Plato was engaged on a variety of problems, and his religious and
ethical thoughts were so keen and fertile that the experimental
investigation of his soul appears involved with many other motives.
In one passage Plato will combine matter of thought of all kinds and
from all sources, overlapping, interrunning. And in no case is he more
involved and rich than in this question of the soul. In fact, I wish
there were two words, one denoting that being, corporeal and real, but
with higher faculties than we manifest in our bodily actions, which is
to be taken as the subject of experimental investigation; and the other
word denoting “soul” in the sense in which it is made the recipient and
the promise of so much that men desire. It is the soul in the former
sense that I wish to investigate, and in a limited sphere only. I wish
to find out, in continuation of the experiment in the Meno, what the
“soul” in us thinks about extension, experimenting on the grounds laid
down by Plato. He made, to state the matter briefly, the hypothesis
with regard to the thinking power of a being in us, a “soul.” This
soul is not accessible to observation by sight or touch, but it can be
observed by its functions; it is the object of a new kind of natural
history, the materials for constructing which lie in what it is natural
to us to think. With Plato “thought” was a very wide-reaching term, but
still I would claim in his general plan of procedure a place for the
particular question of extension.
The problem comes to be, “What is it natural to us to think about
matter _qua_ extended?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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