In reading Plato, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between λόγος, εἶδος, and ἰδέα. The conclusion to which we have arrived, but which we would state with some de gree of hesitation, is as follows: Aóyoç is the notion or reason of a thing viewed in relation to the mind contemplating it, yet having an existence separate from such a mind; eidos, the notion in reference to the thing itself—as the ἓν ἐν πολλοῖς, or one in many, residing in it ; ἰδέα, the same, regarded as self-subsisting, apart from mind, and also from the individual things through which it is manifested. The absolute existence of the last is the great question in philosophy. In respect to the second term, which is the one Aristotle is most fond of using, there is no real disagreement between him and Plato. If we reject the third hypothesis, there is still a wide difference between that philosophy which was common to Aristotle, Plato, and Bacon, and that which is now styled the system of Locke.

XXVIII.

Distinction between λόγος and ὄνομα.

PAGE 30, LINE 3. Τὸ ἑαυτὸ κινεῖν φῂς λόγον ἔχειν τὴν αὐτὴν οὐσίαν, ἥνπερ τοὔνομα, ὃ δὴ πάντες, ψυχὴν προσαyopɛvouɛv. The order of this rather complicated sentence would seem to be this : φῂς τὴν αὐτὴν οὐσίαν (καθ' ήνπερ τὸ ὄνομα προσαγορεύομεν, ὃ δὴ πάντες (προσαγορεύουσι) ψυχὴν, λόγον ἔχειν—τὸ ἑαυτὸ κινεῖν. “ You say, then, that that very essence, of which we predicate that name which all men predicate, namely, vxý, or soul, hath for its λόγος self-motion, or αὐτοκίνησις.” See the notes and explanations accompanying the text.

It may, perhaps, be objected, that Plato is resting these important positions on mere words, to which he assigns his own arbitrary definitions or notions. But what is meant by

the sneering expression, mere words, which is such a favourite with a certain class of modern declaimers? What are words—we speak not now of sounds or articulate enunciations, ὀνόματα or ῥήματα, but of the higher term λόγοι -what are words, in this sense, but outward expressions of the inward logical necessities of our own minds? And what can be higher proof for us than those affirmations, which the immutable laws of our own souls compel us to make, in respect to what is included or not included in a certain idea? Whatever belongs to the idea is necessary; so, on the other hand, whatever is necessary pertains to an idea, and the exclusion of any part involves, for our minds, a logical contradiction.

The naming of them, therefore, cannot be arbitrary, except so far as the mere outward sound is concerned. There are certain ideas which are not dependent on language, as some of the nominalists of the school of Locke would hold, but language on them. So far, human speech may be regarded as something supernatural, although its outward dress or vocal forms may have been the result of conventional or accidental usage, instead of any natural adaptedness of sound to sense. We may give to the λóyos, or notion, any ὄνομα we please. We may call it ψυχή, πνεῦμα,

,, animus, anima, Geist, or soul; we may etymologically associate this ovoua with any such sensible phenomenon as we may fancy comes the nearest to the conception, such as air, breath, fire, æther, &c.; and in this way the voua may continually change; but the λóyoç is not conventional. In all languages, even from the earliest periods, it has had a distinct vocal sign-as much so as that of body—and we expect, as a matter of course, to find it in every tongue we may investigate. The idea which calls for the name is implanted by God as one of the fixed parts of our being. The metaphysical notion of soul is self-motion, self-energy, avtokívnois. Of this notion we

cannot divest ourselves. Hence, after proving, even from physical premises, that there must be somewhere self-motion, the mind attaches this λóyos to its ovoua, and affirms that this self-motion is soul, vxý, Geist, &c.—being the same unchanging notion, whatever be the name—and that this name, although affixed to the flowing and varying sensible phenomenon from which it may have been etymologically derived, ultimately represents the immutable λóyos of which that sensible* phenomenon is the symbol.

* Το dwell on this distinction between ὄνομα (or ῥῆμα) and λόγος at greater length, we may say, that the former simply represents a sensible perception or action (aiolŋróv), or what Plato sometimes calls eidwλov; the latter, a thought, an idea (idea), the intelligibile, intellectum, or voŋtóv, being no part of the sensible image or action, but suggested or symbolized by it. All words, being a communication from mind to mind, through matter, must array the thought, during its passage, in the garments of the flesh, or, in other words, must originally represent something sensible. The ovoμa, then, in reality, goes no farther than this sensible image or action, which it primarily presents. There are but two stages in the process. The λóyos, on the other hand, goes beyond this, and represents the intelligibile, or vontóv, of which that image, action, or aioðŋróv, is but the symbol. Here, then, are, in fact, three stages, and the ɛidwλov, or action, which the word, as ovoμa, presents, does itself re-present something still behind it. The life of language is gone, when, with respect to abstract terms, the primary sensible images have faded away and become unknown, or, in other words, when this second stage in the process has been left out, and the word stands for the thought, in the same way that x and y represent quantities in algebra.

The same term may be regarded both as ovoμa and λóyos. For example, the word circle, as a name, merely presents that round, sensible image, which, as far as the ɛidwλov is concerned, is the same to the vision of an animal as of a Newton; as λóyoç, it suggests that cardinal idea, involving all the properties of the figure, which is present to the mind of the mathematician, and of which this ɛidwλov is itself the word or representative. This cannot be better expressed than in the language of Plato himself, if the Epistles can in any way be regarded as genuine : κύκλος, τὸ ἐπὶ τὸ μέσον ἐκ τῶν ἐσχάτων ἴσον ἀπέχον πάντη, ΛΟΓΟΣ ἂν εἴη ἐκείνου ᾤπερ στρογγύλον καὶ περιφερὲς

It is not a vain support to rely upon language. We may say, in the words which Plato puts into the mouth of Cratylus, Οἶμαι μὲν μείζω τινὰ δύναμιν εἶναι ἢ ἀνθρωπείαν, τὴν θεμένην τὰ πρῶτα ὀνόματα τοῖς πράγμασιν. Cratylus, 438, C. As is shown in this last-cited dialogue, it follows, in its origin and progress, an inward necessity, and must, therefore, possess inward truth and necessary correctness.* It is a striking proof of its Divine origin (we mean in the bounding, defining, classifying, and combining of ideas, and not in the outward vocal sounds affixed to them), that the atheist or materialist cannot use it as it is, but must change the meaning of its terms to suit non-existent notions, to which it never has been and never can be adapted, without introducing confusion extending far beyond the particular cases of amendment. He must have an entire new dialect, and that, too, one which will ever destroy itself by the contradictions, discords, and jarring inconsistencies which must exist between its parts, in every attempt to express the doctrine of death in words necessitated to glow with a life which no efforts can wholly quench.

It has been well observed, that there is no language under heaven in which the atheist, the pantheist, or the man who denies the reality of moral distinctions, can talk five minutes without a logical contradiction, or, in other words, a war of ideas. Should they form a new one, and take the utmost pains to adapt it to their philosophy of darkness, it will be found to be built on a disarrangement of the necessary and logical elements of speech, and must soon perish by reason of its own innate contradictions. No such Babel, formed in opposition to the high decree of Heaven, can ever ὄνομα καὶ κύκλος. "The word circle, representing the idea of equality in every direction, from extremities to a central point, is the 26yos of that to which roundness, and periphery, and circle, are the names." Plat., Epist., vii., 342, B. Compare, also, the Theatetus, 201, 202; Sophista, 221, A.

* See Schleiermacher's Introduction to the Cratylus.

stand. The ideas of incorporeal substance, of eternal verities, of moral distinctions, cannot be separated from language. The proof of soul and of God is stamped upon it as indelibly as it is written on the firmament of heaven itself.

Some of the views we have been endeavouring to set forth may be found admirably stated in Varro's account of the Platonic or Socratic philosophy, especially in respect to the importance it attached to innate notions and words as representatives of them, in Cicero, Acad. Poster., viii.: Tertia deinde philosophiæ pars, quæ erat in ratione et in disserendo sic tractabatur; quanquam oriretur a sensibus, tamen non esset judicium veritatis in sensibus. Mentem (vous) volebant rerum esse judicem : solam censebant idoneam cui crederetur, quia sola cerneret id, quod semper esset, (τὰ ἀεὶ ὄντα), simplex et unius modi (ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ kai wσaúτws) et tale quale esset. Hanc illi ideam appellabant, jam a Platone ita nominatam : nos recte speciem (ɛldoc) possumus dicere. Sensus autem omnes hebetes et tardos esse arbitrabantur, nec percipere ullo modo eas res quæ subjectæ sensibus viderentur, quæ essent ita mobiles (péovτa) et concitatæ, ut nihil unquam unum esse constans, ne idem quidem, quia continenter laberentur et fluerent omnia. Itaque hanc omnem partem rerum opinabilem (došaoTóv) appellabant. Scientiam autem nusquam esse censebant nisi in animi notionibus atque rationibus (λóyoɩ), qua de causa definitiones rerum probabant, et has ad omnia, de quibus disceptabatur, adhibebant. Verborum explicatio probabatur, qua de causa quæque essent ita nominata, quam etymologiam appellabant. Argumentis et quasi rerum notis ducibus utebantur ad probandum et ad concludendum id quod explanari volebant, in qua tradebatur omnis dialectica disciplina, id est, orationis ratione conclusæ.