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| Plato's Inconsistency. He Supposes the Soul Self-Existent, Yet Capable of Forgetting What Passed in a Previous State. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXIV.—Plato’s Inconsistency. He Supposes the Soul
Self-Existent, Yet Capable of Forgetting What Passed in a Previous
State.
In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul
is capable of a failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so
large an amount of divine quality as to put it on a par with God. He
makes it unborn, which single attribute I might apply as a
sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then adds that the
soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal—since he believed
God to be the same—invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform,
supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to
the soul, if he wanted to call it God? We, however, who allow no
appendage to God1665
1665 Nihil Deo
appendimus. | (in the sense of
equality), by this very fact reckon the soul as very far below God: for
we suppose it to be born, and hereby to possess something of a diluted
divinity and an attenuated felicity, as the breath (of God), though not
His spirit; and although immortal, as this is an attribute of divinity,
yet for all that passible, since this is an incident of a born
condition, and consequently from the first capable of deviation from
perfection and right,1666 and by consequence
susceptible of a failure in memory. This point I have discussed
sufficiently with Hermogenes.1667
1667 In his, now lost,
treatise, De Censu Animæ. | But it may be
further observed, that if the soul is to merit being accounted a god,
by reason of all its qualities being equal to the attributes of God, it
must then be subject to no passion, and therefore to no loss of memory;
for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to that of which you
predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato himself deems
the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties, and which
Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. Now we need not
raise the doubt whether so divine a faculty as the soul was capable of
losing memory: the question rather is, whether it is able to recover
afresh that which it has lost. I could not decide whether that, which
ought to have lost memory, if it once incurred the loss, would be
powerful enough to recollect itself. Both alternatives,
indeed, will agree very well
with my soul, but not with Plato’s. In the second place, my
objection to him will stand thus: (Plato,) do you endow the soul with a
natural competency for understanding those well-known ideas of
yours? Certainly I do, will be your answer. Well, now, no one will
concede to you that the knowledge, (which you say is) the gift of
nature, of the natural sciences can fail. But the knowledge of
the sciences fails; the knowledge of the various fields of learning and
of the arts of life fails; and so perhaps the knowledge of the
faculties and affections of our minds fails, although they seem to be
inherent in our nature, but really are not so: because, as we
have already said,1668
1668 Above, in ch. xix. xx.
pp. 200, 201. | they are affected
by accidents of place, of manners and customs, of bodily condition, of
the state of man’s health—by the influences of the Supreme
Powers, and the changes of man’s free-will. Now the
instinctive knowledge of natural objects never fails, not even in the
brute creation. The lion, no doubt, will forget his ferocity, if
surrounded by the softening influence of training; he may become, with
his beautiful mane, the plaything of some Queen Berenice, and lick her
cheeks with his tongue. A wild beast may lay aside his habits,
but his natural instincts will not be forgotten. He will not forget his
proper food, nor his natural resources, nor his natural alarms; and
should the queen offer him fishes or cakes, he will wish for flesh; and
if, when he is ill, any antidote be prepared for him, he will still
require the ape; and should no hunting-spear be presented against him,
he will yet dread the crow of the cock. In like manner with man, who is
perhaps the most forgetful of all creatures, the knowledge of
everything natural to him will remain ineradicably fixed in
him,—but this alone, as being alone a natural instinct. He will
never forget to eat when he is hungry; or to drink when he is thirsty;
or to use his eyes when he wants to see; or his ears, to hear; or his
nose, to smell; or his mouth, to taste; or his hand, to touch.
These are, to be sure, the senses, which philosophy depreciates by her
preference for the intellectual faculties. But if the natural
knowledge of the sensuous faculties is permanent, how happens it that
the knowledge of the intellectual faculties fails, to which the
superiority is ascribed? Whence, now, arises that power of
forgetfulness itself which precedes recollection? From long lapse of
time, he says. But this is a shortsighted answer. Length of time cannot
be incidental to that which, according to him, is unborn, and which
therefore must be deemed most certainly eternal. For that which is
eternal, on the ground of its being unborn, since it admits neither of
beginning nor end of time, is subject to no temporal criterion.
And that which time does not measure, undergoes no change in
consequence of time; nor is long lapse of time at all influential over
it. If time is a cause of oblivion, why, from the time of the
soul’s entrance into the body, does memory fail, as if
thenceforth the soul were to be affected by time? for the soul, being
undoubtedly prior to the body, was of course not irrespective of time.
Is it, indeed, immediately on the soul’s entrance into the body
that oblivion takes place, or some time afterwards? If immediately,
where will be the long lapse of the time which is as yet inadmissible
in the hypothesis?1669
1669 Or, “which has
been too short for calculation.” | Take, for instance,
the case of the infant. If some time afterwards, will not the soul,
during the interval previous to the moment of oblivion, still exercise
its powers of memory? And how comes it to pass that the soul
subsequently forgets, and then afterwards again remembers? How long,
too, must the lapse of the time be regarded as having been, during
which the oblivion oppressed the soul? The whole course of one’s
life, I apprehend, will be insufficient to efface the memory of an age
which endured so long before the soul’s assumption of the
body. But then, again, Plato throws the blame upon the body, as
if it were at all credible that a born substance could extinguish the
power of one that is unborn. There exist, however, among bodies a great
many differences, by reason of their rationality, their bulk, their
condition, their age, and their health. Will there then be
supposed to exist similar differences in obliviousness? Oblivion,
however, is uniform and identical. Therefore bodily peculiarity, with
its manifold varieties, will not become the cause of an effect which is
an invariable one. There are likewise, according to Plato’s own
testimony, many proofs to show that the soul has a divining faculty, as
we have already advanced against Hermogenes. But there is not a man
living, who does not himself feel his soul possessed with a presage and
augury of some omen, danger, or joy. Now, if the body is not
prejudicial to divination, it will not, I suppose, be injurious to
memory. One thing is certain, that souls in the same body both forget
and remember. If any corporeal condition engenders forgetfulness, how
will it admit the opposite state of recollection? Because recollection,
after forgetfulness, is actually the resurrection of the memory. Now,
how should not that which is hostile to the memory at first, be also
prejudicial to it in the second instance? Lastly, who have better
memories than little children, with their fresh, unworn souls, not yet
immersed in domestic and public cares, but devoted only to those
studies the acquirement of which is itself a reminiscence? Why, indeed,
do we not all of us recollect in an equal degree, since we are equal in
our forgetfulness? But this is true only of philosophers! But not even
of the whole of them. Amongst so many nations, in so great a crowd of
sages, Plato, to be sure, is the only man who has combined the oblivion
and the recollection of ideas. Now, since this main argument of his by
no means keeps its ground, it follows that its entire superstructure
must fall with it, namely, that souls are supposed to be unborn, and to
live in the heavenly regions, and to be instructed in the divine
mysteries thereof; moreover, that they descend to this earth, and here
recall to memory their previous existence, for the purpose, of course,
of supplying to our heretics the fitting materials for their
systems.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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