ideas back to the mind. This process of being reminded is
education.
With this, of course, is connected the doctrine of {217}
transmigration, which Plato took, no doubt, from the
Pythagoreans. Most of the details of Plato’s doctrine of
transmigration are mere myth. Plato does not mean them
seriously, as is shown by the fact that he gives quite different
and inconsistent accounts of these details in different dia-
logues. What, in all probability, he did believe, however,
may be summarized as follows. The soul is pre-existent as
well as immortal. Its natural home is the world of Ideas,
where at first it existed, without a body, in the pure and
blissful contemplation of Ideas. But because it has affinities
with the world of sense, it sinks down into a body. After
death, if a man has lived a good life, and especially if he
has cultivated the knowledge of Ideas, philosophy, the soul
returns to its blissful abode in the world of Ideas, till, after
a long period it again returns to earth in a body. Those
who do evil suffer after death severe penalties, and are then
reincarnated in the body of some being lower than them-
selves. A man may become a woman. Men may even, if
their lives have been utterly sensual, pass into the bodies
of animals.
- Ethics
(a) The Ethics of the Individual
Just as Plato’s theory of knowledge begins with a negative
portion, designed to refute false theories of what truth is, so
does his theory of morals begin with a negative portion, in-
tended to refute false theories of what virtue is. These two
negative departments of Plato’s philosophy correspond in
every way. As he was then engaged in showing that knowl-
edge is not perception, as Protagoras thought, so he now
urges that {218} virtue is not the same as pleasure. And
as knowledge is not mere right opinion, neither is virtue
mere right action. The propositions that knowledge is per-
ception, and that virtue is pleasure, are indeed only the
same principle applied to different spheres of thought. For
the Sophists whatever appeared true to the individual was
true for that individual. This is the same as saying that
knowledge is perception. For the Sophists, again, whatever
appeared right to the individual was right for that individ-
ual. This is the same as saying that it is right for each man
to do whatever he pleases. Virtue is defined as the pleasure
of the individual. This consequence of the Sophistic princi-
ples was drawn both by many of the Sophists themselves,
and later by the Cyrenaics.As these two propositions are thus in fact only one princi-
ple, what Plato has said in refutation of the former provides
also his refutation of the latter. The theory that virtue is
pleasure has the same destructive influence upon morals as
the theory that knowledge is perception had upon truth.
We may thus shortly summarize Plato’s arguments.(1) As the Sophistic theory of truth destroys the objectivity
of truth, so the doctrine that virtue is the pleasure of the
individual destroys the objectivity of the good. Nothing
is good in itself. Things are only good for me or for you.
There results an absolute moral relativity, in which the idea
of an objective standard of goodness totally disappears.