Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/537

PLATO'S DOCTRINE OF IDEAS. 523 wise steady advance towards a clear doctrine of scientific method. He would have understood, once for all, that Plato is not only a Man of Science and Critic of Scientific Method, but also a Seer. As it is, he shows no appreciation of the masterly ease with which the Man of Science in Plato keeps the tendencies of the Seer in hand where the interests of Science would be compromised by their pre- valence ; and the abandon of the Seer, where scientific interests are not in question, he mistakes for serious defection from these interests. I do not underrate the difficulty of the task which I venture to find fault with Prof. Natorp for not having attempted. The Variety of Experience which finds expression in that phase of the Doctrine of ' Ideas, ' where the ' Ideas ' are presented, not as ' scientific points of view,' but as ' eternal substances ' really present in objects of sense, is one which has its roots very deep in Human Nature, as we must conclude from the fact that the expressions of it (and Plato's Doctrine of Ideas is neither the only expression of it, nor even itself reducible to a single formula) are at once so obscure to thought, and so perennially attractive to feeling. Those minds in which, as in Plato's, this deeply-rooted Experience is most vivid find any expression of it inadequate, and, in their effort to be out with it, try many modes of expression, emotional, sensuous, con- ceptual. Thus it is just where, as in Plato's mind, the Experience is most vivid, and its influence on its subject's life and thought presumably most profound, that the literary evidence to be sub- mitted for interpretation to the Court of Psychology is likely to be most conflicting. Here, as it seems to me, lies the peculiar diffi- culty confronting the psychological interpretation of Plato's Doc- trine of Ideas regarded not as method of science the psychological interpretation of that side of the doctrine is comparatively easy but as expression of the Experience from which Art and Keligion draw their inspiration. But it is, after all, only a difficulty of detail, and will certainly be overcome when trained psychologists, especially those in whom the Experience mentioned is vivid, have made that Experience an object of special study in themselves and in others, and have examined the literary evidence for it in Plato critically in the light of their special study. The trend of criticism is now so steady in the direction of treating ' Philosophical Doc- trines ' as expressing Varieties of Experience to be explained psycho- logically or, to use the most comprehensive term, biologically that there can be no doubt that, sooner or later, we shall see. the Doctrine of Ideas treated in this way. And we may confidently expect that the employment of this intimate method of interpreta- tion upon work so genial, so charged with rich personality, as is Plato's, will discover there treasures of truth and beauty hitherto hidden. It is now time to bring the foregoing general remarks to bear specially on some statements made by Prof. Burnet in his Eeview. I trust that nothing I may have to say will be thought inconsistent with appreciation of the friendly spirit of that Eeview or with the