Plato accordingly took his departure. After the separation, however, both felt the desire to be again together. Dionysius recalled Plato, in order to effect a reconciliation with him; he could not endure that he should have failed in the attempt to attach Plato permanently to himself, and he found it specially intolerable that Plato would not give up Dion. Plato yielded to the urgent representations, not only of his family and Dion, but also of Archytas and other Pythagoreans of Tarentum, to whom Dionysius had applied, and who were taking an interest in the reconciliation of Dionysius with Dion and Plato; indeed, they went so far as to guarantee safety and liberty of departure to Plato. But Dionysius found that he could endure Plato’s presence no better than his absence; he felt himself thereby constrained. And though, by the influence of Plato and his other companions, a respect for science had been awakened in Dionysius, and he had thus become more cultured, he never penetrated beyond the surface. His interest in Philosophy was just as superficial as his repeated attempts in poetry; and while he wished to be everything—poet, philosopher, and statesman—he would not submit to be under the guidance of others. Thus no closer tie between Plato and Dionysius was formed; they drew together again, and again parted, so that the third visit to Sicily ended also in coldness, and the connection was not again established. This time the ill-feeling with regard to the continued relations with Dion ran so high, that when Plato wished to leave Sicily, on account of the treatment his friend had met with from Dionysius, the latter deprived him of the means of conveyance, and at last would have forcibly prevented his departure from Sicily. The Pythagoreans of Tarentum came at length to the rescue,[6] demanded Plato back from Dionysius, got him conveyed away safely, and brought him to Greece. They were aided by the circumstance that Dionysius was afraid of an ill report being spread that he was not on good terms with Plato.[7] Thus Plato’s hopes were shattered, and his dream of shaping the constitution in accordance with the demands of his own philosophic ideas, through the agency of Dionysius, proved vain.

At a later date, therefore, he actually refused to be the lawgiver of other States, though they had made application to him for that very purpose; amongst these applicants were the inhabitants of Cyrene and the Arcadians. It was a time when many of the Greek States found their constitutions unsatisfactory, and yet could not devise anything new.[8] Now in the last thirty years[9] many constitutions have been drawn up, and it would be no hard task for anyone having had much experience in this work to frame another. But theorizing is not sufficient for a constitution; it is not individuals who make it; it is something divine and spiritual, which develops in history. So strong is this power of the world-spirit that the thought of an individual is as nothing against it; and when such thoughts do count for something, i.e. when they can be realized, they are then none other than the product of this power of the universal spirit. The idea that Plato should become lawgiver was not adapted for the times; Solon and Lycurgus were lawgivers, but in Plato’s day such a thing was impracticable. He declined any further compliance with the wishes of these States, because they would not agree to the first condition which he imposed, namely, the abolition of all private property,[10] a principle which we shall deal with later, in considering Plato’s practical philosophy. Honoured thus throughout the whole land, and especially in Athens, Plato lived until the first year of the 108th Olympiad (B.C. 348); and died on his birthday, at a wedding feast, in the eighty-first year of his age.[11]

We have to speak, in the first place, of the direct mode in which Plato’s philosophy has come down to us; it is to be found in those of his writings which we possess; indubitably they are one of the fairest gifts which fate has preserved from the ages that are gone. His philosophy is not, however, properly speaking, presented there in systematic form, and to construct it from such writings is difficult, not so much from anything in itself, as because this philosophy has been differently understood in different periods of time; and, more than all, because it has been much and roughly handled in modern times by those who have either read into it their own crude notions, being enable to conceive the spiritual spiritually, or have regarded as the essential and most significant element in Plato’s philosophy that which in reality does not belong to Philosophy at all, but only to the mode of presentation; in truth, however, it is only ignorance of Philosophy that renders it difficult to grasp the philosophy of Plato. The form and matter of these works are alike of interest and importance. In studying them we must nevertheless make sure, in the first place, what of Philosophy we mean to seek and may find within them, and, on the other hand, what Plato’s point of view never can afford us, because in his time it was not there to give. Thus it may be that the longing with which we approached Philosophy is left quite unsatisfied; it is, however, better that we should not be altogether satisfied than that such conclusions should be regarded as final. Plato’s point of view is clearly defined and necessary, but it is impossible for us to remain there, or to go back to it; for Reason now makes higher demands. As for regarding it as the highest standpoint, and that which we must take for our own—it belongs to the weaknesses of our time not to be able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit, to feel crushed before them, and to flee from them faint-hearted. We must stand above Plato, i.e. we must acquaint ourselves with the needs of thoughtful minds in our own time, or rather we must ourselves experience these needs. Just as the pedagogue’s aim is to train up men so as to shield them from the world, or to keep them in a particular sphere—the counting-house, for instance, or bean-planting, if you wish to be idyllic—where they will neither know the world nor be known by it; so in Philosophy a return has been made to religious faith, and therefore to the Platonic philosophy.[12] Both are moments which have their due place and their own importance, but they are not the philosophy of our time. It would be perfectly justifiable to return to Plato in order to learn anew from him the Idea of speculative Philosophy, but it is idle to speak of him with extravagant enthusiasm, as if he represented beauty and excellence in general. Moreover, it is quite superfluous for Philosophy, and belongs to the hypercriticism of our times, to treat Plato from a literary point of view, as Schleiermacher does, critically examining whether one or another of the minor dialogues is genuine or not. Regarding the more important of the dialogues, we may mention that the testimony of the ancients leaves not the slightest doubt.

Then of course the very character of Plato’s works, offering us in their manysidedness various modes of treating Philosophy, constitutes the first difficulty standing in the way of a comprehension of his philosophy. If we still had the oral discourses (ἄγραφα δόγματα) of Plato, under the title “Concerning the Good” (περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), which his scholars noted down, we should have had his philosophy before us in simpler, because in more systematic form.[13] Aristotle seems to have had these discourses before him, when dealing with the philosophy of Plato, and he quotes them in his work “On Philosophy,” or, “On the Ideas,” or, “On the Good” (Brandis has written on this topic). But, as it happens, we have only Plato’s Dialogues, and their form renders it all the more difficult for us to gather a definite idea of his philosophy. For the dialogue form contains very heterogeneous elements; Philosophy proper in the treatment of absolute Being, and, intermingled with that, its particular mode of representation. It is just this which constitutes the manysidedness of Plato’s works.

A second difficulty is said to lie in the distinction drawn between exoteric and esoteric philosophy. Tennemann (Vol. II. p. 220) says: “Plato exercised the right, which is conceded to every thinker, of communicating only so much of his discoveries as he thought good, and of so doing only to those whom he credited with capacity to receive it. Aristotle, too, had an esoteric and an exoteric philosophy, but with this difference, that in his case the distinction was merely formal, while with Plato it was also material.” How nonsensical! This would appear as if the philosopher kept possession of his thoughts in the same way as of his external goods: the philosophic Idea is, however, something utterly different, and instead of being possessed by, it possesses a man. When philosophers discourse on philosophic subjects, they follow of necessity the course of their ideas; they cannot keep them in their pockets; and when one man speaks to another, if his words have any meaning at all, they must contain the idea present to him. It is easy enough to hand over an external possession, but the communication of ideas requires a certain skill; there is always something esoteric in this, something more than the merely exoteric. This difficulty is therefore trifling.