the mixed, which is composed of the two former, and the supreme cause of all.

Example of the first; all that admits of increase or decrease, greater or less, hotter or colder, &c., i. e. all undetermined quantity. Of the second; all that determines quantity, as equality, duplicity, and whatever relation number bears to number, and measure to

measure.

Of the third, or mixed; all created things, in which the infinity of matter is, by number and measure, reduced to proportion.

P. 27. Pleasure and pain, having no bounds' in themselves, are

of the nature of the infinite.

P. 28, § 49. The supreme power and wisdom of the Deity asserted. P. 28, § 53. But a small portion of the several elements is visible in our frame. Our soul is a small portion of the spirit of the universe, or fourth kind mentioned above.

P. 31. Pain is a consequence of a dissolution of that symmetry and harmony in our fabric, which is the cause of health, strength, &c.; as pleasure results from the return and restoration of the parts to their just proportions.

Thus hunger and thirst are uneasinesses proceeding from emptiness; eating and drinking produce pleasure by restoring a proper degree of repletion. Excess of cold is attended with a sensation of pain, and warmth brings with it an equal pleasure.

Pleasures and pains of the soul alone arise from the expectation of pleasure or pain of the body: these are hopes and fears, and depend upon the memory.

A state of indifference is without pleasure or pain, which is consistent with a life of thought and contemplation.

P. 33. Sensation is conveyed to the soul through the organs of the body; the body may receive many motions and alterations unperceived by the mind.

P. 34. Memory is the preserver of our sensations.

Recollection, an act of the mind alone, restores to us ideas imprinted in the memory, after an intermission.

1 Happiness and misery, says Mr. Locke, are the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not: but of some degrees of them we have very lively ideas. (Chapt. of Power, i. 41.)

2 This is an idea of Timæus, the Locrian, p. 100, C. § 7. And Mr. Locke makes much the same observation. Excess of cold, (says he,) as well as heat, pains us; because it is equally destructive of that temper, which is necessary to the preservation and the exercise of the several functions of the body, and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth, or, you please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies confined within certain bounds. Essay on H. U. ch. vii. § 4.

Hope is that pleasure in the mind, which every one finds upon the thought of a profitable future enjoyment of a thing which is apt to delight him. Fear is an uneasiness upon the thought of future evil, likely to befall

us.

Locke, ib. ch. xx.

Desire, in the mind alone, by which it supplies the wants of the body: it depends on memory.

In the appetites, pleasure and pain go together, a proportionable satisfaction succeeding, as the uneasiness abates.

1

Memory of a past pleasing sensation inspires hope of a future one, and thereby abates an uneasiness actually present; as the absence of hope doubles a present pain.

P. 36. Whether truth and falsehood belong to pleasures and pains?

:

2

They do as these are founded on our opinions of things preconceived, which may, undoubtedly, be either true or false.

P. 38. Our opinions are founded on our sensations, and the memory of them. Thus we see a figure at a distance beyond a certain rock, or under a certain tree, and we say to ourselves, it is a man; but on advancing up to it, we find a rude image of wood carved by a shepherd.

P. 39. The senses, the memory, and the passions, which attend on them, write on our souls, or rather delineate, a variety of conceptions and representations, of which, when justly drawn, we form true opinions and propositions; but when falsely, we form false ones.

On these our hopes and fears are built, and consequently are capable of truth and falsehood, as well as the opinions on which they are founded.

P. 40. The good abound in just and true hopes, fears, and desires; the bad, in false and delusive ones.

P. 41. As pleasures and pains are infinite, we can only measure them by comparison, one with the other.

P. 42, § 89. Our hopes and fears are no less liable to be deceived by the prospect of distant objects, than our eyes. As we are always comparing those which are far off, with others less remote or very near, it is no wonder that we are often mistaken; especially as a pleasure, when set next a pain, does naturally appear greater than its true magnitude, and a pain less.

P. 42, § 90. So much then of pains and pleasures as exceeds or falls short of its archetype, is false.

P. 42, § 92. A state of indolence, or of apathy, is supposed by the school of Heraclitus to be impossible, on account of the perpetual motion of all things.

1 What Plato calls by the name of Munun, "Memory," and 'Aváμvnois, "Recollection," are by Locke distinguished under the names of Contemplation and Memory, (1. i. ch. 10,) being the different powers of retention.

2 All this head is finely explained by Locke in ch. on Power, § 61 and foll., which is the best comment on this part of Plato.

3 "If we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison." Locke, ch. on Power, § 42.

Motions and alterations' proved to happen continually in our body, of which the soul has no perception.

P. 43. Therefore, (though we should allow the perpetual motion of things,) there are times when the soul feels neither pleasure nor pain; so that this is a possible state.

Pleasure, and its contrary, are not the consequences of any changes in our constituent parts, but of such changes as are considerable and violent.

P. 44. The sect of philosophers, who affirm that there is no pleasure but the absence of pain, is in the wrong, but from a noble principle.

P. 45. To know the nature of pleasure, we should consider such as are strongest: bodily pleasures are such.

Pleasure is in proportion to our desires. The desires and longings of sick persons are the most violent: the mad and thoughtless feel the strongest3 degree of pleasure and of pain; so that both the one and the other increase with the disorder and depravity of our body and mind.

P. 46. Pleasures of lust have a mixture of pain, as the pain of the itch has a mixture of pleasure, and both subsist at the same instant.

Anger, grief, love, envy, are pains of the soul, but with a mixture of pleasure. Exemplified in the exercise of our compassion and terror at a tragic spectacle, and of our envy at a comic one. The pleasure of ridicule arises from vanity and from the ignorance of ourselves. We laugh at the follies of the weak, and hate those of the powerful.

6

P. 47. Pure and unmixed pleasures proved to exist: those of the senses resulting from regularity of figure, beautiful colours, melodious sounds, odours of fragrance, &c., and all whose absence is not necessarily accompanied with any uneasiness. Again: satisfactions of the mind resulting from knowledge, the absence or loss of which is not naturally attended with any pain. P. 53, § 121. A small portion of pure and uncorrupted pleasure is preferable to a larger one of that which is mixed and impure. P. 53, § 122. The opinion of some philosophers, that pleasure is continually generating, but is never produced, i. e. it has no real existence, seems true with regard to mere bodily pleasures.

P. 55, § 130. Inquiry into knowledge. The nature of the arts:

1 Whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Locke, ch. ix.

2 "Pleasure," says Mr. Selden, "is nothing but the intermission of pain, the enjoyment of something I am in great trouble for, till I have it."

3 Vid. Plat. in Republ. iii. p. 403. 5 Vid. Aristot. Rhetor. ii. c. 2.

4 Vid. Gorgiam, p. 494. Vid. de Republ. ix. p. 584.

such of them as approach the nearest to real knowledge, are the most considerable, being founded on number, weight, and2 measure, and capable of demonstration.

P. 55, § 131. Secondly, those attainable only by use and frequent trial, being founded on conjecture and experiment, such as music, medicine, agriculture, natural philosophy, &c.

P. 60. Recapitulation.

P. 61. Happiness resides in the just mixture of wisdom and pleasure; particularly when we join the purest pleasures with the clearer and more certain sciences.

P. 63. Prosopopoeia of the pleasures and sciences, consulted on the proposal made for uniting them.

P. 64. No mixture is either useful or durable, without proportion. The supreme good of man consists in beauty, in symmetry, and in truth, which are the causes of all the happiness to be found in the above-mentioned union.

MENO.

THE subject of the dialogue is this: That virtue is knowledge, and that true philosophy alone can give us that knowledge.

I see nothing in this dialogue to make one think that Plato intended to raise the character of Meno. He is introduced as a young man who seems to value himself on his parts, and on the proficiency he has made under Gorgias the Leontine, whose notions are here exposed, and the compliments Socrates makes him on his beauty, wealth, family, and other distinctions, are only little politenesses ordinarily used by that philosopher to put persons into good humour, and draw them into conversation with him.

The time of the dialogue seems to be not long before the expedition of the ten thousand into Asia, for Meno was even then a very young man, and still beardless, as he is represented here; and the menaces of Anytus (p. 94) show, that it was not long before the accusation of Socrates; so that we may place it Ol. 94, 4, if Plato may be trusted in these small matters of chronology, which, we know, he sometimes neglected. Gorgias was yet at Athens, Ol. 93, 4, and it is probable, that the approaching siege of that city might

1 Vid. de Republ. x. p. 602.

2 And above all, logic, to which we owe all the evidence and certainty we find in the rest. De Republ. vii. p. 534.

Vid. de Republ. ix. p. 582, and de Leg. v. p. 733.

drive him thence into Thessaly, and he returned not till after Socrates's death.

Socrates here distinguishes (p. 75) the true method of disputation from the false.

P. 77. Meno's first definition of virtue is, that it consists in desiring good, and in being able to attain it. Socrates proves that all men desire good, and consequently all men are so far equally virtuous, which is an absurdity; it must therefore consist in the ability to attain it: which is true in Socrates's sense of the word good, (which makes him say, "Iowç av ev λéyoç): but it is necessary to know if men's ideas of it are the same. Upon inquiry, Meno's meaning appears to be, health, honour, riches, power, &c.; but, being pressed by Socrates, he is forced to own, that the attainment of these is so far from virtue, that it is vice, unless accompanied with temperance, with justice, and with piety; as then the virtue of such an attainment consists in such adjuncts, and not in the thing attained; and as these are confessedly parts of virtue only, subordinate to some more general idea, they are no nearer discovering what virtue in the abstract is, than they were at first.

Though the doctrine of reminiscence, repeated by Plato in several places, be chimerical enough; yet this, which follows it, (p. 84,) is worth attending to, where Socrates shows how useful it is to be sensible of our own ignorance. While we know nothing, we doubt of nothing; this is a state of great confidence and security. From the first distrust we entertain of our own understanding springs an uneasiness and a curiosity, which will not be satisfied till it attains to knowledge.

Whoever reads the dialogue, "On Virtue, whether it is to be taught," attributed to Æschines the Socratic, will see so great a resemblance to this of Plato, and at the same time find so great a difference in several respects, that he will believe both one and the other to be sketches of a real conversation, which passed between Socrates and some other person, noted down both by Eschines and by Plato at the time: the former left his notes in that unfinished condition, but the latter supplied them as he thought fit, and worked them up at his leisure into this dialogue.

NOTES ON THE GREEK TEXT.

P. 70. E' inπiky te kai nλovry.] The breed of Thessalian horses was the most celebrated in Greece; and when the cities of Thessaly were united among themselves, they could raise a body of six thousand, equal to any cavalry in the world. (Xenophon, Hellenic. vi. p. 339. Pausan. x. p. 799. Plato in Hipp. Maj. p. 284.) They were of great service to Alexander in his expeditions. The country was very rich in pasture and in corn, and, as their government was generally remiss and ill-regulated, their wealth naturally introduced a corruption (Athe