A

ideal commonwealth because they teach not truth, but the images of truth; and he asserts that truth is always to be upheld as an object of great consequence: ̓Αλλὰ μὴν καὶ ἀλήθειάν γε περὶ πολλοῦ ποσο ητέονΡ. Téov. He permits however the governors of the city to make use of deceit, either for the sake of the citizens, or on account of the enemies; meaning probably for the good of the citizens, more especially against the enemies of the state: Tois ἄρχουσι δὴ τῆς πόλεως, εἴ πέρ τισιν ἄλλοις, προσήκει ψεύ δεσθαι ἢ πολεμίων ἢ πολιτῶν ἕνεκα ἐπ ̓ ὠφελείᾳ τῆς πό Aews but a private person is forbidden to practise it. Let us suppose then that Plato, while writing his Republic, considered himself as enjoying the privileges of a magistrate', and entitled, at the very time he dismisses the poets for giving false representations of gods and men, to inculcate falsehoods respecting the rewards and punishments of another life, provided the tendency of his fictions was beneficial. How comes it, that not in the Republic and the Laws only, but in works strictly philosophical, he holds out the same prospect of retribution after death?

P De Repub. Bekker, pars iii. vol. i.

¶ De Repub. p. 112.

p.

112.

r Yet this supposition, which is allowed for the sake of argument, will not be entertained by any one who recollects the concluding pages in the second book of the Republic.

Is he writing as a legislator in the Phædo an account of the death of Socrates?

In the Crito, a narrative of his refusal to escape from prison?

In the Apologia, his defence before his judges? In the Timæus, a philosophical description of the creation of the world?

In the Phædrus, a discussion on the difference between the truly beautiful and the image of it? In the Gorgias, a treatise on rhetoric?

D.

It would appear from the writings of Plato himself, as well as from other testimonies, that there were secret and esoterics doctrines reserved for select disciples, which were intended to explain more fully the obscurer parts of his philosophy. This seems to be the meaning of the passage in the seventh Epistle, in which, apparently jealous that accounts of his instructions had been made public without his sanction, he declares (evincing at the same time, as may be perceived from the tone of his feelings, a desire to magnify the value of these hidden precepts) that there were some things which he never had written, and which he never would write; and without

s Brucker, vol. i. p. 660. Plato, Phædrus, Epist. 2. 7. 13. De Repub. lib. iv. Bekker, p. 179.

these, his common instructions could not in many points be clearly understood.

It is easy to suppose him having in view those passages in his writings in which he makes vague and obscure allusions to some apparently sublime truth, and then hastens on, without dwelling farther on the subject, to sentences like that in the Phædrus, where, after describing in a wild and mystical style the happiness belonging to different orders of spiritual beings, he hints at some more exalted and perfect felicity confined to the Deity alone, and which no poet had ever yet described or could worthily describe. But there is no foundation for believing, that though his philosophical writings might sometimes admit of a fuller sense, they were therefore intended to bear a double sense, and that the very same words were calculated to convey to different classes of readers two meanings opposite to each other. Yet it is upon such a theory that we are to imagine Plato (according to Warburton's views) not merely keeping back something in his obscure representations, but absolutely disbelieving" his plain and positive

* Τὸν δὲ ὑπερουράνιον τόπον οὔ τέ τις ὕμνησέ πω τῶν τῇδε ποιητὴς οὔ τέ noệ vμvýσei kat' àžíav. Phædrus, Bekker, pars i. vol. i. p. 42,

" Cicero thought differently of Plato's belief on the subject. Ut enim rationem Plato nullam afferret (vide quid homini tribuam) ipsa auctoritate me frangeret. Tot autem rationes attu

statements, and having no conviction of a future state of personal consciousness, though he never fails in every treatise to inculcate it. A species of literary Machiavellianism (as it has been called) so extravagant, if not impossible, as this, and so directly opposed to all the notions which a soberminded man would imbibe from a general view of the tendency of Plato's writings, would require the strongest evidence for its support. And the supposition is at once disproved, as far as his belief of a future state is concerned, by a reference to his Epistles; those private Epistles, in which (as Warburton properly remarks) a man speaks his sentiments without disguise; nay, to the very same Epistles which are appealed to for the theory of a double sense, and which, if they do contain it, prevent its application to the question of a future retribution, by their containing also other passages in which the philosopher decidedly expresses his conviction of individual consciousness after death. In fact, nothing can be more la

lit, ut velle ceteris, sibi certe persuasisse videatur. Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. c. 21.

* Ο δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ τεκμήριον ποιοῦμαι ὅτι ἔστι τις αἴσθησις τοῖς τεθνεῶσι τῶν ἐνθάδε. αἱ γὰρ βέλτισται ψυχαι ΜΑΝΤΕΥΟΝΤΑΙ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχειν. αἱ δὲ μοχθηρόταται οὔ φασι, κυρίωτερα δὲ τὰ τῶν θείων ἀνδρῶν μаνтeúμaтaтà Tav μý. Epist. 2. ad Dionys. Bekker, p. 400.

Πείθεσθαι δὲ ὄντως ἀεὶ χρὴ τοῖς παλαιοῖς τε καὶ ἱεροῖς λόγοις οἳ δὴ μηνύουσιν ἡμῖν ΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΝ ΨΥΧΗΝ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΔΙΚΑΣΤΑΣ ΤΕ ΙΣΧΕΙΝ

boured and unsatisfactory than the bishop's arguments on the subject. The Epistles which he cites would by no means prove the truth of the general principle itself, omitting the question of its application, but only the partial adoption of such an expedient for a specific object : and most of the other testimonies may be dismissed at once. Such writers as Jamblichus and Synesius are of very little value in determining such a question. The latter was a Christian bishop of the fifth century; and, as he refused to surrender his heretical notions respecting the soul to the testimony of the written word of God, it is very possible that his interpretations of philosophy might be equally at variance with the actual statements of Plato. And Jamblichus, with all the Platonists of the Alexandrian school, (though they by no means universally support Warburton's views,) made it their object to misrepresent the doctrines of their Master. By the convenient theory of a double sense, of which they constituted themselves the inter

ΚΑΙ ΤΙΝΕΙΝ ΤΑΣ ΜΕΓΙΣΤΑΣ ΤΙΜΩΡΙΑΣ ΟΤΑΝ ΤΙΣ ΑΠΑΛΛΑΧΘΗ ΤΟΥ ΣΩΜΑΤΟΣ. Epist. 7. p. 448.

y Warburton, book iii. sect. 2. 3. 4.

z Plotinus, the most acute of them all, never supposed that the unity of the universal Soul excluded the idea of separate consciousness after death, or of personal identity in the individuals who were parts of it. 4th Ennead, Plotinus, 9th book, 7th book, ch. 15.

ch. 1.