PLATO.

crucibles, as, if any reduction took place, the crucible would be destroyed by the fusion of the resulting alloy. An alloy of platinum, iridium, and rhodium is found, by the investigations of Deville and Debray, to be harder and capable of resisting a higher temperature than the pure metal; and hence is admirably adapted for the formation of crucibles, &c.

strongly against teaching philosophy for fees, and we nowhere read of his having held any public office from which he could have derived emolument. Such are the few reliable facts known as to the life of Plato.

There are two oxides of platinum, the platinous, Pt, and the platinic, Pt4O2, neither of which can be formed by the direct union of the elements. Excepting that the change which platinum vessels undergo when containing the caustic alkalies, &c., and exposed to a red heat, is due to the formation of a super-tonists of Alexandria; but this is a danger which ficial layer of oxide (probably platinic), these compounds are of little interest. The sulphides and chlorides correspond in number and composition to the oxides. Of these compounds, the tetrachloride (PtCl4) alone requires notice. It is formed by dissolving platinum in aqua regia, and evaporating the solution to dryness; and it is obtained as a deliquescent, reddish-brown mass, which forms an orangecoloured solution in water, from which, on evaporation, it crystallizes in prisms. It is also freely soluble in alcohol and ether. A solution of this salt is much used for the recognition and determination of potash and ammonia.

Platinum has long been used in the form of crucibles in the analytical laboratory, but has recently been employed in the arts on a large scale. Stills for the concentrating sulphuric acid have been made capable of producing eight tons per day, and valued at £2500. Iridio-platinum has been employed for vents for Whitworth guns.

PLATO, who, along with Aristotle, represents to modern Europe the whole compass of Greek speculation, was born at Athens in the year 429 B. C., shortly after the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and the same year in which Pericles died. He was of a good family-being connected, on the mother's side, with Solon; and on the father's side, with Codrus, one of the ancient kings of Athens. He received a good education, according to the common practice of the Greeks, in music, gymnastics, and literature. His rich and gorgeous imagination is said at first to have essayed its powers in poetry; but when about 20 years of age, having become acquainted with Socrates, he threw all his verses into the fire, and consecrated his great intellect to philosophy. When he was 20 years old, the political troubles, of which the death of Socrates was only one terrible symptom, forced him to leave Athens for a season, and he resided at Megara, with Euclid, the founder of the Megaric sect. The disturbed state of his native country, doubtless, also was of the frequent travels which he is reported to have made. Of these, his three visits to Sicily, during the time of the elder and younger Dionysius, are the most celebrated and the best authenticated. That he visited Italy, is extremely probable; at all events, he was most closely connected with Archytas and the Pythagorean philosophers; though, as Aristotle (Metaph. i. 6) justly remarks, he borrowed from Heracleitus as well as from Pythagoras, and put a stamp of freshness and originality on all that he borrowed. After returning from his first visit to Sicily, being then in his fortieth year, he commenced teaching philosophy publicly, in the Academeia, a pleasant garden in the most beautiful suburb of Athens, and there gathered around him a large school of distinguished followers, who main ained a regular succession after his death, under the name of the Philosophers of the Academy. He lived to the age of 82; was never married; and must have possessed some independent property, as he expresses himself

one cause

As

The principles of his philosophy are happily better known; for all his great works have been preserved, and have always been extensively read wherever the Greek language was known. The only danger to which the students of his philosophy have been exposed is the confusion of the doctrines distinctly taught by him with the exaggeration of these as afterwards worked out by the Neo-Plathe exact critical scholarship of modern times has put out of the way for all persons who exercise common precaution in the acquisition of knowledge. The distinctive character of the Platonic philosophy is expressed by the word idealism, as opposed to realisin, materialism, or sensationalism, using these words in their most general and least technical sense, the capacity of forming and using ideas being taken as an essential virtue or quality of mind, as contrasted with matter; of thought as contrasted with sensation; of the internal forces of individuals and of the universe, as contrasted with the external forms by which these forces are manifested. such, the ideal philosophy stands generally opposed to that kind of mental action which draws its stores principally from without, and is not strongly deter mined to mould the materials thus received by any type of thought or hue of emotion derived from within. In other words, the philosophy of P. is essentially a poetical and an artistical philosophy; for poetry, painting, and music all grow out of idealism, or those lofty inborn conceptions by which genius is distinguished from talent. It is also, at the same time, a scientific philosophy, for the purest science, as mathematics-on which P. is well known to have placed the highest value-is a science of mere ideas or forms conditioned by the intellect which deduces their laws; and, above all, it is essentially a moral and a theological philosophy, for practice, or action, is the highest aim of man, and morality is the ideal of action; and God, as cause of all, is the ideal of ideals, the supreme power, virtue, and excellence to which all contemplation recurs, and from which all action and original energy proceed. The distinctive excellence of the Platonic philosophy is identical with its distinctive character, and consists in that grand union of abstract thought, imaginative decoration, emotional purity, and noble activity, which is the model of a complete and richly endowed humanity. The poetical element in P., so wonderfully combined with the analytical, shews itself not only in those gorgeous myths which form the peroration of some of his profoundest dialogues, but in that very dialogic form itself, of which the situation is often extremely dramatic; though this form of philosophic discussion perhaps owes its existence more to the lively temper and out-of-door habits of the Greeks, than to the special dramatic talent of Plato. On the other hand, the defects of the Platonic philosophy arise from its essential one-sidedness, as a polemical assertion of the rights of thought against the claims of the mere sense, of the stability of the eternal type against the constant change that characterises the ephemeral form. In his zeal to submit all that is external to the imperatorial power of internal conception, the philosopher of ideas is apt to forget the obstinate and unpliable nature of that external world which he would regulate, and after projecting a grand new scheme of society, according to what appears a perfect model, shews like the architect who, after drawing out the model of a

587

PLATO.

marble temple, finds he has only bricks to build it with. For this reason, extremely practical men, and those who are compelled to reason chiefly by an extensive induction from external facts, have ever felt an instinctive aversion to the Platonic philosophy; and P. himself, by some of the strange and startling conclusions, in matters of social science, to which his ideal philosophy led, has, it must be confessed, put into the hands of his adversaries the most efficient weapons by which his ideal system may be combated.

or

The

meant wisdom, and wisdom meant wise action, and wise action meant virtue. The philosophy of P., therefore, with all its transcendental flights, of which we hear so much, was essentially a practical philosophy; all his discussions on the theory of knowledge and the nature of ideas are undertaken mainly that a system of eternal divine types, as the only reliable knowledge, may serve as a foundation for a virtuous life, as the only consistent course of action. Virtue, with Socrates and P., is only practical reason. As in the Proverbs of Solomon, The starting-point of the Platonic philosophy, as, all vice is folly, so in the philosophy of P., the indeed, it must be of all philosophy, properly so imperial virtue is phronesis—i. e., 'wisdom' called, is the theory of knowledge. This is set practical insight.' The other two great Greekt forth in the Theaetetus, the Sophistes, and the Par- and Platonic virtues-sōphrosynē, 'moderation' or menides; and in the Cratylus, the foundations are 'soundmindedness,' and dikaiosyne, 'justice,' or the laid for a science of language, as the necessary assigning to every act and every function its proper product of a creature energising by ideas. The place-are equally exemplifications of a reasonable Platonic theory of knowledge, as developed in the order applied to action-such an order as alone and Theatetus, will be most readily understood by everywhere testifies the presence of mind. imagining the very reverse of that which is vulgarly theory of morals as worked out from such principles attributed to Locke; viz., by drawing a strong and is, of course, as certain as the necessary laws of the well-marked line between the province of thought reason which it expresses; and accordingly, the and that of sensation in the production of ideas, Platonic morality, like the Christian, is of that aud taking care that, in the process of forming high order which admits of no compromise conceptions, the mind shall always stand out as the with ephemeral prejudice or local usage. The dominant factor. In other words, the hackneyed contrast between the low moral standard of local simile of the sheet of blank paper, applied to the respectability and that which is congruous with mind by extreme sensational philosophers, must the universal laws of pure reason, stands out as either be thrown away altogether or inverted; the strikingly in Plato, as the morality of the Sermon more active part of the operation must always be on the Mount in the Gospels docs against the assigned to the mind. The formation of knowledge, morality of the Scribes and Pharisees. Splendid according to P., may be looked on as the gradual passages to this effect occur in various parts of and systematic elimination of the accidental and P.'s writings, particularly in the Republic and the fleeting in the phenomenon from the necessary Gorgias. In perfect harmony with the Platonic and permanent; and the process by which the theory of noble action, is his doctrine with regard mind performs this elimination-and it can be per- to pure emotion and elevated passion. Love with formed only by mind-is called Dialectics. This P. is a transcendental admiration of excellence-an word, from dialégomai, originally signifies only admiration of which the soul is capable by its own conversational discussion; thence, that discussion high origination and the germs of godlike excellence, conducted in such scientific fashion as to lead to which are implanted into it from above. The philoreliable results, i. e., strictly logical. The product sophy of love is set forth with imaginative grandeur of dialectics is ideas, and these ideas being the éide, in the Phædrus, and with rich dramatic variety in forms or types of things which are common to all the Banquet, of which dialogue there is an English the individuals of a species, all the species of a translation by Shelley. The philosophy of beauty genus, all the genera of a family, and all the families and the theory of pleasure are set forth with great of a class, generate classification - that is, knowledge analytic acuteness in the Philebus. With P., of the permanent in phenomena-and definition, the foundation of beauty is a reasonable order, which is merely the articulate verbal expression addressed to the imagination through the senses of this permanency. The construction of the con-i. e., symmetry in form, and harmony in sounds, fused results of observation into the orderly array the principles of which are as certain as the laws of of clear conceptions, by a sort of cross-examination logic, mathematics, and morals-all equally necesof the phenomena, performed by minds impassioned sary products of eternal intellect, acting by the for truth, is exhibited as the great characteristic of creation and by the comprehension of well-ordered the teaching of Socrates, in the Memorabilia of forms, and well-harmonised forces, in rich and various Xenophon. In the dialogues of P., the same purifi- play through the living frame of the universe; and cation of the reason, so to speak, from the clouds the ultimate ground of this lofty and coherent of indistinct sensuousness, is exhibited on a higher doctrine of intellectual, moral, and aesthetical platform, and with more comprehensive results. harmonies lies with P., where alone it can lie, in For between Socrates and P., notwithstanding a the unity of a supreme, reasonable, self-existent deep internal identity, there was this striking differ- intelligence, whom we call God, the fountain of all ence in outward attitude-that the one used logic force, and the creator of all order in the universe; as a practical instrument in the hands of a great the sum of whose most exalted attributes, and the social missionary and preacher of virtue; while the substantial essence of whose perfection may, as other used it as the architect of a great intellectual contrasted with our finite and partial aspects of system of the universe, first and chiefly for his own things, be expressed by the simple term tò agathontime and his own place, but, as the event has the GOOD. From this supreme and all-excellent roved, in some fashion also for all times and all intelligence, human souls are offshoots, emanations, places. or sparks, in such a fashion, that they partake essentially of the essential nature of the source from which they proceed, and accordingly possess unity as their most characteristic quality, attest their presence everywhere by a unifying force which acts by impressing a type on whatever materials are submitted to it, and is filled with a native joy in the perception of such types, the product of

We should err greatly, however, if we looked on P. as a man of mere speculation, and a writer of metaphysical books, like certain German professors. Neither P. nor any of the great Greeks looked on their intellectual exercises and recreations as an end in themselves. With them, philosophy did not mean mere knowledge or mere speculation, but it

PLATO-PLATOFF.

the same divine principle of unity, wheresoever presentel. The undivided unity and unifying force which we call the soul is immortal, being from its nature altogether unaffected by the changes of decay and dissolution to which the complex structure of the material human body is exposed. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is most fully set forth in the Phado, a dialogue which combines with the abstract philosophical discussion, a graphic narrative of the last hours of Socrates, which, for simple pathos and unaffected dignity, is unsurpassed by any human composition.

The most complete and systematic exhibition of the opinions of P. will be found in the Republic, or ideal commonwealth, of which an excellent English translation has been recently made by Davies and Vaughan. The Republic is not, as the title would lead us to suppose, a political work, like the Politics of Aristotle. It is, as Baron Bunsen well remarked, not so much a state as a church with which this great work has to do; or at least, both a state and a church; and the church is the superior and dominating element. In the Republic, accordingly, we find the necessity of virtue to the very idea of social life proved in the first book; then the whole process of a complete moral and scientific education is set forth with such fulness as to throw the strictly political part of the book, including the germs of what is now called political economy, very much into the shade. The principles and government of an ideal moral organism, of which the rulers shall be types of fully developed and perfectly educated men, is the real subject of the Republic, which accordingly forms a remarkable contrast to the inductive results of the thoroughly practical work of Aristotle on the same subject. P.'s commonwealth is a theoretical construction of a perfect ideal state of society; Aristotle's is a practical discussion on the best form of political government possible under existing conditions. Of the value of P.'s work, both suggestively in the world of politics, and dogmatically in the region of moral and religious speculation, there can be no doubt; but as a practical treatise on politics, it is vitiated throughout, both by its original scheme, and by an inherent vice in the author's mind, which prevented him from recognising the force of the actual in that degree which necessarily belongs to such a complex art as human government. Of this fault, the author was himself sufficiently conscious, and has accordingly, in another large political treatise, the Laws, endeavoured, for practical purposes, to make some sort of compromise between the transcendental scheme of his Commonwealth and the conditions of existing society. But however he might modify individual opinions, there was a one-sidedness about P.'s mind, which rendered it impossible for him to struggle successfully with the difficulties of complex practical politics. He was too much possessed with the idea of order, and, moreover, had planted himself with too manifest a polemical attitude against Athenian democracy, to give due weight to the opposite principle of freedom, proved by experience to be so indispensable to overy healthy and vigorous political development.

Physical science, in the days of P., stood on no basis sufficiently sure or broad to authorise a philosophy of the material universe with any prospect of success. Nevertheless, in his Timaus, the great philosopher of ideas has attempted this; and it is a work which, however valueless in the face of the grand results of modern chemical and kinetical research, will ever be consulted with advantage, as a grand constructive summary of the most important facts and theories of nature, known to the Greeks, before the accurate observations of Aristotle,

and the extended mathematics of the Alexandrian school. The great question as to what matter is, and whence, P. nowhere seems to settle very clearly; but the general tendency of ancient thought was towards a dualism, which recognised the independent existence of a not very tractable element called matter, in which P. seems to have acquiesced. The works of P. were extensively studied by the Church Fathers, one of whom joyfully recognises, in the great teacher of the Academy, the schoolmaster who, in the fulness of time, was destined to educate the heathen for Christ, as Moses did the Jews. A lofty passion for P. likewise seized the literary circle of the Medici at the period of the revival of letters in Italy. Since that time, the tyrannous sway of Aristotle, characteristic of the middle ages, has always been kept in check by a strong band of enthusiastic Platonists in various parts of Europe. Since the French Revolution particularly, the study of Plato has been pursued with renewed vigour in Germany, France, and England; and many of our distinguished authors, without expressly professing Platonism-as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Mrs Browning, Ruskin, &c.-have formed a strong and a growing party of adherents, who could find no common banner under which they could at once so conveniently and so honourably muster as that of Plato. The amount of learned labour expended on the text of Plato during the present century, has been in proportion; and in this department the names of Bekker, Ast, and Stallbaum stand pre-eminent. Professor Jowett also, in Oxford, has made P. his standard author for many years. Mr Grote, the historian of Greece, published Plato and the other Companions of Socrates in 1865. One of the best accounts of the Platonic philosophy in the English language will be found in Archer Butler's History of Greek Philosophy, vol. ii. See also a sketch of P. by Dr Joseph Thomas, in his Universal Dict. of Biography, Philada., 1870.

PLATOFF, MATVEI IVANOVITCH, COUNT, the Hetman of the Cossacks of the Don, and a Russian cavalry general, was born on the banks of the Don, 6th August 1757, and was descended from an ancient and noble family, which had emigrated from Greece. Having acquired a considerable repu tation for wisdom and bravery, he was appointed by the Czar Alexander I. Hetman of the Cossacks; and subsequently, as a lieutenant-general in the Russian army, and afterwards as commander of the Russian irregular cavalry, he took a prominent part in the wars both with France and Turkey. After the French had evacuated Moscow, and retreated, P. hung upon their rear with the utmost pertinacity, wearying them out by incessant attacks, cutting off straggling parties, capturing their convoys of provisions, and keeping them in a state of continual terror and apprehension. The French historians state that Bonaparte's army suffered more loss from the attacks of P.'s Cossacks than from privation and exhaustion. He defeated Lefebvre at Altenburg. After the rout of the French at Leipzig, he inflicted great loss upon them in their retreat, and subsequently gained a victory over them at Laon. The inhabitants of Seine-et-Marne will long remember him by the devastations and pillage committed by his undisciplined bands. He was enthusiastically welcomed by the Parisians (to their shame), and also by the English, who presented him with a sword of honour on the occasion of his visit to London in company with Marshal Blücher. The allied monarchs loaded him with honours and decorations, and the czar gave him the title of Count. He retired to his own country, there to mourn the death of his only son who had been killed in the campaign of 1812 and died near Tcherkask in 1818.

PLATONIC LOVE-PLAUTUS.

No other Russian general ever exercised such an influence over the men under his command, and their awe of him was not greater than their affection; but this was doubtless owing to the inflexible and speedy justice which he administered to them, and to the freedom with which he left them to rob and pillage.

PLATONIC LOVE, the name given to an affection subsisting between two persons of different sex, which is presumed to be unaccompanied by any sensuous emotions, and to be based on moral or intellectual affinities. The expression has originated in the view of Plato, who held that the common sexual love of the race, harassed and afflicted with fleshly longings, is only a subordinate form of that perfect and ideal love of truth which the soul should cultivate. Whether such a sentiment as Platonic love can really subsist between persons of different sex, has been frequently disputed; but without pronouncing positively on a point so delicate, and depending so much on differences in our spiritual organisation, it may be safely affirmed, that wherever a feeling-calling itself by this nameexists, it has undoubtedly a tendency to develop into something more definite and dangerous.

PLATOO'N (probably from the French peloton) was a term formerly used to designate a body of troops who fired together. A battalion was commonly divided into 16 platoons, and each company into two platoons, the platoon thus corresponding to the present subdivision. The word is obsolete in this its original sense; but it survives in the expression platoon exercise,' which is the course of motions in connection with handling, loading, and firing the musket or rifle.

་

PLATTE. See NEBRASKA. PLATTEN-SEE. See BALATON. PLAʼTTSIURG, a village of New York, U.S., on the west shore of Lake Champlain, at the mouth of the river Saranac, which furnishes water-power to several mills and factories. It has a customhouse, academy, and nine churches. In Plattsburg Bay was fought the naval battle of Champlain, in which the British flotilla, under Commodore Downie, was defeated by the American commodore M'Donough, September 11, 1814; while the land forces, amounting to 14,000 men, under Sir George Prevost, were defeated by General Macomb. Pop. in 1860, 6680; in 1870, 8414.

PLATYPUS. See DUCK-BILL

or advocate, but is now used as the seat of justice and other courts. P. contains a gymnasium, a royal palace, and numerous educational and benevolent institutions. It carries on extensive manufactures of muslin, cambric, and jaconet goods, as well as embroidered fabrics and cotton goods. In September 1844, 150 buildings were destroyed by fire, and after that event, the town was almost wholly rebuilt. Pop. (1871) 23,355.

PLAUTUS, M. Accrus, or, more correctly, T. MACCIUS, the great comic poet of Rome, was born about 254 B. C. at Sarsina, a village of Umbria. We have no knowledge of his early life and education; but it is probable that he came to Rome while still a youth, and there acquired a complete mastery of the Latin language in its most idiomatic form, as well as an extensive familiarity with Greek literature. It is uncertain whether he ever obtained the Roman franchise. His first employment was with the actors, in whose service he saved an amount of money sufficient to enable him to leave Rome and commence business on his own account. What the nature of this business was, or where he carried it on, we are not informed; we know, however, that he failed in it, and returned to Rome, where he had to earn his livelihood in the service of a baker, with whom he was engaged in turning a hand-mill. At this time-a few years before the outbreak of the Second Punic War-he was probably about 30 years of age; and while employed in his humble occupation, he composed three plays, which he sold to the managers of the public games, and from the proceeds of which he was enabled to leave the mill, and turn his hand to more congenial work. The commencement of his literary career may, therefore, be fixed about 224 B. C., from which date he continued to produce comedies with wonderful fertility, till 184, when he died in his 70th year. was at first contemporary with Livius Andronicus and Nævius; subsequently with Ennius and Cæcilius.

He

Of his numerous plays-130 of which bore his name in the last century of the republic-only 20 have come down to us. Many of them, however, were regarded as spurious by the Roman critics, among whom Varro in his treatise (Quæstiones Plautina) limits the genuine comedies of the poet to 21. With the exception of the 21st, these Varronian comedies are the same as those we now possess. Their titles, arranged (with the exception of the Bacchides) in alphabetical order, are as follows: 1, Amphitryo; 2, Asinaria; 3, Aulularia; 4, Capt vi; 5, Curculio; 6, Casina; 7, Cistellaria; &, Epidicus; 9, Bacchides; 10, Mostellaria; 11, Men achmi; 12, Miles; 13, Mercator; 14, Pseudolus; 15, Panulus; 16, Persa; 17, Rudens; 18, Stichus; 19, Trinummus; 20, Truculentus; 21, Vidularia As a comic writer, Plautus enjoyed immense popu larity among the Romans, and held possession of the stage down to the time of Diocletian. The vivacity, the humour, and the rapid action of his plays, as well as his skill in constructing plets, commanded the admiration of the educated no less than of the unlettered Romans; while the fact that he was a national poet prepossessed his audiences in his favour. Although he laid the Greek comic drama under heavy contributions, and adapted' the plots of Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon with all the license of a modern playwright, he always preserved the style and character native to the Romans, and reproduced the life and intellectual PLAU'EN, an important manufacturing town of tone of the people in a way that at once conciliated Saxony, in a beautiful valley on the White Elster, their sympathies. The admiration in which he was 74 miles south of Leipzig by railway. It was the held by his contemporaries descended to Cicero chief town of the Saxon Voigtland (q. v.), and its and St Jerome; while he has found imitators in castle was at one time the residence of the Voigt, | Shakspeare, Molière, Dryden, Addison. and Lessing,

PLATYSTO'MA (Gr. broad-mouth), a genus of fishes of the family Siluride, having a very flat (depressed) snout, and a very large mouth with six long barbels; the skin quite destitute of scales; two dorsal fins; the eyes lateral, level with the nostrils. The species are numerous, some of them attaining a large size, many of them notable for their distinct and conspicuous markings. Several are natives of the rivers of the north-east of South America; and among these are some of the most beautiful and delicious of fresh-water fishes, as P. tigrinum, known among different tribes of Indians by various names-Corutto, Colite, Oronni, &c., which has an elongated body, light blue, transversely streaked with black and white, and a spreading forked tail. It is both taken by baited hooks and shot with arrows by Indians, as are several other species, some of which are found as far south as Buenos Ayres.

PLAYFAIR-PLEBEIANS.

and translators in most European countries. The only complete translation of his works into English is that by Thornton and Warner (5 vols., 1767 PLEA is a technical term in the law of the -1774). Unfortunately the text of his plays, as United Kingdom. In England, it has a very they have come down to us, is in such a very restricted meaning, being confined to the pleading corrupt state, so defective from lacunæ, and so of a defendant to an action at common law. filled with interpolations, that much yet remains to It has a similar, though still more restricted be done by the grammarian and the commentator meaning when used in Chancery proceedings.--In before they can be read with full appreciation or Scotland, it is not used in the same sense, but comfort. Of complete editions, the best are those denotes the short legal ground on which a party, of Weise and Fleckeisen; while those plays edited whether pursuer or defender, bases his case by Ritschl are treated with such admirable acute-pleading. Hence the pleas in law are only short ness and learning as to cause regret that they are yet so few.