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THE ETHICS OF SOCRATES AND PLATO 57
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Now this, we may take it, was in essence Plato's view.
As I have already hinted, his reasoning, his emotional and
his appetitive parts of the soul are not in any strict sense
of the word "parts " at all. They arc rather to be conceived
as different levels at which the sold can function; or, to
continue my metaphor, as different channels along which
the river of psychical activity may flow, the important
point being that it is the whole soul which functions at
any one of the levels, the whole river which flows at any
moment along each of the channels.
Plato's Metaphysical Theory. The essence of Plato's
ethical theory, is that, since the soul contains more than
one part, virtue consists not in the quality of one
part, but in a special land of relation between the
various parts. Plato proceeds to tell us what this relation
should be. It is a relation in which the inferior elements
of the soul obey the superior. Now the superior element in
the soul is the reasoning part. It is with the establishment
of this right relation between the parts of the soul that the
excellence ofthe boul, called by Plato "justice", is identified.
At this point, I must digress to give a brief statement
of Plato's metaphysical views, since an acquaintance with
these is necessary to a full understanding of his ethical
theory.*
That the reasoning part of the soul is not for Plato
merely an instrument of thinking, or knowing,
that it
is impelled by an urge to embody in the life of the
individual that which it knows, we have already seen.
But it is, nevertheless, primarily a faculty of knowing, and
we must now pause to consider what in fact it is that it
knows. Plato's view was that the world of which we are
made aware by our senses is not the real world; the world
revealed to sense perception, the world of physical things
is, he held, compounded in equal degrees of reality
and non-reality. 1 Such reality as it possesses it owes to
1 For a fuller account of Plato's Metaphysical Theory see my Giddt
to Philosophy, Chapter X.