PLATONISM. The philosophy of Plato (427-347 B.C.), whose real name was Aristocles, is a form of Idealism. He denied the real existence of the objects of sense which are changing continually. Real Being belongs only to Ideas, which are unchangeable and eternal. The objects of sense are but imperfect copies of Ideas, the perfect types. And the highest Idea of all is the Idea of the Good. This is the foundation or first cause of know ledge and of all Being. This, " the Good In itself," is God. It is explained in the Republic (bk. vi.) that as the sun is the cause which makes things to be and to grow and to become visible, so the Good is of such power and beauty that it bestows Truth and Being upon every thing that is an object of knowledge, and as the sun is high above the visible, so the Good in itself is high above Knowledge and Truth. From the point of view of re ligion, the important question with regard to Platonism : Does it comfort and console men? Or the question may be put in another way : What then is Plato's con ception of happiness? The answer may be given in the words of Rudolf Eucken. " His conception of happiness involves an energetic negation and rejection of the usual human existence: all the happiness which is there offered and commended seems to him fleeting, external, and illusory. But science reveals to the thinker the possi bility of contemplating an external order of things which. in accordance with his characteristic tendency towards grandeur and vividness of conception, becomes co o rdi nat ed into a whole, the world of ideas. This ideal world, with all its superiority, is not intrinsically alien to us, but he who strives with all his might to attain it can gain complete possession of it and make it his own life and being. In this appropriation of a real and per
fect world the thinker finds a happiness which is beyond comparison with anything else that life offers. But even the individual life of man takes another course when a higher world is thus revealed to him : it is in particular the combination of scientific thought with the formative activity of art which everywhere reveals great tasks and leads to genuine happiness. . . . In the possession of such happiness, which is grounded in his own nature. man may feel himself superior to all fate. for this 'inner harmony cannot be destroyed or even diminished by any thing that conies from outside. Thus Plato sketches that magnificent picture of the suffering just man, who is misjudged and persecuted even unto death, but through all the attacks upon him actually gains in inward happiness. . . . The chief distinction of this doctrine of happiness lies in the fact that it brings the internal disposition and its manifestation, the good and the beauti ful, into the closest connection, but represents the whole as finding its joy and motive force immediately in itself. Here all petty calculation of private advantage, all thoughts of reward and punishment, have sunk out of sight." See O. Seyffert. Diet.; C. J. Deter; Rudolf Eucken, The Life of the Spirit, 1909; Max B. Weinstein, Welt- end Leben-amschautingen, 1910.