it finally enters upon dialectic. Thus all knowledge ends in
dialectic, and that life has not attained its end which falls
short of philosophy.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of the subordination
of all spiritual activities to philosophy is to be found in the
doctrine of Eros, or Love. The phrase “platonic love” is on
the lips of many, but, as a rule, something very different
from Plato’s own doctrine is meant. According to him,
love is always concerned with beauty, and his teaching on
the subject is expounded {205} chiefly in the “Symposium,”
He believed that before birth the soul dwelt disembodied in
the pure contemplation of the world of Ideas. Sinking down
into a body, becoming immersed in the world of sense, it
forgets the Ideas. The sight of a beautiful object reminds
it of that one Idea of beauty of which the object is a copy.
This accounts for the mystic rapture, the emotion, the joy,
with which we greet the sight of the beautiful. Since Plato
had expressly declared that there are Ideas of the ugly as
well as of the beautiful, that there are Ideas, for example, of
hair, filth, and dirt, and since these Ideas are just as divine
and perfect as the Idea of the beautiful, we ought, on this
theory, to greet the ugly, the filthy, and the nauseating,
with a ravishment of joy similar to that which we experience
in the presence of beauty. Why this is not the case Plato
omitted to explain. However, having learned to love the one
beautiful object, the soul passes on to the love of others.
Then it perceives that it is the same beauty which reveals
itself in all these. It passes from the love of beautiful forms
to the love of beautiful souls, and from that to the love of
beautiful sciences. It ceases to be attached to the many
objects, as such, that is to say, to the sensuous envelopes of
the Idea of beauty. Love passes into the knowledge of the
Idea of beauty itself, and from this to the knowledge of the
world of Ideas in general. It passes in fact into philosophy.In this development there are two points which we cannot
fail to note. In the first place, emotional love is explained as
being simply the blind groping of reason towards the Idea.
It is reason which has not yet recognized itself as such. It
appears, therefore, in the {206} guise of feeling. Secondly,
the later progress of the soul’s love is simply the gradual
recognition of itself by reason. When the soul perceives that
the beauty in all objects is the same, that it is the common
element amid the many, this is nothing but the process
of inductive reasoning. And this development ends at last
in the complete rational cognition of the world of Ideas,
in a word, philosophy. Love is but an instinctive reason.
The animal has no feeling of the beautiful, just because it
has no reason. Love of the beautiful is founded upon the
nature of man, not as a percipient or feeling being, but as a
rational being. And it must end in the complete recognition
of reason by itself, not in the feeling and intuition, but in
the rational comprehension, of the Idea.One can imagine what Plato’s answer would be to the sort
of vulgarians and philistines who want to know what the
use of philosophy is, and in what way it is “practical.” To
answer such a question is for Plato impossible, because the
question itself is illegitimate. For a thing to have a use
involves that it is a means towards an end. Fire has use,
because it may be made a means towards the cooking of
food. Money is useful, because it is a means to the acqui-