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PROFESSOR JOWETT'S "PLATO."
WITIf the appearance of these five singularly handsome Tolurues—in their form and typography a credit even to the Clarendon Press—the Master of Balliol may fairly be con- gratulated on the final accomplishment of his long task, that 'of converting Plato into an English classic. He has, of eourse, also translated Thucydides and the Politics of Aristotle, and has beside many other claims to fame, but it is with Plato, as has been now recognised for all time in the beautiful stanzas recently addressed to him by his old friend, the late Poet-Laureate, and by a more touching 'coincidence published just after this third edition, that his name will be specially associated. Plato himself, after the excellent manner of the ancients, literally spent a lifetime on elaborating his glorious style, and at eighty years of age, was still "combing and curling, and in every way dressing anew his dialogues." In the same way, the Master, during twenty busy years, in which, like Plato's philosopher, he has been called on to undertake the duties and drudgeries of ruling first his College and then his University, has found time to touch and retouch his work many times. The general character of the translation is well known. It still retains its old foibles, and even in a third edition some of its old. faults. That it is not liberal, it is quite needless to say. Literal it does not mean to be. As a "crib," it is of little use. The scholar who goes to it for the solution of a crux, will often find his difficulty not so much solved as dis- solved in a paraphrase. It would not be difficult to produce a rendering which should bear to this the same relation as the Revised to the Authorised Version. Something would be gained, more would be lost. For Professor Jowett's is, and will be, the 'authorised version' of Plato. If ever Plato * The Dia'ostos of Plato. Translated into English, with Analyses and Intro. ,dnotion, by B..lowett, M.A.., Master of Balliol Oellege, and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. Third Edition, Revised and corrected throughout, with Marginal Analyses, and an Index of Subjects and Proper Nantes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1884 is to sink into the general English mind, it will be through this noble rendering. To translate Plato requires a combina- tion of gifts. Of Greek, that "musical and prolific language," and of its peculiar genius by which, as Gibbon goes on, "it gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstrac- tions of philosophy," he is the fullest and richest master. Writing in prose, he is still, as all critics, from Aristotle and Cicero to Sidney and Spenser and Shelley, have recognised, essentially poetical, so much so that minds of a positive cast, like Gibbon and Macaulay, have avowedly loved him for his poetry rather than his philosophy. Professor Jowett is not so one-sided, but of Plato's prose-poetry he is thoroughly appreciative, and his translation is its faithful echo. Plato's rhythm, his music, his Olympian Eloquence, his exquisite dic- tion, the lightness and brightness of his idealised conversation, the play of his fancy, the soaring sweep of his imagination, are all here. And Plato has not one, but many styles. Now he is grave, now be is gay, he is simple, elaborate, serious, mocking by turns, now narrative, now oratorical, now descriptive, now argumentative, now mystical, now mathematical. The per- sons of his drama are many, and speak in character. With the most subtle sympathy, the Master reproduces this variety. The irony of Socrates, the impetuous ardour of his youthful hearers, the euphuism of Agathon, the copious braggadocio of Thrasymachus, the cadence silver as those of Lysias ; nor these earthly voices alone, but also the sweet and solemn utterances of Heaven and Hell, all succeed each other as in. the original, and with the same flowing grace.
On the Analyses we need not dwell. They are, speaking generally, a compendium of the translation, often in language almost identical, displaying in brief, with admirable discrimi- nation and lucidity, the " argument " in both senses of the Dialogues. The Introductions are far more. They are a series of expanded elucidations of points raised by the Dia- logues, sometimes little more than long notes, sometimes what would be called in the language of scholarship, " excur- suses " on larger points or portions of the Platonic matter. But Plato is a most various writer. There are few things in heaven and earth which are not dreamed of in his philosophy. To use the phrase coined by his illustrious disciple, Coleridge, for Shakespeare, he is indeed "myriad-minded." As has been said of him by a modern metaphysician, "his pliant genius sits close to universal reality like the sea which fits in to all the sinuosities of the land. Not a shore of thought was left untouched by his murmuring lip. Over deep and over shallow he rolls on, broad, urbane, and unconcerned." It follows that Professor Jowett is equally various,—religion, art, science, politics, education, are each handled in turn ; while certain longer and almost independent essays deal with such topics as the Science of Language, Psychology, Communism, Utilitarianism, the Platonic Ideas or the Philosophical Systems of Kant and Hegel.
Professor Jowett has not, perhaps, even yet been sufficiently recognised as an original thinker and writer with a distinct and beautiful style of his own, polished, terse, epigrammatic without rhetoric or affectation. It was Mr. Bagehot who long ago said of him that he often proved by a chance expression that he had exhausted impending controversies before they arose. And there are in these essays many apothegms quite as good as that about the "ages before morality," which so pleased Mr. Bagehot. It would be impossible in our space to do justice to them. All that can be attempted is to give some idea of their drift and method. "Clear your mind of cant" was the central maxim of the great critic of the last century. The Master's is hardly different. 'Free your mind,' he practically says, from the domination of words, and especially of technical terms.' He seems almost to think that speech has been given to man to conceal his thoughts not only from his neighbours but from himself :—" The words evo- lution," birth," law," development," instinct," implicit,' explicit,' and the like, have a false clearness and comprehen- siveness which adds nothing to our knowledge." "Would it not be better if this term (consciousness), which is so mis- leading and yet has played so great a part in mental science, were either banished or used only with the distinct meaning of attention to our own minds such as is called forth, not by familiar mental processes, but by the interruption of them?" Exceedingly characteristic are the two essays on Language and Psyehology. The one is constructive, but with reser- vation; the other destructive, but with qualification. "There is a science of language, but it is far from certain whether it will prove progressive or lead to much more definite con- clusions than at present." Psychology is, on the other hand, not a science, but "a fragment of a science which in all pro- bability can never make great progress or attain to much clearness or exactness." "It should be natural, not technical, It should aim at no more than every reflecting man knows, or can easily verify for himself."
Applied to Plato, this method means the constant effort to present him as he really was in the conditions of Greek society, and knowledge. When that has been done, and then only, are we to think of the modern application. The first task is one of scholarship in the widest sense. We must realise Greek life and thought, and in the endeavour to do this the Master throws out innumerable °biter dicta full of sagacity and suggestion. We must see what Plato was, and also what he was not. "Ancient and modern philosophy throw a light upon one another, but they should be compared, not confounded," and" we must not intrude upon Plato either a system or a technical language."
A delightful piece of writing is the essay on the "Ideas of Plato," in which, perhaps, though the whole of the Master's teaching runs counter to such an attempt, he may be said to have summed up the essence of Plato's philosophy :— " Plato's doctrine of ideas has attained an imaginary clearness and definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings." "They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations, aspirations after an unknown world." "They relate to a sub- ject of which Plato himself would have said that he was not confident of the precise form of his own statements, but was strong in the belief that something of the kind was true.'" "It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agree, the spirit which places the divine above the human, the spiritual above the materiel, the one above the many, the mind before the body." The essay concludes with a brief but masterly review of modern philosophy, in which Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, are all touched on, and finally, in a passage of great interest, the writer rises to something of prophetic strain, and sees at a distance the promise of a new method of philosophy.
Characteristic, too, though in different ways, are the Excursus on the "Legend of Atlantis," a tradition which, though doubtless launched by the fancy of Plato, in the sequel, may be said to have contributed indirectly to the discovery of .America, and the remarks about the Commentary of Proclus on the Timmus, which is "a wonderful monument of the silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian age, and to which he who would study the degeneracy of philosophy and of the Greek mind cannot do better than devote a few of his days and nights." We may note, too, that if hard upon Proclus, the Master sets a good example of urbanity and courtesy in his gentle censure of M. Martin, and in his graceful and light, while serious, discussion of Dr. Jackson's view of an early and later Theory of Ideas, with which, we need hardly say, he does not agree. The new essay on the Myths contains many good things, among them, this :—" It is useless to criticise the broken metaphors of Plato, if the effect of the whole is to create a picture, not such as can be painted on canvas, but which is full of life and meaning to the reader." And a beautiful piece of writing at the end of the Introduction to the " Laws " takes a pathetic leave of the great philosopher, as of a personal friend.
Plato is a fixed star, shining with an unborrowed and steady light, from whose size and brightness the added distance of a few centuries makes no appreciable deduction. His influence may vary with passing clouds ; but it recurs, and men return to it, sometimes when, like Rousseau, they fancy they are returning to Nature. Is he to have a new period of potency in our day P It would be natural; and it is to be desired that, as in the first Renaissance, so in the second, in which we are living, there should be a revival of a wise Platonism. In an age whose dangers are materialism, pessimism, and scepticism in science, realism in art, and ochlocracy in politics, when education, too, is the question of the hour, Plato, with his "thoughts that lift the soul of men," might do something, 'nay, much, to reinforce the love of the spiritual and the ideal, but only if he is read in his entirety, and with under- standing. It is a curious fact in the history of Plato that he has had much influence through translations. Like Aristotle, " Hato= " penetrated in Arabic versions the furthest corners
of Islam. The great version of Ficino informed the men of the revival of letters. Shelley, one of the most notable of Platonists, began his study in a version of a version, in an English rendering of the French of Dacier, supplemented by Floyer Sydenha.m, and Thomas Taylor. The existence, then, of his whole works in a form accessible and intelligible to the whole English race, is in itself a factor the value of which can hardly be calculated. It is said that Professor Jowett's earlier editions have had a great vogue in America. We trust that this may be even more the case with this new edition, for there are not wanting signs of a revival there of the follies of Neoplatonism. It is no` enough that Plato should be read a he should be read aright. And if this noble version should help to the first end, the second should no less be furthered by the large and ripe wisdom of the admirable introductions. and elucidations. We know, indeed, of few pieces of recent writing which seem to us so pregnant with a philosophy applicable to the present moment, so beautifully conveyed, as. Professor Jowett's discussion of the character of the true and the false statesman, and of the true poet, in the introduction. to the" Gorgias."
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