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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

Borko Furht
Esad Akar · Whitney Angelica Andrews

Digital Image
Processing:
Practical
Approach

123
SpringerBriefs in Computer Science

Series Editors
Stan Zdonik, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Shashi Shekhar, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Xindong Wu, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, USA
Lakhmi C. Jain, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
David Padua, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
Xuemin Sherman Shen, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Borko Furht, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA
V. S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA
Martial Hebert, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Katsushi Ikeuchi, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Bruno Siciliano, Università di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy
Sushil Jajodia, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
Newton Lee, Newton Lee Laboratories, LLC, Burbank, California, USA
SpringerBriefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical
applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10028

Borko Furht • Esad Akar
Whitney Angelica Andrews

Digital Image Processing:

Practical Approach
Borko Furht Esad Akar
Department of Computer & Electrical Department of Computer & Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science Engineering and Computer Science
Florida Atlantic University Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL, USA Boca Raton, FL, USA

Whitney Angelica Andrews

Department of Computer & Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL, USA

ISSN 2191-5768 ISSN 2191-5776 (electronic)

SpringerBriefs in Computer Science
ISBN 978-3-319-96633-5 ISBN 978-3-319-96634-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96634-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952345

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the
material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
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The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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Preface

This book is intended for beginners in the field who would like to understand the
basic concepts of digital image processing and apply them in programming some
fundamental digital image processing algorithms. It is our assumption that the reader
has some background in programming including the basics of C and C++. The book
is of practical nature, and the fundamental concepts of image processing discussed in
each chapter are showcased with demo programs. The reader is encouraged to
understand and run these programs as well as create similar programs proposed in
the book.
The book consists of ten chapters. The book begins with the introduction to image
concept, classification of images, and various image formats. Then, it follows up
with Chaps. 2 and 3 on creating user interface and image loading and rendering.
After successfully completing and understanding these concepts, the reader will be
able to begin writing basic programs in image processing. In Chaps. 4 and 5, we
introduce some relatively simple image processing techniques, such as creating
image histograms and detecting changes in colors and present programs that accom-
plish these techniques. Chapters 6 and 7 introduce more complex image processing
problems and their solutions including lossless image compression and similarity-
based image retrieval.
When completing these chapters and related programming examples, the reader
will be able to understand and write some exciting image processing applications.
Lastly, Chaps. 8, 9, and 10 present three applications including how to hide data in
digital images, how to create a transition from one to another image, and how to
embed one image into another image with resizing. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 were
completed by students as part of Introduction to Image and Video Processing class at
Florida Atlantic University taught in Spring 2018.

v
vi Preface

The book can be used as a practical textbook for basic courses on image
processing. The main features of the book can be summarized as follows:
1. The book describes the basic concept of digital image processing.
2. The focus of the book is practical programming examples of fundamental image
processing algorithms.
3. Link to complete programs allows readers to run, test programs, and design
various image processing solutions. The libraries used in this book can be
found at https://github.com/scarface382/libraries, and source code for all pro-
grams described in the book can be found at http://github.com/scarface382/
multimedia-examples.

Boca Raton, FL, USA Borko Furht

2018 Esad Akar
Whitney Angelica Andrews
Contents

1 Introduction to Digital Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Image Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Image File Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Image Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Creating User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1 Compiling the Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Image Loading and Rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.1 Loading Image from Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2 Writing to Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3 Creating Texture from Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4 Converting Color to Grayscale Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4 Creating Image Histograms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.1 Program for Creating Histograms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5 Detecting Changes in Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6 Lossless JPEG Image Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.1 Example of a Huffman coder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
6.2 Huffman Programming Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6.3 Lossless JPEG Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
7 Similarity-Based Image Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8 Data Hiding in Digital Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9 Image Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
9.1 Compiler Optimizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
10 Image-to-Image Embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
11 Changing Color of Selected Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.1 Implementation Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

vii
viii Contents

12 Loading and Inserting Objects in an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

13 Swap Faces in an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
13.1 Rapid Object Detection Using a Boosted Cascade of Simple
Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
13.2 Features in Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
13.3 Integral Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Chapter 1
Introduction to Digital Imaging

1.1 Image Concept

Image is a two-dimensional array of samples or pixels, as illustrated in Fig. 1.1.

Each pixel consists of number of bits. Based on number of bits per pixel,
Table 1.1 classifies images into four categories: binary, computer graphics, gray-
scale, and color images. Digital images come in different flavors. Images can be
made up pixels that are either fully black or fully white, called binary images.
Grayscale images contains pixels where the pixel color values vary between a
range of black, grey, and white. Color images can capture pixel values of any
color such as red, blue, and green.
In this book, we will focus on color and grayscale images. The most common
representation of color images, RGB representation (Red, Green, Blue) is based on
trichromatic theory that the sensation of color is produced by selectively exciting
three classes of receptors in the eye. Figure 1.2 shows the three-dimensional
representation of color images consisting of these three components: R, G, and B.
In 24-bit color format, each color is represented with 8 bits. Therefore, the
elements in the three-dimensional cube have values from (0,0,0) to (255,255,255).
Black color is defined as (0,0,0) and the white component as (255,255,255). Gray-
scale image is defined as the straight line in the three-dimensional cube, which is
when R ¼ G ¼ B.
The term channel in the context of digital images refers to number of color
components used to display a pixel value. A three-channel image simply means a
RGB color image. Pixels of grayscale images can be represented with a single value
so they are single channel images. RGBA images which stand for Red, Green, Blue,
Alpha are regular RGB images with a fourth channel called the alpha channel which
controls the transparency level of the pixels. In most digital image editing software,
layers of image objects can be stacked together. By tweaking the transparency/
opacity levels of these layers, the bottom layer can be made to show through as
seen in Fig. 1.3. Of course, when the final design is exported as a regular image file,

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 1

B. Furht et al., Digital Image Processing: Practical Approach, SpringerBriefs in
Computer Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96634-2_1
2 1 Introduction to Digital Imaging

Fig. 1.1 Image concept

(5  5 pixels)

Table 1.1 Image Image type Number of bits/pixel

classification based on number
Binary image 1
of bits per pixel
Computer graphics 4
Grayscale image 8
Color image 16–24

Fig. 1.2 Three-dimensional representation of color images using R, G, and B components

the layer information is not stored so the areas where the layers overlap are forced in
a single stream of pixels instead of two. In applications such as Internet browsers that
render images to the screen, images with RGBA channels inform the application
how the image should be displayed when it is displayed over any background image
e.g. a solid background color or another image.
Digital cameras typically contain filters with three sensors for each color compo-
nent in RGB. The light source captured by the lenses is processed through the color
1.1 Image Concept 3

Fig. 1.3 An image layer with different levels of opacity

Mirrors and
Light splitter Red Sensor Amplifier R

RGB Monitor
Scene

Lens G
Green Sensor Amplifier

B
Blue Sensor Amplifier

Fig. 1.4 Three-sensor RGB color video camera and TGB monitor

filter, which produces RGB component values for every pixel. The captured RGB
values then can be displayed using a RGB monitor as illustrated in Fig. 1.4.
Another color model often used in digital image and video processing is UYV
color model, which describes color perception and consists of one luminance
component (Y) and two chrominance components (U and V). The YUV image
representation can be created from RGB presentation using the following approxi-
mate mathematical description:

Y ¼ 0:3R þ 0:6G þ 0:1B

V¼RY
U¼BY

The YUV color model consists of a luminance component Y, which captures the
brightness of the pixel, and two chrominance components, U and V, that capture
color information.
When R ¼ G ¼ B then Y ¼ R ¼ G ¼ B, which is a grayscale image. In summary,
to convert a full color RGB image into a grayscale image, the following approximate
formula can be used:
4 1 Introduction to Digital Imaging

Y ¼ 0:3R þ 0:6G þ 0:1B

This formula will be used in subsequent chapters when dealing with grayscale
images.

1.2 Image File Formats

In this section we introduce several common image file formats:

• GIF: Graphics Interchange Format (limited to 8-bit color images)
• JPEG: Standard for image compression
• PNG: Portable Network Graphics
• TIFF: Tagged Image File Format
• Windows BMP (BitMap) format
GIF is most suitable for storing graphics with few colors, such as simple dia-
grams, shapes, logos, and cartoon style images. GIF supports only 256 colors and a
single transparent color.
JPEG images are compressed typically using a lossy compression method. The
format is dominantly used in digital cameras.
PNG file format is a free, open-source alternative to GIF. The PNG file format
supports eight-bit paletted images and 24-bit truecolor (16 million colors).
TIFF image format is a flexible format that normally saves eight bits or sixteen
bits per color (red, green, blue) for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, respectively.
Windows BMP handles graphic files within the Microsoft Windows
OS. Typically, BMP files are uncompressed, and therefore large and lossless; their
advantage is their simple structure and wide acceptance in Windows programs.

1.3 Image Resolution

As we already discussed, an image is defined using pixels. The resolution (R) defines
the total number of pixels in an image as:

R¼nm

where n specifies the number of pixels in horizontal direction, and m in vertical

direction. If the total number of pixels is large than the quality of the image is higher,
and the memory to store the image and the time to transmit the image will be higher
as well. Typical image resolutions are shown in Table 1.2. The table also shows the
total number of pixels for each resolution as well as memory needed to save the full
color image.
1.3 Image Resolution 5

Table 1.2 Image resolutions

Type of image/video Resolution Number of pixels Memory
VGA 640  480 307,200 921,600 B
NTSC, DVD 720  480 345,600 1.036 MB
Super VGA 1024  768 786,432 2.305 MB
HD DVD, Blu-ray 1280  720 921,600 2.764 MB
HDV 1920  1080 2,073,600 6.22 MB
4K UHDTV 3840  2160 8,294,400 24.883 MB
8K UHDTV 7680  4320 33,177,600 99.532 MB
16K Digital cinema 15360  8640 132,710,400 398.131 MB
64K Digital cinema 61440  34560 2.12  109 6.37 GB

Here are two examples of calculating the number of pixels and the memory for
two types of images:
(a) For a 640  480 VGA pixel image with 240 bit color, the number of pixels is
640  480 ¼ 307,200 pixels. The memory required to store the image is:
M ¼ 307,200 pixels  3 bytes ¼ 921,600 bytes ¼ 921.600 KB
(b) For a high-definition image 1920  1800, the number of pixels is
1920  1800 ¼ 2,073,600 pixels, and the required memory to store the image is:
M ¼ 2,073,600 pixels  3 bytes ¼ 6,220,000 bytes ¼ 6.22 MB
In this chapter we discussed the basics of digital images. Digital images are
composed of pixels where different color models, such as RGB and YUV, can be
used to represent color values.
Chapter 2
Creating User Interface

Every chapter in this book includes a demo program to explain the material, the
theory behind digital image topics, and provides code that the reader can run and
manipulate. Instead of writing command line demo programs with little user inter-
action, we opted to write programs with a User Interface (UI) that includes essential
UI elements such as buttons, sliders, and ability to display images on the screen.
Thus, in this chapter, we present the UI library we have chosen to use and how to use
it in the context of the digital image programming.
The UI library we selected for all the projects is ImGui, which is an open-source
library written in C++ with MIT license. ImGui is defined on its GitHub page as a
bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++. It outputs optimized vertex
buffers that you can render anytime in your 3D-pipeline enabled application and
can be found at http://github.com/ocornut/imgui.
ImGui is different than the traditional UI C++ libraries. The internals of ImGui
resembles a state-machine instead. There are no classes for each UI class objects
such as a button, a text box, a window, etc. There is no need to create separate files
for UI code or the main logic code. Each function resides in the ImGui namespace
and the order of objects to be rendered are dictated by the order of function calls
made. A bit more experience with graphics programing is needed, however, to be
able to use it. There exists no framework that renders the vertex buffers ImGui
creates, so the programmer needs to create a window context, initialize graphics
libraries (OpenGL in our case), and write the code for transferring user input such as
key strokes and mouse clicks over to ImGui for processing. For OpenGL initializa-
tion, we use the GLEW library.
For creating a window and processing user input, we make use of GLFW, another
useful wrapper library. To learn more about GLEW and GLFW, visit glew.
sourceforge.net and glfw.org. The maintainers of ImGui have already provided a
full implementation that uses GLEW and GLFW so we made use of that. To observe
how ImGui interacts with GFLW, read imgui_glfw.h and observe how user input is
processed and vertex buffers are rendered in the graphics pipeline.

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 7

B. Furht et al., Digital Image Processing: Practical Approach, SpringerBriefs in
Computer Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96634-2_2
8 2 Creating User Interface

Fig. 2.1 User interface

example: outcome of the
program

All the code for UI is inside the main ‘forever’ loop featured in the code text box.
ImGui gives the ability to create multiple windows inside one OS windows. Win-
dows and groups are created by making begin and end calls. To create a new ImGui
window, a call to ImGui::Begin(. . .) is made. Next, any UI object is created by
calling the necessary function. A button with label ‘click me’ simply requires
ImGui::Button(“click me”) call. When a user click on that button, the function
returns true, so putting the ImGui::Button(. . .) call in an if statement lets the
programmer write the code for the button click event. Once all objects are put into
the rendering list by their respective ImGui calls, a final ImGui::End() call is made.
At the end of the main loop, ImGui::Render() is called, buffers are switched,
rendered, and put to the screen.
We present next a simple example program. With the help of glfw, glew, and
ImGui libraries, the program creates an UI window, which contains a single button
and a text area. Each time the user clicks the button, the number is incremented in the
text area; refer to Fig. 2.1.
The function calls between the start of main and the while loop initializes GLFW
and GLEW libraries and creates an OS window that we can use to render our UI. The
while-loop will run forever as long as the user does not close the window. If a
terminate message makes it way from the OS to the GLFW context, the
glfwWindowShouldClose(window) statement will return true, end the while loop,
initiate cleanup, and terminate the program.
At the start of the loop once user input is polled with glfwPollEvents()
and ImGui is informed that a new frame is being rendered with
ImGui_ImplGlfwGL3_NewFrame(), we can begin calling the necessary UI func-
tions for window display. In this example, we create a window that includes a button
and a text area that displays the current x value. The x value initially has a value of
zero, but with each click of the button, the value of x is incremented by one. To
render our UI components to the screen, we call a few more functions. After fetching
the OS window size, we tell OpenGL to clear the screen with the already defined
vector clear_color. Then, ImGui::Render() renders whatever UI component function
we previously called (ImGui window, button, text, etc.) and glfwSwapBuffers
(window) makes the changes on the screen. This pattern of library initialization,
loop, and cleanup is present throughout all the projects in the following chapters.
The program shown next includes library initializations, main loop, ImGui calls, and
rendering.
2 Creating User Interface 9

// UI example code
// ImGui headers
#include <image.h>
#include <imgui/local.h>

int main()
{
// Setup window
glfwSetErrorCallback(error_callback);
if (!glfwInit())
return 1;

// OpenGl version 3
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, 3);
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, 3);
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_PROFILE, GLFW_OPENGL_CORE_PROFILE);

// Create Window and init glew

GLFWwindow* window = glfwCreateWindow(950,500, "Demo 1", NULL, NULL);
glfwMakeContextCurrent(window);
glewInit();

// Setup ImGui binding

ImGui_ImplGlfwGL3_Init(window, true);

ImVec4 clear_color = ImColor(114, 144, 154);

int x = 0;

// main loop
while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(window)) {

// user events such as clicking, typing, and moving cursor

glfwPollEvents();
ImGui_ImplGlfwGL3_NewFrame();

// UI components
ImGui::Begin("any window title");
if (ImGui::Button("CLICK ME"))
x++;
ImGui::Text("X: %d", x);
ImGui::End();

// window size
int display_w, display_h;
glfwGetFramebufferSize(window, &display_w, &display_h);

// clear the screen

glViewport(0, 0, display_w, display_h);
glClearColor(clear_color.x, clear_color.y, clear_color.z,
clear_color.w);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

// finally render
ImGui::Render();
glfwSwapBuffers(window);
}
// Cleanup
ImGui_ImplGlfwGL3_Shutdown();
glfwTerminate();
}
10 2 Creating User Interface

2.1 Compiling the Program

For every chapter in this book, we have written one or two demo programs in C++ to
go along with the explanation of each topic. To successfully compile and run each
program, let us discuss the steps of acquiring a C++ compiler, libraries we used, and
the source code for the demo programs. The programs were compiled using Win-
dows 7, 9 and 10 so if you are running Linux or MacOS checkout the GitHub
repository of ImGui for instructions on how to compile on these platforms.
The source code for the demo programs can be found on GitHub by downloading
the repository (github.com/scarface382/multimedia-examples). You can unzip the
file in any location in your computer. Each folder corresponds to a chapter in this
book and contains the files for the source code and a makefile which contains
information of where libraries are located and what compiler flags needs to be
passed on to the compiler. Here is the content of the makefile for this chapter:

LIBDIR = C:/libraries/lib
LIB = -L $(LIBDIR) -lOpenGL32
DLL = $(LIBDIR)/libglew32.dll.a $(LIBDIR)/libglfw3dll.a

INC = C:/libraries/include
IMGUI = $(INC)/imgui/imgui.cpp $(INC)/imgui/imgui_draw.cpp

all:
g++ -std=c++11 main.cpp $(IMGUI) -I $(INC) $(DLL) $(LIB) -o demo

The library repository, which includes ImGui, GLEW, GLFW, and the utility
functions, are used in the demo programs and can be found at (https://github.com/
scarface382/libraries). Make sure to download and move the content of this repos-
itory to C:/libraries.
To make installing both g++ and make programs easier for you, we’ve also
included an installation application mingw-w64-install in the libraries repository.
When you run the installation, make sure that you select x_86 architecture if your
computer has a 64-bit architecture (almost all new computers do) under installation
settings. For the destination folder, install everything under C:/mingw. Once you are
done with installation, rename mingw32-make.exe to make.exe under C:/mingw/
mingw64/bin. This is so that we don’t have to keep typing mingw32-make every
time we want to run a makefile script to compile a program.
At this point, we have acquired our compiler, source code, and all the necessary
libraries but we are not ready to compile the code yet. We need to add the path of our
libraries folder and the location of our compiler and make program to the global
environment variables of Windows so that when we compile by running make in the
console, the make program along with g++ can be located. To add these paths,
simply run these two commands in your console ran as administrator:
2.1 Compiling the Program 11

setx /M path "C:\libraries\lib;%path%"

setx /M path " C:\mingw\mingw64\bin;%path%"

Finally, we are ready to compile. Open a new console and change working
directory to the directory of the demo program for first chapter then run:

make

The code should be compiled by g++ and it should output a new executable with
the name ‘demo.exe’.
We have discussed the UI library that we used in demo programs and how to
acquire and compile the source code for all the chapters. In the next chapter we
discuss how images are decoded, loaded, and rendered.
Chapter 3
Image Loading and Rendering

3.1 Loading Image from Disk

JPEG and PNG are some of the most popular digital image file types. Pixel values
are compressed with some form of compression in these file, and as a result it is not
possible to open a digital image file and directly read the pixel values. The image
must be first be decoded, which returns the decompressed pixel values along with
other necessary information such as image resolution. For this task, we use
stb_image.h written by Sean Barrett which is an image loader library that can decode
images and extract pixel values from JPEG and PNG files (https://github.com/
nothings/stb).
To handle image files with ease in accordance with this library, we use the struct
definition below for all loaded image files:

typedef uint8_t uint8;

struct Image
{
uint8* pixels = NULL; // 8-bit unsigned integer
GLuint texture;
int texture_loaded = 0;
int width;
int height;
int n; //number of color channels, can be 3 (RGB) or 4 (RGBA)
};

This definition contains all the information of an image that we need: the pixel
value, the texture, the width, the height, and the number of color channels. The struct
allows easy access to the images attributes which is especially convenient when
handling multiple images at the same time.

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 13

B. Furht et al., Digital Image Processing: Practical Approach, SpringerBriefs in
Computer Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96634-2_3
14 3 Image Loading and Rendering

stb_image.h is a single header file that contains all the functions that we need.
Include this header file at the start of any program, with this macro definition:

#define STB_IMAGE_IMPLEMENTATION
#include <stb/stb_image.h>

The #define tells stb_image.h that we want access to the functions and not just
function definitions that is located at the top of the file. The function we use the most
from that library is stbi_load. See the following textbox for an example.

// image filename is 'cat.png'

#define RGBA 4
Image a;
a.pixels = (uint8*)stbi_load("cat.png", &a.height, &a.width, &a.n, RGBA);

The stbi_load function returns a ‘unsinged char *’ which points to a sequence of

memory that contains pixel values. The function also writes to the height, the width,
and the number of color components the image is made up of (RGB, or RGBA) to
the appropriate struct members. In this case, a.n is the number of channels. We
specifically request an RGBA output by passing ‘RGBA’ as the last parameter. Each
unsigned char in memory is a color component value. If the image that is loaded an
RGBA image, then the number of color components is four, and four sequential
RGBA values make up one pixel. An RGBA image that is 10 pixels by 10 pixels
contains 400 uint8 (unsinged char) color components (10 * 10 * 4) where each row
in the image contains 40 colors components. Here is sample code that changes each
R color component to the value 112.

int length = a.height * a.width * RGBA;

for (int i=0; i < length; i+= RGBA) {
a.pixels[i] = 112;
}

// do other work with the pixels

free(a.pixels); // cleanup

Notice that we increment i by 4 to skip GBA values and access R values. To clean
up the memory allocated by stbi_load, you can simply call free(a.pixels) or
stbi_image_free(a.pixels) to be fully compliant with stb.
3.3 Creating Texture from Images 15

3.2 Writing to Disk

Loading the image file to memory is necessary if we need to make changes to it, such
as making each R component 112 in the previous example. After manipulation, the
image may be saved to disk using another stb library: stb_image_write.h. Here is the
sample code:

#define STB_IMAGE_WRITE_IMPLEMENTATION
#include <stb/stb_image_write.h>

stbi_write_png("cat_manipulated.png", a.width, a.height, RGBA, a.pixels,0);

3.3 Creating Texture from Images

Images can be loaded from the disk to memory using a few lines of code. The next step
is to render them to screen. Since UI rendering is done directly with OpenGL under
ImGui, the loaded image needs to be converted to an OpenGL texture. We have
provided a function texture_image() in imgui/local.h file that generates an image
texture given an Image struct. Observe that in the Image struct, there are two texture
related members: texture and texture_loaded. These members are filled out with the
necessary texture information to pass onto ImGui for rendering. The following
example creates an ImGui window, loads, and displays an image the user has selected
from their computer by click “Select Image” button, as illustrated in Fig. 3.1.

Fig. 3.1 Creating ‘Select Image’ button and loading an image

16 3 Image Loading and Rendering

// header files, main function, and library initialization

while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(window))
{
glfwPollEvents();
ImGui_ImplGlfwGL3_NewFrame();

ImGui::Begin("Slider Window");
if (a.texture_loaded)
ImGui::Image((void*)a.texture, resize_ui(a.width, a.height, 300));

if (ImGui::Button("Select Image"))
ImGui::OpenPopup("select 0");

std::string tmp = image_select(0); //opens the file list

if (tmp != "") {
reset_image(&a);
a.pixels = stbi_load(tmp.c_str(), &a.width, &a.height, &a.n, RGBA);
texture_image(&a);
free_image(&a);
}
ImGui::End();

// Gl Rendering
int display_w, display_h;
glfwGetFramebufferSize(window, &display_w, &display_h);
glViewport(0, 0, display_w, display_h);
glClearColor(clear_color.x, clear_color.y, clear_color.z, clear_color.w);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
ImGui::Render();
glfwSwapBuffers(window);
}
// cleanup...

Note that in the code section, we have skipped important steps such as including
header files, writing the main function, creating the window, polling input, writing
the rendering, and the cleanup code. Without the inclusion of those components the
program will not compile (see the previous UI chapter for examples and explana-
tions for those components). As always, you can examine the code in the source file
we have written for this chapter.
When the image selection button is clicked, image_select() function is called and
a pop up with a list of files in the directory of the executable file opens. The user can
navigate through the folders and go up one directory by clicking the “..” at the top of
the list. Once a file is selected, the name of the file is returned and is passed to
stbi_load() for image file loading.
3.4 Converting Color to Grayscale Images 17

The function call ImGui::Image((void*)a.texture, ImVec2(a.width, a.height)), as

shown in the previous example, takes two parameters: the first being the texture and
the second being the image size in the form of a ImGui vector with just a x and a y
component. The image size controls how large the image will be displayed on the
screen. We discuss actual resizing, not just UI resizing, in Chap. 10.

3.4 Converting Color to Grayscale Images

Now that we’ve shown how to load and render an image, let’s discuss the details of
coding the simple image processing task of converting color images to grayscale. As
we discussed in Chap. 1, to convert a color pixel to a grayscale, we need to apply the
luminance value of the pixel to every component in RGB using this formula:

Y ¼ 0:3R þ 0:6G þ 0:1B

The program written for this section works the same as the previous ImGui but it
displays a second, grayscale image next to the original when the user selects an
image, as can be seen in Fig. 3.2.

Fig. 3.2 Example of converting the color to the grayscale image

18 3 Image Loading and Rendering

while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(window))
{
glfwPollEvents();
ImGui_ImplGlfwGL3_NewFrame();

ImGui::Begin("Slider Window");

if (a.texture_loaded && b.texture_loaded) {

ImGui::Image((void*)a.texture, resize_ui(a.width, a.height, 300));
ImGui::SameLine();
ImGui::Image((void*)b.texture, resize_ui(b.width, b.height, 300));
}

if (ImGui::Button("Select Image"))
ImGui::OpenPopup("select 0");

std::string tmp = image_select(0); //opens the file list and assigns to tmp

if (tmp != "") {
reset_image(&a);
reset_image(&b);
a.pixels = stbi_load(tmp.c_str(), &a.width, &a.height, &a.n, RGBA);
texture_image(&a);

// allocate new memory for grayscale image and convert image to grayscale
int length = a.width * a.height * RGBA;
b.pixels = (uint8*)malloc(length);
b.width = a.width;
b.height = a.height;
b.n = a.n;

for (int i=0; i < length; i+= RGBA) {

float R = a.pixels[i];
float G = a.pixels[i+1];
float B = a.pixels[i+2];
float A = a.pixels[i+3];

int Y = (0.3 * R) + (0.6 * G) + (0.1 * B);

b.pixels[i] = Y;
b.pixels[i+1] = Y;
b.pixels[i+2] = Y;
b.pixels[i+3] = A;
}
texture_image(&b);
}
3.4 Converting Color to Grayscale Images 19

ImGui::End();

// Gl Rendering
int display_w, display_h;
glfwGetFramebufferSize(window, &display_w, &display_h);
glViewport(0, 0, display_w, display_h);
glClearColor(clear_color.x, clear_color.y, clear_color.z, clear_color.w);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
ImGui::Render();
glfwSwapBuffers(window);
}

The code for this program is an extension to the previous demo. Just as before,
when an image file is selected, the image is loaded and is given a new to texture
which is used to render the image. The next part is new and handles the allocation of
enough memory for the grayscale image and the conversion to grayscale of the
loaded image. The ‘for loop’ iterates over every color component of the original
image and access each RGBA component of every pixel. Next, the luminance Y
value is computed and assigned to each color component of the grayscale image. At
the end of the loop, a texture is created for the grayscale image which gets rendered
in the next iteration of the while loop under the very first if statement.
By knowing how to load and display image file in our UI programs, we are now
ready to discuss more topics and ideas on digital image processing and write
programs to put these ideas to the test.
Chapter 4
Creating Image Histograms

In this chapter, we discuss the basics on how to create color histograms for images. A
histogram is a graphical representation of the number of pixels in an image. As an
example, assume a 10
6 pixel image shown in Fig. 4.1. The pixels are one-byte
data, and their values are between 0 and 255. The histogram for this simple image is
shown in Fig. 4.2.
Color histogram is a representation of the distribution of colors in an image. To
calculate the frequency of each color component, we simply increment a counter for
every RGB component value between 0 and 255. All we need is three arrays of size
256 indexes. We iterate over each component in RGB and using the component
value as the index, we increment the counter in the array. You can observe how to do
this in code excerpt below:

int length = image.width * image.height * image.n;

int red[256] = {0};
int blue[256] = {0};
int green[256] = {0};

for(int i=0; i < length; i += image.n) {

red[image.pixels[i]]++;
blue[image.pixels[i+1]]++;
green[image.pixels[i+2]]++;
}

In the programming example, we also calculate grayscale histogram for an image

using this formula from Chaps. 1 and 3.

Y ¼ 0:3R þ 0:6G þ 0:1G

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 21

B. Furht et al., Digital Image Processing: Practical Approach, SpringerBriefs in
Computer Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96634-2_4
22 4 Creating Image Histograms

25 32 29 29 36 34 36 27 33 26
28 35 28 36 26 38 26 38 34 31
35 25 26 32 38 29 35 26 36 29
28 32 34 25 32 27 38 30 33 26
26 35 29 27 25 32 35 29 35 37
34 28 32 36 31 29 37 35 25 29
Fig. 4.1 An example of an image 10
6 pixels. All values are between 0 and 255

6
FREQUENCY

0
0 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 255
PIXEL VALUE

Fig. 4.2 Histogram function for a simple 10
6 pixels image

4.1 Program for Creating Histograms

In the demo program we wrote for this chapter, we perform the same calculation
shown above. When the program is opened, it displays a single button. Clicking the
button pops up a list of the files of the current working directory. When an image file
is selected, the program loads the image and computes the values of the histogram
for R, G, and B channels along with the grayscale values of each pixels. Figure 4.3
shows a screenshot of the demo program.
The x-axis of each plot is in the range of value between 0 and 255 as discussed
already. The y-axis is the number of occurrences of each of these values. As can be
observed, we have four histograms, one for each channel and one for the grayscale
version of the image. ImGui does not display the values of the x and y axes initially,
but hovering your mouse over the graph reveals the values in the form of a pop
up. Here’s a section of the code where the image is loaded and the histograms are
computed:
4.1 Program for Creating Histograms 23

Fig. 4.3 Screenshot of the histogram program

//opens the file list and assigns to tmp

std::string tmp = image_select(0);
if (tmp != "") {

reset_image(&a);
a.pixels = stbi_load(tmp.c_str(), &a.width, &a.height, &a.n, RGBA);
assert(a.pixels != NULL);
texture_image(&a);

// reset arrays
memset(red, 0, sizeof(float) * 256);
memset(green, 0, sizeof(float) * 256);
memset(blue, 0, sizeof(float) * 256);
memset(gray, 0, sizeof(float) * 256);

int length = a.width * a.height * RGBA;

for(int i = 0; i < length; i+= RGBA) {

red[a.pixels[i]] += 1.0f;
green[a.pixels[i+1]] += 1.0f;
blue[a.pixels[i+2]] += 1.0f;

int grayscale = roundf((a.pixels[i] * r_gray) + (a.pixels[i+1] * g_gray) +

(a.pixels[i+2] * b_gray));

gray[grayscale] += + 1.0f;
}
}
Other documents randomly have
different content
of a stripling, or of some particular person, or institution—became a
feeble and trifling character, but, betaking himself to the vast ocean
of beauty, and contemplating it, may give birth to many fine and
stately discourses and sentiments on the boundless field of
philosophy.'
The confusion of Mr. Jowett's rendering here appears to us
extraordinary. 'Being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one
youth, or man, or institution, himself a slave, mean and calculating,
but looking at the abundance of beauty, and drawing towards the
sea of beauty, and creating and beholding(!) many fair and noble
thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom.'
We are compelled to ask, in all earnestness, Would such construing
as this be tolerated from a boy of the sixth form in any public school
in the kingdom? Our suspicions are aroused, that the Oxford Greek
Professor has admitted aid from less competent hands, and, in a too
generous confidence, has failed to look closely over the contributions
which he invited and received. Plato, we cannot doubt, in the above
passage, has been expounding his own aspirations for leaving
behind him what he elsewhere calls 'offspring of the mind,'—viz.,
immortal records of his own genius in the composition of his
Dialogues. He goes on to speak of the ultimate attainment of that
highest καλὸν, the knowledge of abstract science, or rather of
science, ἐπιστήμη, in the abstract; and in language evidently
borrowed from the economy of the Eleusinian mysteries, he
proceeds to ask what must be the happiness of those who, as the
result of a right discipline on earth, attain hereafter to the enjoyment
of the τὸ θεῖον μονοεῖδες, the Beatific Vision of God, or rather (if we
might say) of 'Godness,' unmixed with human frailties and
imperfections. The passage itself reads almost like one inspired; and
it is very remarkable how exalted and spiritual an idea of the Deity
Plato had realized. He seems to transcend the anthropomorphic
doings and sayings attributed to the Jehovah of the Old Testament.
In rendering such a passage, Mr. Jowett should have devoted
especial pains to attain the closest accuracy possible, for every word
is a jewel. Yet he wrongfully renders τὰ καλὰ έπιτηδεύματα, 'fair
actions,' and τὰ καλὰ μαθήματα, 'fair notions,' (p. 211, c.), whereas
'institutions' (laws, &c.), and 'lessons,' or 'instructions,' are really
meant; and the important words, ἐκεῖνο ᾦ δεῖ θεωμένου,
'contemplating that beauty by and with the proper faculty, i.e., νῷ,
with mind, not with mere eyes,' he omits, apparently because
ὁρῶντι ᾦ ὁρατὸν τὸ καλὸν occurs a little further on.
We have devoted some space to the examination of the Symposium,
because we have found in it, perhaps more than elsewhere,
indications of hasty and superficial rendering. Yet Mr. Jowett himself
says, in his introduction, 'Of all the works of Plato, the Symposium is
the most perfect in form,—more than any other Platonic dialogue, it
is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty "as of a statue."'
Special care, therefore, should have been taken in presenting it
accurately to the English reader. Turn we now to the Phædo,—that
remarkable essay, which has exercised more influence than some
are willing to suppose on all subsequent theology, and which,
though of little weight as an argument in proof of the immortality of
the soul, is of such special interest as standing alone among the
writings of the age in advocating anything approaching to the
Christian idea of a good man's hopes and prospects of a happy
existence hereafter. For even Aristotle, it is well known, in a
professed treatise on the laws and ends that influence men's action
(the 'Ethics'), in no case appeals to moral responsibility, obedience to
Divine commands, or the hopes of a happy eternity. He does not
seem to rise above the conception of the half-conscious Homeric
ghost or εἴδωλον wandering disconsolate in the shades below. And
even of this state of existence he speaks doubtfully (Eth. i. ch. x.) In
this treatise, the Phædo, we may say at once, and with pleasure, Mr.
Jowett has given us a tolerably close, as well as a fairly accurate
rendering throughout. It is hard indeed to believe that the two
dialogues can have been translated by the same hand. Let us cite,
as a good example, the following extract (p. 66, b.):—
'And when they consider all this, must not true philosophers make a
reflection, of which they will speak to one another in such words as
 these: We have found, they will say, a path of speculation which
seems to bring us and the argument to the conclusion, that while we
are in the body, and while the soul is mingled with this mass of evil,
our desire will not be satisfied, and our desire is of the truth? For the
body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere
requirement of food; and also is liable to diseases which overtake and
impede us in the search after truth, and by filling us as full of loves,
and lusts, and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly,
prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a thought. For
whence come wars, and fightings, and factions—whence, but from
the lusts of the body? For wars are occasioned by the love of money,
and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the
body; and in consequence of all these things, the time which ought to
be given to philosophy is lost. Moreover, if there is time, and an
inclination towards philosophy, yet the body introduces a turmoil, and
confusion, and fears into the course of speculation, and hinders us
from seeing the truth; and all experience shows that if we would have
pure knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body, and the
soul in herself must behold all things in themselves; then, I suppose,
that we shall attain that which we desire, and of which we say that
we are lovers, and that is wisdom: not while we live, but after death,
as the argument shows; for if, while in company with the body, the
soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow
—either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death.
For then, and not till then, the soul will be in herself alone and
without the body.'

There is not a word we could wish altered in the above, except,

indeed, that 'a path of speculation which seems to bring us and the
argument to the conclusion,' should rather have been, 'a kind of
path which carries us on, with reason for our guide (μετὰ τοῦ
λόγου), in the speculation.' A little below (67, b.), μὴ καθαρῷ
καθαροῦ ἐφάπτεσθαι, is not exactly, 'no impure thing is allowed to
approach the pure'—a version that savours too much of the
language of Christian theology—but, 'to realize the pure with that
faculty which is not itself pure,' i.e., with νοῦς not entirely
dissociated from σῶμα. The abstract, he says, cannot be realized by
the intellect while bound up with the concrete. In p. 80, b., τὸ
νοητὸν and τὸ ἀνόητον are not 'the intelligible and the
unintelligible;' nor, in p. 81, d., is τὸ ὁρατὸν, 'sight.' Everyone knows
that τὰ αἰσθητὰ, 'the sensuous,' or things which are the objects of
sense, are opposed to τὰ νοητὰ, those which are abstract, and can
be realized only by the mind; and a soul, or ghost, is said μετέχειν
τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, not as 'cloyed with sight,' but as 'having yet something
of the visible,' or concrete, i.e., some lingering remnants of body,
which render it visible.
The passage in p. 82, e., is rather difficult, and has been
misunderstood by others. Mr. Jowett's rendering is, 'the soul is only
able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her
own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance; and
philosophy, seeing the horrible nature of her confinement, and that
the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity,' &c.
We think that τοῦ εἱρχμοῦ ἡ δεινότης means, 'the strong tie, or hold,
that the prison—i.e., the body—has on the soul;' and that ὅτι δι'
ἐπιθυμίας ἐστὶ means, 'that it, the prison, is actually liked.' Thus,
says Plato, attached as the soul is to the allurements and pleasures
of the body, the latter 'helps the captive to remain in captivity.' Thus,
in Æsch., Prom. v. 39:
Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινὸν ἤ θ' ὁμιλία,

and elsewhere, δεινὸν, 'a serious matter,' is opposed to φαῦλον,

what is trifling and unimportant.
On the whole, this version of the Phædo is well and carefully
executed. As a treatise, it is of the highest interest, if only from the
firm belief it everywhere shows in the immortality of the soul—a
belief which is nothing short of a real faith, and which seems almost
to labour at demonstration by varied and often very subtle
arguments, as if the writer was half conscious, all the while, that
demonstration in such a matter is quite beyond the province either
of logic or physics. But 'dialectics' were thought equal to any
difficulty. Says Cebes (p. 72, e.), 'Yes, I entirely think so; we are not
walking in a vain imagination; but I am confident in the belief that
there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring
from the dead; and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and
that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.' In this
remarkable passage we recognise the same sublime faith which gave
birth to the ecstatic exclamation, 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,'
and also the germs of the doctrine of a Resurrection in τὸ
ἀναβιώσκεσθαι τοὺς τεθνηκότας. No pagan writer before Plato had
attained to such exalted ideas of the destiny of a good man, to be
with God in the life hereafter. He is full of hope, Socrates says (p. 63,
b.), that he shall meet in the other world the wise and the good who
have departed hence before him, and still more sure that he shall go
to those blessed beings whom (with his usual acquiescence in the
popular mythology) he calls ἀγαθοὶ δεσπόται. The doctrine of
Resurrection is not really distinct from that of Metempsychosis, both
being in fact held by Orphic or Pythagorean teachers (ὁ παλαιὸς
λόγος, p. 70, c.), as was that of a final judgment, often insisted on
by Plato, as by Pindar and Æschylus before him. The fixed notion
with the ancient physicists was, that soul (ψυχὴ, or vitality) was air
(πνεῦμα, spiritus, animus, ἄνεμος),—for all turn upon this notion.
When a person died, his last gasp was supposed to be the vital air or
soul leaving the body, and departing into its kindred and eternal
ether. The air, in fact, was thought to be full of souls; and each
nascent form, whether of man or animal, in drawing its first breath,
might inhale a life, i.e., the actual ψυχὴ that had animated some
former body. Hence arose the notion of cycles of existence, of more
or less duration, and of triple lives of probation on earth (Pind. ol. ii.
68). This doctrine of a return to earth after some period of residence
in Hades is plainly affirmed, Phæd., p. 107, e., and 113, a., and
Phædr., p. 249. One of the penalties of a misspent life was thought
to be a detention on earth in an inferior and grovelling state of
existence. 'If we tell the wicked' (says Socrates in Theætetus, p.
177, a.) 'that if they do not get rid of that cleverness of theirs, that
place which is pure and free from evil will never receive them after
they are dead, but that here on earth they will have to pass an
existence like to themselves—bad associating with bad; all this they
will hear as the language of fools addressed to men of cunning and
genius.'
The oft-expressed fear of the loss, destruction, or dissipation of the
soul after death, lest, as Cebes says (Phæd., p. 70, a.), 'the moment
it leaves the body it should be dispersed and fly away like a puff of
wind or smoke, and be nowhere,' arose from the philosophical value
attached to the soul as the organ and instrument, or perhaps the
seat, of true φρόνησις, intellectuality, and comprehension of things
abstract and divine. This faculty the thinkers of this school regarded
as impeded and retarded by the union with the body. Of nervous
force and brain-power as the real source of intelligence, they had no
idea. In this respect, modern science is even more materialistic than
ancient philosophy. 'If,' says Socrates (p. 107, b.), 'the soul is really
immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of
the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the
danger of neglecting her, from this point of view, does indeed appear
to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would
have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily
quit not only of their body, but of their own evil, together with their
souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is
no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest
virtue and wisdom (ὡς βελτίστην καὶ φρονιμωτάτην).' Life, then,
according to Plato, should be a constant process of assimilation to
God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, Theæt., p. 176, b.), a discipline and a learning
how to die (Phæd., p. 67, d.), because God is the type and fount as
it were of all justice, wisdom, and truth. 'The release from evil,'
ἀποφυγὴ, was a favourite topic with Plato, whose mind had received
a strongly cynical impression from the prevalent selfishness and
injustice of the Athenians, and especially from the crowning act of
fanatical injustice, as he considered it, in putting Socrates to death.
That, in his view, was simply to extinguish truth, to banish justice, to
ignore intellectuality, reason, and philosophy as the guides of life.
His speculations on the origin of evil, and the permission of its
existence on earth, are very interesting. In the grand passage
(Theætet., p. 176, a.), he thinks that its existence, as a correlative of
good, is a necessary law, i.e., there would be no such thing as good
if it were not in contrast with what is bad; just as we can conceive of
cold only by the opposite quality of heat, or death by the contrasted
state of life. But Plato had no idea of an evil spirit—the Semitic
doctrine of a Satan—as the personal author of evil. In Republ., ii. p.
379, c., he says that God is the author only of good; but as there is
more of evil in the world than of good, God is not the cause of all
things that happen to man; 'but of evil we must look for some other
causes' (ἄλλ' ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸν θεόν). The Aryan
mind did not realize the personality of an Evil Being. 'The Aryan
nations had no devil' ('Chips from a German Workshop,' ii., p. 235).
Of penal abodes in the other world, however, Socrates had an idea;
in truth, the doctrine of a purgatory (δικαιωτήριον, Phædr., p. 249,
a.; τὸ τῆς τίσεως τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, Gorg., p. 523, b.), as
well as of a hell, is distinctly Platonic. Into the one the ἰάσιμοι, into
the other the ἀνίατοι, the curable and the incurable sinners
respectively go. (Gorg., p. 526, b.) So Phædo, p. 113, d.:—
'When the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each
severally conveys them, first of all, they have sentence passed upon
them, as they have lived well and piously or not. And those who
appear to have lived neither well nor ill go to the river Acheron, and
mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to
the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and
suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and
are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according
to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of
the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible
deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are
hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never
come out.' (Jowett, p. 464.)

The whole of this theory is developed in detail in the tenth book of

the Republic.
Thinkers will not be deterred from asking themselves, with all
solemnity and in all love of truth, How far is this doctrine of a hell
really a revealed truth, or a Platonic speculation, or both? If it is
both one and the other, either Plato anticipated Christian Revelation,
or Revelation confirmed Plato. Plato, without doubt, did not invent a
doctrine which was familiar to the Semitic theology long before him.
Still, it may be true that the Platonic theories are totally independent
of Jewish traditions, and that the belief in a penal state of existence
after death (so clearly developed in the well-known passage of Virgil,
Æn., vi. 735, seq.), like that of a last Judgment, had its origin rather
in the speculation of mystics, and passed into the popular theology
of Christian teachers. The doctrine of retribution for sin (τίσις) may
be clearly traced to the Pythagorean dogma δράσαντι παθεῖν, so
often insisted upon by Æschylus,—'the doer must suffer.' It was
manifest to all, that such suffering was no rule upon earth, since
many villains escaped scot-free; and therefore a filling up of the
measure hereafter was thought a necessary condition for the sinner.
The beneficence of Christianity consisted primarily in this, that it
held out a hope that such a debt of suffering could be paid
vicariously; whereas the only hope of release held out by Plato (p.
114, a.) was the forgiveness of the persons who had been wronged
on earth. This ancient idea of a stern law of reciprocity, 'an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' is distinctly attributed by Aristotle,
who calls it τὸ ἀντιπεπονθὸς, to Pythagoras, Eth. N.V. ch. 8. Be this
as it may, it is a very interesting fact that Plato, the first writer of
pagan antiquity who describes a bright, supernal heaven, the abode
of gods and blessed men who hold converse with them, and a
dismal, infernal abode of fire (Phædo, p. 110–113,) derives all his
imagery in describing the latter from the effects of volcanic
outbreaks, to which he even definitely compares it (p. 111, d.) His
description of heaven, which in the Phædrus (p. 247, c.) he places
far above the sky, the ὑπερουράνιος τόπος, with some reference to
the Hesiodic doctrine of a supernal firmament or floor, in the Phædo
is a singular compound of the Homeric Olympus and the Elysium and
Isles of the Blest in the legends of the earlier poets. Those legends
placed Elysium below, and the Isles of the Blest on the earth. Plato's
heaven is on the earth indeed, but on a part of it elevated far above
the Mediterranean basin, where, he says, men live in a
comparatively dim and misty atmosphere. His account suggests the
idea that he had heard some tradition of the healthy and prosperous
life of the natives on the sunny slopes of the giant Himalaya
mountains. But Plato's heaven is also, to a considerable extent, the
heaven of the Revelation. Both are described in very materialistic
terms. To this day, the popular notion of heaven is undoubtedly
associated with saints in white garments, crowns and thrones of
gold and gems, music, brightness, and eternal hallelujahs. One little
coincidence between the Platonic and the Apocalyptic account is too
remarkable to be omitted. In Plato (p. 110, d.) we are told that,
besides silver and gold, heaven is spangled with gems of which
earthly gems are but fragments, σάρδια τε καὶ ἰάσπιδας καὶ
σμαράγδους. In the fourth chapter of the Revelation (ver. 3) we
read, ἰδοῦ θρόνος ἔκειτο ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου
καθήμενος· καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἦν ὅμοιος ὁπάσει (al. σαρδίῳ) · καὶ ἶρις
κυκλόθεν τοῦ θρόνου ὅμοιος ὅράσει σμαραγδίνῳ.
Scarcely less remarkable is the coincidence of the four rivers that
surround the abode of shades in the under world (Phædo, p. 112,
e.), and the four rivers that encompassed the 'Garden of Eden'
(Genesis ii. 10–14). As for the river Acheron and the Acherusian
lake, not only does the word contain, like Achelöus, the root aq,
water, but the involved notion of ἄχος, 'grief,' suggested its fitness as
an infernal river, not less than the Κώκυτος, named from groans.
The disappearance of a river in a chasm or 'swallow,' like the Styx in
Arcadia and the Erasinus in Argolis, also gave credibility to the
existence of infernal rivers, as much as volcanic ebullitions seemed
to be proofs of subterranean fire lakes. But it is rather curious that a
geographical identity in name should exist between the Acherusian
lake and river in Thesprotia (Thucyd., i. 46), and the semi-mythical
lake and river in the above passages of the Phædo. The tendency to
localize adits to the regions below was very strong; so the lake
Avernus, and the promontory of Tænarus, and the καταῤῥάκτης
ὀδὸς at Colonus (Soph. Œd. Col. 1590) were all regarded with awe
as places giving direct communication with the shades below.
The simple but very touching narrative of the death of Socrates at
the conclusion of the dialogue, sets forth in golden words the calm
resignation, the perfect faith and happiness of the death of a truly
good man. The brevity and want of detail in the last scene is very
remarkable. Mr. Jowett gives it thus:—
 'Socrates alone retained his calmness. What is this strange outcry? he
said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not
offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace.
Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that, we were
ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he
said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to
the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then
looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard,
and asked him if he could feel, and he said, No; and then his leg, and
so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff.
And he felt them himself, and said, When the poison reaches the
heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the
groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up,
and said (they were his last words)—he said, Crito, I owe a cock to
Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid,
said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this
question: but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the
attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his
eyes and mouth.'

We will make bold to observe on this celebrated passage, that it

bears the impress of a dramatic scene rather than of a history. That
Plato himself was not present as an eye-witness is expressly told us
at the beginning of the dialogue (p. 59, b.) The narrative, to say
nothing of the improbability of the execution of a distinguished
criminal taking place before a company of friends at a social
meeting, seems to us framed in ignorance of the medical nature of
either narcotic or alkaloid poisons, and to have been compiled to suit
the popular notions of the effects of κώνειον (whether the word
means 'hemlock' or some other compound drug). The idea was, as is
clear from the verse in the Frogs of Aristophanes—
εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπήγνυσι τἀντικνήμια

that death by this poison was caused by a gradual freezing up, or

suspension of vital power, beginning at the lower extremities, and
creeping up to the heart. Whether a vigorous old man would die in
this easy, gradual, and painless way by any known poison, is a
medical question we should like to see answered. It may be
observed, too, that if the poison were a narcotic, like laudanum, the
'walking about' was precisely the wrong course to take. That is the
method specially adopted to prevent and counteract the numbness
caused by an overdose of morphia or laudanum. That Socrates was
really poisoned, there can be no doubt; but the deed was probably
done, as we think, in the darkness of a prison, and the Platonic
scene was invented to give a vivid picture of the grand old man's
calmness and dignity to the last.
Be this as it may, it may be fairly assumed that the deep injustice of
the Athenian republic in thus removing from a scene of usefulness,
and of harmless, if somewhat unpopular banter, this great teacher,
rankled very deeply in the heart of Plato. It is the real source of that
most favourite of all topics, that theme on which all his disquisitions
on moral worth turn—ἀδικία, or injustice. This may be called the
key-note of the Republic, as it is, in fact, of the Gorgias and the
Protagoras, not to mention the very numerous passages in other
dialogues. Plato is ever fond of putting in the mouth either of
Socrates or his friends passages which he could hardly have uttered,
for they have a clear reference to the want of success in his
'Apologia' at the trial, through the non-use of clap-trap, δημηγορία,
and ῥητορική. (See Gorgias, p. 486, a.; Theætet., p. 172, c., 174, c.)
Modern writers on morals or casuistry do not, directly, at least, take
injustice as the basis of all their teaching, even though, in a sense,
all vice is a form of injustice, either to oneself or one's neighbour.
The fate of Socrates, and the reasons of it, bear some analogy to
the unpopularity and harsh treatment which great moral reformers
have received in almost every country and under every form of
government. The alleged interference both in public and private
affairs, the resistance to popular indulgences and vicious pleasures,
and the persistent lecturing men of deadened conscience, are more
than human nature is prepared to stand, if pressed beyond a certain
point. In the Theætetus (p. 149, a.), Socrates sums up the popular
odium against himself in these words: 'They say of me that I am an
exceedingly strange being, who drives men to their wits' end;' and in
the Apology he distinctly traces the διαβολὴ, or misrepresentation of
his motives and practices, to the ridicule brought upon him (some
twenty years before) by the Clouds of Aristophanes. But the real
cause of his unpopularity was the fearless way in which he told
unpalatable truths: as that men should care for their souls more
than for their money, and that a life without self-examination was
not worth the living, ὁ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἄνθρώπῳ (Apol.,
p. 29, e., 36, c., 38, a.) This was stronger doctrine, at least so far as
concerns the preference of money to all religious cares, than could
safely be preached now-a-days from a pulpit in London. We
remember the case of a clergyman being quite recently bemobbed
and rather roughly treated because he attempted to do so. No! the
sophist and the Christian moralist alike must give way when
resistance to the career of human feeling is pressed too far, just as a
river will surmount or wash away altogether the dam constructed to
check its course.
Before parting with the Phædo, we must be allowed to cite one
passage, describing the earlier career of Socrates as a philosopher,
because it has always seemed to us the true key to the
understanding of the widely different views taken by Aristophanes
and Plato of the real character of Socrates. The passage occurs in p.
96, a., and is rendered by Mr. Jowett thus:
'When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know that
department of philosophy which is called Natural Science; this
appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being the science which has to
do with the causes of things, and which teaches why a thing is, and is
created and destroyed; and I was always agitating myself with the
consideration of such questions as these: Is the growth of animals the
result of some decay which the hot and cold principle [principles]
contract, as some have said? Is the blood the element with which we
think, or the air, or the fire? or perhaps nothing of this sort—but the
brain may be the originating power of the perceptions of hearing, and
sight, and smell, and memory, and opinion may come from them, and
science may be based on memory and opinion when no longer in
motion, but at rest.... Then I heard (p. 97, b.) some one who had a
book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind was
the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion
of this, which appeared admirable, and I said to myself, If mind is the
disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in
 the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to find out the
cause of the generation or destruction or existence of anything, he
must find out what state of being or suffering or doing was best for
that thing, and therefore a man had only to consider the best for
himself and others, and then he would also know the worse, for that
the same science comprised both. And I rejoiced to think that I had
found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I
desired, and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the earth
is flat or round; and then he would further explain the cause and the
necessity of this, and would teach me the nature of the best, and
show that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in the
centre, he would explain that this position was the best, and I should
be satisfied if this were shown to me, and not want any other sort of
cause.'

Now this avowal on the part of Socrates, that in his earlier career he
was a follower of the physical philosophers, goes far to explain
several important points. In the first place, it explains to us the
propriety, and in some sense the justice, of Aristophanes' sketch of
Socrates, some twenty years earlier than we know of the
philosopher's mind from Plato, viz., as a speculator on meteorics
after the fashion of Anaxagoras himself, a star-gazer, a lecturer on
clouds and thunder and circling motions, rain and mist, and
phenomena celestial and subterranean. We know, indeed, from
Diogenes Laertius, ii. 4, that Socrates had been a hearer of
Archelaus, himself a pupil of Anaxagoras. And thus we understand
why Socrates was identified with the other sophists or schoolmen of
the day, who taught 'wisdom' generally, ethics not less than physics.
As subverters of the established traditions about the gods, and
exponents of truth to the best of their knowledge, they met with the
same opposition and the same obloquy, in their day, that the
Huxleys and the Darwins, and other conspicuous men of our own
times, are not wholly exempt from. Their teaching was thought to be
'latitudinarian,' and so they were credited with many views from
which they would have recoiled with horror. In the Nubes (902),
Socrates is charged with denying the existence of justice, and
defending the proposition by the example of the gods, who
themselves set it at nought, as when Zeus maltreated and
imprisoned his own father, Cronus; and in the same play (1415), the
lawfulness of a son beating his father is maintained as a part of the
new-fangled Socratic creed. Now in the second book of the Republic
(p. 377, fin.), this case of Cronus is expressly repudiated by Socrates
as monstrous and unnatural; as also the doctrine that a son may
lawfully beat his own father for wrong-doing. In a very curious
passage of the 'Wasps' (1037), Aristophanes bitterly blames the
Athenians for not having supported him in putting down the
nuisance of the philosophers, whom he calls ἠπίαλοι and πυρετοὶ,
'agues' and 'fevers,' teachers of parricide, and base informers. By
not giving the prize, he says, to his play of the 'Clouds,' only the
year before, they had frustrated all his hopes of crushing and
extinguishing the philosophers. Now, these philosophers are
represented as headed by Socrates, and Socrates was the very worst
of them. That he was at that period (about twenty years before his
death) essentially a sophist, and incurring with the rest of them the
odium of the popular opinion, seems undeniable. The precise views
that he held on ethics, and consequently the exact nature of his
teaching at that period, we have no other means of knowing. But it
seems inconceivable that Aristophanes should have so grossly
misrepresented his character with the slightest chance of success;
and we know that it was his ardent desire that his play of the
'Clouds' should succeed. On the whole, we should say, there is a
greater chance that Aristophanes truly represented the feeling of his
age about Socrates than Plato, who, at best, gives us the Socrates
as endeared to his private friends—the man of matured thought, and
possibly of much altered and more chastened views. Nor ought we
to forget that Plato is as severe against the Sophists generally as
Aristophanes is against Socrates in particular. All high teaching at
Athens—all that we include in the idea of a college education—was
done by the Sophists. The art of ῥητορικὴ was one of the most
important: we can see the effect of the training incidentally in the
style and the speeches of Euripides and Thucydides. Socrates saw
that the ethical principles of the Sophists were wrong, and he
engaged in the dangerous task of trying to reform them.
But secondly, the Platonic passage gives us a clue to that sympathy
which Socrates, or at least Plato, always shows for the Eleatic school
of philosophy as represented by Zeno and Parmenides. 'Of all the
pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato speaks of the Eleatic with the
greatest respect,' says Mr. Jowett (Preface to Philebus, p. 227). That
school was a reaction from the teaching of the Ionic physicists,
Thales, Anaximenes, and others, who were speculators on natural
phenomena without any true system of induction. Anaxagoras'
doctrine of Νοῦς, or pervading intelligence, though purely a
pantheistic one, stood half-way between the two schools.
Xenocrates, the founder of the Eleatics, taught that Creation
emanated from a One Being, and not from a fortuitous concurrence
of atoms, from water or air, or states of repose, or flux, or any other
mere physical reason. In the Philebus (p. 28, c., and p. 30, d.) we
find an express eulogy and sympathy with Anaxagoras, whose views
were in truth much more adapted to the doctrine of ἰδέαι and
abstractions than the materialistic views of the Ionic school. And in
the Parmenides, one of the most obscure of the Platonic dialogues,
the discussions on τὸ ἓν, The One, and the relations of the real to
the phenomenal, though a great advance over the Eleatic doctrines,
which, as Mr. Jowett says, 'had not gone beyond the contradictions
of matter, motion, space, and the like' (Introd. Parmen., p. 234), still
are based on the views of Zeno in the main. Parmenides, indeed,
was 'the founder of idealism, and also of dialectic, or, in modern
phraseology, of metaphysics and logic.' (Ibid.)
We proceed now to the Theætetus, one of the most important, as
well as difficult, of the Platonic dialogues. To this Mr. Jowett has
written a rather long but excellent Introduction, replete with large
views of the Platonic philosophy, and containing many original and
striking remarks, e.g. (p. 329): 'The Greeks, in the fourth century
before Christ, had no words for "subject" and "object," and no
distinct conception of them; yet they were always hovering about
the question involved in them.' (We should be inclined to say, that
the familiar distinction between τὰ νοητὰ and τὰ αἰσθητὰ, to a
considerable extent represented our terms 'subjective' and
'objective.') Again (p. 328): 'The writings of Plato belong to an age
in which the power of analysis had outrun the means of knowledge;
and through a spurious use of dialectic, the distinctions which had
been already "won from the void and formless infinite," seemed to
be rapidly returning to their original chaos.' And (p. 353), 'The
relativity of knowledge' (viz., to the individual mind) 'is a truism to
us, but was a great psychological discovery in the fifth century
before Christ.' In p. 360 the remark is a shrewd one: 'The ancient
philosophers in the age of Plato thought of science' (i.e., ἐπιστήμη,
exact knowledge) 'only as pure abstraction, and to this opinion
(δόξα) stood in no relation.' The subject of Theætetus, 'What is
knowledge?' involving, as it doubtless does, some satire on Sophists,
who professed to teach what they were themselves unable to
explain, has been well called 'A critical history of Greek psychology
as it existed down to the fourth century.' In this treatise, the views
of the earlier philosophers, that there is no test of existence or
reality except perception, αἴσθησις, are impugned. Plato did not,
perhaps, himself hold the opinion that objective truth existed,
independently of opinion; but his favourite theory of ἰδέαι, or
abstracts, implied the existence of some typical, eternal, absolute
standard of goodness and justice, as well as of the beautiful. If this
were not the case, then all moral as well as all physical οὐσίαι would
depend on our sense of them. There would be no φύσει δίκαιον, but
only νόμῳ δίκαιον. That would be right in every state which the laws
enacted; and thus in two neighbouring states one course of acting
(say, lying or stealing, or promiscuous intercourse) would be right,
because it is legalised; in another it would be wrong, because
punishable by the law. Nor is this difficulty wholly imaginary, as
Aristotle felt. (Eth. Nic. V. ch. 7.) The old law, for instance,
sanctioned polygamy, as modern usage does in some parts of the
East; while the law of Europe condemns it. So in the case of murder:
a Greek thought it a solemn and absolute duty to slay the slayer of
his father; while we should regard it as one murder added to
another. There was a good deal of sense therefore in what
Protagoras taught, that 'man is the measure,' μέτρον ἄνθρωπος. If I
feel it hot, it is hot to me; if cold, then it is cold: or if wine tastes
sour, or bitter, because my digestion is in an abnormal state, then to
me it is sour or bitter; and it is no use to argue with me that it is
not, but you must set right my disordered stomach, and then the
wine will taste as it should. Apply this doctrine to the diversities of
religious belief; the Christian says the Buddhist and the
Mahommedan are wrong; and each of these retort the same on the
Christian and on each other. A thing cannot be absolutely true
merely because this or that party asserts it, which is but a 'petitio
principii.' Protagoras would have said, had he lived much later, and
not altogether absurdly, 'If this form of religion is one that you
embrace from conviction, and with entire faith in it, then to you it is
true.' And after saying this to the Christian, he would have turned to
the Buddhist and the Mahommedan, and have repeated the same
formula to each.
Now Plato, to make the victory over Protagoras more complete, first
shows, in the Theætetus, that he, Protagoras, by his doctrine of
μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, virtually holds the same opinion as those (1) who
make αἴσθησις the sole test of truth; (2) who, like Heraclitus, allow
of no fixed existence, but hold that πάντα γίγνεται, states of things
are always coming into being, because everything is in a state of
perpetual flux. For it is evident that each of these views denies any
permanent, stable, or objective existence of anything. Even a
momentary perception is a fleeting sensation, not a true and real
sense. While I say this paper is 'white,' some discoloration of it
occurred while the monosyllable was being pronounced, and
therefore it was not true that the paper was absolutely white. It
appears to us that the question which Mr. Jowett moots as a
difficulty in his Introduction (p. 326) is not really very important:
'Would Protagoras have identified his own thesis, "Man is the
measure of all things," with the other, "All knowledge is sensible
perception?" Secondly, would he have based the relativity of
knowledge on the Heraclitean flux?' The latter, we think, Protagoras
clearly does, when he says (p. 168, b.) ἥιλεῳ τῇ διανοίᾳ ξυγκαθεὶς
ὡς ἀληθῶς σκέψει, τί ποτε λέγομεν κινεῖσθαί τε ἀποφαινόμενοι τὰ
πάντα τό τε δοκοῦν ἑκάστῳ τοῦτο καὶ εἶναι ἰδιώτῃ τε καὶ πόλει. To us
it appears that Plato classed them together, simply because they are
logically coherent and inseparable. He insists that all sensations
imply a patient and an agent. Fire does not burn if there is nothing
for it to consume. Colour is non-existent (being a mere effect of
light), unless there is an eye to behold it. That indeed is true, and
Epicurus and Lucretius also perceived (Lucr., ii. 795) that three
conditions are wanted to produce colour—viz., light, an object to be
seen, and an eye to see it. It is quite true, that a person sees a red
or a blue cloth on a table while he looks at it, but that when he turns
his back upon it, it has no colour, because one of the three
conditions, the sight, has been withdrawn. Mr. Jowett seems,
however (with the disciples of a modern school), to press this
doctrine of relativity too far in asserting (Introd., p. 332), 'There
would be no world, if there neither were, nor never had been, any
one to perceive the world.' For we cannot escape from the
conclusion that the world must have existed (in the sense in which
we know of existence) prior to life, i.e., any perceptive faculty, being
placed upon it.
What appears to have struck Plato most strongly in considering the
doctrine of Protagoras was this—that if everybody is right, or as right
as any other, all reasoning, argument, persuasion, in fine, the whole
science of dialectics, becomes ipso facto useless and absurd (p. 161,
e.) There are no such characters as wise and foolish. Protagoras
himself felt the difficulty, but evaded it thus: the wise man is not one
who tries to argue a person out of his convictions, e.g., that justice
is only tyranny, or that sweet is bitter, but who so trains and
educates the mind or appetite that the sounder and better view will
spontaneously present itself. Thus a good sophist or a wise legislator
will endeavour so to educate and so to govern, that right and
reasonable views will approve themselves to the people. Again, in
judging of what will be good or useful in the end, sagacity is needed,
which clearly is not the property of everyone alike. A thing is right or
wrong only as individual conviction or the law of a State makes it so
for the time being; but in advising a certain course of action, where
result, and therefore, forethought are involved, one counsellor may
be greatly superior to another (p. 172). Hence, as legislation is
prospective, it is not true that one man's opinion as to the wisdom or
expediency of a measure is as good as another's; but there are
some things at least in which one man's must be better than
another's judgment.
It was thus that Protagoras endeavoured to reconcile the obvious
fact that some men were more clever than others, with the theory
that all morality is based on mere human opinion. And those persons
would take a very shallow view who think that all this is merely an
ingenious quibbling. The difficulties which Protagoras attempted to
solve are real ones, and only thinkers know to what extent all
questions, both of religion and casuistry, are bound up with them.
We proceed to perform, somewhat in brief, the less agreeable task
of showing that Mr. Jowett's version of the Theætetus, though
always fluent and pleasant to read, is not always as accurate as
might have been desired.
In p. 149, a., Socrates playfully asks Theætetus if he has never
heard that he, Socrates, is the son of a midwife, by name,
Phænaretè, μάλα γενναίας τε καὶ βλοσυρᾶς, 'a sour-faced old lady,'
we should say. Mr. Jowett somewhat oddly renders this phrase, a
'midwife, brave and burly.' The epithets mean something very
different. The first is an ironical allusion to the humble station of the
professional midwife, the latter to the alarm which her presence
might inspire in the timid.... For βλοσυρὸν is something that shocks
and causes terror, as in Æschylus, Suppl. 813; Eumen. 161. To this
real or supposed parentage of the philosopher, a joke is directed by
Aristophanes in the Nubes, 137—
καὶ φροντίδ' ἐξήμβλωκας έξευρημένην.

Perhaps also the Φαιναρέτη in Acharn. 49, may have reference to

this person. In p. 151, b., προσφέρου πρὸς ἐμὲ is not 'come to me,'
but 'behave towards me,' 'deal with me.' And in p. 156, a., ἀντίτυποι
ἄνθρωποι are not 'repulsive' mortals (at least, according to our
established use of the word), but 'refractory,' 'men on whom one can
make no impression,' but from whom a blow rebounds as a hammer
does from an anvil. Antisthenes and the cynical party seem to be
meant. In p. 156, d., we come to a very obscure passage. Mr.
Jowett's version is, 'And the slower elements have their motions in
the same place and about things near them, and thus beget; but the
things begotten are quicker, for their motions are from place to
place.' This is not very intelligible. For ἡ κίνησις, it seems to us that
we should read ἡ γένεσις. The figure of speech is taken from the
notion of sexual contact, and by πρὸς τὰ πλησιάζοντα τὴν κίνησιν
ἴσχει, Socrates seems to mean that certain impressions or objects
meet certain senses, e.g., sounds the ear, scents the nose, objects
the eye, but severally 'have their rate of motion according to the
speed of those faculties with which they naturally unite;' but, he
adds, the sensations of hearing, smelling, seeing are more
instantaneously perceived, when once produced, because the
γένεσις or production of such sensation takes place ἐν φορᾷ, while
the αἴσθησις and the αἰσθητὸν are moving in space towards each
other, and thus, as it were, the offspring partakes of the speed of
the parents. In plain words, sight and sound and smell are produced
at very different intervals of time, but are equally sudden sensations
when produced; and even those which are more slowly generated
are as quickly felt. (Compare Aristot., Eth. x. ch. iii. s. 4. πάσῃ
(κινήσει) γὰρ οἰκεῖον εἶναι δοκεῖ τὰχος καὶ βραδυτής .) In p. 159, d.,
ἡ γλυκύτης πρὸς τοῦ οἴνου περὶ αὐτὸν φερομένη seems to us to
mean, the sense of sweetness from the wine moving to and coming
upon the patient,' τὸν πάσχοντα (unless, indeed, we should read
περὶ αὐτὴν, i.e., γλῶσσαν, which would render the meaning rather
clearer). Mr. Jowett's version is, 'the quality of sweetness which
arises out of, and is moving about the wine.' Just below, περὶ δὲ τὸν
οἶνον γιγνομένην καὶ φερομένην πικρότητα, the words καὶ
φερομένην read very like an interpolation, as an attentive
consideration of the passage, we think, will show.
In p. 161, a., we come upon some rather loose rendering.
Theætetus asks Socrates whether he has not been all along
speaking in irony, and whether, having proved that black is white, he
is not prepared equally to prove that white is black. This, of course,
is a playful satire on his skill in dialectics. The words ἀλλὰ πρὸς θεῶν
εἰπὲ, ἦ αὖ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει, literally mean, 'But tell me in heaven's
name, is not all this, on the other hand, not so?' And so just below,
Socrates says, 'You are, indeed, a lover of arguments and a worthy
good soul, my Theodorus, for thinking that I am a mere bag of
words, and can easily bring them out when wanted, and prove that,
on the other hand, these things are not so.' In the very next words,
τὸ δὲ γιγνόμενον οὐκ ἐννοεῖς, there is a joke, and not a bad one, on
the doctrine, οὐδὲν ἔστιν ἀλλὰ πάντα γίγνεται. Mr. Jowett's version
of the whole passage seems rather careless: 'But I should like to
know, Socrates, by heaven I should, whether you mean to say that
all this is untrue? Socrates: You are fond of argument, Theodorus,
and now you innocently fancy that I am a bag full of arguments, and
can easily pull one out which will prove the reverse of all this. But
you do not see that in reality none of these arguments come from
me. They all come from him who talks with me. I only know just
enough to extract them from the wisdom of another, and to receive
them in a spirit of fairness.' The last words, ἀποδέξασθαι μετρίως,
more accurately mean, 'to take it from its parent fairly well,' i.e., as a
theme for discussion. The phrase μητρόθεν δέχεσθαι, said of the
nurse taking a newly-born infant, is playfully alluded to.
In p. 161, c., Mr. Jowett's version but poorly represents the real
sense of a keenly ironical passage:—'Then, when we were
reverencing him as a god, he might have condescended to inform us
that he was no wiser than a tadpole, and did not even aspire to be a
man: would not this have produced an overpowering effect?' The
exact words of Plato are these: 'In which case he would have
commenced his address to us in grand style, and very
contemptuously, by letting us see that we have been looking up to
him, as to a god, for his wisdom, while he all the time was in no
degree superior, in respect of intelligence, to a tadpole, not to say to
any other man.' The point is, that if Protagoras had commenced his
work entitled 'Truth,' with the proposition, 'A pig is the measure of all
things' (i.e., the standard by which feelings and notions are to be
tested), 'he would have well shown his contempt of men who
foolishly took him for an authority.' Of course the very object and
heart's desire of Protagoras in writing such a book was to be thought
supremely clever. Hence the irony is apparent.
Again, in p. 160, b., Socrates says to Theodorus:—
'You have capitally expressed my weakness by your simile (τὴν νόσον
μου ἀπείκασας). I, however, am stouter (ἰσχυρικώτερος) than they;
for before now many and many a Hercules and Theseus' (meaning, of
course, many Sophists), 'on meeting me, men brave at talk, have
pounded me right well; but I don't give it up for all that, so strong a
passion has taken possession of my soul for this kind of exercise.
Therefore, do not refuse on your part to prepare for a contest with
me, and so to benefit yourself and me alike.'

We see no reason whatever why the above should have been diluted
down to such a version as this:—
'I see, Theodorus, that you perfectly apprehend the nature of my
complaint; but I am even more pugnacious than the giants of old, for
I have met with no end of heroes. Many a Hercules, many a Theseus,
mighty in words, have broken my head; nevertheless, I am always at
this rough game, which inspires me like a passion. Please, then, to
indulge me with a trial, for your own edification as well as mine.'

The following (p. 175, a.) is not satisfactory:—

'And when some one boasts of a catalogue of twenty-five ancestors,
and goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot
understand his poverty of ideas. Why is he unable to calculate that
Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been
anybody, and was such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth,
and so on? He is amused at the notion that he cannot do a sum, and
thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of his senseless
vanity.'

What Plato really says is this:—

'But, when men pride themselves on a list of five-and-twenty
ancestors, and trace them back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, it
seems to him surprising that they should make these trumpery
reckonings; and they should not be able (further) to calculate that the
 twenty-fifth from Amphitryon backwards was just such a person as
fortune chanced to make him, or at least the fiftieth from him, and
thus to get rid of the vanity of a senseless mind,—at this he cannot
suppress a smile.'

In p. 194, c., the words τὰ ἰόντα διὰ τῶν αἰσθήσεων, ἐνσημαινόμενα

εἰς τοῦτ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς κέαρ, ὃ ἔφη Ὅμηρος, &c., should be rendered,
'the impressions entering us through our senses, leaving their marks
on this heart's core, as Homer called it, intending to express in
allegory the resemblance between κῆρ and κηρός,' &c. Mr. Jowett
rather loosely turns it,—'the impressions which pass through the
senses and sink into the [waxen] heart of the soul, as Homer says in
a parable,' &c. And just below, the words εἶτα οὐ παραλλάττουσι τῶν
αἰσθήσεων τὰ σημεῖα, which he renders 'and are not liable to
confusion,' might just as well have been brought out in their true
sense, 'and further, they do not misapply the impressions of (or left
by) the senses;' for παραλλάσσειν is 'to change wrongly,' and is a
word selected as exactly and most happily representing the idea
Plato wished to convey, that confused memories owe their confusion
to not keeping distinctly apart the impressions formerly received. A
few lines further on, ὅταν λάσιόν του τὸ κέαρ ᾖ, ὃ δὴ ἐπῄνεσεν ὁ
πάντα σοφὸς ποιητὴς, ἢ ὅταν κοπρῶδες &c., there are some points
which only a careful rendering will bring out. In taking a delicate
impression of a seal or gem on clarified wax, a hair left in it would
mar the impression. And the dark yellow colour of natural wax was
thought by the Greeks to be made foul by the dirt of the insects;
clarifying it, in fact, was 'defæcation.' So we render it thus:—'When,
then, a man's heart has hairs in it, which is the state the all-wise
poet referred to [in calling it λάσιον κῆρ ], or when it has dirt left in
it, or is made of wax that is not pure [but adulterated], or too soft or
too hard, then,' &c. Now this hardly appears in Mr. Jowett's version,
'But when the heart of any one is shaggy, as the poet who knew
everything says, or muddy and of impure wax, or very soft, or very
hard, then,' &c.
Of the Phædrus, as a whole, Mr. Jowett appears to us to give a
correct account, in saying (Introd., p. 552) that
 'the continuous thread which appears and reappears throughout is
rhetoric. This is the ground into which the rest of the dialogue is
inlaid, in parts embroidered with fine words, "in order to please
Phædrus." The speech of Lysias and the first speech of Socrates are
examples of the false rhetoric, as the second speech of Socrates is
adduced as an instance of the true. But the true rhetoric is based
upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin to love; they
are two aspects of philosophy in which the technicalities of rhetoric
are absorbed. The true knowledge of things in heaven and earth is
based upon enthusiasm or love of the ideas; and the true order of
speech or writing proceeds according to them.'

With regard to the first speech of Socrates on Love (p. 237, c., to
241, d.) it appears to us that it is not so much 'an example of the
false rhetoric,' as a proof how much better and more logically even a
paradoxical subject can be treated by a dialectician than by a mere
rhetorician. The hit at Phædrus for having given no definition
whatever of his subject (p. 237, c.) is one of the points of contrast
which is very significant; and there is this subtle irony underlying the
whole speech, that whereas Socrates undertook to prove that
χαρίζεσθαι μὴ ἐρῶντι was better than χαρίζεσθαι ἐρῶντι, his essay is
made to turn, in fact, simply on the latter point, μὴ χαρίζεσθαι
ἐρῶντι, so as to be a diatribe against vicious παιδεραστία; only a
word or two at the end being added in apparent sanction of the
other, and by way of verbally fulfilling the engagement he had made:
λέγω οὖν ἑνι λόγῳ, ὅτι ὅσα τὸν ἕτερον λελοιδορήκαμεν, τῷ ἑτέρῳ
τἀναντία τούτων ἀγαθὰ πρόσεστι (p. 341, fin.) And the palinodia, or
pretended recantation (p. 244, seq.), cleverly pursues the same
theme, by showing that love, in its philosophical and nonsensual
phase, is a divine emotion, and the source of every blessing to man.
The famous allegory that follows, which means that Reason should
control Passion, gives a sketch of the orderly and well-trained man,
gradually recovering, even as the depraved mind gradually loses, the
impressions and memories of the god-like existence men enjoyed in
a previous state. The latter part of the dialogue hangs on to the
allegory, not indeed very directly; rather, we should say, it reverts to
the former part, and is intended to show, by a critique of the two
essays, that no essayist or speech-maker can hope to succeed, who
derives all his art from rules and treatises and the pedantic
phraseology of the teachers. He must trust to dialectic, i.e., the
science of hard and close reasoning, if he would rise above mere
δημηγορία, or clap-trap; and psychology itself must form the basis of
dialectic.
Mr. Jowett's version of this dialogue is fully as lax as that of the
Symposium. Still it reads pleasantly, and if one could forget the
incomparable and often so much more expressive Greek, one would
be fairly content with the general correctness of the paraphrase.
Almost at the outset, he renders εἴ σοι σχολὴ προϊόντι ἀκούειν, 'if
you have leisure to stay and listen,' instead of 'to walk on and listen,'
where a slight satire is intended on the 'constitutional' and
prescribed exercise of the effeminate youth. And γέγραφε γὰρ δὴ ὁ
Λυσίας πειρώμενόν τινα τῶν καλῶν, οὐχ ὑπ' ἐραστοῦ δὲ, ἀλλ' αὐτὸ
τοῦτο καὶ κεκόμψευται means, 'Lysias, you must know, has written
about one of the handsome youths having proposals made to him,
not, however, by a lover; but this is the very point he has put in a
new and quaint light.' (Of course, κεκόμψευται, to which we have
given a medial sense, may also be taken as a passive.) Mr. Jowett
gives us nothing nearer to the above than 'Lysias imagined a fair
youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was the
point; he ingeniously proved that,' &c. In p. 229, a., κατὰ τὸν
Ἰλισσὸν ἵωμεν should be rendered, 'let us go along or down the
Ilissus,' i.e., in the bed or channel, or even along the bank; certainly
not, 'let us go to the Ilissus.' Nor is ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ (p. 329, fin.),
this sort of 'crude philosophy,' but 'an uncourteous (or uncivil) kind
of philosophy,' viz., that which employs itself in giving the lie to
received traditions.
The charming and justly celebrated passage in p. 230, b.—one of the
few in Greek literature that indicate intense feeling for the beauties
of nature—we propose to render as follows, nearly every word being
a close representative of the equivalent Greek:—
'Upon my word, the retreat is a charming one; for not only is this
plane-tree of ample size and height, but the dense shade of this tall
 agnus is quite beautiful to behold; in full flower too, so as to make the
place most fragrant! Yon spring, also, is most grateful, that flows from
under the plane-tree with a stream of very cold water, as one may
judge by the feeling to the foot. Moreover, there appears, from the
images and ornaments, to be a shrine here to certain Nymphs and to
the Achelöus. Pray notice, also, the balmy air of the place, how
delightful and exceeding sweet, and how it rings with the shrill
summer chirp of the chorus of cicadas! But the quaintest thing of all is
the growth of the grass, which on this gentle slope springs up in just
enough abundance for one to recline one's head and be quite
comfortable. So that you have proved a most excellent guide for a
strange visitor, my dear Phædrus.'

Some extra pains might have been fairly bestowed on a passage

almost without rival in Greek literature. But Mr. Jowett gives us the
following bare and clipped paraphrase of it:—
'Yes, indeed, and a fair and shady resting-place, full of summer
sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading plane-tree, and
the agnus castus, high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the
greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-
tree is deliciously cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and
images, this must be a spot sacred to Achelöus and the Nymphs;
moreover, there is a sweet breeze, and the grasshoppers chirrup; and
the greatest charm of all is the grass like a pillow gently sloping to the
head. My dear Phædrus, you have been an admirable guide.'

In p. 248, c., θεσμὸς Ἀδραστείας is not 'a law of the goddess

Retribution,' but simply 'a law of necessity.' Had we space, we could
point out not a few very inadequate, not to say inaccurate,
renderings in the grand and mystical passage about the ἰδέα of
beauty, p. 250. For instance, Mr. Jowett does not see that we should
construe κατειλήφαμεν αὐτὸ (viz., κάλλος) διὰ τῆς ἐναργεστάτης
αἰσυήσεως τῶν ἡμετέρων, 'we realize it (here on earth) by the
clearest of all our senses,' viz., the sight of the eye. The whole
translation of the great allegory, in fact, reads as if it came from one
who had never taken the trouble to make out exactly what the
Greek meant; and, as it is very difficult, and the passage itself very
sublime, the student ought to have found in Professor Jowett a safe
and cautious and accurate guide to the language as well as to the
mind of Plato.
We are compelled to pass on, rapidly and very briefly, to that most
difficult of Platonic dialogues, the Philebus. This treats of a life made
up of pleasure and intellectuality, φρόνησις, combined in certain
proportions, a μικτός βίος, as the best and happiest. And the
doctrine of πέρας and ἄπειρον, the Finite and the Infinite, which
Aristotle (Eth., ii. 5) attributes to Protagoras, τὸ κακὸν τοῦ ἀπείρου,
ὡς οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι εἴκαζον, τὸ δ' ἀγαθὸν τοῦ πεπερασμένου, is so
applied as to show that mere pleasure carried to excess is self-
destroying. This also is touched upon in the Tenth Book of the
Ethics, ch. ii., where the μικτὸς βίος of ἡδονὴ and φρόνησις
combined is preferred to either alone. It has sometimes occurred to
us, that in this dialogue Plato has purposely used involved
constructions and an affected obscurity of style, as if to satirize
Heraclitus, or some sophist of the Ephesian school. The scholastic
formulæ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ, implying synthesis and analysis, and μᾶλλον
καὶ ἧττον, 'the more or less,' to denote the ἄπειρον, which can
always be carried forward or backward, as in 'hot and cold,' till
πέρας, or definite quantity, is brought to limit them,—these and
other subtleties give to the Philebus, besides its linguistic difficulties,
which are great, an aspect which is seldom inviting to younger
students.
In the difficult passage (p. 15, b.), about ἰδέαι, Mr. Jowett has again
failed to give the exact sense. Plato says, one difficulty about them
is, 'whether we must assume that the abstract principle of each
quality (e.g., abstract beauty) pervades concretes and infinites,
dispersed and separated in each, or exists as a whole outside of
itself.' That is to say, if an abstract or ἰδέα is one thing indivisible,
which yet exists in different objects, it must reside outside itself, and
apart from the centre of its own οὐσία,, or essence. The words εἴθ'
ὅλην αὐτὴν αὑτῆς χωρὶς, Mr. Jowett oddly translates, 'or as still
entire, and yet contained in others.' In p. 15, d., ταὐτὸν ἓν καὶ πολλὰ
ὑπὸ λόγων γιγνόμενα is, 'this doctrine of "one and many" being the
same, brought into existence (or, as we say, brought before our
notice) by discussions,' not 'the one and many are identified by the
reasoning power;' nor is ἄγηρων πάθος τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν, just
below, 'a quality of reason, as such, which never grows old,' but 'a
conditions of discussion themselves,' &c. Surely, to render the plural
λόγοι by 'reason,' is a singular error. In p. 23, d., by not noticing the
emphatic ἐγὼ the author has failed to see that there is a reference
to the clumsy attempts of tiros at synthesis and analysis, p. 15. fin.;
so that Socrates intends to say that he fears he is not much more
skilful. A few lines below, where the doctrine of causation is
introduced, the words τῆς ξυμμίξεως τούτων πρὸς ἄλληλα τὴν αἰτίαν
ὅρα, 'consider now the cause of the union of these conditions (the
finite and the infinite) with each other,' is poorly rendered by 'find
the cause of the third or compound.' In p. 24, d., Socrates argues
that, if the principle of limitation (πέρας) were admissible in, or could
co-exist with, 'more or less,' i.e. progressive degree, the infinite
would cease, by ipso facto becoming finite. And he concludes,κατὰ
δὴ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἄπειρον γίγνοιτ' ἂν τὸ θερμότερον καὶ
τοὐναντίον ἅμα, 'according to this way of putting it, the "hotter"
would become at the same time infinite and finite.' Surely Mr. Jowett
quite misses the sense in rendering it, 'which proves that
comparatives, such as the hotter and the colder, are to be ranked in
the class of the infinite.' In p. 26, b., Socrates says that 'the goddess
Harmony, perceiving the general lewdness and badness of men, and
that there was no limiting principle in them, either of pleasures or of
satisfying them, introduced law and order, containing in themselves
the finite. And you, Protarchus (he adds), say that she thereby
spoiled our pleasures; whereas I say, on the contrary, that she saved
them.' If the text is right, πέρας οὐδὲν ἐνὸν is the accusative
absolute; but we propose to read καὶ πέρας, &c., so that the
accusative will depend on κατιδοῦσα. Mr. Jowett's version is
—'Methinks that the goddess saw the universal wantonness and
wickedness of all things, having no limit of pleasure or satiety, and
she devised the limit of the law and order, tormenting the soul, as
you say, Philebus, or, as I affirm, saving the soul.'
It is no disparagement to the best of scholars to say that a perfect
translation of the whole of Plato is too great a task for any one
person to perform. It would be hardly possible to have the same
knowledge of every dialogue, and those less familiar to the
translator would not be wholly free from some mistakes. The
scholarship that can grapple with and gain a perfect mastery over
the Greek of Plato, to say nothing of his philosophy, must be of a
very high order. No man, perhaps, could have done the task better
than Professor Jowett; and no man, probably, is more fully aware
that it might have been a good deal better even than it is.

Art. VII.—Mr. Miall's Motion on Disestablishment.

Debate on the Motion of Edward Miall, Esq., M.P., May 9th, 1871.
Reprinted from the Nonconformist.

We doubt whether when the opponents of Mr. Gladstone's Irish

Church policy, during the electoral campaign of 1868, insisted that
disestablishment in Ireland would inevitably be followed by
disestablishment in England, they expected that such a debate as
that which took place in the House of Commons on the 9th of May
last would furnish a seeming justification of their prediction. The
prediction, however, was one which tended to fulfil itself; for, if it did
not suggest, it encouraged the movement which has followed it. The
plea—in the mouths of English Episcopalians, at least—was an
essentially selfish one, and has brought with it its own punishment.
Mr. Gladstone has reminded us that he did his best to convince the
electors of Lancashire that, neither on logical, nor on practical
grounds, did his proposal necessarily involve the sweeping away of
all the Established churches; and he has also said, and, no doubt,
with truth, that while Mr. Miall and his supporters may be entitled to
speak of the Irish Church Act of 1869 as the initiation of a policy,
that was not the intention of its authors, who regarded it simply as a
measure of justice to the Irish people. The upholders of
Establishment, however, were too heated and unreflecting to see
that, in refusing to allow Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party to
escape by this flying bridge, they were virtually bringing down the
enemy on a portion of their territory hitherto comparatively secure.
The less, they insisted, involved the greater, and the public at large,
taking them at their word, was prepared for an advance movement
on the part of the opponents of all national religious establishments
which a few years ago would have been regarded as the blunder of
a party altogether bereft of political prudence.
It nevertheless required no small degree of courage on the part of
Mr. Miall to give notice so soon as a year after the passing of the
Irish Church Act that he would, in the following session, ask
Parliament to apply the principle of that measure to the other
Established Churches of the kingdom, and we are not surprised to
know that the time selected was, in part, determined by accidental
circumstances, as much as by deliberate choice. It is true that the
honourable member was not a novice in the matter; seeing that in
1856 he had submitted a motion which similarly aimed at the
extinction of the Irish Establishment. But the Irish question, even in
1856, was, so far as public sentiment was concerned, more
advanced than the English Church question is now; for Protestant
ascendancy in Ireland had long been condemned by English
Liberalism, though the mode of bringing it to an end occasioned a
wide divergence of opinion. Nobody could and nobody did, then
deny Mr. Miall's facts, however much they dissented from his
practical conclusions; while the absence of concurring circumstances
gave to the debate an air of languor strangely in contrast with the
excitement occasioned by the same topic in after years. It is true
that the recent disestablishment motion is not the first which has
been submitted to the House of Commons, even in regard to the
Church of England. For nearly forty years ago—on the 16th of April,
1833—Mr. Faithfull, the member for Brighton—a borough then, as
now, intrepidly represented in Parliament—moved: 'That the Church
of England, as by law established, is not recommended by practical
utility: that its resources have always been subjected to
parliamentary enactments, and that the greater part, if not the
whole, of those resources ought to be appropriated to the relief of
the nation;' but on this occasion the question excited too little
interest to subject the mover to any sharp antagonism; Lord
Althorpe declining to reply to Mr. Faithfull's speech, and moving the
previous question, while the motion was negatived without a
division. Mr. Gladstone's memorable declaration, in 1868, that 'in the
settlement of the Irish Church that Church, as a State-Church, must
cease to exist,' required high moral courage; but the speaker knew
that he was the mouthpiece of a party powerful within, as well as
without, the walls of Parliament, and that he was sounding the
tocsin for an immediate, and a comparatively brief struggle, in which
success was already assured. Mr. Miall, on the contrary, knew that he
would have no powerful backing in the House of Commons, however
great the moral strength which he represented, and he knew also
that he headed a skirmishing party, rather than led a final attack;
while he must also have been conscious that the wisdom of his
procedure would, by friendly, as well as hostile, critics, be judged by
the measure of success.
That the success was great, few persons who combine intelligence
with candour will be likely to deny, and probably it was greater than
either Mr. Miall, or the most sanguine of his friends, had ventured to
expect. Success, of course, has relation to the objects aimed at, and
these were well defined, and such as can be readily compared with
the actual results. We assume that Mr. Miall wished, by means of his
motion, to give a practical direction to the out-door agitation with
which he has been so many years identified; to put the subject in
the category of practical political questions, by forcing it on the
notice of politicians by the ordinary political methods; to place before
the greatest legislative assembly in the world, with something like
completeness, views held by a large and growing party in the
country, but never before directly and fully advocated in Parliament;
to draw out the forces enlisted on the side of establishments, and to
put them on the defensive, at a time when the difficulties in the way
of defence were by no means inconsiderable; and, finally, to secure
such a thorough discussion of the whole subject by the country as
would hasten the time when it must be dealt with with a view to a
practical settlement. If this is an accurate description of Mr. Miall's
aims, can it be said of any one of them that there has been even an
approach to failure? Could any parliamentary question, in the hands
of an independent member, have been launched with greater éclat,
or with more hopeful presages, than characterized the discussion in
the House of Commons on the 9th of May last? A large house—a
speech which the most competent critics in England have
pronounced to be of the highest class—a seven hours' debate
sustained, for the most part, by members of the greatest mark—a
weakness of argument and of tone on the part of the opponents of
the motion which has excited general surprise—a division almost
exactly tallying with the calculations of those at whose instance it
was taken—leading articles and correspondence on the subject in
every journal in the kingdom, and an almost universal impression
that disestablishment is nearer at hand than it was thought to be
before the motion was submitted—if these do not satisfy the most
ardent of 'Liberationists,' the patience which has hitherto
distinguished them must have given way to unreasoning haste.
On one point, at least, in regard to which there was, at one time,
room for reasonable doubt, Mr. Miall's triumph must be considered
complete. Although it would have been difficult for any
Nonconformist member to have successfully vindicated a refusal to
support the motion, on the plea that it was 'premature,' yet there
was something to be urged in support of the plea itself, and it
required a recognition of some facts scarcely known to the public at
large to decide unhesitatingly in favour of the course actually
adopted. But, now that the motion has been made, the plea of
prematureness can scarcely be repeated. Even Sir Roundell Palmer
frankly admitted that, having regard to the feeling excited by the
subject, both in the house and in the country, it was one which was
rightly brought under discussion, and, notwithstanding the
embarrassment which it was likely to occasion the ministry, Mr.
Gladstone tendered his thanks to Mr. Miall for initiating the
discussion, since, 'by introducing this question, he has absorbed
minor matters, which really involve his motion as an ulterior
consequence, but which do not fully express it,' and has 'raised the
question in a clear, comprehensive, and manly manner, calculated to
keep it from all debasing contact, and to raise a fair trial of the great
national question involved in the motion.' These admissions are in
singular contrast to the reception given to Mr. Miall's Irish Church
motion in 1856, when a Conservative member actually tried to avert
discussion by moving the adjournment of the house, and Lord
Palmerston, the then Premier, though he did not venture to sanction
the attempt, deprecated as 'unfortunate' the enforced consideration
of the subject.
If Mr. Miall has not acquired fame as a parliamentary debater, he has
made two speeches which will live in the political history of this half
century. Of that of 1856 it may, perhaps, be said that its influence
was greatest in the effect which it produced on the minds of Liberal
politicians whose minds were made up in condemnation of the Irish
Establishment, but whose notions in regard to remedial measures
were confused and undecided, or were radically unsound. The
principle which he then affirmed was as bread cast upon waters
seen after many days; and seen in the unequivocal shape of a
statute of the realm giving practical effect to the views enunciated
thirteen years ago. But the task undertaken then was far less
difficult than that of 1871, the area of discussion was much
narrower, and the issues raised much less complicated. Of Mr. Miall's
recent speech, Mr. Leatham happily said that it seemed to him 'as
though it were the condensation of the thought of a life-time;' but,
in truth, the speaker had to disengage his mind from many thoughts
which had for years engaged the highest powers of his intellect and
the warmest sympathies of his heart. He had to remember that he
was standing, not on a Liberation platform, but on the floor of the
House of Commons, and that he was addressing not the eagerly
responsive readers of the Nonconformist, but the cold and critical
readers of journals of a very different type. And, further, while
avowing that the religious side of the question was that which most
powerfully affected his own mind, and conscious that the most
potent arguments which he could employ were those which derive
their force from religious considerations, he had to leave that
vantage ground, from the admitted unwillingness and unfitness of
the House of Commons to deal with the subject in its spiritual
aspects, and to take the lower ground involved in objections of an
exclusively political and social character. It required no small degree
of self-restraint, and of practical skill, for a speaker of such
antecedents as those of Mr. Miall to keep strictly within the lines
which he had laid down for himself; and the unstinted admiration
expressed by all the subsequent speakers and especially by public
journals, which—within a week of his Metropolitan Tabernacle
speech—were little likely to be biased in his favour, have shown
conclusively the completeness of his success. When the usually
moderate Guardian affirms that Mr. Miall's speech was a signal
example of dissenting exaggeration, dissenting narrowness of view,
and dissenting shortness of thought and inability to comprehend the
higher aspects of a great religious and national question; and the
Record asserts that 'never was a speech delivered on a great
question more damaging to the cause it was intended to support:'
the very recklessness of the misrepresentations indicate a
consciousness that the impression produced was of a kind which has
given great uneasiness to the supporters of the Establishment. We
expect, moreover, that the reading of the speech, in the complete
form in which it has since been published and widely circulated, will
be found to have deepened the impression produced by its delivery,
and by a first hasty perusal. Its calm yet forcible statements—its
close reasoning—its apt and pungent illustrations—its
incontrovertible facts, and its elevation of tone and style will, we are
confident, perceptibly affect the minds of thoughtful men on whom,
for some time past, the truth has been dawning that there must be
something radically wrong in the existing relations between the State
and the several religious bodies of the country. By a process of
filtration, the truths enunciated by Mr. Miall in this speech will, aided
by other influences, find their way into quarters into which none of
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