[Side-note: Valuable remarks on the effects of these preparatory studies.]
The remarks made by Plato on the effect of this preparatory curriculum, and on the various studies composing it, are highly interesting and instructive--even when they cannot be defended as exact. Much of what he so eloquently enunciates respecting philosophy and the philosophical character, is in fact just and profound, whatever view we may take as to Universals: whether we regard them (like Plato) as the only Real Entia, cognizable by the mental eye, and radically disparate from particulars--or whether we hold them to be only general Concepts, abstracted and generalised more or less exactly from particulars. The remarks made by Plato on the educational effect produced by Arithmetic and the other studies, are valuable and suggestive. Even the discredit which he throws on observations of fact, in Astronomy and Acoustics--the great antithesis between him and modern times--is useful as enabling us to enter into his point of view.[179]
[Footnote 179: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 529 C-D.
The manner in which Plato here depreciates astronomical observation is not easily reconcileable with his doctrine in the Timæus. He there tells us that the rotations of the Nous (intellective soul) in the interior of the human cranium, are cognate or analogous to those of the cosmical spheres, but more confused and less perfect: our eyesight being expressly intended for the purpose, that we might contemplate the perfect and unerring rotations of the cosmical spheres, so as to correct thereby the disturbed rotations in our own brain (Timæus, pp. 46-47).
Malebranche shares the feeling of Plato on the subject of astronomical observation. Recherche de la Vérité, liv. iv. ch. vii. vol. ii. p. 219, ed. 1772 (p. 278, ed. 1721).
"Car enfin qu'y a-t-il de grand dans la connoissance des mouvemens des planètes? et n'en sçavons nous pas assez présentement pour régler nos mois et nos années? Qu'avons nous tant à faire de sçavoir, si Saturne est environné d'un anneau ou d'un grand nombre de petites lunes, et pourquoi prendre parti là-dessus? Pourquoi se glorifier d'avoir prédit la grandeur d'une éclipse, où l'on a peut-être mieux rencontré qu'un autre, parcequ'on a été plus heureux? Il y a des personnes destinées, par l'ordre du Prince, à observer les astres; contentons nous de leurs observations. . . Nous devons être pleinement satisfaits sur une matière qui nous touche si peu, lorsqu'ils nous font partie de leurs découvertes."]