. This explains how these two come to be so intimately combined in Plato and the Pythagoreans.
To the empiricist, the body is what brings us into touch with the world of external reality, but to Plato it is doubly evil, as a distorting medium, causing us to see as through a glass darkly, and as a source of lusts which distract us from the pursuit of knowledge and the vision of truth. Some quotations will make this clear.
The body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us all power of thinking at all. Whence come wars, and fightings and factions? Whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and by reason of all these impediments we have no time to give to philosophy; and, last and worst of all, even if we are at leisure to betake ourselves to some speculation, the body is always breaking in upon us, causing turmoil and confusion in our inquiries, and so amazing us that we are prevented from seeing the truth. It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have true knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body—the soul in herself must behold things in themselves: and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of which we say we are lovers; not while we live, but after death: for if while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure knowledge, knowledge must be attained after death, if at all.
And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and have converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth. For the impure are not permitted to approach the pure. . . . And what is purification but the separation of the soul from the
-137-
body? . . . And this separation and release of the soul from the body is termed death. . . . And the true philosophers, and they only, are ever seeking to release the soul.
There is one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged, and that is wisdom.
The founders of the mysteries would appear to have had a real meaning, and were not talking nonsense when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For many, as they say in the mysteries, are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics, meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers.
All this language is mystical, and is derived from the mysteries. «Purity» is an Orphic conception, having primarily a ritual meaning, but for Plato it means freedom from slavery to the body and its needs. It is interesting to find him saying that wars are caused by love of money, and that money is only needed for the service of the body. The first half of this opinion is the same as that held by Marx, but the second belongs to a very different outlook. Plato thinks that a man could live on very little money if his wants were reduced to a minimum, and this no doubt is true. But he also thinks that a philosopher should be exempt from manual labour; he must therefore live on wealth created by others. In a very poor State there are likely to be no philosophers. It was the imperialism of Athens in the age of Pericles that made it possible for Athenians to study philosophy. Speaking broadly, intellectual goods are just as expensive as more material commodities, and just as little independent of economic conditions. Science requires libraries, laboratories, telescopes, microscopes, and so on, and men of science have to be supported by the labour of others. But to the mystic all this is foolishness. A holy man in India or Tibet needs no apparatus, wears only a loin cloth, eats only rice, and is supported by very meagre charity because he is thought wise. This is the logical development of Plato’s point of view.
To return to the Phaedo: Cebes expresses doubt as to the survival of the soul after death, and urges Socrates to offer arguments. This he proceeds to do, but it must be said that the arguments are very poor.
-138-
The first argument is that all things which have opposites are generated from their opposites—a statement which reminds us of Anaximander’s views on cosmic justice. Now life and death are opposites, and therefore each must generate the other. It follows that the souls of the dead exist somewhere, and come back to earth in due course. Saint Paul’s statement, «the seed is not quickened except it die,» seems to belong to some such theory as this.
The second argument is that knowledge is recollection, and therefore the soul must have existed before birth. The theory that knowledge is recollection is supported chiefly by the fact that we have ideas, such as exact equality, which cannot be derived from experience. We have experience of approximate equality, but absolute equality is never found among sensible objects, and yet we know what we mean by «absolute equality.» Since we have not learnt this from experience, we must have brought the knowledge with us from a previous existence. A similar argument, he says, applies to all other ideas. Thus the existence of essences, and our capacity to apprehend them, proves the pre-existence of the soul with knowledge.
The contention that all knowledge is reminiscence is developed at greater length in the Meno (87 ff.). Here Socrates says «there is no teaching, but only recollection.» He professes to prove his point by having Meno call in a slave-boy whom Socrates proceeds to question on geometrical problems. The boy’s answers are supposed to show that he really knows geometry, although he has hitherto been unaware of possessing this knowledge. The same conclusion is drawn in the Meno as in the Phaedo, that knowledge is brought by the soul from a previous existence.
As to this, one may observe, in the first place, that the argument is wholly inapplicable to empirical knowledge. The slave-boy could not have been led to «remember» when the Pyramids were built, or whether the siege of Troy really occurred, unless he had happened to be present at these events. Only the sort of knowledge that is called a priori—especially logic and mathematics—can be possibly supposed to exist in every one independently of experience. In fact, this is the only sort of knowledge (apart from mystic insight) that Plato admits to be really knowledge. Let us see how the argument can be met in regard to mathematics.
-139-
Take the concept of equality. We must admit that we have no experience, among sensible objects, of exact equality; we see only approximate equality. How, then, do we arrive at the idea of absolute equality? Or do we, perhaps, have no such idea?
Let us take a concrete case. The metre is defined as the length of a certain rod in Paris at a certain temperature. What should we mean if we said, of some other rod, that its length was exactly one metre? I don’t think we should mean anything. We could say: The most accurare processes of measurement known to science at the present day fail to show that our rod is either longer or shorter than the standard metre in Paris. We might, if we were sufficiently rash, add a prophecy that no subsequent refinements in the technique of measurement will alter this result. But this is still an empirical statement, in the sense that empirical evidence may at any moment disprove it. I do not think we really possess the idea of absolute equality that Plato supposes us to possess.
But even if we do, it is clear that no child possesses it until it reaches a certain age, and that the idea is elicited by experience, although not directly derived from experience. Moreover, unless our existence before birth was not one of sense-perception, it would have been as incapable of generating the idea as this life is; and if our previous existence is supposed to have been partly super-sensible, why not make the same supposition concerning our present existence? On all these grounds, the argument fails.
The doctrine of reminiscence being considered established, Cebes says: «About half of what was required has been proven; to wit, that our souls existed before we were born: —that the soul will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of which the proof is still wanting.» Socrates accordingly applies himself to this. He says that it follows from what was said about everything being
