Plato and Platonism | Page 7

itself also such perpetual motion? a baffling transition from the dead
past, alive one moment since, to a present, itself deceased in turn ere
we can say, It is here? A keen analyst of the facts of nature and mind, a
master presumably of all the knowledge that then there was, a vigorous
definer of thoughts, he does but refer the superficial movement of all
persons and things around him to deeper and still more masterful
currents of universal change, stealthily withdrawing the apparently
solid earth itself from beneath one's feet. The principle of disintegration,
the incoherency of fire or flood (for Heraclitus these are but very lively
instances of movements, subtler yet more wasteful still) are inherent in
the primary elements alike of matter and of the soul. Legei pou
Hêrakleitos, says Socrates in the Cratylus, hoti panta chôrei kai ouden
menei.+ But the principle of lapse, of waste, was, in fact, in one's self.
"No one has ever passed [16] twice over the same stream." Nay, the
passenger himself is without identity. Upon the same stream at the
same moment we do, and do not, embark: for we are, and are not:
eimen te kai ouk eimen.+ And this rapid change, if it did not make all
knowledge impossible, made it wholly relative, of a kind, that is to say,
valueless in the judgment of Plato. Man, the individual, at this
particular vanishing-point of time and place, becomes "the measure of
all things."
To know after what manner (says Socrates, after discussing the
question in what proportion names, fleeting names, contribute to our
knowledge of things) to know after what manner we must be taught, or
discover for ourselves, the things that really are (ta onta)+ is perhaps
beyond the measure of your powers and mine. We must even content
ourselves with the admission of this, that not from their names, but
much rather themselves from themselves, they must be learned and
looked for. . . . For consider, Cratylus, a point I oft-times dream
on--whether or no we may affirm that what is beautiful and good in
itself, and whatever is, respectively, in itself, is something?
Cratylus. To me at least, Socrates, it seems to be something.
Socrates. Let us consider, then, that 'in-itself'; not whether a face, or
anything of that kind, is beautiful, and whether all these things seem to
flow like water. But, what is beautiful in itself--may we say?--has not

this the qualities that define it, always?
Cratylus. It must be so.
Socrates. Can we then, if it is ever passing out below, predicate about it;
first, that it is that; next, that it has this or that quality; or must it not be
that, even as we speak, it should straightway become some other thing,
and go out under on its way, and be no longer as it is? Now, how could
that which is never in the same state be a thing at all? . . .
[17] Socrates. Nor, in truth, could it be an object of knowledge to any
one; for, even as he who shall know comes upon it, it would become
another thing with other qualities; so that it would be no longer matter
of knowledge what sort of a thing it is, or in what condition. Now, no
form of knowing, methinks, has knowledge of that which it knows to
be no-how.
Cratylus. It is as you say.
Socrates. But if, Cratylus, all things change sides, and nothing stays, it
is not fitting to say that there is any knowing at all. . . . And the
consequence of this argument would be, that there is neither any one to
know, nor anything to be known. If, on the other hand, there be always
that which knows, and that which is known; and if the Beautiful is, and
the Good is, and each one of those things that really are, is, then, to my
thinking, those things in no way resemble that moving stream of which
we are now speaking. Whether, then, these matters be thus, or in that
other way as the followers of Heraclitus affirm and many besides, I fear
may be no easy thing to search out. But certainly it is not like a sensible
man, committing one's self, and one's own soul, to the rule of names, to
serve them, and, with faith in names and those who imposed them, as if
one knew something thereby, to maintain (damaging thus the character
of that which is, and our own) that there is no sound ring in any one of
them, but that all, like earthen pots, let water. Cratylus, 439.+
Yet from certain fragments in which the Logos is already named we
may understand that there had been another side to the doctrine