and these relations they must always retain.  But the contradiction disappears when, instead of considering the qualities in themselves, we consider the things of which those qualities are aspects; for the qualities of things are not compacted by implication, but are conjoined irrationally by nature, as she will; and the same thing may be, and is, at once yellow and green, to the left and to the right, good and evil, many and one, large and small; and whatever verbal paradox there may be in this way of speaking (for from the point of view of nature it is natural enough) had been thoroughly explained and talked out by the time of Plato, who complained that people should still raise a difficulty so trite and exploded.[8] Indeed, while square is always square, and round round, a thing that is round may actually be square also, if we allow it to have a little body, and to be a cylinder.

[Footnote 8:  Plato, Philebus, 14, D. The dialectical element in this dialogue is evidently the basis of Mr. Russell’s, as of Mr. Moore’s, ethics; but they have not adopted the other elements in it, I mean the political and the theological.  As to the political element, Plato everywhere conceives the good as the eligible in life, and refers it to human nature and to the pursuit of happiness—­that happiness which Mr. Russell, in a rash moment, says is but a name which some people prefer to give to pleasure.  Thus in the Philebus (11, D) the good looked for is declared to be “some state and disposition of the soul which has the property of making all men happy”; and later (66, D) the conclusion is that insight is better than pleasure “as an element in human life.”  As to the theological element, Plato, in hypostasising the good, does not hypostasise it as good, but as cause or power, which is, it seems to me, the sole category that justifies hypostasis, and logically involves it; for if things have a ground at all, that ground must exist before them and beyond them.  Hence the whole Platonic and Christian scheme, in making the good independent of private will and opinion, by no means makes it independent of the direction of nature in general and of human nature in particular; for all things have been created with an innate predisposition towards the creative good, and are capable of finding happiness in nothing else.  Obligation, in this system, remains internal and vital.  Plato attributes a single vital direction and a single moral source to the cosmos.  This is what determines and narrows the scope of the true good; for the true good is that relevant to nature.  Plato would not have been a dogmatic moralist, had he not been a theist.]