Part 1 of 18
Notes
General Remarks.
The text of the book is self-contained and may be read without these Notes. However, a considerable amount of material which is likely to interest all readers of the book will be found here, as well as some references and controversies which may not be of general interest. Readers who wish to consult the Notes for the sake of this material may find it convenient first to read without interruption through the text of a chapter, and then to turn to the Notes.
I wish to apologize for the perhaps excessive number of cross-references which have been included for the benefit of those readers who take a special interest in one or other of the side issues touched upon (such as Plato's preoccupation with racialism, or the Socratic Problem). Knowing that war conditions would make it impossible for me to read the proofs, I decided to refer not to pages but to note numbers. Accordingly, references to the text have been indicated by notes such as: 'cp. text to note 24 to chapter 3', etc. War conditions also restricted library facilities, making it impossible for me to obtain a number of books, some recent and some not, which would have been consulted in normal circumstances.
* Notes which make use of material which was not available to me when writing the manuscript for the first edition of this book (and other notes which I wish to characterize as having been added to the book since 1943) are enclosed by asterisks; not all new additions to the notes have, however, been so marked.*
Note to Introduction
For Kant's motto, see note 41 to chapter 24, and text.
The terms 'open society' and 'closed society' were first used, to my knowledge, by Henri Bergson, in Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Engl, ed., 1935). In spite of a considerable difference (due to a fundamentally different approach to nearly every problem of philosophy) between Bergson's way of using these terms and mine, there is a certain similarity also, which I wish to acknowledge. (Cp. Bergson's characterization of the closed society, op. cit., p. 229, as 'human society fresh from the hands of nature'.) The main difference, however, is this. My terms indicate, as it were, a rationalist distinction; the closed society is characterized by the belief in magical taboos, while the open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence (after discussion). Bergson, on the other hand, has a kind of religious distinction in mind. This explains why he can look upon his open society as the product of a mystical intuition, while I suggest (in chapters 10 and 24) that mysticism may be interpreted as an expression of the longing for the lost unity of the closed society, and therefore as a reaction against the rationalism of the open society. From the way my term 'The Open Society' is used in chapter 10, it may be seen that there is some resemblance to Graham Wallas' term 'The Great Society'; but my term may cover a 'small society' too, as it were, like that of Periclean Athens, while it is perhaps conceivable that a 'Great Society' may be arrested and thereby closed. There is also, perhaps, a similarity between my 'open society' and the term used by Walter Lippmann as the title of his most admirable book. The Good Society (1937). See also note 59 (2) to chapter 10 and notes 29, 32, and 58 to chapter 24, and text.
Notes to Volume I
Notes to Chapter One
For Pericles' motto, see note 31 to chapter 10, and text. Plato's motto is discussed in some detail in notes 33 and 34 to chapter 6, and text.
1. I use the term 'collectivism' only for a doctrine which emphasizes the significance of some collective or group, for instance, 'the state' (or a certain state; or a nation; or a class) as against that of the individual. The problem of collectivism versus individualism is explained more fully in chapter 6, below; see especially notes 26 to 28 to that chapter, and text. — Concerning 'tribalism', cp. chapter 10, and especially note 38 to that chapter (list of Pythagorean tribal taboos).
2. This means that the interpretation does not convey any empirical information, as shown in my The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
3. One of the features which the doctrines of the chosen people, the chosen race, and the chosen class have in common is that they originated, and became important, as reactions against some kind of oppression. The doctrine of the chosen people became important at the time of the foundation of the Jewish church, i.e. during the Babylonian captivity; Count Gobineau's theory of the Aryan master race was a reaction of the aristocratic emigrant to the claim that the French Revolution had successfully expelled the Teutonic masters. Marx's prophecy of the victory of the proletariat is his reply to one of the most sinister periods of oppression and exploitation in modern history. Compare with these matters chapter 10, especially note 39, and chapter 17, especially notes 13-15, and text.
* One of the briefest and best summaries of the historicist creed can be found in the radically historicist pamphlet which is quoted more fully at the end of note 12 to chapter 9, entitled Christians in the Class Struggle, by Gilbert Cope, Foreword by the Bishop of Bradford. ('Magnificat' Publication No. 1, Published by the Council of Clergy and Ministers for Common Ownership, 1942, 28, Maypole Lane, Birmingham 14.) Here we read, on pp. 5-6: 'Common to all these views is a certain quality of "inevitability plus freedom". Biological evolution, the class conflict succession, the action of the Holy Spirit — all three are characterized by a definite motion towards an end. That motion may be hindered or deflected for a time by deliberate human action, but its gathering momentum cannot be dissipated, and though the final stage is but dimly apprehended, it is 'possible to know enough about the process to help forward or to delay the inevitable flow. In other words, the natural laws of what we observe to be "progress" are sufficiently... understood by men so that they can... either... make efforts to arrest or divert the main stream — efforts which may seem to be successful for a time, but which are in fact foredoomed to failure.'*
4. Hegel said that, in his Logic, he had preserved the whole of Heraclitus' teaching. He also said that he owed everything to Plato. *It may be worth mentioning that Ferdinand von Lassalle, one of the founders of the German social democratic movement (and, like Marx, a Hegelian), wrote two volumes on Heraclitus.*
Notes to Chapter Two
1. The question 'What is the world made of?' is more or less generally accepted as the fundamental problem of the early Ionian philosophers. If we assume that they viewed the world as an edifice, the question of the ground-plan of the world would be complementary to that of its building material. And indeed, we hear that Thales was not only interested in the stuff the world is made of, but also in descriptive astronomy and geography, and that Anaximander was the first to draw up a ground-plan, i.e. a map of the earth. Some further remarks on the Ionian school (and especially on Anaximander as predecessor of Heraclitus) will be found in chapter 10; cp. notes 38-40 to that chapter, especially note 39.
* According to R. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt , p. 693, Homer's feeling of destiny ('moira') can be traced back to oriental astral mysticism which deifies time, space, and fate. According to the same author (Revue de Synthese Historique, 41, app., p. 16 f), Hesiod's father was a native of Asia Minor, and the sources of his idea of the Golden Age, and the metals in man, are oriental. (Cp. on this question Eisler 's forthcoming posthumous study of Plato, Oxford 1950.) Eisler also shows (Jesus Basileus, vol. II, 618 f) that the idea of the world as a totality of things ('cosmos') goes back to Babylonian political theory. The idea of the world as an edifice (a house or tent) is treated in his Weltenmantel.'
2. See Diels, Die Vorsokratiker, 5th edition, 1934 (abbreviated here as 'D5'), fragment 124; cp. also D5, vol. II, p. 423, lines 21 f (The interpolated negation seems to me methodologically as unsound as the attempt of certain authors to discredit the fragment altogether; apart from this, I follow Rustow's emendation.) For the two other quotations in this paragraph, see Plato, Cratylus, 40 Id, 402a/b.
My interpretation of the teaching of Heraclitus is perhaps different from that commonly assumed at present, for instance from that of Burnet. Those who may feel doubtful whether it is at all tenable are referred to my notes, especially the present note and notes 6, 7, and 11, in which I am dealing with Heraclitus' natural philosophy, having confined my text to a presentation of the historicist aspect of Heraclitus' teaching and to his social philosophy. I further refer them to the evidence of chapters 4 to 9, and especially of chapter 10, in whose light Heraclitus' philosophy, as I see it, appears as a somewhat typical reaction to the social revolution which he witnessed. Cp. also the notes 39 and 59 to that chapter (and text), and the general criticism of Burnet's and Taylor's methods in note 56.
As indicated in the text, I hold (with many others, for instance, with Zeller and Grote) that the doctrine of universal flux is the central doctrine of Heraclitus. As opposed to this, Burnet holds that this 'is hardly the central point in the system' of Heraclitus (cp. Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd ed., 163). But a close inspection of his arguments (158 f) leaves me quite unconvinced that Heraclitus' fundamental discovery was the abstract metaphysical doctrine 'that wisdom is not the knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of warring opposites', as Burnet puts it. The unity of opposites is certainly an important part of Heraclitus' teaching, but it can be derived (as far as such things can be derived; cp. note 11 to this chapter, and the corresponding text) from the more concrete and intuitively understandable theory of flux; and the same can be said of Heraclitus' doctrine of the fire (cp. note 7 to this chapter).
Those who suggest, with Burnet, that the doctrine of universal flux was not new, but anticipated by the earlier Ionians, are, I feel, unconscious witnesses to Heraclitus' originality; for they fail now, after 2,400 years, to grasp his main point. They do not see the difference between a flux or circulation within a vessel or an edifice or a cosmic framework, i.e. within a totality of things (part of the Heraclitean theory can indeed be understood in this way, but only that part of it which is not very original; see below), and a universal flux which embraces everything, even the vessel, the framework itself (cp. Lucian in D5 I, p. 190) and which is described by Heraclitus' denial of the existence of any fixed thing whatever. (In a way, Anaximander had made a beginning by dissolving the framework, but there was still a long way from this to the theory of universal flux. Cp. also note 15 (4) to chapter 3.)
The doctrine of universal flux forces Heraclitus to attempt an explanation of the apparent stability of the things in this world, and of other typical regularities. This attempt leads him to the development of subsidiary theories, especially to his doctrine of fire (cp. note 7 to this chapter) and of natural laws (cp. note 6). It is in this explanation of the apparent stability of the world that he makes much use of the theories of his predecessors by developing their theory of rarefaction and condensation, together with their doctrine of the revolution of the heavens, into a general theory of the circulation of matter, and of periodicity. But this part of his teaching, I hold, is not central to it, but subsidiary. It is, so to speak, apologetic, for it attempts to reconcile the new and revolutionary doctrine of flux with common experience as well as with the teaching of his predecessors. I believe, therefore, that he is not a mechanical materialist who teaches something like the conservation and circulation of matter and of energy; this view seems to me to be excluded by his magical attitude towards laws as well as by his theory of the unity of opposites which emphasizes his mysticism.
My contention that the universal flux is the central theory of Heraclitus is, I believe, corroborated by Plato. The overwhelming majority of his explicit references to Heraclitus (Crat, 401d, 402a/b, 411, 437ff , 440; Theaet, 153c/d, 160d, 177c, 179d f , 182a ff , 183a ff., cp. dlso Symp., 207d, Phil., 43a; cp. also Aristotle's Metaphysics, 987a33, 1010al3, 1078b 13) witness to the tremendous impression made by this central doctrine upon the thinkers of that period. These straightforward and clear testimonies are much stronger than the admittedly interesting passage which does not mention Heraclitus' name (Soph., 242d f., quoted already, in connection with Heraclitus, by Ueberweg and Zeller), on which Burnet attempts to base his interpretation. (His other witness, Philo Judaeus, cannot count much as against the evidence of Plato and Aristotle.) But even this passage agrees completely with our interpretation. (With regard to Burnet's somewhat wavering judgement concerning the value of this passage, cp. note 56(7) to chapter 10.) Heraclitus' discovery that the world is not the totality of things but of events or facts is not at all trivial; this can be perhaps gauged by the fact that Wittgenstein has found it necessary to reaffirm it quite recently: 'The world is the totality of facts, not of things.' (Cp. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921/22, sentence 1.1; italics mine.)
To sum up. I consider the doctrine of universal flux as fundamental, and as emerging from the realm of Heraclitus' social experiences. All other doctrines of his are in a way subsidiary to it. The doctrine of fire (cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 984a7, 1067a2; also 989a2, 996a9, 5; Physics, 205a3) I consider to be his central doctrine in the field of natural philosophy; it is an attempt to reconcile the doctrine of flux with our experience of stable things, a link with the older theories of circulation, and it leads to a theory of laws. And the doctrine of the unity of opposites I consider as something less central and more abstract, as a forerunner of a kind of logical or methodological theory (as such it inspired Aristotle to formulate his law of contradiction), and as linked to his mysticism.
3. W. Nestle, Die Vorsokratiker (1905), 35.
4. In order to facilitate the identification of the fragments quoted, I give the numbers of Bywater's edition (adopted, in his English translation of the fragments, by Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy), and also the numbers of Diels' 5th edition.
Of the eight passages quoted in the present paragraph, (1) and (2) are from the fragments B 114 (= Bywater, and Burnet), D5 121 (= Diels, 5th edition). The others are from the fragments: (3) B 111, D5 29; cp. Plato's Republic, 586a/b... (4): B 111, D5 104... (5): B 112, D5 39 (cp. D5, vol. I, p. 65, Bias, 1)... (6): B 5, D5 17... (7): B 110, D5 33... (8): B 100, D5 44.
5. The three passages quoted in this paragraph are from the fragments: (1) and (2): cp. B 41, D5 91; for (1) cp. also note 2 to this chapter; (3): D5 74.
6. The two passages are B 21, D5 31; and B 22, D5 90.
7. For Heraclitus' 'measures' (or laws, or periods), see B 20, 21, 23, 29; D5 30, 31, 94. (D 31 brings 'measure' and 'law' (logos) together.)
The five passages quoted later in this paragraph are from the fragments: (1): D5, vol. I, p. 141, line 10. (Cp. Diog. Laert., IX, 7.)... (2): B 29, D5 94 (cp. note 2 to chapter 5)... (3): B 34, D5 100... (4): B 20, D5 30... (5): B 26, D5 66.
(1) The idea of law is correlative to that of change or flux, since only laws or regularities within the flux can explain the apparent stability of the world. The most typical regularities within the changing world known to man are the natural periods: the day, the moon-month, and the year (the seasons). Heraclitus' theory of law is, I believe, logically intermediate between the comparatively modem views of 'causal laws' (held by Leucippus and especially by Democritus) and Anaximander's dark powers of fate. Heraclitus' laws are still 'magical', i.e. he has not yet distinguished between abstract causal regularities and laws enforced, like taboos, by sanctions (with this, cp. chapter 5, note 2). It appears that his theory of fate was connected with a theory of a 'Great Year' or 'Great Cycle' of 18,000 or 36,000 ordinary years. (Cp. for instance J. Adam's edition of The Republic of Plato, vol. II, 303.) I certainly do not think that this theory is an indication that Heraclitus did not really believe in a universal flux, but only in various circulations which always re-established the stability of the framework; but I think it possible that he had difficulties in conceiving a law of change, and even of fate, other than one involving a certain amount of periodicity. (Cp. also note 6 to chapter 3.)
(2) Fire plays a central role in Heraclitus' philosophy of nature. (There may be some Persian influence here.) The flame is the obvious symbol of a flux or process which appears in many respects as a thing. It thus explains the experience of stable things, and reconciles this experience with the doctrine of flux. This idea can easily be extended to living bodies which are like flames, only burning more slowly. Heraclitus teaches that all things are in flux, all are like fire; their flux has only different 'measures' or laws of motion. The 'bowl' or 'trough' in which the fire burns will be in a much slower flux than the fire, but it will be in flux nevertheless. It changes, it has its fate and its laws, it must be burned into by the fire, and consumed, even if it takes a longer time before its fate is fulfilled. Thus, 'in its advance, the fire will judge and convict everything' (B 26, D5 66).
Accordingly, the fire is the symbol and the explanation of the apparent rest of things in spite of their real state of flux. But it is also a symbol of the transmutation of matter from one stage (fuel) into another. It thus provides the link between Heraclitus' intuitive theory of nature and the theories of rarefaction and condensation, etc., of his predecessors. But its flaring up and dying down, in accordance with the measure of fuel provided, is also an instance of a law. If this is combined with some form of periodicity, then it can be used to explain the regularities of natural periods, such as days or years. (This trend of thought renders it unlikely that Burnet is right in disbelieving the traditional reports of Heraclitus' belief in a periodical conflagration, which was probably connected with his Great Year; cp. Aristotle, Physics, 205a3 with D5 66.)
8. The thirteen passages quoted in this paragraph are from the fragments.
(1): B 10, D5 123... (2): B 11, D5 93... (3): B 16, D5 40... (4): B 94, D5 73... (5): B 95, D5 89... with (4) and (5), cp. Plato's Republic, 476c f , and 520c... (6): B 6, D5 19... (7): B 3, D5 34... (8): B 19, D5 41... (9): B 92, D5 2... (10): B 91a, D5 113... (11): B 59, D5 10... (12): B 65, D5 32... (13):B28, D5 64.
9. More consistent than most moral historicists, Heraclitus is also an ethical and juridical positivist (for this term, cp. chapter 5): 'All things are, to the gods, fair and good and right; men, however, have taken up some things as wrong, and some as right' (D5 102, B 61; see passage (8) in note 11.) That he was the first juridical positivist is attested by Plato (Theaet, 177c/d). On moral and juridical positivism in general, cp. chapter 5 (text to notes 14-18) and chapter 22.
10. The two passages quoted in this paragraph are: (1): B 44, D5 53... (2): B 62, D5 80.
11. The nine passages quoted in this paragraph are: (1): B 39, D5 126... (2): B 104, D5 111... (3): B 78, D5 88... (4): B 45, D5 51... (5): D5 8... (6): B 69, D5 60... (7): B 50, D5 59... (8): B 61, D5 102 (cp. note 9)... (9): B 57, D5 58. (Cp. Aristotle, Physics, 185b20.)
Flux or change must be the transition from one stage or property or position to another. In so far as flux presupposes something that changes, this something must remain identically the same, even though it assumes an opposite stage or property or position. This links the theory of flux to that of the unity of opposites (cp. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1005b25, 1024a24 and 34, 1062a32, 1063a25) as well as the doctrine of the oneness of all things; they are all only different phases or appearances of the one changing something (of fire).
Whether 'the path that leads up' and 'the path that leads down' were originally conceived as an ordinary path leading first up a mountain, and later down again (or perhaps: leading up from the point of view of the man who is down, and down from that of the man who is up), and whether this metaphor was only later applied to the processes of circulation, to the path that leads up from earth through water (perhaps liquid fuel in a bowl?) to the fire, and down again from the fire through the water (rain?) to earth; or whether Heraclitus' path up and down was originally applied by him to this process of circulation of matter; all this can of course not be decided. (But I think that the first alternative is more likely in view of the great number of similar ideas in Heraclitus' fragments: cp. the text.)
12. The four passages are: (1): B 102, D5 24... (2): B 101, D5 25 (a closer version which more or less preserves Heraclitus' pun is: 'Greater death wins greater destiny.' Cp. also Plato's Laws, 903 d/e; contrast With. Rep. 617 d/e)... (3): B 111, D5 29 (part of the continuation is quoted above; see passage (3) in note 4)... (4): B 113, D5 49.
13. It seems very probable (cp. Meyer's Gesch. d. Altertums, esp. vol. I) that such characteristic teachings as that of the chosen people originated in this period, which produced several other religions of salvation besides the Jewish.
14. Comte, who in France developed a historicist philosophy not very dissimilar from Hegel's Prussian version, tried, like Hegel, to stem the revolutionary tide. (Cp. F. A. von Hayek, The Counter-Revo lution of Science, Economica, N.S. vol. VIII, 1941, pp. 119 ff., 281 ff.) For Lassalle's interest in Heraclitus, see note 4 to chapter 1. — It is interesting to note, in this connection, the parallelism between the history of historicist and of evolutionary ideas. They originated in Greece with the semi-Heraclitean Empedocles (for Plato's version, see note 1 to chapter 11), and they were revived, in England as well as in France, in the time of the French Revolution.
Notes to Chapter Three
1. With this explanation of the term oligarchy, cp. also the end of notes 44 and 57 to chapter 8.
2. Cp. especially note 48 to chapter 10.
3. Cp. the end of chapter 7, esp. note 25, and chapter 10, esp. note 69.
4. Cp. Diogenes Laert., Ill, 1. — Concerning Plato's family connections, and especially the alleged descent of his father's family from Codrus, 'and even from the God Poseidon', see G. Grote, Plato and other Companions of Socrates (edn 1875), vol. I, 114. (See, however, the similar remark on Critias' family, i.e. on that of Plato's mother, in E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, vol. V, 1922, p. 66.) Plato says of Codrus in the Symposium (208d): 'Do you suppose that Alcestis,... or Achilles,... or that your own Codrus would have sought death — in order to save the kingship for his children -- had they not expected to win that immortal memory of their virtue in which indeed we keep them?' Plato praises Critias' (i.e. his mother's) family in the early Charmides (157e ff.) and in the late Timaeus (20e), where the family is traced back to the Athenian ruler (archon-) Dropides, the friend of Solon.
5. The two autobiographical quotations which follow in this paragraph are from the Seventh Letter (325). Plato's authorship of the Letters has been questioned by some eminent scholars (perhaps without sufficient foundation; I think Field's treatment of this problem very convincing; cp. note 57 to chapter 10; on the other hand, even the Seventh Letter looks to me a little suspicious — it repeats too much what we know from the Apology, and says too much what the occasion requires). I have therefore taken care to base my interpretation of Platonism mainly on some of the most famous dialogues; it is, however, in general agreement with \hQ Letters. For the reader's convenience, a Hst of those Platonic dialogues which are frequently mentioned in the text may be given here, in what is their probable historical order; cp. note 56 (8) to chapter 10. Crito — Apology — Euthyphro; Protagoras — Meno — Gorgias; Cratylus — Menexenus — Phaedo; Republic; Parmenides — Theaetetus; Sophist — Statesman (or Politicus) — Philebus; Timaeus — Critias; Laws.
6. (1) That historical developments may have a cyclic character is nowhere very clearly stated by Plato. It is, however, alluded to in at least four dialogues, namely in the Phaedo, in the Republic, in the Statesman (or Politicus), and in the Laws. In all these places, Plato's theory may possibly allude to Heraclitus' Great Year (cp. note 6 to chapter 2). It may be, however, that the allusion is not to Heraclitus directly, but rather to Empedocles, whose theory (cp. also Aristotle, Met, 1000a25 f.) Plato considered as merely a 'milder' version of the Heraclitean theory of the unity of all flux. He expresses this in a famous passage of the Sophist (242e f.). According to this passage, and to Aristotle (De Gen. Corn , B, 6., 334a6), there is a historical cycle embracing a period in which love rules, and a period in which Heraclitus' strife rules; and Aristotle tells us that, according to Empedocles, the present period is 'now a period of the reign of Strife, as it was formerly one of Love'. This insistence that the flux of our own cosmic period is a kind of strife, and therefore bad, is in close accordance both with Plato's theories and with his experiences.
The length of the Great Year is, probably, the period of time after which all heavenly bodies return to the same positions relative to each other as were held by them at the moment from which the period is reckoned. (This would make it the smallest common multiple of the periods of the 'seven planets'.)
(2) The passage in the Phaedo mentioned under (1) alludes first to the Heraclitean theory of change leading from one state to its opposite state, or from one opposite to the other: 'that which becomes less must once have been greater...' (70e/71a). It then proceeds to indicate a cyclic law of development: 'Are there not two processes which are ever going on, from one extreme to its opposite, and back again...?' (loc. cit.). And a little later (72a/b) the argument is put like this: 'If the development were in a straight line only, and there were no compensation or cycle in nature,... then, in the end, all things would take on the same properties... and there would be no further development' It appears that the general tendency of the Phaedo is more optimistic (and shows more faith in man and in human reason) than that of the later dialogues, but there are no direct references to human historical development.
(3) Such references are, however, made in the Republic where, in Books VIII and IX, we find an elaborate description of historical decay treated here in chapter 4. This description is introduced by Plato's Story of the Fall of Man and of the Number, which will here be discussed more fully in chapters 5 and 8. J. Adam, in his edition of The Republic of Plato (1902, 1921), rightly calls this story 'the setting in which Plato's "Philosophy of History" is framed' (vol. II, 210). This story does not contain any explicit statement on the cyclic character of history, but it contains a few rather mysterious hints which, according to Aristotle's (and Adam's) interesting but uncertain interpretation, are possibly allusions to the Heraclitean Great Year, i.e. to the cyclic development. (Cp. note 6 to chapter 2, and Adam, op. cit, vol. II, 303; the remark on Empedocles made there, 303f., needs correction; see (1) in this note, above.)
(4) There is, furthermore, the myth in the Statesman (268e-274c). According to this myth, God himself steers the world for half a cycle of the great world period. When he lets go, then the world, which so far has moved forward, begins to roll back again. Thus we have two half-periods or half-cycles in the full cycle, a forward movement led by God constituting the good period without war or strife, and a backward movement when God abandons the world, which is a period of increasing disorganization and strife. It is, of course, the period in which we live. Ultimately, things will become so bad that God will take the wheel again, and reverse the motion, in order to save the world from utter destruction.
This myth shows great resemblances to Empedocles' myth mentioned in (1) above, and probably also to Heraclitus' Great Year. — Adam ( op. cit., vol. II, 296 f.) also points out the similarities with Hesiod's story. *One of the points which allude to Hesiod is the reference to a Golden Age of Cronos; and it is important to note that the men of this age are earth-born. This estabhshes a point of contact with the Myth of the Earth-bom, and of the metals in man, which plays a role in the Republic (414b ff. and 546e f); this role is discussed below in chapter 8. The Myth of the Earth-bom is also alluded to in the Symposium (191b); possibly the allusion is to the popular claim that the Athenians are 'like grasshoppers' — autochthonous (cp. notes 32 (l)e to chapter 4 and 1 1 (2) to chapter 8).*
When, however, later in the Statesman (302b ff.) the six forms of imperfect government are ordered according to their degree of imperfection, there is no indication any longer to be found of a cyclic theory of history. Rather, the six forms, which are all degenerate copies of the perfect or best state (Statesman, 293d/e; 297c; 303b), appear all as steps in the process of degeneration; i.e. both here and in the Republic Plato confines himself, when it comes to more concrete historical problems, to that part of the cycle which leads to decay.
* (5) Analogous remarks hold for the Laws. Something like a cyclic theory is sketched in Book III, 676b/c-677b, where Plato turns to a more detailed analysis of the beginning of one of the cycles; and in 67 8e and 679c, this beginning turns out to be a Golden Age, so that the further story again becomes one of deterioration. — It may be mentioned that Plato's doctrine, that the planets are gods, together with the doctrine that the gods influence human lives (and with his belief that cosmic forces are at work in history), played an important part in the astrological speculations of the neo-Platonists. All three doctrines can be found in the Laws (see, for example, 821b-d and 899b; 899d-905d; 677a ff.). Astrology, it should be realized, shares with historicism the belief in a determinate destiny which can be predicted; and it shares with some important versions of historicism (especially with Platonism and Marxism) the belief that, notwithstanding the possibility of predicting the future, we have some influence upon it, especially if we actually know what is coming.*
(6) Apart from these scanty allusions, there is hardly anything to indicate that Plato took the upward or forward part of the cycle seriously. But there are many remarks, apart from the elaborate description in the Republic and that quoted in (5), which show that he believed very seriously in the downward movement, in the decay of history. We must consider, especially, the Timaeus, and the Laws.
(7) In the Timaeus (42b f, 90e ff., and especially 9 Id f; cp. also the Ph a edrus, 248d f), Plato describes what may be called the origin of species by degeneration (cp. text to note 4 to chapter 4, and note 11 to chapter 11): men degenerate into women, and later into lower animals.
(8) In Book III of the Laws (cp. also Book IV, 713a ff.; see however the short allusion to a cycle mentioned above) we have a rather elaborate theory of historical decay, largely analogous to that in the Republic. See also the next chapter, especially notes 3, 6, 7, 27, 31, and 44.
7. A similar opinion of Plato's political aims is expressed by G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries (1930), p. 91: 'The chief aim of Plato's philosophy may be regarded as the attempt to re-establish standards of thought and conduct for a civilization that seemed on the verge of dissolution.' See also note 3 to chapter 6, and text.
8. I follow the majority of the older and a good number of contemporary authorities (e.g. G. C. Field, F. M. Cornford, A. K. Rogers) in believing, against John Burnet and A. E. Taylor, that the theory of Forms or Ideas is nearly entirely Plato's, and not Socrates', in spite of the fact that Plato puts it into the mouth of Socrates as his main speaker. Though Plato's dialogues are our only first-rate source for Socrates' teaching, it is, I believe, possible to distinguish in them between 'Socratic', i.e. historically true, and 'Platonic' features of Plato's speaker 'Socrates'. The so-called Socratic Problem is discussed in chapters 6, 7, 8, and 10; cp. especially note 56 to chapter 10.
9. The term 'social engineering' seems to have been used first by Roscoe Pound, in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (1922, p. 99; *Bryan Magee tells me now that the Webbs used it almost certainly before 1922.*) He uses the term in the 'piecemeal' sense. In another sense it is used by M. Eastman, Mxrxwm; Is it Science? (1940). I read Eastman's book after the text of my own book was written; my term 'social engineering' is, accordingly, used without any intention of alluding to Eastman's terminology. As far as I can see, he advocates the approach which I criticize in chapter 9 under the name 'Utopian social engineering'; cp. note 1 to that chapter. — See also note 18 (3) to chapter 5. As the first social engineer one might describe the town-planner Hippodamus of Miletus. (Cp. Aristotle's Politics 1276b22, and R. Eisler, Jesus Basileus, II, p. 754.)
The term 'social technology' has been suggested to me by C. G. F. Simkin. — I wish to make it clear that in discussing problems of method, my main emphasis is upon gaining practical institutional experience. Cp. chapter 9, especially text to note 8 to that chapter. For a more detailed analysis of the problems of method connected with social engineering and social technology, see my The Poverty of Historicism (2nd edition, 1960), part III.
10. The quoted passage is from my The Poverty of Historicism, p. 65. The 'undesigned results of human actions' are more fully discussed below, in chapter 14, see especially note 11 and text.
11. I believe in a dualism of facts and decisions or demands (or of 'is' and 'ought'); in other words, I believe in the impossibility of reducing decisions or demands to facts, although they can, of course, be treated as facts. More on this point will be said in chapters 5 (text to notes 4-5), 22, and 24.
12 Evidence in support of this interpretation of Plato's theory of the best state will be supplied in the next three chapters; I may refer, in the meanwhile, to Statesman, 293 d/e; 297c; Laws, 713b/c; 739d/e; Timaeus, 22d ff., especially 25e and 26d.
13. Cp. Aristotle's famous report, partly quoted later in this chapter (see especially note 25 to this chapter, and the text).
14. This is shown in Grote's Plato, vol. Ill, note u on pp. 267 f.
15. The quotations are from the Timaeus, 50c/d and 51e-52b. The simile which describes the Forms or Ideas as the fathers, and Space as the mother, of the sensible things, is important and has far-reaching connections. Cp. also notes 17 and 19 to this chapter, and note 59 to chapter 10.
(1) It resembles Hesiod's myth of chaos, the yawning gap (space; receptacle) which corresponds to the mother, and the God Eros, who corresponds to the father or to the Ideas. Chaos is the origin, and the question of the causal explanation (chaos = cause) remains for a long time one of origin (arche-) or birth or generation.
(2) The mother or Space corresponds to the indefinite or boundless of Anaximander and of the Pythagoreans. The Idea, which is male, must therefore correspond to the definite (or limited) of the Pythagoreans. For the definite, as opposed to the boundless, the male, as opposed to the female, the light, as opposed to the dark, and the good, as opposed to the bad, all belong to the same side in the Pythagorean table of opposites. (Cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 986a22 f ) We also can therefore expect to see the Ideas associated with light and goodness. (Cp. end of note 32 to chapter 8.)
(3) The Ideas are boundaries or limits, they are definite, as opposed to indefinite Space, and impress or imprint (cp. note 17 (2) to this chapter) themselves like rubber-stamps, or better, like moulds, upon Space (which is not only space but at the same time Anaximander 's unformed matter — stuff without property), thus generating sensible things. *J. D. Mabbott has kindly drawn my attention to the fact that the Forms or Ideas, according to Plato, do not impress themselves upon Space but are, rather, impressed or imprinted upon it by the Demiurge. Traces of the theory that the Forms are 'causes both of being and of generation (or becoming)' can be found aheady in the Phaedo (100d), as Aristotle points out (in Metaphysics 1080a2).*
(4) In consequence of the act of generation, Space, i.e. the receptacle, begins to labour, so that all things are set in motion, in a Heraclitean or Empedoclean flux which is really universal in so far as the movement or flux extends even to the framework, i.e. (boundless) space itself. (For the late Heraclitean idea of the receptacle, cp. the Cratylus, 41 2d.)
(5) This description is also reminiscent of Parmenides' 'Way of Delusive Opinion', in which the world of experience and of flux is created by the mingling of two opposites, the light (or hot or fire) and the dark (or cold or earth). It is clear that Plato's Forms or Ideas would correspond to the former, and Space or what is boundless to the latter; especially if we consider that Plato's pure space is closely akin to indeterminate matter.
(6) The opposition between the determinate and indeterminate seems also to correspond, especially after the all-important discovery of the irrationality of the square root of two, to the opposition between the rational and the irrational. But since Parmenides identifies the rational with being, this would lead to an interpretation of Space or the irrational as non- being. In other words, the Pythagorean table of opposites is to be extended to cover rationality, as opposed to irrationality, and being, as opposed to non-being. (This agrees with Metaphysics, 1004b27, where Aristotle says that 'all the contraries are reducible to being and non-being'; 1072a31, where one side of the table — that of being — is described as the object of (rational) thought; and 1093b 13, where the powers of certain numbers — presumably in opposition to their roots — are added to this side. This would further explain Aristotle's remark in Metaphysics, 986b27; and it would perhaps not be necessary to assume, as F. M. Cornford does in his excellent article 'Parmenides' Two Ways', Class. Quart, XVII, 1933, p. 108, that Parmenides, fir. 8, 53/54, 'has been misinterpreted by Aristotle and Theophrastus' for if we expand the table of opposites in this way, Cornford's most convincing interpretation of the crucial passage of fir. 8 becomes compatible with Aristotle's remark.)
(7) Cornford has explained (op. cit, 100) that there are three 'ways' in Parmenides, the way of Truth, the way of Not-being, and the way of Seeming (or, if I may call it so, of delusive opinion). He shows (101) that they correspond to three regions discussed in the Republic, the perfectly real and rational world of the Ideas, the perfectly unreal, and the world of opinion (based on the perception of things in flux). He has also shown (102) that in the Sophist, Plato modifies his position. To this, some comments may be added from the point of view of the passages in the Timaeus to which this note is appended.
(8) The main difference between the Forms or Ideas of the Republic and those of the Timaeus is that in the former, the Forms (and also God; cp. Rep., 380d) are petri-fied, so to speak, while in the latter, they are deified. In the former, they bear a much closer resemblance to the Parmenidean One (cp. Adam's note to Rep., 380d28, 31), than in the latter. This development leads to the Laws, where the Ideas are largely replaced by souls. The decisive difference is that the Ideas become more and more the starting points of motion and causes of generation, or as the Timaeus puts it, fathers of the moving things. The greatest contrast is perhaps between the Phaedo, 79e: 'The soul is infinitely more like the unchangeable; even the most stupid person would not deny that' (cp. also Rep., 585c, 609b f), and the Laws, 895e/896a (cp. Phaedrus, 245c ff.): 'What is the definition of that which is named "soul"? Can we imagine any other definition than... "The motion that moves itself'?' The transition between these two positions is, perhaps, provided by the Sophist (which introduces the Form or Idea of motion itself) and by the Timaeus, 35a, which describes the 'divine and unchanging' Forms and the changing and corruptible bodies. This seems to explain why, in the Laws (cp. 894d/e), the motion of the soul is said to be 'first in origin and power' and why the soul is described (966e) as 'the most ancient and divine of all things whose motion is an ever-flowing source of real existence'. (Since, according to Plato, all living things have souls, it may be claimed that he admitted the presence of an at least partly formal principle in things; a point of view which is very close to Aristotelianism, especially in the presence of the primitive and widespread belief that all things are alive.) (Cp. also note 7 to chapter 4.)
(9) In this development of Plato's thought, a development whose driving force is to explain the world of flux with the help of the Ideas, i.e. to make the break between the world of reason and the world of opinion at least understandable, even though it cannot be bridged, the Sophist seems to play a decisive role. Apart fi"om making room, as Cornford mentions (op. cit, 102), for the plurality of Ideas, it presents them, in an argument against Plato's own earlier position (248a ff.): (a) as active causes, which may interact, for example, with mind; (b) as unchanging in spite of that, although there is now an Idea of motion in which all moving things participate and which is not at rest; (c) as capable of mingling with one another. It further introduces 'Not-being', identified in the Timaeus with Space (cp. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge , 1935, note to 247), and thus makes it possible for the Ideas to mingle with it (cp. also Philolaus, fr. 2, 3, 5, Diels^), and to produce the world of flux with its characteristic intermediate position between the being of Ideas and the not- being of Space or matter.
(10) Ultimately, I wish to defend my contention in the text that the Ideas are not only outside space, but also outside time, though they are in contact with the world at the beginning of time. This, I believe, makes it easier to understand how they act without being in motion; for all motion or flux is in space and time. Plato, I believe, assumes that time has a beginning. I think that this is the most direct interpretation of Laws, 721c: 'the race of man is twin-born with all time', considering the many indications that Plato believed man to be created as one of the first creatures. (In this point, I disagree slightly with Cornford, Plato's Cosmology , 1937, p. 145, and pp. 26 ff.)
(11) To sum up, the Ideas are earlier and better than their changing and decaying copies, and are themselves not in flux. (See also note 3 to chapter 4.)
16. Cp. note 4 to this chapter.
17. (1) The role of the gods in the Timaeus is similar to the one described in the text. Just as the Ideas stamp out things, so the gods form the bodies of men. Only the human soul is created by the Demiurge himself who also creates the world and the gods. (For another hint that the gods are patriarchs, see Laws, 713c/d.) Men, the weak, degenerate children of gods, are then liable to further degeneration; cp. note 6(7) to this chapter, and 37-41 to chapter 5.
(a) In an interesting passage of the Laws (681b; cp. also note 32 (1, a) to chapter 4) we find another allusion to the parallelism between the relation Idea — things and the relation parent — children. In this passage, the origin of law is explained by the influence of tradition, and more especially, by the transmission of a rigid order from the parents to the children; and the following remark is made: 'And they (the parents) would be sure to stamp upon their children, and upon their children's children, their own cast of mind.'
18. Cp. note 49, especially (3), to chapter 8.
19. Cp. Timaeus, 31a. The term which I have freely translated by 'superior thing which is their prototype' is a term frequently used by Aristotle with the meaning 'universal' or 'generic term'. It means a 'thing which is general' or 'surpassing' or 'embracing' and I suspect that it originally means 'embracing' or 'covering' in the sense in which a mould embraces or covers what it moulds.
20. Cp. Republic, 597c. See also 596a (and Adam's second note to 596a5): 'For we are in the habit, you will remember, of postulating a Form or Idea — one for each group of many particular things to which we apply the same name.'
21. There are innumerable passages in Plato; I mention only the Phaedo (e.g. 79a), the Republic, 544a, the Theaetetus (152d/e, 179d/e), the Timaeus (28b/c, 29c/d, 51d f). Aristotle mentions it in Metaphysics, 987a32; 999a25-999bl0; 1010a6-15; 1078b 15; see also notes 23 and 25 to this chapter.
22. Parmenides taught, as Burnet puts it (Early Greek Philosophy 2, 208), that 'what is... is finite, spherical, motionless, corporeal', i.e. that the world is a full globe, a whole without any parts, and that 'there is nothing beyond it'. I am quoting Burnet because (a) his description is excellent and (b) it destroys his own interpretation (E.G. P., 208-11) of what Parmenides calls the 'Opinion of the Mortals' (or the Way of Delusive Opinion). For Burnet dismisses there all the interpretations of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Simplicius, Gomperz, and Meyer, as 'anachronisms' or 'palpable anachronisms', etc. Now the interpretation dismissed by Burnet is practically the same as the one here proposed in the text; namely, that Parmenides believed in a world of reality behind this world of appearance. Such a dualism, which would allow Parmenides' description of the world of appearance to claim at least some kind of adequacy, is dismissed by Burnet as hopelessly anachronistic. I suggest, however, that if Parmenides had believed solely in his unmoving world, and not at all in the changing world, then he would have been really mad (as Empedocles hints). But in fact there is an indication of a similar dualism already in Xenophanes, fragm. 23-6, if confronted with fragm. 34 (esp. 'But all may have their fancy opinions'), so that we can hardly speak of an anachronism. — As indicated in note 15 (6-7), I follow Cornford's interpretation of Parmenides. (See also note 41 to chapter 10.)
23. Cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1078b23; the next quotation is: op. cit, 1078bl9.
24. This valuable comparison is due to G. C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 211.
25. The preceding quotation is from Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1078bl5; the next from cit., 987b7.
26. In Aristotle's analysis (in Metaphysics, 987a30-bl8) of the arguments which led to the theory of Ideas (cp. also note 56 (6) to chapter 10), we can distinguish the following steps: (a) Heraclitus' flux, (b) the impossibility of true knowledge of things in flux, (c) the influence of Socrates' ethical essences, (d) the Ideas as objects of true knowledge, (e) the influence of the Pythagoreans, (f) the 'mathematicals' as intermediate objects. — ((e) and (f) I have not mentioned in the text, where I have mentioned instead (g) the Parmenidean influence.)
It may be worth while to show how these steps can be identified in Plato's own work, where he expounds his theory; especially in the Phaedo and in the Republic, in the Theaetetus and in the Sophist, and in the Timaeus.
(1) In the Phaedo, we fmd indications of all the points up to and including (e). In 65a-66a, the steps (d) and (c) are prominent, with an allusion to (b). In 70e step (a), Heraclitus' theory appears, combined with an element of Pythagoreanism (e). This leads to 74a ff., and to a statement of step (d). 99-100 is an approach to (d) through (c), etc. For (a) to (d), cp. also the Cratylus, 439c ff.
In the Republic, it is of course especially Book VI that corresponds closely to Aristotle's report, (a) In the beginning of Book VI, 485a/b (cp. 527a/b), the Heraclitean flux is referred to (and contrasted with the unchanging world of Forms). Plato there speaks of 'a reality which exists for ever and is exempt from generation and degeneration '. (Cp. notes 2 (2) and 3 to chapter 4 and note 33 to chapter 8, and text.) The steps (b), (d) and especially if) play a rather obvious role in the famous Simile of the Line (Rep., 509c-511e; cp. Adam's notes, and his appendix I to Book VII); Socrates' ethical influence, i.e. step (c), is of course alluded to throughout the Republic. It plays an important role within the Simile of the Line and especially immediately before, i.e. in 508b ff, where the role of the good is emphasized; see in particular 508b/c: 'This is what I maintain regarding the offspring of the good. What the good has begotten in its own likeness is, in the intelligible world, related to reason (and its objects) in the same way as, in the visible world', that which is the offspring of the sun, 'is related to sight (and its objects).' Step (e) is implied in (/), but more fully developed in Book VII, in the famous Curriculum (cp. especially 523a-527c), which is largely based on the Simile of the Line in Book VI.
(2) In the Theaetetus, (a) and (b) are treated extensively; (c) is mentioned in 174b and 175c. In the Sophist, all the steps, including (g), are mentioned, only (e) and (J) being left out; see especially 247a (step (c)); 249c (step (b)); 253d/e (step (d)). In the Philebus, we find indications of all steps except perhaps (/); steps (a) to (d) are especially emphasized in 59a-c.
(3) In the Timaeus, all the steps mentioned by Aristotle are indicated, with the possible exception of (c), which is alluded to only indirectly in the introductory recapitulation of the contents of the Republic, and in 29d. Step (e) is, as it were, alluded to throughout, since 'Timaeus' is a 'western' philosopher and strongly influenced by Pythagoreanism. The other steps occur twice in a form almost completely parallel to Aristotle's account; first briefly in 28a-29d, and later, with more elaboration, in 48e-55c. Immediately after (a), i.e. a Heraclitean description (49a ff.; cp. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 178) of the world in flux, the argument (b) is raised (51c-e) that if we are right in distinguishing between reason (or true knowledge) and mere opinion, we must admit the existence of the unchangeable Forms; these are (in 51e f) introduced next in accordance with step (d). The Heraclitean flux then comes again (as labouring space), but this time it is explained, as a consequence of the act of generation. And as a next step (f) appears, in 53c. (I suppose that the 'lines and planes and solids' mentioned by Aristotle in Metaphysics, 992b 13, refer to 53c ff.)
(4) It seems that this parallelism between the Timaeus and Aristotle's report has not been sufficiently emphasized so far; at least, it is not used by G. C. Field in his excellent and convincing analysis of Aristotle's report (Plato and His Contemporaries, 202 ff.). But it would have strengthened Field's arguments (arguments, however, which hardly need strengthening, since they are practically conclusive) against Burnet's and Taylor's views that the Theory of Ideas is Socratic (cp. note 56 to chapter 10). For in the Timaeus, Plato does not put this theory into the mouth of Socrates, a fact which according to Burnet's and Taylor's principles should prove that it was not Socrates' theory. (They avoid this inference by claiming that 'Timaeus' is a Pythagorean, and that he develops not Plato's philosophy but his own. But Aristotle knew Plato personally for twenty years and should have been able to judge these matters; and he wrote his Metaphysics at a time when members of the Academy could have contradicted his presentation of Platonism.)
(5) Burnet writes, in Greek Philosophy, 1, 155 (cp. also p. xliv of his edition of the Phaedo, 1911): 'the theory of forms in the sense in which it is maintained in the Phaedo and Republic is wholly absent from what we may fairly regard the most distinctively Platonic of the dialogues, those, namely, in which Socrates is no longer the chief speaker. In that sense it is never even mentioned in any dialogue later than the Parmenides... with the single exception of the Timaeus (51c), where the speaker is a Pythagorean.' But if it is maintained in the Timaeus in the sense in which it is maintained in the Republic, then it is certainly so maintained in the Sophist, 257d/e; and in the Statesman, 269c/d; 286a; 297b/c, and c/d; 301a and e; 302e; and 303b; and in the Philebus, 15a f , and 59a-d; and in the Laws, 713b, 739d/e, 962c f, 963c ff., and, most important, 965c (c^. Philebus, 16d), 965d, and 966a; see also the next note. (Burnet believes in the genuineness of the Letters, especially the Seventh; but the theory of Ideas is maintained there in 342a ff.; see also note 56 (5, d) to chapter 10.)
27. Cp. Laws, 895d-e. I do not agree with England's note (in his edition of the Laws, vol. II, 472) that 'the word "essence" will not help us'. True, if we meant by 'essence' some important sensible part of the sensible thing (which might perhaps be purified and produced by some distillation), then 'essence' would be misleading. But the word 'essential' is widely used in a way which corresponds very well indeed with what we wish to express here; something opposed to the accidental or unimportant or changing empirical aspect of the thing, whether it is conceived as dwelling in that thing, or in a metaphysical world of Ideas.
I am using the term 'essentialism' in opposition to 'nominalism', in order to avoid, and to replace, the misleading traditional term 'realism', wherever it is opposed (not to 'idealism' but) to 'nominalism'. (See also note 26 ff. to chapter 11, and text, and especially note 38.)
On Plato's application of his essentialist method, for instance, as mentioned in the text, to the theory of the soul, see Laws, 895e f, quoted in note 15 (8) to this chapter, and chapter 5, especially note 23. See also, for instance, Meno, 86d/e, and Symposium, 199c/d.
28. On the theory of causal explanation, cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, especially section 12, pp. 59 ff. See also note 6 to chapter 25, below.
29. The theory of language here indicated is that of Semantics, as developed especially by A. Tarski and R. Carnap. Cp. Carnap, Introduction to Semantics, 1942, and note 23 to chapter 8.
30. The theory that while the physical sciences are based on a methodological nominalism, the social sciences must adopt essentialist ('reahstic') methods, has been made clear to me by K. Polanyi (in 1925); he pointed out, at that time, that a reform of the methodology of the social sciences might conceivably be achieved by abandoning this theory. — The theory is held, to some extent, by most sociologists, especially by J. S. Mill (for instance. Logic, VI, ch. VI, 2; see also his historicist formulations, e.g. in VI, ch. X, 2, last paragraph: 'The fundamental problem... of the social science is to find the laws according to which any state of society produces the state which succeeds it...'), K. Marx (see below); M. Weber (cp., for example, his definitions in the beginning of Methodische Grundlagen der Soziologie, in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, I, and in Ges. Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre), G. Simmel, A. Vierkandt, R. M. Maclver, and many more. — The philosophical expression of all these tendencies is E. Husserl's 'Phaenomenology', a systematic revival of the methodological essentialism of Plato and Aristotle. (See also chapter 1 1. especially note 44.)
The opposite, the nominalist attitude in sociology, can be developed, I think, only as a technological theory of social institutions.
In this context, I may mention how I came to trace historicism back to Plato and Heraclitus. In analysing historicism, I found that it needs what I call now methodological essentialism; i.e. I saw that the typical arguments in favour of essentialism are bound up with historicism (cp. my The Poverty of Historicism). This led me to consider the history of essentialism. I was struck by the parallelism between Aristotle's report and the analysis which I had carried out originally without any reference to Platonism. In this way, I was reminded of the roles of both Heraclitus and Plato in this development.
31. R. H. S. Grossman's Plato To-day (1937) was the first book (apart from G. Grote's Plato) I have found to contain a political interpretation of Plato which is partly similar to my own. See also notes 2-3 to chapter 6, and text. * Since then I have found that similar views of Plato have been expressed by various authors. C. M. Bowra (Ancient Greek Literature, 1933) is perhaps the first; his brief but thorough criticism of Plato (pp. 186-90) is as fair as it is penetrating. The others are W. Fite ( The Platonic Legend, 1934); B. Farrington (Science and Politics in the Ancient World, 1939); A. D. Winspear (The Genesis of Plato's Thought, 1940); and H. Kelsen (Platonic Justice, 1933; now in What is Justice!, 1957, and Platonic Love, in The American Imago, vol. 3, 1942).*