The Character and Provenance of Socrates' 'Dream' in the "Theaetetus"Author(s): Winifred HickenReviewed work(s):Source: Phronesis, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1958), pp. 126-145Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4181636 .Accessed: 30/09/2012 21:56

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The Character and Provenance of Socrates' 'Dream' in the Theaetetus.

WINIFRED HICKEN

THE PURPOSE of this article is to make one further attempt to under- stand the theory described by Socrates in the Theaetetus (20I d 8) as a 'dream to match a dream'. This is an elusive and puzzling

theory which in recent years has been variously interpreted as a nomi- nalist's theory of definition1, as a physicist's theory of the analysis of natural objects into their ultimate constituents 2 and as an anticipation of modern attempts to analyse propositions and the facts stated by them into their 'atomic' elements.3

Socrates' account is detailed and has a certain specious clarity which makes it easy to state, but it contains so many gaps and problems that the sense of the theory, even its general sense, remains obscure. Nor is it easy to take an indirect route to the sense of the theory by way of its provenance, for the only obvious clue to this, the use of the term etLal't (2oi d 2-3), gives the modern reader no assistance since the word seems not to occur in extant Greek literature before Aristotle. Outside the dialogue itself the only ancient source which promises to be relevant is the Metaphysics of Aristotle, for in Z. I7. 104I b9-3 3 and H. 3 1043b4-32, passages which are themselves not free from diffi- culties of interpretation, Aristotle criticises some ideas about the analysis of compounds which strongly resemble those put forward by Socrates in his discussion of the 'dream'. These passages have often been related to the Theaetetus, but mainly by those interested in proving or disproving the attribution of the 'dreamed' theory to the Socratic Antisthenes. I shall argue that they in no way support this attribution but that, if taken together with the evidence offered in the Theaetetus not only by Socrates' account but also by his presentation of it, they suggest another line of interpretation. 1 C. M. Gillespie, Arch. Gesch. Philos, xxvi (I912-3), pp. 479ff. and xxvii (1913-4), pp. 17ff. 2 L. Campbell, Introduction to The Theactetus o] Plato,2 p. xxxix; J. Burnet, Greek Philosophy, pp. 2g1-3; A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and his Work, pp. 344ff. andA Commen- tary on Plato's Timaeus, pp. 3o6 ff. 3 G. Ryle in an unpublished paper read to the Oxford Philological Society on February I E, I 9S2. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the author for letting me see his script.

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First, then, for the theory itself. Theaetetus' first hypothesis, that knowledge is Mta%-aL4, has been finally refuted ( 84b4-l 86 e io), and so too the attempt to define it as true 86to. (200 d 8-20I c7). In 20o c 8 ff. Theaetetus suggests what sounds like a modification of this view. He remembers having heard some one say that knowledge is true ao'6 accompanied by ?oyo4. He does not recall the theory exactly but would, he thinks, recognise it if it were repeated to him. Socrates then outlines a theory (20I d8-202 c E) which is instantly accepted by Theaetetus as the one he had in mind (20 2 c -6). It seemed to him, Socrates says, that he heard some people say that the letters or elements (atoLXs-L) of which we and everything else are formed have no X6yo4. Taken each by itself they can be nam-ied only but nothing can be predicated of them, not even 'being' or terms like 'itself' and 'each' and 'only' which Socrates has had to use to indicate what they are at all. For such predicates 'run around' and are attached to everything, themselves distinct from the things to which they are applied, whereas if per impossibile an element could be described or stated (?%6yeaOoL), it should be by a Xoyoq peculiar to itself. The letters, he concludes, are thus unknowable and without Xoyo4, but they are odaOia'; the syllables can be known and stated (P'-to) and grasped by true 80'o, but no one knows them unless he can 'give and receive an account of them', ao5vod -re xotL 8e(atO ?oyov.

This theory Socrates goes on at once to refute (Tht. 203 a 1-2o6b i I) by making Theaetetus choose between alternative views of the relation between syllables and letters. If the syllable is all its letters, then since ex hypothesi these are unknowable, so too must be the syllable; if the syllable is something distinct from the letters, a single nature which comes into being when they combine, since this is incapable of analysis into parts, it must be as unknowable as its letters.

Such a refutation clearly holds good against any analysis of a whole into absolutely simple parts; by itself it tells us nothing about the application of the analogy; and Socrates' account leaves many questions unanswered. We are told that we are ourselves complexes of elements (2oi e 1-2), but, as no instance of an element is given, we cannot be sure what kind of analysis of persons Socrates has in mind, nor indeed whether all the complexes represented by syllables are of the same general type. The elements are said to be oO-,rot& (202b6), but whether by this Socrates means 'perceived by the senses' or perhaps 'directly cognised' 1 is not immediately evident. There is a corresponding puzzle about the word 1 For this view vide e.g. Taylor, Plato, the Man and his Work, p. 34g.

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Xoyo4. Does it mean 'definition' or 'description', either of which might be suitable if the complexes Socrates had in mind were all substances, or are we to infer from the statement at 20I e 2 ff. that the elements, which correspond to Theaetetus' &Xoym, admit of no predicates at all that any any sort of predication is a' 6yo4? And what are we to make of true 80'o which is in some sense correlated with syllables but is unable to 'give and receive an account of them'?

It has long been taken for granted that the theory represents knowledge as some kind of analysis of objects, which may be expressed in definitions or descriptions but not, or not primarily, in statements of the form 'X is Y' where Y is a quality or relation. The syllable stands for a complex thing of some kind and not for a fact or truth about things. There are good primafacie grounds for this. Not only is the notion of a complex exemplified by 'ourselves', but when Theaetetus' original formula is restated in a less subtle form in 2 o6 e s ff., it is illustrated by the analysis of a cart into physical parts, and the only other sense of Xo6yo4 seriously considered, distinction by differentia (208 c6 ff.), necessarily applies not to facts but to objects like the sun or Theaetetus. I am to argue that this is the type of knowledge which the 'dream' tries to illuminate with the help of its analogy, but there are certain difficulties about this view, itself no more than an approach to an interpretation, which lend support to Professor Ryle's belief that ?o6yo4 means 'statement', something told, and is correlated not with objects but with facts.

In the first place Theaetetus' suggestion follows and appears to be a refinement upon his attempt to define knowledge as true ao'oc (2 00 e 4 ff.), where by K0'ieLv he seems to mean 'to believe a proposition' e.g. that so-and-so stole from or did violence to some one else (20I a ioff.). Again, Socrates' account of the arotXe?Z which can be named only but not expressed by a Xo6yo;, 'Oni~VML Xoyu (202 b ), appears to imply that statements like 'a simple exists' or 'is this' or 'is that' are instances of X6yoL in which terms like 'is' and 'this' name component simples. We must hesitate to suppose that the author of the theory treated such statements as imperfect definitions or descriptions of objects made up of these and other simples. For while we might well have to make use of such terms in attempting to define or describe something, it is highly unplausible to suggest that 'is' and 'that' name a thing's component parts, though some one might be tempted to believe that they do name parts of what is stated in a proposition.

There are, then, primafacie grounds also for taking the 'dream' in the way Professor Ryle suggests, as 'a theory about the composition of

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truths and falselhoods'. If I understand his interpretation, the author of the theory may be credited with one piece of insight of which Professor Ryle thoroughly approves. He has seen, as it is suggested Plato may not have seen when in his earlier dialogues he correlated knowledge with single Forms, that truth, and indeed falsehood, necessarily possess internal complexity. A sinmple object cannot be true or false, cannot be believed or stated or known in the sense of savoir; it can be named only. But when he attempts with the help of the analogy of letters and syllables to explain the relation between names and statements con- taining them, he falls into the sort of error which Professor Ryle finds in the analyses of statements offered by modern philosophers such as Meinong and (in his earlier works) Russell, the latter of whom made use of the same analogy in his Enquiry into Meaning and Truth, pp. 3 3 g-6. He assumes that a statement is related to its names as a whole to its parts, and so finds himself unable to distinguish a statement from a name. For one of two things, either the statement conveys the congeries of simples conveyed by its several words, in which case it will no more be capable of expressing knowledge in the sense savoir than were the names them- selves, or it conveys some unitary object of a higher order, a structured complex which contains the simples but cannot without remainder be reduced to them. But then this 'logical molecule' must itself be simple and unanalysable, and so, to quote, 'the sentence will stand to this simple something just as a name stands to the simples that it names. And then the sentence will no more express a falsehood or a truth than an ordinary name does'.

The refutation of the 'dream' thus shows the need to make a sharp distinction between the meaning or sense of statements and the meaning of words, and of this, Professor Ryle points out, Plato seems to have been aware at least when he wrote the Sophist, for in 262cgff. he says that a XGyog such as &vOpcono4 pocL0O!VZt does not merely 'name' something but 'gets you somewhere' by weaving together pn,wlomra and Ov~o-,roc; and he continues 'for this reason we have said that it states something and does not merely name something, and in fact it is to this woven fabric, 7rXe'yLOC-r, that wve give the name 'statement', ?6yov'.

This is an interesting interpretation, but it seems to me that it will not do and for two very simple reasons. The first is that what it offers us in the 'dreanm' is in no sense an answer to the question what is knowledge; it rather an attempt to work out the implications of one of its necessary conditions, which it shares with other states of mind. Knowledge in the sense savoir is distinguished from and related to acquaintance with

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simple nameables, but it is not distinguished from true opinion nor indeed from false opinion. These too ex hypothesi are related to com- plexes expressed in statements and not to simple objects. The inter- pretation will take us as far as the statement that true opinion, like knowledge, is concerned with 'syllables' (202 b 6-7); it will not explain what is meant by saying that some one has knowledge only if he can 'give and receive an account' (202b8-cg). This is the sense of 4oyo4 which seems crucial, and whatever it means it can hardly be simply statement'. Again, on this interpretation we have to understand ulaOjrm' in

202b6 to mean not 'sensible' but 'met', 'directly cognised'. This is a use of acxOocveaOot which it seems particularly difficult to justify here. For whatever the ambiguity of the word in Theaetetus' first hypothesis (5i e iff.), in the course of refuting his theory in i84b4ff. Socrates has whittled it down to 'bare sensation', and it is hard to believe that he would have enlarged or changed its meaning, even while reporting quite a different theory, without giving the reader warning. If xiaOtcc o was used by the author of the 'dream' in the way suggested, it stands in much greater need of comment than e'Ma'1rTcO.

It seems to me justifiable, then, to believe that the syllables stand for one type of complex only, perceptible things, and that knowledge is somehow to be defined in terms of their analysis into sensible simples. If this is true, it seems likely that the theory will turn out to be both unsophisticated and unsatisfactory. If all the elements are sensible, relational terms will find their way into a ?O6yo; only by the back door. All that is included in the structure of a 'syllable' will be left out of account.

Now this is just the point which Aristotle seems to be making at the end of Metaphysics Z (I 7. I 041 b 9-3 3), when after giving an analysis of the question what is X, e.g. a house (ibid. I04I a 32 -b9), which prepares for his own answer that it is a certain kind of matter organised in a par- ticular way by its form, he introduces the syllable as an instance of a complex which, like house, is a single whole and not a heap, and criticises certain attempts to analyse compounds which echo in an interesting -way the different accounts of the relation of letters to syllables considered in the Theaetetus.

The first mistake is to say that the syllable simply is its letters. This, Aristotle points out, is untrue because when their union is dissolved the syllable no longer exists but the letters remain. This view seems to correspond exactly to Socrates' first interpretation of the 'dream' (203 c4ff.). Aristotle then argues that the syllable must consist of 130

something else besides its letters, E'repov tCL and describes two errors which may be made about this. It cannot itself be a aoqLxeZov for that will lead to an infinite regress. We shall have to say that the syllable is composed of its letters plus the r'p'V 'n, and so to ask all over again what is the principle which unites them. Nor yet may we say that the E'T?pOv 't is itself a complex of letters (ex ar?oX?lou), for then we are back where we started. We shall have to ask about the &tepo'v 'n what we asked about the syllable, what is its principle of unity. Both these views seem to be reflected in Socrates' alternative interpretation (203 e 2ff.), though neither is identical with it. This is that the syllable is something other than its letters, eTEpOV NV TTO6rLXZLV, a single nature that has come from them with a character of its own. This account might be interpreted in two ways. It might mean that the syllable is a kind of epiphenomenon which comes into being when letters combine or that it is a structured complex including, but not reducible to, its letters. The first view is that which Socrates presses on Theaetetus when by stoutly identifying the 'whole' with the 'all' he shows that the letters cannot be parts of such a nature or we shall be driven back to our first alternative (2o4a i-20gb 3), and it leads to the conclusion that the syllable is itself yet another simple which possesses all the negative properties of a letter (20gb 8-e 7). If we accept Socrates' argument, we can resist his conclusion only at the cost of maintaining that the syllable is its letters plius such a 9Tsp6v TL. The second view seems to be that for which Theaetetus is feeling when he tries to resist Socrates' identif- ication of the notions -o 7cFv and to 6)ov (2o4a ii-b3 and 2o4e1I-13). He seems obscurely aware (cf. ibid. 2o4.b 2 f.) that the tI?pov rt he has in mind is neither a simple nor an aggregate of simples but a structured whole, but finds nothing in the 'dreamed' theory to help him make clear to himself the relations involved in such a unity. The problem of relating letters to syllable Aristotle believes he can solve with the help of the notions of (proximate) matter and form, which at the end of Z he identifies with o'utc, that which makes a thing what it is. Form actua- lises the relations between the material elements which they already possess potentially. No further link is needed.'

It is doubtless open to us to argue that the views criticised by Aristotle were put forward by some nameless contemporaries and have no light to throw on the theory of the Theaetetus. Their similarity to the ideas elicited by Socrates from the 'dream', it may be suggested, itself

1 Met. Z. I7. 104ib25-33. Cf. also e.g. ibid. H. 6. 1o4Sa23-S.

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incomplete, is largely due to the analogy of letters and syllables, which is one of Aristotle's favourite sources of illustration; the views them- selves may have been expressed in quite other terms. There is, more- over, one major discrepancy. In his introductory passage Aristotle recognises (Met. Z. i7. i041ib9-ii) that his own theory about the structure of compounds implies the existence of elements which he calls simples, and says cannot be analysed but are discovered by some other method of enquiry, but when he comes to describe the analyses which he believes to be mistaken, so far from stressing the absolute sinmplicity of the elements, he cites as examples the parts of flesh, fire and earth, which might themselves be treated as composites (ibid. io041b I2- 14).

This discrepancy does not seem fatal to the belief that Aristotle has in mind the 'dreamed' theory. Flesh also is one of his stock instances of a auvoTov,, as are fire and earth of primary elements, and since his purpose in stating the views he criticises is to reveal the virtues of his own theory, we need not be surprised if he selects only some of the points which interested Plato. There are, moreover, other passages in the whole long discussion of definition in Z and H which suggest that he had been thinking about the last section of the Theaetetus. His insistence in Z. I E. 1040 a 27 ff. that unique objects like the sun and moon cannot be defined recalls the passage where Socrates cites, as an instance of the last of the senses considered of X6yov ao5vo,t, the attempt to distinguish the sun from everything else as r"O XopwpoTOCToV... rcv xcrro 'rbv OUpXVOV LOVTWV 7tepi yiV (2o8dXif.), and in H. 2. 1o433a14ff. he criticises those who define 'house' by listing its physical parts, MLOM,, 7rvOot, ux, just the kind of analysis suggested by Socrates in 206 es- 207a7 in his restatement of the 'dream' in a less subtle form. A cart is 'TpoxoL, Mv UiYp'?Opb, &vruyg, Vuy6v. Even if Aristotle is con- sidering at the end of Z views put forward in his own time, it seems likely that he traced them back to the discussion of the Theactetus, and interpreted the 'dream' as an attempt to answer questions of the form what is X, where X is, like house, a perceptible object.

By itself the passage from Z takes us no further than this. For Aristotle's theory that ouascx is form is applied within a wide field of enquiry and might be contrasted with more than one kind of analysis of objects. It forms the basis of a metaphysical theory of the structure of cn$vo?X and of a theory of definition which states all but their bare particularity, and in Z. ii. 1037aI3ff. Aristotle recognises that the study of alOqraoi oua5at is the proper concern of the physicist.

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It is as a physicist's theory that Burnet 1 and Taylor 2, following Campbell 3, have interpreted the 'dream', the work of some Pythagorean like Ecphantos of Syracuse, and Taylor seems to have understood the ideas criticised by Aristotle at the end of Z in the same way.4 But such an interpretation fits only that part of Aristotle's account which is at variance with the 'dream'. For if, as Taylor suggests, the simples which its author had in mind were something like the two different kinds of triangle out of which Timaeus in the dialogue builds up the regular solids which are to compose all bodies, these are certainly not such that they can be named only but not described, nor yet are the atoms of Ecphantos of Syracuse, for these are said to possess distinguishing properties of size, shape and capacity.5 There is nothing in the account of the errors at the end of Z except perhaps Aristotle's instance, flesh, which suggests Pythagorean origin, and in H6 one at least of the mistakes considered, that of identifying a aCSvOeaL; or principle of arrangement with its parts, is treated as analogous to that of defining man as animal and two-footed. The ideas which Aristotle contrasts with his own he seems to regard as belonging, if not to a theory of definition consciously intended as such, at least to one which might be presented as a theory of definition.

It has been widely believed, though not without objections from some scholars, that Aristotle himself sets us on the road to an answer by identifying Antisthenes with the author of the 'dream'. For in H. 3. 1043b23 ff., in a chapter so loosely constructed that the movement of thought is hard to trace, he suggests tlhat certain of the points he has been making give colour to a difficulty about definition which troubled the followers of Antisthenes. They believed that it was not possible to define the essence of anything since a definition was a X6yoo p.mxp6q, but

Burnet, Greek Philosophy, pp. 2 5 1- 3. 2 Taylor, Plato, the AMan and his Work, pp. 34E-6 and A Commentary on Plato's Tiniaeus., on 48b 8, pp. 306-8. 3 Campbell, Introduction to The Theaetetus of Plato, p. xxxix. 4 Taylor identifies with the 'dream' the theory criticised by Aristotle in Mct. H. 3. 04.3 b4ff., which appears to be a restatement of the analyses examined at the end of Z (A Comm. on Plato's Timaeus, p. 307). 5 Cf. Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,6 sr. i. TrO tY nv7rqr &.8aperac e1VaL, a(O, xczt xo pcO)XXCy QCUv ?pelq D7rpXELV, pryeooq ao 8v, H &M ra pdaQ6yr& yLvraOaL. 6 Met. H. 3. io43b IO-13. 7We have no means of distinguishing the theories of his followers from those of Antisthenes.

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it was possible to say what a thing was like, e.g. to describe silver as like tin. If we follow the punctuation accepted by Ross, putting a light stop after xaocrrepo0 at I o433b 28, Aristotle then expands their thought by saying 'And so there is one kind of substance of which there may be definition and X6yoq, composite substance, whether it is perceptible or intelligible, but of its first constituents definition is no longer possible, if the defining formula predicates something of something else and one of the two must play the part of matter and the other of form'.

Here, it seems, we have the essential contrast of the 'dream' between a crvOcov and its first elements, TM np&rm, and an affirmation, in the second part of the sentence at least, that only composites can be defined by a Xo?yoq. Moreover, the bit about saying what a thing is like seems to be admirably illustrated by Theaetetus' suggestion that sigma is 'a sort of hissing noise' (203 b

-), and one of the phrases used in the 'dream', otxdo0 Xoyoq, recalls the other of the two important notices about Antisthenes in Aristotle, the one describing his refusal to allow that contradiction is possible on the grounds that nothing can be stated or referred to except by its oixeZoq X6yo0q one expression for each thing (Met. A. 29. Io24b 32-4).

If Aristotle really does attribute the theory of the 'dream' to Antisthenes, we have little hope of finding a clue to its character in its provenance. Fior the sounder parts of ancient tradition about him are notoriously thin, and the perilous attempts made to fill out our knowledge of him by detecting further references to his ideas in other Platonic dialogues such as the CrayItIs and Sophist have produced essentially different pictures of the problems which interested him and his solution of them.

On exanmination, however, the passage from H. 3 strongly resists assimilation to the 'dream'. As soon as one bit is comfortably interpreted on these lines, another slips out of place. It is difficult to relate the two parts of the whole sentence 6atr ' &7ropt ... X taL'[rpoq and 6' cT CUaLq fEV.... 1Oppv, or even the two main limbs of the first part, 6,rt oux ?a-nt %n gi'a'tv opLacaOoc and a?X7 rrotov pYv &L... XTTep0q. In the second part it is clearly stated that only composites can be defined, but in the first Antisthenes seems to be denying the possibility of all definition, as indeed is suggested by the instance silver, if this was really borrowed from Antisthenes, for silver, though homogeneous, is com- posite in so far as it admits of predicates like grey, hard, malleable and so forth. On the other hand ro tL ea'rTlv, the formula of definition, is contrasted with totov .. . 'L eaTtV, which appears to answer to Theaetetus' attempt to indicate the nature of a simple.

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The parenthesis TO'v yap o!pov Vyov cNrat ptcxp6v should provide us with our best clue to Aristotle's meaning, but this contains one phrase, Xoyov [i.Cxpov, which has been variously interpreted. It will not do, it seems to me, to follow Field' in taking this to mean 'a roundabout formula', which indicates something by comparing it to something else. For on this view Aristotle's statement of Antisthenes' thought becomes intolerably obscure. We have without assistance to understand not only that in the first part of the sentence Aristotle tacitly limits definition to definition of simples but also that by ro-v opov in the parenthesis he means not 'definition' at all but 'so-called definition', something which he is contrasting with definition proper, the attempt to say what a thing is like.

The interpretation suggested by Ross in his note to H. 3. io43b242 enables us to take oux tarL TO Ltv '6pLa ocaoL as a denial of the possibility of definition in general, and to give an attested meaning to ?oyoq paxpoq. Antisthenes, he suggests, finds definition unsatisfactory because 'it explains its subject only by reference to elements themselves &Xoya xoK &yvwora, and is thus but a ?o6yo4 pccxpo6, a diffuse and evasive answer to a question'. In Met. N. 3. i09ia7ff., criticising those who posit two kinds of number, ideal and mathematical, Aristotle describes their theory as 6o Sc[v[ou [iaxpk Xo?yoq, and adds yLyvetorL yap 0 paxpoq ?o6yog ca0rC?p 6o -6v 8o6UXv 6rXv ,EV &(yL xeyGLv.

But on this view Socrates' refutation of the 'dreamed' theory seems to be swallowed up within the theory itself, whereas in the Theaetetus ability to 'give an account of' composites is represented as full knowledge.3 Besides, we have to suppose that after attributing to Antisthenes a denial of the possibility of all definition Aristotle so far anticipates the argument as to add a phrase, &?OX' ,7oiov V.6v ' xrX, which refers only to simples, and then gives after a &'OrT (1. 28) some of the information we need to understand the first part of the sentence. A yap not a w'are seems to be the particle of connection we need here.

On either view we have still to reckon with the difficulty stressed by Festugiere 4, the presence in the second part of the sentence of two

1 G. C. Field, Plato and'his Contemporaries, p. l 66. He believes that the whole passage ending at tLopq?fv (1. 32) refers to Antisthenes, but makes no attempt to connect it with the 'dream'. 2 Aristotle's Metaphysics, Vol. II, pp. 232-3. 3 Tht. 202 C 3-S. 7rpooa)oc6v?rxm 8i )%yov 8uvarov te '=ctTio nckvTr yeyovivoct xxtl 're)ec(q

4 A.-J. Festugiere, Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et The'ologiques, (1932), p. 373. I 3 5

thoroughly Aristotelian phrases, ea& Ire CtO V.av Tv orI i} 1 (11. 29-30) and the whole of the clause beginning e'Ttp r' x'T'r TLV&.. (11. 30-33). Both of these seem inapplicable to Antisthenes' theory, if that is identified with the 'dream'. In the Theaetetus (202 b 6) Socrates recognises only one type of simples, o1aOaT'C, and Aristotle's doctrine of the complexity of definition 2, which must contain at least two parts, genus and differentia, related to each other as matter to form, implies a hierarchy within the simples for which no allowance seems to be made in the 'dream'.

Gillespie's interpretation avoids most of these difficulties. For he cites 3 as relevant to Antisthenes only the first part of the passage, the part which ends at xC'TL-repOq (1. 28), and supposes that he is there said to deny only the possibility of defining simples, which are exemplified by silver, he suggests 4, because that is treated as an instance not of a substance but of a quality. Antisthenes' view rests on a very simple metaphysic which holds that only one kind of object can exist in its own right, the concrete perceptible individual, and on a logic which admits only two senses of the verb 'to be', the first of which is contained in the second, 'to exist' and 'to be identical with'. 'S is P' to Antisthenes contains the judgment' the thing called S exists', and is formally correct only if S is a concrete individual and P either a simple name for it or a list of its component parts i.e. a complex name, a X6yoq p.cxxpo'. Definition is computation of aggregates, and the parts taken by themt selves are abstractions which cannot be said to exist or to be this or tha- or made the subject of any proposition whatever5. Gillespie is thus enabled to link the passage from Met. H. 3 with Socrates' description of the elements in the Theaetctus, as with the rather similar description in the Sophist (2s2 C 2 ff.) of the consequences of treating the copula 'is' as the 'is' of identity.6

The passage from the Theaetetus cannot easily be interpreted in this way. If Gillespie were right, we should expect the verb 'to be' to be given special treatment, for such statements as 'that is X', where X is a sirnple, are on this view inadmissible only because they imply that X

1Cf. Met. H. 6. 1045 a 3 3 ff. latrL gi cAl VW7C j 8'OcaNri . 2 Cf. e.g. Met. Z. I 2. 1o38a i ff. 3 Arch. Gcsch. Philos. xxvi ( I 9 1 2- 3), p. 48 o . 4 Ibid. XXVii (1913-4), p. 27. r Ibid. xxvii, pp. 2 5 ff. 6 Ibid. xxvi, p. 48 i ff.

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exists in its own right. But the reason Socrates gives why no element can be said either to be or not to be is exactly the same as that whereby he explains the inadmissibility of every other predicative statement about them, the fact that all the terms mentioned are applicable to other things.l Socrates' description appears to have no metaphysical basis at all but to be an attempt to make clear by a series of negative statements the absolute simplicity of the elements which defeats ordinary modes of description.

It is also difficult to understand how on Gillespie's interpretation, as indeed on those of Field and Ross, Aristotle's observations about Antisthenes are to be screwed into their context. If those are right, as I believe they are, who treat o43b 14-23 as a digression, these obser- vations in somne sense follow from the long discussion of definition which has occupied most of the earlier part of H.2 In this discussion Aristotle has continued his examination of substance, above all the substance of perceptibles, including those of artefacts and of natural substances in a temporary state like ice, in whose differentiae, often some principle of arrangement or auvO0aLx 3, he finds not substance itself but something akin to substance. In 1043 a i4ff. he has made the point that those who define something as an aggregate of physical parts mention only the matter of the compound: in io43b4ff. he recalls the other two of the errors discussed at the end of Z, again using the analogy of letters and syllables but replacing the phrase trepov -rL by the word aivOsCUL. Those who suppose that the syllable is composed of its letters plus a

1 Tht. 20 1 e 2- 202 a 8. 2 G. M. A. Grube has argued in the Transactions of the American Philological Association, lxxxi, (I 950), p. 21 ff. that the remarks about Antisthenes, which he believes end at ,LaLxp6v (1. 26), are closely connectea with the passage punctuated by Bonitz and Ross as a digression. In this passage Aristotle raises the question whether preceptible substances can exist apart. 'The point is', Grube suggests, 'the difficulty of establishing the substance of a thing, particularly of artificial compounds, which may not be substance in the proper sense at all'. The remarks about Antisthenes are relevant in so far as doubts of this kind give colour to his suggestion that definition is impossible since it is substance that we try to define. In 1043 b 26, he believes, Aristotle himself continues 'but it is possible to say what a thing is like etc.'

But silver is a poor instance of an artificial compound, and Aristotle has already made it plain that even in artefacts there is something which corresponds to genus and differentia and makes it possible to define them. (cf. e.g. H. 2. 1043a2-14). In any case a difficulty about one limited type of o6voXac seems inisufficient to justify even modified approval of Antisthenes' position. 3 Met. H. 2. 1o42bi5ff.

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auvOeatc or' that the aCuM0eac is composed of its letters both treat the differentia or form of a thing as matter, and so necessarily fail to get at its substance. For this reason, he continues, (if we bracket I o43 b I 4-23), the difficulty raised by Antisthenes' followers has some point.

If we suppose with Bonitz that the reference to Antisthenes ends at XoCTT'Tepog (1. 28), and that he is said to deny the possibility of any kind of definition, the movement of thought seems intelligible. If, as the views just criticised by Aristotle suggest, definition is no more than a thoroughly democratic citation of simple elements, then Antisthenes is right in thinking definition 'a long story' which necessarily fails to show how qualities are put together to form one thing. We can say that silver is greyish, hard, fusile and so on, and that there is some principle of arrangement, but if we want not merely to name this principle but to indicate what it is, the best we can do is to invite a simple act of intu- ition by saying that silver is like tin and so suggesting that it has the characteristic structure of a metal.

If, however, we suppose with Gillespie that Antisthenes denied only the possibility of defining simples, it is hard to see in what sense his 'difficulty' zXt 'ncvcx xYctpOv. If Antisthenes believed that definition was computation, he was himself making one of the mistakes which Aristotle has just criticised. A similar difficulty seems to arise on Field's interpretation. On the other hand, if Antisthenes believed that all definition was unsatisfactory because the simples themselves were unknowable, his theory seems no more relevant to the points Aristotle has been making than that of anyone else whose views might be thought to imply the impossibility of definition e.g. a Heracleitean.

It seems to me, then, that we are better justified in supposing that in the second &are sentence (1. 2 8 if.) Aristotle reaffirms his own view of the nature of definition, and that the 6oare introduces an inference, not from the preceding sentence, nor indeed from the last sentence before the digression, but from the difficulties into which erroneous ideas about definition have been shown to lead us. In a chapter as loosely constructed as H. 3. this seems to me not unnatural, and so interpreted his remarks about the definition of compounds lead on smoothly to the passage which follows (1043b32ff.), where Aristotle finds certain analogies between definition and number, one of which is that both are divisible and into indivisible parts. ' This seems to be Aristotle's meaning in spite of the embarrassing y&kp at b 7. We might get out of the difficulty by taking ?X t6uTov in this line to mean not 'composed of' but 'in the number of', as does Bonitz, but the objection of Ross seems cogent: Ax has just been used in line S in the former sense. I 3 8

The passages from Z and H thus appear to lend little support to the view that the author of the 'dream' was Antisthenes but some grounds for thinking that it may have been a theory of definition, or something which might be developed into such a theory. The second of these alternatives seems much the more likely. There is no trace in the 'dream' of either of the distinctions to which we should expect a logician to give some recognition, if he were attempting an account of definition, the distinction between accidental and essential attributes and that between general and particular statements. Its author treats all the elements as of equal importance, and while he evidently intends the syllables to represent particulars, e.g. ourselves, he seems not to have asked himself whether the object of knowledge is in each case an indi- vidual like Socrates or a member of a class like a man. At any rate Socrates feels free to refer his attempts to restate the 'dream' now to indi- viduals, now to members of a class. The last version offered is an analysis of acquaintance with individuals like the sun or Theaetetus (208 C 6ff.), but in 2 o6 e Sff. Socrates presents the less subtle form of the theory as an attempt to enumerate the 'letters' not of an individual, e.g. this cart, but of an instance of a given type, a cart. What the author of the 'dream' seems to be analysing is not definition consciously regarded as such but direct acquaintance with objects rendered explicit in description.

It seems to me likely indeed that the 'dream' is not a theory at all in the grander sense of the word, not, I mean, a fragment of some con- temporary system of philosophy, but an ad hoc contribution to a dis- cussion or series of discussions in which it is assumed throughout that knowledge is some kind of awareness of objects -which may be illustrated by acquaintance with persons. I shall argue that we have some grounds for believing in the reality of such a discussion and for thinking that it may have taken place in the Academy itself not long before Plato wrote the Theaetetus and Parmenides.

The most striking thing about the 'dream' is that for all that it is offered as an answer to Socrates' demand for a general definition of knowledge its range is strictly limited; it leaves out of account not only the abstract sciences like mathematics but also much that belongs to knowledge of the perceptible world, the skills of craftsmen and knowledge of facts which involve the interrelation of more than one object. What it does attempt to do is to distinguish knowledge of things like persons from two other states in which the mind seems to be directly aware of objects, viz. perception and true ao'cx. Now this is a problem which we have reason to believe was exercising Plato at the

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time when he composed the Theaetetus, a direct consequence of the assumption, which underlies most, if not all, the arguments of the dialogue1, that knowledge is some kind of direct awareness of objects.

In his earlier dialogues, above all the Republic, while it seems highly unlikely that Plato would have been content to define knowledge as direct acquaintance with Forms, he still found no difficulty in distinguishing knowledge from thought about the perceptible world since ex hypothesi knowledge was correlated with quite a different set of objects. In the Theaetetus his position has changed. He now seems prepared to bring the perceptible world within the range of knowledge. This is implied by the conclusion, nowhere refuted, to which Socrates is brought at the end of his final argument against Theaetetus' first hypothesis (I 86 d 2 ff.) that knowledge is to be found, not indeed in our O-wNpcro, but in reasoning about our xOora, and also by the recognition in 20 ib7 ff. that only an eyewitness has knowledge of a crime. At the same time he has become baffled by two specific Mbropea which seem to bar the way to definition of knowledge no matter whether its objects are supposed to be perceptible or intelligible.2 These are the problems raised in the digression on false judgment, the problem of explaining how a man can have an object before his mind without instantly knowing it (i88ai- c 7), and how a man can think at all without having an object before his mind (I88c9-I89b8), the implication of which seems to be that it is impossible to distinguish knowledge from any other kind of thought about an object. In the final refutation of Theaetetus' first hypothesis (I 84b 4-I86 e i o) Plato makes Socrates find a way of distinguishing knowledge from oeXa-0jcnq in the sense bare sensation, uninformed by thought of any kind, but he leaves unsolved the problems of the digression.

The problems raised by such a change in Plato's position were of a daunting kind. What was wanted was a complete revision of the theory of Forms and of the theory of the nature of knowledge associated with it, and the task was made no easier for his pupils if, as seems more than likely, he had discussed with them the difficulties involved in relating Forms to particulars which occupy the first part of the Parmenides. One of its effects, I suggest, was to encourage some of his pupils to forget all

1 There are passages in which knowledge is correlated with facts rather than things e.g. i58a g-b4 and 201 a4ff. but throughout facts are readily assimilated to things-witness the whole digression on false judgement (I 87d i ff). 2 As Plato shows in his comment on the Wax Block theory (Ig9e I f.), these problems stand even if the supposed objects of knowledge are not perceptibles but intelligibles, the numbers of pure arithmetic.

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about Forms for a time and to tackle the still unsolved problem of relating knowledge not only to sensation but also to true 80E,oc by analysing a familiar and apparently simpler sort of knowledge, our acquaintance with particulars like ourselves. Acquaintance with persons is treated very much as the standard type of knowledge both in the digression on false judgment (i88 b7 ff.) and in the discussion of the final sense of ?O6yo4 (2ogb2 ff.). It looks as if it may have been common practice in the Academy of the time to treat is as a test case.

The author of the 'dream', then, I suggest, had no far-reaching system of logic or metaphysics to put forward but simply an idea. He thought that he had found in the notion of spelling a syllable a way of distinguish- ing knowledge, as exhaustive enumeration of simple elements, at once from bare recognition of simple sensible qualities and from that in- articulate notion of a complex with which true ao'6 seems to be identified. As Cornford suggests in a note on page I45 of his Plato's Theory of Knowledge, the use of TLVo0 in the clause OT-nv p.ev ouv Xveu X6you Trrv &XOJO ao6EocYTv TnV64 't )Xc (2o2 b 8) makes it look as if Ro6a should be translated here 'impression' or 'notion' rather than 'judgment'. In the first instance, I believe, the author of the 'dream' intended to identify the syllable with all its letters1; the second view of the syllable considered in 203 e 2ff. may reflect an attempt made either by the author of the 'dream' or by some one else not so much to restate the original idea as to save the analogy. So interpreted the 'dream' has certain plausibility. The simplicity of the elements, on which the stress of the theory comes, appears to exclude error at the level of ttaojaLsg, and to reduce the element of thought in knowledge to nothing more perilous than exhaustive citation while at the same time satisfying the old demand that knowledge should in some sense be specially explicit, capable 'of giving an account of' itself.

There are, it seems to me, several facts about the theory and its presention which support an Academic origin. The analogy of letters and syllables seems to have been early associated with the Platonic School. We learn from for instance Met. A. 4. 98gbI3ff. that the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus used letters and syllables to illustrate the different combinations of which atoms are capable, but Simplicius, commenting on Aristotle's Physics2, tells us on the authority of Eudemus

l Such a view of the relation of letters to syllable seems prima facie to be implied by the notion of spelling a syllable. Cf. e.g. 203a6-9, and in his attempt to restate the 'dream' in 286e sff. Socrates retains this part of the theory. 2 In Aristotelis Physicorum I, Prooemium, p. 7, 11. 10-I4 (Diels) 7twv oye H1&rov -rd Te

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that Plato was the first to use arotXeZo to mean 'elements', the sense he gives to the word in the Sophist (252b Iff.), Politicus (278c8ff.) and Timaetus (48b3if.). Nor does it seem to have established itself as a philosopher's term before Aristotle, for although he makes such frequent use of it himself, on several occasions he feels it necessary to comment on the metaphor. In Met. A 3. I 01 4a 3 2 for instance we find him saying at tov cqcav aTo?XsZc ?ey6uaLv o'L ?eyov'r?, and in De Partibus Animalium 646 a I 3ff. he speaks of 'Cov xoc?ouevuv Uto 'wLv(v atoLXeLwv, while in Met. N. I. I087 b -2 If. he seems to include amongst those who call &PX; (TrtLXELoC Plato himself, some Platonists and (perhaps) Pythagoreans."

Much that is curious about the presentation of the 'dream' becomes easier to understand if we may suppose that it was put forward to be criticised and corrected in discussion and not borrowed from some well-known figure like Antisthenes. First of all we have to explain Socrates' uncertainty about the authorship of the theory. It is not merely that whereas in 2o Ie I he speaks of hearing it from TLVCOV, in 202 e 7 he replaces the plural by tov e1n6vto a Xeyop.ev and in 20 g e 6 by the still more indefinite 'a xv X?yn, but that in the passage beginning at 2 o6 c 7 he feels no scruple about introducing some new attempts to interpret Theaetetus' formula, leaving us doubtful whether we are to distinguish the tLq of the latter from the ttvS4 of the 'dream', and this although Theaetetus has already accepted the 'dreamed' theory as just the one he had in mind (202 c 5-6). Such inconsistency in presentation is, as far as know, unparalleled in Plato and a problem in itself. It will hardly do to argue, as did Jackson 2, that Theaetetus' -rq must be distinct from Socrates' ?Lveq just because after the overthrow of the theory of the Tive4 it is still found necessary to examine the theory of the mt. We need some explanation of the incongruity. We have too to understand how it was that Plato felt free to let Socrates and Theaetetus strike out between them three different interpretations of the relation between letters and syllables 3, and why he left Socrates' account so tantalisingly incomplete. Socrates' ironical suggestion too in 202 d Iff. that to-day perhaps he and Theaetetus have got hold of the answer for which many ic)ov IIuOayyop&)cov xad T5v 'EXevrtxcOv ri Tb6 CarOCIapoV npoxyayxv 'rT 'r u7p dV

cpUJaLV EUpaeWOV &OWLq XaV TOLc CpUaLX01 xat yevy1tOL r't& ctOTXetcCeLq &Px,c tV &XXGV at&XpLVE xMI OTOL C nprOwto aUko wTopta c TaO'q TLO OLa4 &px(q, 44 o6EU18 ?

I Vide Ross, Commentary on 11. x6 and I7-I8, p. Vol. II, 471. 2 Journal of Philology, XIII ( 8 8), p. 2 62. 3 Videsuprapp. 130-31.

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wise men have searched in vain seems an odd comment to make on a set of ideas ostensibly borrowed.

If, however, by the device of the dream Socrates and Theaetetus are allowed to overhear a later discussion of their natural heirs, it is not surprising that Plato should so far identify them with the author of the 'dream' as to give them a brief moment of self-congratulation, nor that at 2o6c7 Socrates should enter the discussion as a direct participant. The uncertainty about the authorship of the theory and its incompleteness and fluidity all become easier to understand if Plato is recalling a sug- gestion put forward in discussion rather than a piece of solid reasoning. In discussion iwe are not surprised if some one presents a theory with loose ends, as the author of the 'dream' seems to do when in his de- scription of the simples he awakens our interest in terms like 'being' and 'this' and 'each' to which he makes no reference in his account of the complexes, nor that when a weakness has been uncovered in a theory based on a promising analogy, its author or sonme one else present should try to deal with the difficulty, not by making a new start, but by reshaping the analogy, whatever the cost to the original theory.

The theory was of interest to Plato, I suggest, not because it showed any insight or subtlety but because he found its analogy fruitful and reflection on mistakes made in the use of the analogy suggested a new line of enquiry whlich enabled him, not indeed to define knowledge, but at least to remove the second of the two stumbling blocks to definition which we are brought up against in the digression on false judgmnent, and to deal effectively with related problems of logic.

The theory is shown to break down for two different but related reasons, its insistence on the absolute simplicity of the elements and its unrealistic use of its own analogy. By positing elements of only one kind and those absolutely simple xa%nycx, it makes it impossible for the mind to relate them as members of a complex. Whether we treat the 'syllable' as the sum of its 'letters' or as a kind of epiphenomenon, we find ourselves left, not with a description of things or persons, but with some loose congeries of &Xoyoc. The theory assumes the identi- fication of two different conceptions of letters. In the first part, the description of simples, letters seem to be treated as isolated sounds, audible sense data, in the second cx hypothesi they are symbols which spell a syllable. But before the mind can relate sounds in this way it must already have made certain other judgmnents. If the letters are to be treated as no more than units in a sum, they must be recognised as numerically distinct, if ranged in a particular order, as diverse from or similar to

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each other. This weakness in the theory Plato brings home to the reader not only by working out its consequences but also, I believe by juxta- position and contrast. For the 'dream' is presented as if it might be considered as a response to the challenge contained in Socrates' con- clusion in I 86 d 2 ff. that knowledge is to be found, not in our 7o=6oTo, but in reasoning about our wncasoc. Although the digression is to intervene, this conclusion leads on directly to the suggestion that knowledge is true aoRoc (i 87b4ff.) on which the 'dream' seems to be offered as an improvement. The theory fails because it finds no room amongst its elements for just those concepts like unity and diversity which Socrates has argued show that we must look for knowledge in reasoning and not sensation since they are discovered by the mind and not by the senses (i 84e4-I 8ge 7), and include one concept, being, which has a peculiar relation to truth and so to knowledge (i 86 c 7- I o).

In his second attack on the theory (206 a i f.) Socrates suggests that the mistake is the result of abstracting acquaintance with letters from the skills of reading and writing. No one who remembers his own experience as a child really supposes that grammatical knowledge means ability to construct syllables out of letters which are simply 'given'. The important thing is to learn to recognise letters in written and spoken words without being misled by change of context. This leads on to another conclusion. Knowledge may be tested by the particular instance but it is not limited to any particular instance. This point is further developed in Socrates' refutation of his own restatement of the 'dream' in 2o7d3if.; no one admits that a man has knowledge when he has reached the stage at which he spells a syllable correstly in one word and gets it wrong in another.

If grammatical knowledge provides a true analogy, it looks as if the ultimate elements of thought cannot be isolated simples nor yet of one kind only nor yet particular, and in the Sophist (2s2eI-264b3) Plato makes an effective attack on the second of the two MbtopEoc of the digression, as on the related problem of negative statement, with the help of an argument which rests on just these conclusions and explores further the analogy from yp%1[tmux%. For his success in distinguishing the 'is' of predication from the 'is' of existence, which makes their solution possible, depends on the recognition that no predicate is an isolated simple but each is related to all other attributes by compatibility, implication or exclusion, or, to use his nmetaphors, each yevoq com- bines or refuses to combine with the rest because it partakes of two y'VY of a special kind, the Same and the Different. J7kvj, he points out '44

(2 s2 e 9 ff.), behave like letters, some of which will fit together while others are incapable of union, and somie again may be compared to vowels which act as a 8ae4o enabling the rest to combine. It is the business of the dialectician, as of the ypoy{u=x-mo, to discover the laws of combination, certain of which explain both negative statement and error, while others,provide the basis for the new method of aLtipsmq.

That Plato had already in mind such a distinction between different types of concepts when he wrote of the 'dream' is suggested by a curious bit of detail in his statement of the Aviary Theory of which he makes no use at all in the Theaetetus. In 197d4ff. he distinguishes three sorts of birds in the aviary of the mind which behave in different ways, some flying about in flocks, sonme in small groups, while others again are singletons which make their way everywhere through the rest. These seem to answer exactly to the types of y6v-n distinguished in the Sophist, those related as species, many or few, of a genus, and those like Being and the Same and the Different which combine as singletons with every other yevo4.

Plato's interest in the 'dream' was, I suggest, mutatis mutandis miuch the sanme as that of Aristotle. It made plain by its errors the importance of those elements of thought which might be called 'structural'. As I have attempted to argue elsewhere 1, this could not lead on to a general definition of knowledge because Plato's uncertainty about the status of Forms made it inmpossible for him to decide whether the relations between yevn explored in the Sophist were real relations between supra-sensible realities or potential relations realised only in particular cases. His conviction that knowledge is a form of direct awareness of objects, from which he seems not to have freed himself even in the Sophist, may have inclined 1him to the first of these alternatives, but his theory of the interrelation of yrvn, if pressed into metaphysics, would have produced results even more intolerable than those discussed in the first part of the Parmcnides. His approach to a definition of knowledge in real life, as in the Theaetetus, seems to have been asymptotic, but the 'dream ' was one of the factors which gave his thought direction and impetus. 1 Knowledge and Forms in Plato's Theaetetus, Journal of Hellenic Studies, LXXVII Part 1,

Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

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Article Contentsp. 126p. 127p. 128p. 129p. 130p. 131p. 132p. 133p. 134p. 135p. 136p. 137p. 138p. 139p. 140p. 141p. 142p. 143p. 144p. 145

Issue Table of ContentsPhronesis, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1958), pp. 75-154Front MatterEvidence of Plato and Aristotle Relating to the Ekpyrosis in Heraclitus [pp. 75-82]Les disertes juments de Parmnide [pp. 83-94]Plato's "Euthyphro" [pp. 95-107]Platonic Piety: An Essay toward the Solution of an Enigma [pp. 108-120]The Spherical Earth in Plato's "Phaedo" [pp. 121-125]The Character and Provenance of Socrates' 'Dream' in the "Theaetetus" [pp. 126-145]Assumptions Involved in the Third Man Argument [pp. 146-149]Der "Beweis durch Heraushebung" bei Galenos [pp. 150-153]Back Matter