the Date Palms may be planted, and will grow again in the Jordan valley in great abundance. As regards the Rose. The Rock Rose does not grow from a bulb ; the little Narcissus Tazetta grows from a bulb, and is a very favourite flower in the north of Palestine. Mr. Sutton asked-Where did the children of Israel get the good Olive? Of course the cultivated one must have been produced from the Wild Olive, but I think I am right in saying that the children of Israel found it when they got into the Holy Land. The Meeting closed with a vote of thanks to the Chairman. THE 609TH ORDINARY MEETING, HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE MACKINLAY IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed. The SECRETARY announced the election of seven Associates :--Mr. J. Harvey, Miss E. A. Everett, the Rev. C. Neill, M.A., M.B., the Rev. Principal Samuel Chadwick, the Rev. G. H. Johnson, M.A., Mr. Thomas Fox, and Mr. Albert Close. The CHAIRMAN, in calling on Professor Langhorne Orchard to read his Paper, reminded his hearers that he was one of the four winners of the Gunning Prize, his subject having been The Attitude of Science towards Miracles," in 1910. First Thoughts. THE ONE IN THE MANY, AND THE MANY IN THE ONE. By Professor H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.Sc. WHEN, HEN, introduced into the universe, we look out upon it and then look into it, among our first thoughts is the idea of association and content. We associate Unity with Plurality, Plurality with Unity, and each as contained in the other. We note that our body is one, containing many members; that the universe is one, containing things and persons, many parts constituting the whole of which each is one part. We note that things and persons possess qualities, many of them possessing one and the same quality,-e.g., stone, iron, wood (under ordinary conditions), have the common quality of solidity; mercury, water, milk that of fluidity; all have besides the common quality of weight; the common quality of gaseity belongs to oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen. Turning our attention to persons, in Plato, St. Paul, Hamilton, we recognise the common quality of philosophy; in Homer, Virgil, Solomon, Schiller, Milton, Shakespeare, that of poetry; in Daniel, Pericles, Bismarck, Lord Burleigh, that of statesmanship; and so on. The one common quality is in the many possessors. If we group them together, we obtain a class—the many being in this one class, included in its membership. Although men's thoughts have from their beginning been conversant with Number, few subjects have at once so attracted and baffled inquiry as the relation between Unity and Pluralityhow The One is in The Many, and The Many are in The One. For the acutest and profoundest ancient philosophers, and some of the most gifted minds in our own time, the problem has proved exceedingly perplexing, yet of fascinating interest, leading tireless investigation up a mountain path, steep indeed, but which rewards the climber with a purer, more bracing air, and a wider, clearer view. The far-famed Samian sage held that the ultimate principle of all Being was to be found in Number. Plato, greatest of non-Christian philosophers, agreed to a large extent with Pythagoras and, in conjunction with his great master, Socrates, brought forward his famous theory of the "Ideas," with that of "The One in The Many, and The Many in The One." This theory, justly regarded as one of the supreme achievements of human intellect, may be collected from his Dialogues-" Theætetus,' "Parmenides, "Phædo,' "Timæus," " Republic," and others. Taking survey of the universe, Plato recognised its divisibility into two worlds or spheres, the visible, consisting of our bodies and other objects perceived by our senses, the invisible, containing our souls and thoughts and moral and other qualities of a general kind. He saw that sense objects are transitory, in a state of flux and change, passing away, to be succeeded by others passing away in their turn; whilst general (or common) qualities, such as justice, courage, beauty, have permanence, remaining unchangeable through successive generations. Drawing therefrom the conclusion that the invisible sphere is higher and more important than the visible, he urged that we should especially consider and attend to it,-not to "the things which are seen and temporal." This led him to construct his theory: The "Ideas " are ideas of general qualities arrived at by generalization and abstraction from sense objects which suggest them through Reminiscence of a knowledge of them divinely given to the soul when it was in a pre-natal state of existence. Sense objects remind us of certain ideal archetypes according to which they were formed by the Divine-and-Human Architect of the universe; these archetypes, having been present as thoughts and purposes (vonuara) in the mind of the وو 66 The Problem of Number. Plato's Theory. The Ideas, and Sense Objects. Creator when HE created, causing visible things to be what these things actually are. Sense objects offer likenesses-reflections and shadows of the archetypal Ideas, but, owing to association with matter, these likenesses are imperfect and obscure. We compare them with their archetypes (apadeíyμata), and judge that they fall short; whence it follows that we must at some time have known the archetypes. Therefore, as this knowledge has not been obtained by us since our birth, we must have had it before. Originating in the Divine mind, the Ideas have Divine character and unity; pre-existent to things created, they are certain, unchangeable, true, and everlastingly stable, independent beings. They are the objects of knowledge; sense objects, because of their fluctuating unstable* character, cannot be known, for there is no certainty on which the intellectual anchor can take hold--they are objects of opinion. The Ideas are intellectual objects† with which the pure intuitive reason is conversant and, as like goes to like, they can be known by the soul which is itself pure reason or intellection. Their home is in the Divine mind-the pure absolute universal intellection (vous) where they originated, and they make habitation in souls all finite intelligences being manifestations, or modes of existence of the universal Noûs. An Idea has three aspects-(1) A Divine thought, (2) The imperfect image of this thought presented in the sense world, (3) The mental concept which is the reflection in our mind of this image.‡ Calderwood has pointed out that Plato gives to the general conceptions of Socrates the character of Ideas which constitute the fundamental ideas of Reason. and are at the same time regarded by him as the perfect essences of things the eternal laws of being. They belong to a supersensible state-"a world or sphere of ideas." Intelligence is at first confused by the shadows of the sense state, striving to rise into the "upper world" of higher knowledge, where The Good, which he ultimately identifies with GOD, is supreme. We are reminded by Whewell that the "Reason conversant with the Ideas is not Reasoning, with its dialectic, but is that intuitive Reason§ which apprehends the truth of First Principles * Like the waters at any point of a river. † Incorporeal and without parts. I.e., the reflection of (1) by a finite intelligence subject through limita tion to conditions of space and time. § GOD, the Soul, the World, are Ideas of the Reason (Noûs). Opinion and Knowledge. Three Idea Aspects and discerns truths deduced from First Principles. This is the Reason which deals with knowledge, controlling and governing those emotions and appetites that are impulses to human action, and so producing virtue-a harmony of the soul. Pure Reason, as well as Reasoning, makes use of hypotheses (which are tentative conceptions of the Idea that is being sought); but Reasoning never gets further than hypotheses, whereas Pure Reason arrives at direct apprehension of the first principle or Idea. Thus the conclusions of Reasoning-mere Reasoningnever rise higher than Opinion (which, true or false, is a matter of persuasion only), whereas those of Pure Reason, avouched by logical demonstration with direct intuition, present the certainty belonging to Knowledge. If Ideas were not realities. cognition would be impossible. 66 Opinion, even though true, is comparable to artificial light which shows us but indistinctly the reflections and shadows of the Ideas as perceived in sense objects which, by reminiscence, suggest and recall them. But Knowledge resembles the light of the sun which shows things perspicuously and plainly. True opinion may belong to any man, but intellection is the privilege of only a few men. A Definition (Móyos) of a class is the image (Eikov) of its Idea, and includes all we can discover about the class from observation; the Idea includes all there is to be known about it. Hamilton ("Discussions ") remarks that the word, as employed by Plato, expresses the real forms of the intelligible world, in lofty contrast to the unreal images of the sensible." Tiberghien says that "according to the Platonic sense, adopted by Kant and Cousin, ideas are, as it were, the essence and matter of our intelligence, they are its primitive elements, and at the same time the immediate objects of its activity. They are the primary anticipations which the mind brings to all its cognitions, the principles and laws by reason of which it conceives of beings and things. The mind does not create ideas, it creates by means of ideas." (Essai des Connais, p. 33.) 66 Socrates and Plato at first restricted their theory to such ideas as they judged to be "worthy." Moral and intellectual ideas, e.g., justice, courage, beauty, were "worthy"; but many other ideas were unworthy. Socrates being asked (in "Parmenides ") whether he admits ideas of physical things such as man, fire, water, answers: "There I have often felt a difficulty." And to the further inquiry: "And of such things Reason and Reasoning. Reminiscence. worthy" Ideas. Worthy" and "Un |