ONE:I agree, however, with Teichmüller that the doctrines of reminiscence and metempsychosis have a purely mythical significance, and I should have expressed my views on the subject with more definiteness and decision had I known that his authority might be quoted in their support. I think that Plato was in a transition state from the Oriental to what afterwards became the Christian theory of retribution. In the one he found an allegorical illustration of his metaphysics, in the other a very serious sanction for his ethics. He felt their incompatibility, but was not prepared to undertake such a complete reconstruction of his system as would have been necessitated by altogether denying the pre-existence of the soul. Of such vacillation Platos later Dialogues offer, I think, sufficient evidence. For example, the Matter of the Timacus seems to be a revised version of the Other or principle of division and change, which has already figured as a pure idea, in which capacity it must necessarily be opposed to matter. At the same time, I must observe that, from my point of view, it is enough if Plato inculcated the doctrine of a future life asxxi an important element of his religious system. And that he did so inculcate it Teichmüller fully admits.4Here, as elsewhere, we shall employ the genetic method of investigation. Aristotles writings do not, indeed, present that gradual development of ideas which makes the Platonic Dialogues so interesting. Still they exhibit traces of such a development, and the most important among them seems to have been compiled from notes taken by the philosopher before his conclusions were definitely reasoned out, or worked up into a consistent whole. It is this fragmentary collection which, from having been placed by some unknown editor after the Physics, has received a name still associated with every kind of speculation that cannot be tested by a direct or indirect appeal to the evidence of external sense.
