Eleatics, as an abstract One. It gives us, therefore, Plato’s
conception of the relation of his own philosophy to Eleati-
cism.
The dialogues of the third group are the work of Plato’s
maturity. He has now completely mastered his thought,
and turns it with ease in all directions. Hence the style
returns to the lucidity and purity of the first period. If the
first period was marked chiefly by literary grace, the sec-
ond by depth of thought, the third period combines both.
The perfect substance is now moulded in the perfect form.
But a peculiarity of all the dialogues of this period is that
they take it for granted that the theory of Ideas is already
established and familiar to the reader. They proceed to
apply it to all departments of thought. The second period
was concerned with the formulation and proof of the theory
of Ideas, the third period undertakes its systematic appli-
cation. Thus the “Symposium,” which has for its subject
the metaphysic of love, attempts to connect man’s feel-
ing for beauty with the intellectual knowledge of the Ideas.
(iii.) Dialectic, or the theory of Ideas
ethics, the “Timaeus” to the sphere of physics, and the “Re-
public” to the sphere of politics. The “Phaedo” founds the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul upon the theory of
Ideas. The “Phaedrus” is probably to be grouped with the
“Symposium.” The beauty, grace, and lucidity of the style,
and the fact that it assumes throughout that {176} the the-
ory of Ideas is a thing established, lead us to the belief that
it belongs to the period of Plato’s maturity. Zeller’s theory
that it was written at the beginning of the second period,
and is then offered to the reader as a sort of sweetmeat to
induce him to enter upon the laborious task of reading the
“Sophist,” the “Statesman,” and the “Parmenides,” seems
to be far-fetched and unnecessary. [Footnote 12][Footnote 12: Zeller’sPlato and the Older Academy, chap.
iii.]If the second is the great constructive period of Plato’s life,
the third may be described as his systematic and synthetic
period. Every part of his philosophy is here linked up with
every other part. All the details of the system are seen
to flow from the one central principle of his thought, the
theory of Ideas. Every sphere of knowledge and being is in
turn exhibited in the light of that principle, is permeated
and penetrated by it.The plan for expounding Plato which first suggests itself is
to go through the dialogues, one by one, and extract the
doctrine of each successively. But this suggestion has to
be given up as soon as it is mentioned. For although the
philosophy of Plato is in itself a systematic and coherent
body of thought, he did not express it in a systematic way.
On the contrary, he scatters his ideas in all directions. He
throws them out at random in any order. What logically
comes first often appears last. It may be found at the end
of a dialogue, and the next step in reasoning may make its
appearance at the beginning, or even in a totally different
dialogue. If, therefore, we are to get any connected view
of the system, we must abandon Plato’s own order of ex-
position, and piece the thought together for ourselves. We
must begin {177} with what logically comes first, wherever
we may find it, and proceed with the exposition in the same