That Plato was in some sense a poet is a fact which most of us are prepared to recognize without much hesitation. What is not always clear is how far any of his Dialogues, in whole or in part, may be justly described as poetry, and to what extent his “poeticalness” must affect our critical approach to, and hence our evaluation of, his philosophy as a whole. And this, in effect, is the problem to which I propose to address myself in this paper. Before, however, I attempt to discuss what is an exceptionally complicated issue, a few remarks of a more general nature will not perhaps be out of place-for the need of caution in any approach to Plato is obvious from the start.

The most important question under this heading is the question whether states are subject to the moral law. That they are has sometimes been denied even in theory, and there are no doubt still countries in which it would be highly desirable to publish an article combating this denial. But, thank goodness, England is not one of these countries, and it will suffice to say briefly that I can find no even plausible argument for the contrary view. This view has often been associated with the doctrine that the State is a sort of super-person over and above the individual citizens, to whom the latter can appropriately be sacrificed as beings of little worth, as we sacrifice to our own welfare, if we can, without any compunction the myriad germs inhabiting our bodies. I cannot see any reason whatever for holding this view either, but I should have thought that, if it were adopted, the analogy of the individual thus applied to the State would suggest the contrary conclusion that the State should find its true good not in its own unscrupulous aggrandizement but in co-operation with other States. We have been taught the analogous doctrine in regard to the individual from the beginning of the Christian era or earlier, and we can look on it as generally accepted in regard to the individual by reflective people in theory, although not, of course, by any means always in practice. If we regard the State as just a group of individuals, there is still less excuse for making it out to be subject to no moral law. In that case actions of the State will always be actions by individual persons, differing only from other such actions because they are performed on behalf of certain groups of persons.

The third of October, 1949, was the 2,500th anniversary of Confucius’ birth. This date has been under dispute for more than 2,000 years. Early and reliable accounts state that the birth was on a certain day of the Chinese sixty-day cycle and that it was fifty days after an eclipse of the sun. But those same accounts list eclipses of the sun in two successive months, something that is impossible in China. Only recently has any one bothered to calculate which eclipse actually occurred and discover that, in a period of twenty years before and after the birth, only one eclipse of the sun occurred on that day of the cycle and was visible at Confucius’ birthplace. So this date can be fixed accurately by modern scientific methods.1

It is the purpose of the following pages to reconsider the basic problem of induction. According to Hume the concomitance of A with B on one or more occasions gives no valid presumption that A will be accompanied by B on any other occasion. The data of experience may give rise to an association of ideas or set up mental habits, but they provide no reasonable grounds for expecting similar concomitances or sequences in future. If this is correct, we have no starting point for the formation of any valid opinions about matters of fact; we remain ice-bound in a region of total scepticism.

Locke's contribution to the discussion was fourfold: First, he saw the importance of the problem; Second, he realized that the puzzle cases, the “strange suppositions,” were relevant; Third, he maintained “same” had a different meaning when applied to “person” from its meaning in other contexts; and, Fourth, he offered his much criticized solution of the problem.

Lichtenberg, the German philosopher and physicist, once remarked: “It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.” Goethe, coeval with Lichtenberg, possessed by the conviction that he too was the bearer of truth, recked not whose beard was singed. Between his scientific attitude and his philosophic insight, however, a contradiction was patent, as revealed in his maxim that truth is a torch and that it is only with blinking eyes that we try to get past it, whilst in actual terror of being burnt.

There is among many moral philosophers today a renewed emphasis on the connection between reason and morality, and an attempt to exhibit moral behaviour as characteristically rational. What is original in Mr. Kneale's extremely interesting paper (April 1950) is the following-up of a suggestion that certain words like “right,” “wrong,” “ought,” are used in the same way both by lawyers and by moralists; this leads to a logical rehabilitation of the somewhat unpopular concept of the moral law, which in turn argues objectivity and rationality in morals, and makes it possible “to distinguish between good and bad moralists in much the same way as we can distinguish between good and bad lawyers.” The legal pattern is essentially the same as the moral pattern.