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THE ETHICS OF SOCRATES AND PLATO 55
depending upon whether the reasoning, the nobly emotional,
or the appetitive part of the soul prevails in them; upon
whether, that is to say, their lives and actions are mainly
governed by reason, by noble emotions, or by the appetites.
One other feature of Plato's psychology requires to be
mentioned before we are in a position to do justice to his
ethical theory.
Reason and Desire. The account which most psycho-
logists have given of the individual psyche makes provision
for a striving or endeavouring element, which is usually
denoted by a technical word, conation. This striving or
before us
endeavouring element is that which, setting
certain ends as desirable, impels us to undertake the
activities which are necessary to realize them. It may also
express itself merely as a kind of restless feeling which is
not directed to any particular end. Conation stands, in
other words, for the dynamic element in the individual's
make-up, and, as such,
it is often differentiated from
reason whose function is limited to planning the steps
which may be necessary to reach the objectives which
conation sets before us. I shall have occasion to refer
again to this division of so-called faculties in connection
with a later discussion of free-will. 1 It is, however, important
to realize that Plato envisages no such separation. Reason
is not for him one thing, desire another; for although one
part of the soul is described as the reasoning part, it does
not, therefore, follow that it is without conation or desire.
For Plato, every part of the soul is endowed with its own
appropriate form of desire. Thus the reasoning part desires,
although what it desires is the end appropriate to reason,
which Plato conceives of as the discovery of philosophical
truth* What is more, the reasoning part can exercise
controlling, even coercive functions; it can, and in the
good man it should, coerce the other parts of the soul
into proper subordination to its authority. The reasoning
part of the toul must, therefore, contain an element of
1 See Chapter VII, pp. 268, 269.