Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge | Page 9

of Knowledge that it is something which can be communicated
to, and which is the common possession of, several individuals. That
can never be true of sensation. We can never tell whether our
sensations are the same as those of other people--never at any rate by
means of sensations themselves; never unless and until such sensations
have been inter-related by some other instrument. A mere photographic
reproduction of sensation is thus quite useless as a means of

Knowledge.
In some way or other general terms supply the common bond. The
recognition of this fact was one of the great results of the Socratic
discussion. This explains the immense importance which Socrates
naturally attached to the criticism of general and abstract terms.
* * * * *
The work of Socrates in this direction was immediately taken up and
carried much further by Plato. Plato maintained that these general and
abstract terms were in truth the names of ideas (+eidê+) with which the
mind is naturally furnished, and further that these ideas corresponded to
and typified the eternal forms of things--the essential constituents of the
real world. Knowledge was possible because there were such eternal
forms or ideal elements--the archetypes--of which the +eidê+ were the
counterparts and representations.
Knowledge, Plato held, was concerned solely with these eternal forms,
not with sensation at all. The sensible world was in a state of constant
flux and could not be the object of true science. Its apprehension was
effected by a faculty or capacity (Republic, v. 478-79) midway between
Knowledge and nescience to which he applied the term +doxa+,
frequently translated opinion, but which in this connection would be
much more accurately rendered, sensible impression, or even
perception. At any rate, the term opinion is a very unhappy one, and
does not convey the true meaning at all, for no voluntary intellective
act on the part of the subject was implied by the term. Now intelligence
in constructing a scheme of Knowledge is active. The ideas are the
instruments of this activity.
Plato's doctrine of ideas was probably designed or conceived by him as
affording an explanation also of the community of Knowledge. He
emphasised the fluent instability of the sensible impression, and as we
have already pointed out, sensation in itself labours also under this
drawback that it contains and affords no common nexus whereby the
conceptions or perceptions of one man can be compared or related with
those of another.

Indeed, if Experience were composed solely of sensations, each
individual would be an isolated solipsistic unit--incapable of rational
Discourse or communication with his fellow-men. To cure this defect,
Plato offered the ideas--universal forms common to the intelligence of
every rational being. Not only would they render possible a common
Knowledge of Reality--the existence of such ideas would necessarily
also give permanence, fixity, law, and order to our intellectual activity.
Our Knowledge would not be a mere random succession of impressions,
but a definitely determined organic unity.
In all this argument it must be remembered Plato never said or
suggested that the intellect of man--thus equipped with ideal
forms--was thereby enabled to become, or did become, the creator of
the world by and in which each one believes himself to be surrounded
and included. He always distinguished between Idea and Reality,
between Thought and Thing. The ideas were types of the forms
immanent in things themselves. It has been said by some scholars that
he generally distinguished between the two by the employment of
distinct terms, applying +eidos+ to the mental conception and +idea+ to
the substantial form. This verbal distinction was accepted by many
scholars of the epoch of Liddell and Scott and Davies and Vaughan. A
reference to this distinction in the present writer's essay on The
Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge provoked at the instance of one
critic the allegation that it is not borne out by a critical study of the
Platonic texts. That is a matter of little moment and one upon which the
writer cannot claim to pronounce. The important point is that in one
way or another Plato undoubtedly distinguished between and indeed
contrasted the idea and the substantial form. No trace of the solipsism
which results from their being confounded and which has ultimately
brought to destruction the imposing edifice of Hegelian Thought is to
be found in his writings.
* * * * *
The Platonic doctrine of ideas speedily found an energetic critic in
Aristotle. In Aristotle's view, it was quite unnecessary and
unwarrantable to postulate the existence in the Mind of ideal forms or

counterparts of the substantial forms of Reality. This, according to him,
was a wholly unnecessary reduplication. He was content to believe that
the mind found and recognised the essential forms of things when they
were presented to it in perceptive Experience. Universalia