520 J. A. STEWART : 'Ideas'. "About the 'Ideas'?" The puzzled inquirer asks: "What are the 'Ideas'? What were all these people talking about? Surely about the right way of expressing some Experience which they all had in common, and we ourselves still have. Tell me, in the language vernacular or philosophical of to-day what that Experience is." To this appeal, Prof. Jackson and his followers and Dr. Lutoslawski have nothing to say. The inquirer is left to choose between empirical judgments or go away empty-handed for let him not be misled by the appearance of substantial agree- ment among the textualists, and suppose that scientific truth is within sight. If they sometimes seem to agree, the agreement, on examination, will be found to be merely verbal ; agreeing, as is natural, about the translation of some term or phrase avra KO.& aur.i, xwpt's, Trj.pelva.i, /xeTe^eiv they offer the translation as an interpretation. Prof. Shorey has already done service in calling attention to this habit of offering translation for interpretation as common among Platonic scholars ; in connecting the habit with what I take to be its cause lack of psychological basis, and enter- ing this plea for supply of such basis, I hope that I may perhaps not to-day, but some day be thought to have supplemented his service. But better times are surely coming for the study of Plato. One who ventures to substitute interpretation for translation, and to put Plato's meaning into the modern language vernacular or philosophical into which modern men must put it, if they are to realise it as meaning at all, may indeed sometimes feel a slight shade of irritation passing over him when he reads the Notice ' It is not Platonic ' to say this or that (2.7., to say that the Intellect deals in ' existential ' or ' theoretic ' rather than in ' value ' judg- ments) the Notice with which the textualists warn the curious trespasser off their Scriptures ; but the irritation soon passes into amusement, when he remembers that other Scriptures, though similarly fenced, have had their letter invaded, and indeed per- manently occupied, by psychological interpretation. 1 Prof. Natorp's exposition of the Doctrine of Ideas (1903), I do not class with the expositions of Prof. Jackson and his followers, and of Dr. Lutoslawski, as having no psychological basis. Prof. Natorp realises that Plato's Doctrine of Ideas has, at any rate, one side which can be understood only in the light of Psychology the Psychology of the faculties by which the Man of Science interprets Nature. These faculties were the same in Plato as they are in the 1 Perusal of M. Raeder' s recent book has only deepened my impression of the confusion which reigns in the region of Platonic scholarship. M. Raeder. a sensible, though by no means suggestive, scholar, while recognis- ing to the full the value of the method first pointed out and worked by Prof. Campbell, has no difficulty in showing up the arbitrary and subjective character of the conclusions drawn from the literary data by Platonic scholars from Schleierrnacher downwards. M. Raeder's footnotes are indeed melancholy reading such a long list of attempted solutions of the ' Platonic Problem.' and if we believe M. Raeder, as, I think, we must all of them mostly wrong !
