In our contemporary world of ubiquitous mirage, the skills of discernment are not only important, they are of vital benefit. “Likely stories” are a bedrock of classical education, and classical educators should endeavor to have students read them not because they believe students must be virtuous in order to go to battle against societal disintegration and disarray, but because without it students cannot be virtuous at all.

Plato’s dialogue The Timaeus has bequeathed to us a famous phrase, eikōs muthos or “likely story.” At other times within the same dialogue, the phrase is rendered eikōs logos, which can be translated as “likely account.” Today, we use the idiom “a likely story” to dismiss what we are told as a “tall tale” and “beyond belief.” But, here at one possible origin in the 4th century BC, the phrase refers to an articulation of possibility or a plausible report. It makes perfect sense that this phrase appears prominently in The Timaeus, for that dialogue is a story about the formation of the universe; of course, there are no eyewitnesses to that event to whom we can turn for a description, and there is no way in which we may indisputably verify such a description when one is given. If we are to attend to such a likely story, we must accept the teller’s word that there is benefit in it.

If we must proceed, as it were, on the say-so of another, then the important question becomes why attend to likely stories at all? What benefit can we gain from accounts that are plausible rather than provable? There are many who claim that we should not attend and there are no benefits of doing so. For example, some have argued that we ought to dispense with likely stories altogether: myths should be eliminated because they are simply fabricated nonsense; fairy tales should be left in early childhood where they belong, because they do not address “real life”; reading fiction should not be encouraged because it is not factual and does not bolster the technological skills we deem so necessary; religion should be abandoned because, as Marx famously put it, it is “the opiate of the masses” – a mere narrative designed to bring comfort to the existential crises we all face as materialistic blips in the universe. We have even reached the point where we do not know what history to read or teach because we cannot agree on which, if any, versions “really happened”; “Reality” itself is in doubt.

When we approach the question this way, however, we have lost sight of a significant truth: the point is not about whether a likely story can or should be entirely empirically accurate. Rather, it is about how helpful such likely stories are to us in living well, wisely, and virtuously. For example, likely stories are beneficial in the scientific method when hypotheses (yes, the analytical versions of the “likely story”) are proposed, then tested, and subsequently bear fruit in technological advancement; they can be useful as scientific theories, such as the General Theory of Relativity, because they permit us to explore our world in ways we could otherwise never have implemented; they are especially valuable as fairy tales and fiction when they paint value-saturated pictures for us of types of characters, situations, actions, and outcomes. Vigen Guroian writes that,

Plato argued that conversion to that which is moral, that which is just, that which is right and good is like an awakening…Symbols, allegories, fables, myths, and good stories have a special capacity to bring back to life the starved or atrophied moral imagination…[and a] well-fortified and story-enriched moral imagination helps [us] move about in the world with moral intent. (Rallying the Really Human Things)

In circa 45 BC, the philosopher Cicero was the first to translate Plato’s Timaeus. He rendered eikōs muthos into Latin as probabilia, that is, “probabilities.” It is a fitting translation, as likely stories are windows into probabilities from which we can select the ones most harmonious with the truths that we know – and, as a result, we can wisely decide how to act reasonably and virtuously in our lives based upon what we conclude and believe.

As Peter Kalkavage suggests in his translation of The Timaeus, the purpose of this eikōs muthos is to make living in Plato’s allegorical cave “more enlightened in its opinions and more livable.” In crucial ways, it is not whether a likely story is indisputably historically and/or empirically accurate that matters, for we are, whether we like it or not, in a plethora of ways stranded in Plato’s proverbial cave. It is undeniable that we see but through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12). What matters is which likely story most closely aligns with the truths that we can know. Once again, think of the scientific method in which a hypothesis, when tested, is either verified or cast by the wayside depending upon how well it aligns with observable data. This is the crux of the matter, whether dealing in science, history, literature, or any other field of inquiry and action.

What are among such truths we can know? C.S. Lewis answers this question when he refers to the ancient Chinese Way, the Tao. Lewis adopts this term when he talks of Natural Law:

It is the reality beyond all predicates…the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. (Abolition of Man)

It may surprise some that Lewis, a Christian apologist, selects the Tao for this purpose. He utilizes the Tao, not because he wishes to advocate for a philosophy or belief apart from Christianity, but because he perceives in it an important communication about something shared by all humankind through common grace: broadly intuited and experienced objectivities or if you will, truths, which are present a priori before any particular religious or philosophical revelation. He writes,

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law…is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. (Abolition of Man)

Lewis echoes what he writes about the Tao in Mere Christianity when he says,

[The] Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the ‘laws of nature’ we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong ‘the Law of Nature’, they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation, and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law – with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.

Classical educators would agree that virtue consists in the choice to obey the Law of Human Nature, that it is wise to respond to and be in the world in ways which are appropriate to and in accord with “the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” Emphasizing the importance of such appropriateness, Peter Kreeft’s Socrates quips in The Best Things in Life – based upon the metaphor for a human soul as a captain steering a ship through life – that “…a captain who…ignores what his ship is for is not a wise captain.” Elaborating on the idea that such wise appropriateness embodies alignment with reality, or Natural Law, Lewis writes that “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue” (Abolition of Man). Adding flesh to this in Norms and Nobility, David Hicks spells out more precisely what such a process looks like:

…the end of education is not thinking; it is acting. It is not just knowing what to do; it is doing it. The sublime premise of a classical education asserts that right thinking will lead to right, if not righteous, acting…Education must address the whole student, his emotional and spiritual sides as well as his rational. The aims of education…must express not just ideas, but norms, tending to make young people not only rational, but noble.

Thus, the goal of classical education is to nurture such wise appropriateness by harnessing students’ responses to the Law of Human Nature, thereby producing virtue.

Lewis discusses how the methodology and goal of education depends upon whether you stand within or without the Tao:

For those within, the task is to train in the pupil those responses which are in themselves appropriate [to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are]…Those without…must regard all sentiments [that is, the responses and sentiments referenced earlier] as equally non-rational, as mere mists between us and the real objects. As a result, they must either decide to remove all sentiments, as far as possible, from the pupil’s mind; or else to encourage some sentiments for reasons that have nothing to do with their intrinsic ‘justness’ or ‘ordinacy.’ The latter course involves them in the questionable process of creating in others by ‘suggestion’ or incantation a mirage which their own reason has successfully dissipated. (Abolition of Man)

The first instance described above retains the classical sense, while the second portrays the educational approach Lewis observed emerging in his lifetime, an approach coming into full flower around us today – one propagated by men “who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean” (Abolition of Man).

To draw a connection between Lewis’ conception of the Tao, The Timaeus and Platonic philosophy in general, and also to classical education, the Tao can be seen as a kind of counterpart to the Forms, or eide, of Plato – iconic ideals, perfect ideas, archetypes: the realities of all things of which earthly things are the copied images. The Timaeus itself is an unmistakable artifact of this Platonic thought. Eva Brann writes about the dialogue in The World of the Imagination:

The “likely myth” is the prototype of the grand scientific model…It is a best available rational conjecture; it is an intellectual construct…embodying certain intellectually appealing hypotheses; it is an image with the fewest possible distortions, the kind called “eikonic”…The…cosmos…is itself a sensible, spatial image made…by a divine craftsman, an artificer working from a non-sensible, non-spatial, fully intelligible original, the model of models…

This non-material “model of models” is constituted by the Forms and may be viewed as a complex Form itself, upon which the material manifestation is based. Thus, the eikōs muthos, where eikōs carries the implication of imaging through the meaning “likeness,” articulates the notion that all things manifest appropriately when they are in accordance with the Forms, just as all things are within the Tao when they adhere “to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” Classical education strives to cultivate precisely this kind of imaging and appropriateness.

The crucial thing to grasp, as Lewis observed, is that contemporary educational pedagogy rejects any concept of such Forms and also stands outside the Tao. Furthermore, it is critical to recognize that it has not abandoned the teaching of likely stories. Not at all: what it has done is eroded and eliminated the classical likely stories that long stood the test of time, and it now instructs with untethered likely stories that actively embrace iterations fragmented from common and historic human experience and reason. The Tao has not just been disowned, but it has been forcibly eviscerated.

This conception of education wholeheartedly embraces the notion that reality itself is in doubt, disconnected from any barometers such as reasonable responses or sentiments. Thereby all values become reliant on “suggestion or incantation.” Responses and sentiments divorced from the Tao are lauded and leveraged, and rather than being cultivated from nature these responses and sentiments are imposed by authority. In other words, stories that are not – and can be convincingly argued never have been – the most probable are now presented as the most likely.

The challenge as classical educators in our times is to resurrect and defend largely abandoned likely stories that reflect “the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are.” Again, it behooves us to bear in mind that these “classics” are not perfectly accurate stories in all the ways we can imply by that term (as The Timaeus itself, when read carefully, reveals in more than one aspect); they will all include elements that sooner or later demand critical assessment. Nevertheless, we must not only champion such classics but also nurture a highly sensitive understanding in our students concerning likely stories. For example, through the tools of classical education such as the Five Common Topics, we give our students the ability to differentiate which likely stories are within the Tao and which are without and how and why they fall in one category or the other.

In our contemporary world of ubiquitous mirage, the skills of such discernment are not only important, they are of vital benefit. Classical educators should guide students first to be able to recognize a likely story when they encounter one, and second to effectively evaluate likely stories in terms of harmony with all that the Tao represents. Classical educators should endeavor to do this not because they believe students must be virtuous in order to go to battle against societal disintegration and disarray, but because without it students cannot be virtuous at all. It is for this primary reason that likely stories are a bedrock of classical education.

“…the myriad of creatures all revere the way and honor virtue.
Yet the way is revered and virtue honored not because this is decreed by any authority
but because it is natural for them to be treated so.”
Tao Te Ching, Book Two, LI

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The featured image is a detail, by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, from “The School of Athens” by Raphael. It is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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