The result of their neglect of the Psychology of the
Experience which expresses itself in the Doctrine of Ideas
is that the scholars to whom I refer, going to Plato's text
in the dark, lose themselves in it. Having no clue they
find themselves in a labyrinth. Because Plato, dealing,
at different periods of his life, with different subjects,
in Dialogues differently staged, phrases and accentuates
the Doctrine of Ideas differently, they tell us that he
has altered the Doctrine essentially' they ask us to
believe that at one period of his career he held this
opinion, and at another period that opinion, while
Pupils of the Academy, Pythagoreans, Eleatics, Megarians,
not to mention Aristotle himself, held certain other
opinions--'about the Ideas'. 'But,' we ask, 'What are
the Ideas? What were Plato and these other people
talking about? Surely about the right way of expressing
some Experience which they all had in common, and we
ourselves still have. Tell us in the language, vernacular
or philosophical, of to-day what that Experience is.' To
this appeal the textualists have no response to make; in
lieu they either offer us empirical judgements suggested by
simple inspection of the language employed in various
passages, or else ask us to accept the translation of some
term or phrase αὺτὰ καθ αὺτά, χωρίς, παρειυαι, μετέχειυ,
μίμησις, παράδειγμα--as a sufficient interpretation of Plato's
Doctrine as it happened to stand when he used the term
or phrase in question. Translation, in which, naturally,
the expositors agree, offered as interpretation, and em-
pirical judgements, in which they, as naturally, differ--
these are the chief constituents of expositions which
attempt to interpret the literary evidence for the meaning
of the Doctrine of Ideas without seeking the control of
Psychology.

It is to Aristotle's version of the Doctrine of Ideas that
these recent expositions ultimately go back--to a version
vitiated, like most of Aristotle's versions of Plato's doc-
trines, by the Pupil's inability or unwillingness to enter

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