PLATONISM.• Tars is a popular analysis of Platonism, a book
with a strong didactic bias, a book with a purpose. As such it is of interest to the world at large rather than to scholars or specialists. The author deals exclusively with the ethical theme which runs through all Plato's discussions. He laments tho fact that the youth of to-day find their intellectual life deprived by the decay of religious dogma, and by what he considers the perversions of philosophy, of all centre or significance, and would turn their minds to the " inexhaustible source of strength and comfort " to be found in the Platonic Dialogues. The representation of philosophy offered to us by Mr. Elmer More is not, as he warns us, in'complete accord with present-day convictions. " The current of thought to-day runs against me," he says. Nevertheless, his conclusions aro eminently practical and, if we may say so, topical.
The efforts of the various scholars to escape the Socratic paradox by representing Socrates, on the one hand, as a-pure rationalist, and, on the other, as a mere mystic, are, he thinks, untenable. Intel- lectual scepticism and spiritual affirmation are both Socratic. Our author brings up against Christianity that, while affirming with Socrates that the just man is alone happy whatever his misfortunes, St. Paul at any rate refused to stand by the assertion unless he were backed by belief in a future life. He practically said that the good man was more unhappy than other men if the grave were the end. Socrates, on the other hand, met the question of goodness and unending misfortime and death squarely and continued to affirm his great contention. The ordinary reader will not be able, we think, to avoid the reflection that., whether St. Paul was right or wrong, he was more of a realist than Mr. More, and made quite as direct an appeal to the final authority which Mr. More is always quoting,
• Platonism. By Paul Elmer More, London : Humphrey Milford. [7s. bd. net.]
the common-sense of man. The reader, however, must obviously not lose sight of the duality of happiness and pleasure, or of the
fact that only by the offer of the one can man be weaned from the temptations of the other.
Mr. More's exposition of the Socratic quest, and his distinction between it and the Platonic quest, in which exposition there is of course space for much individual opinion. is deeply interesting. His chapters " The Doctrine of Ideas " and " Science and Cosmo- gony," and his comments upon the famous metaphor of the chariot of the Phaedrus, will all, we are sure, be eagerly read by the public for whom the book is intended. To our mind, however, It is his view of what he describes as the religion of Socrates which forms the most striking and original portion of the whole work. Rever- ential regard for the daemonic guidance was, he believes, the religion of Socrates. His conception of the Divine immanence brought " a new and strange faith into Athens and the world, the faith of philosophy." Whether we regard the " daemonic check " as a spark of Divine intelligence imparted to every soul, or as something peculiar to Socrates, or simply as a name he gave to his higher self, it is certain that " the daemonic guide invariably takes the form of an Inhibition, and never of a positive command." On the determination to keep this " will to refrain distinct from any conception of the will as a positive force " depends, In Mr.
More's view, the individual and corporate salvation of man. Here we must allow Mr. More to speak for himself :— " We touch here on the mystery of the spiritual life. Men are loath to accept this purely negative view of what is highest in their being ; every instinct of the concupiscent soul cries out against this complete severance between the law of the spirit and the law of nature, and the human heart revolts from it with all the energy and the tenacity of its craving for flattery. Men argue in their calmer moods that such a philosophy leads nowhere save to utter abnegation of life and to a quietism that promises only the peace of death. In their moments of exaltation they appeal to the stronger emotions and, as they think, deeper consolations of a religion that clings to faith in a personal God who has manifested himself in human form with passions like unto man's. All these arguments and repudiations I know; but, withal, I read Plato, and then read in my own soul, and the book and the voice of conscious- ness are one in replying that the truth of our being can be found only in the hard fact of dualism, and that the spirit, if we would define it, can be expressed only in terms of negation. Nor has this truth ever been forgotten by the world. If you turn to those Christian theologians who have most wrestled with language to give a name to their God, you will find that the attributes allowed to him are all merely negatives of things we know by our senses."
Once confuse the Divine voice with Kant's Categorical Imperative
and, in Mr. More's belief, you gain an excuse for forcing your own sense of right upon reluctant mankind. What else than this, he asks, is the German standpoint to-day ? When Goethe spoke of the spirit that denies he was, our author believes, wholly in the wrong :—
" It is God that denies, not Satan. The moment these terms are reversed, what is reverenced as the spirit becomes a snare instead of a monitor : liberty is turned into license, a glamour of sanctity is thrown over the desires of the heart, the humility of doubt goes out of the mind, the will to follow this or that impulsion is invested with divine authority, there is an utter confusion of the higher and the lower elements of our nature."
The Divine spirit is, Mr. More maintains, the hidden source of beauty,• order, and joy, and yet it never appears as a positive inspiration
with a command to do. That way lies fanaticism. Temperance is the outcome of inhibition.
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