some notion of what they are looking for, otherwise they could not look; but they fail to perceive the difference between the idea itself and its partial embodiments; while he knows that the bright object of his quest is distinct from all sensible and particular things. And now let us take just one example of the negative dialogues, and consider whether it will bear this interpretation. Take the Hippias Major, than which there is no better illustration of our meaning. The question here is about the beautiful, or, if we would retain the comprehensive meaning of the Greek word, the fair, and the discussion is carried on with Hippias, a Sophist, who is introduced as expressing the utmost confidence that he can answer all the difficulties of Socrates. In the course of the conversation, Hippias offers three several definitions of the beautiful, all of which he is compelled to abandon by the questions of his opponent. These definitions are so remote from the point that they have been regarded as utterly unworthy of a man who was reputed wise in his own age, and as, therefore, very far from truth and probability. Of course it is impossible to say whether they are such definitions as the real Hippias would have given, but their fault is only this, that they confound the idea with the object in which it resides, or, as it may be expressed, the common attribute with the particular thing to which it belongs, and such a mistake was not ridiculous when Plato wrote. In fact, Socrates has the utmost difficulty in making Hippias understand the nature of the question. Having brought him to admit that there is such a thing as justice distinct from the just man, he tries to convince him that, in the same way, there must be a beauty distinct from the things that are beautiful. No sooner, however, is the question putWhat is the beautiful?-than Hippias forgets the lesson, and gives as his definition, "a beautiful maiden." Socrates speedily convinces him that a maiden cannot be possessed of absolute beauty, because, though much more beautiful than an ape, she is not beautiful as compared with the gods, and explains that what he is looking for is that by the possession of which other things, as well as the beautiful maiden herself, are beautiful. Hippias, however, is still so far from the apprehension of a universal idea that he now replies that gold is the thing by which all things else are made beautiful. Socrates, in reply, shows that there are other things besides gold which impart beauty, and that gold itself is not always beautiful-namely, when it is not becoming: for example, a ladle of figtree wood is more becoming and therefore more beautiful than one of gold. Driven from this position, the Sophist at length appears for a moment to have a glimmering of the real object of search, and asks, is it not something which will appear beautiful at all times and in all places? His next answer, however, shows that he is still in the dark. "It is," he says, "always and everywhere the most beautiful thing for a man after a happy life, and having laid his parents in the grave, to be himself splendidly buried by his children." But this does not apply to gods and heroes, and is, therefore, as futile as the rest. Socrates, accordingly, now takes his turn, and proposes several definitions of the beautiful-it is the

becoming, the useful, the pleasurable, which are, one after the other, eagerly welcomed by Hippias, and then, after examination, rejected both by him and by Socrates, and the dialogue ends with a speech from the latter, pointing out the folly of attempting to judge what is beautiful and what is not, so long as one does not know what is beauty itself.

Here the purpose of Plato seems to be quite unmistakable. There can hardly be a doubt that the result aimed at is the conviction that beauty is a thing by itself, altogether distinct from the objects in which it resides, and that there is no other quality into which it can be resolved. And the same purpose, applied to other general ideas, run through other dialogues. It is unnecessary to illustrate the subject at greater length, but any one who will read the most negative and the most apparently unsatisfactory of Plato's dialogues, will hardly fail to perceive that they all tend to the same conclusion-to the separation, namely, of the general idea, whatever it may be-temperance, or holiness, or law-from the particular persons or things which partake of its essence.

Enough has been said now to render Plato's doctrine of ideas intelligible to our non-Platonic readers, and it is only for such we write. Whether the doctrine is entirely absurd, or contains some grain of truth, is a question which the reader will probably be able to answer for himself, and to which we need not devote much space. In some respects the doctrine that abstract ideas are real entities, is highly absurd. There can be no doubt that the words animal, tree, man, &c. are simply names carried about in the memory, to be applied to all those several objects which resemble one another in such particulars as are included in the definition, and it is difficult to understand how any one could ever have maintained the contrary. There can be no doubt that justice is also a word applicable to certain understood relations and actions of intelligent beings, and that there is no such entity as justice, apart from intelligent beings and their doings. In this respect Plato was certainly misled by words. But in one respect his doctrine was not absurd. he intended to teach was, that justice and truth, and other such abstractions, are not mere matters of human opinion, dependent upon the customs of different countries, and changing with the revolutions of time; but that there is an absolute standard somewhere, known indeed only to the wise, but by them capable of being so applied as to enable them to form a judgment in all particular cases. And every one feels that this is so. Every one feels that though all men were to act unjustly, this would not destroy justice itself, or make injustice right; that though all men were agreed in a lie, this would not alter the nature of truth. And this, doubtless, is the grain of truth which lies, almost drowned in splendour, beneath the gorgeous imagery of the Phædrus and the gentle beauty of the Phado, and which is the purpose indirectly aimed at even in the apparently negative discussions.

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