If the first of Europe's philosophers whose works survive does not
have the same towering dominance as its first poet, Homer, that is
not any reflection on Plato's genius. His actual achievement in his
own field was as great. It is merely that we know a little more about
what went before. Despite this, he, like Homer, presents to us the
appearance (albeit a misleading one) of arising out of nothing, and
also of a certain primitiveness which his marvellously polished style
does not altogether conceal. He has a greater claim than anybody
else to be called the founder of philosophy as we know it. But what,
exactly, did he found? The answer will depend on who 'we' are; it
will be different for Patonists and Latonists, and even that crude
division does not do justice to the complexity of Plato's make-up,
and of his influence on the subsequent history of philosophy.

Of the two Platos that we distinguished, it is difficult to think that
the achievement of Pato was as great as that of Lato. The 'perennial
philosophy' is perennial just because it is a very natural expression
of human thinking about the mind and about values; it has appeared
in many places at many times in different forms, and Plato's mind-
body dualism, with its associated belief in the immortality of the
soul, and his particular treatment of the objectivity of values, are not
markedly different from anybody else's. What is unique in him is
the progress from these quasi-religious speculations, which could
have remained, as they have in others, vapid and evanescent,
towards a much tougher, more precise logical and metaphysical
theory, a moral philosophy and a philosophy of language; these were
not entirely new, but, through discussion and criticism of them,
they engendered the lasting achievements of Aristotle in those fields,
and thus shaped the entire future of philosophy.

Let us start with Plato's development of the topic of 'The One and
the Many'. We have seen how the early cosmologists sought an
explanation of the bewildering variety of things in the world by
seeking for them some common ground or reason. The search
started with the question, 'What were their origins?'; went on to the

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