TWO:We have this great advantage in dealing with Platothat his philosophical writings have come down to us entire, while the thinkers who preceded him are known only through fragments and second-hand reports. Nor is the difference merely accidental. Plato was the creator of speculative literature, properly so called: he was the first and also the greatest artist that ever clothed abstract thought in language of appropriate majesty and splendour; and it is probably to their beauty of form that we owe the preservation of his writings. Rather unfortunately, however, along with the genuine works of the master, a certain number of pieces have been handed down to us under his name, of which some are almost universally admitted to be spurious, while the authenticity of others is a question on which the best scholars are still divided. In the absence of any very cogent external evidence, an immense amount of industry and learning has been expended on this subject, and the arguments employed on both sides sometimes make us doubt whether the reasoning powers of philologists are better developed than, according to Plato, were those of mathematicians in his time. The176 two extreme positions are occupied by Grote, who accepts the whole Alexandrian canon, and Krohn, who admits nothing but the Republic;115 while much more serious critics, such as Schaarschmidt, reject along with a mass of worthless compositions several Dialogues almost equal in interest and importance to those whose authenticity has never been doubted. The great historian of Greece seems to have been rather undiscriminating both in his scepticism and in his belief; and the exclusive importance which he attributed to contemporary testimony, or to what passed for such with him, may have unduly biassed his judgment in both directions. As it happens, the authority of the canon is much weaker than Grote imagined; but even granting his extreme contention, our view of Platos philosophy would not be seriously affected by it, for the pieces which are rejected by all other critics have no speculative importance whatever. The case would be far different were we to agree with those who impugn the genuineness of the Parmenides, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Philbus, and the Laws; for these compositions mark a new departure in Platonism amounting to a complete transformation of its fundamental principles, which indeed is one of the reasons why their authenticity has been denied. Apart, however, from the numerous evidences of Platonic authorship furnished by the Dialogues themselves, as well as by the indirect references to them in Aristotles writings, it seems utterly incredible that a thinker scarcely, if at all, inferior to the master himselfas the supposed imitator must assuredly have beenshould have consented to let his reasonings pass current under a false name, and that, too, the name of one whose teaching he in some respects controverted; while there is a further difficulty in assuming that his existence could pass unnoticed at a period marked by intense literary and philosophical activity. Readers who177 wish for fuller information on the subject will find in Zellers pages a careful and lucid digest of the whole controversy leading to a moderately conservative conclusion. Others will doubtless be content to accept Prof. Jowetts verdict, that on the whole not a sixteenth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy.116 To which we may add that the Platonic dialogues, whether the work of one or more hands, and however widely differing among themselves, together represent a single phase of thought, and are appropriately studied as a connected series.Let the reader compare a hammer with a wheel and axle, inclined plane, screw, or lever, as an agent for concentrating and applying power, noting the principles of its action first, and then considering its universal use, and he will conclude that, if there is a mechanical device that comprehends distinct principles, that device is the common hammer. It seems, indeed, to be one of those provisions to meet a human necessity, and without which mechanical industry could not be carried on. In the manipulation of nearly every kind of material, the hammer is continually necessary in order to exert a force beyond what the hands may do, unaided by mechanism to multiply their force. A carpenter in driving a spike requires a force of from one to two tons; a blacksmith requires a force of from five pounds to five tons to meet the requirements of his work; a stonemason applies a force of from one hundred to one thousand pounds in driving the edge of his tools; chipping, calking, in fact nearly all mechanical operations, consist more or less in blows, such blows being the application of accumulated force expended throughout a limited distance.
Paul Morrison - BlackTie.co
TWO:6
Mike Wellington - BlackTie.co
