Plato

might be said that if the principal doctrines of the Platoni

c Socrates were known by Plato to be his own peculiar property, he might feel a difficulty about putting a new and more critical philo sophy into the mouth of the speaker who had been used as the expo nent of his "earlier" teaching. But this would not wholly explain why Socrates might not have been made to teach the logic of the Sophistes.

feed in later dialogues, or in the version of Platonism pre supposed by Aristotle's criticisms.

No attempt will be made here to describe the personality or temperament of Plato which is, in fact, as elusive as that of Shakespeare and for the same reason. He is often credited with a strongly "mystical" and "erotic" temperament. He does ascribe such a temperament to Socrates, but it is puerile to treat his pic ture of Socrates as evidence about himself, though the mistake is constantly committed.

It should therefore be noted that the "mysticism" is confined to dialogues of the first period, in which Socrates is its exponent, and that the "erotic" language in which Plato's Socrates speaks of his devotion to his young friends was also used by the Socrates of Aeschines to describe his relations with Alcibiades (Fr. 4, Krauss). There is no evidence that Plato personally ever fired the imagina tion of gifted boys as Socrates did. Apart from the Epistles, the most valuable light we possess on Plato's personality is afforded by Aristotle's description of him as a man "whom it is blasphemy in the base even to praise" (iiv old' Tag!, KaKoi.o-c OiAts).

In the Republic, the greatest of all the dialogues which precede the Theaetetus, there may be said to be three main strands of argument deftly combined into a consummate artistic whole, the ethical and political, the aesthetic and "mystical," and the meta physical. Other major dialogues belonging to this period give special prominence to some one of these three lines of thought; the Phaedo to the metaphysical theme, the Protagoras and Gorgias to the ethical and political, the Symposium and Phaedrus to the aesthetic and "mystical," though in none does Plato make an artificially rigid separation of any one of the great ideal interests of human life from the rest.

The shorter dialogues deal with more special problems, usually of an ethical character, and mostly conform to a common type. A problem in moral science, often that of the right definition of a "virtue," is propounded, a number of tentative solutions are considered and are all found to be vitiated by difficulties which we cannot dispel; we are thus left, at the end of the conversation, aware of our discreditable ignorance of the very things it is most imperative for man to know. We have formally "learned" noth ing, but have been made alive to the worthlessness of what we had hitherto been content to take for knowledge and the need of seeking further enlightenment.

The effect of these "dialogues of search" is thus to put us in tune with the spirit of Socrates, who had said that the one respect in which he was wiser than other men was just his keen realiza tion of his own ignorance of the most important matters. We learn the meaning of his ruling principle that the supreme business of life is to "tend" the soul (to "make it as good as possible") and his conviction that "goodness of soul" means first and f ore most, knowledge of good and evil. The three dialogues directly

concerned with the trial of Socrates have manifestly a further purpose. They are intended to explain to a puzzled public why Socrates thought it stuff of the conscience neither to withdraw from danger before trial, nor to make a conciliatory defence, nor, finally, to avail himself of the opportunity of flight after conviction. Even well-wishers like Xenophon, as we know, were puzzled by what had seemed his wilfully defiant attitude ; it was therefore a debt of honour to his memory to put the matter in the true light. In the remarks which follow, we will consider these shorter dialogues in an order adopted simply for purposes of convenience.

Hippias I. and II.

In these dialogues Socrates has as "respon dent" the well-known polymath Hippias of Elis, whose self-com placency is sharply satirized. In the Hippias Major the question propounded is "What is the fine" (KaX6v)? "Fine" is a predicate by which we are constantly expressing both aesthetic and moral approval; do we really know what we mean by it? We dis cover that we do not, though incidentally we also learn that "fine" or "beautiful" is certainly not a synonym for either "useful" or "pleasant." Hippias Minor deals directly with the famous Socratic paradox that "wrong-doing is involuntary." It is commonly held that it is much worse to tell a wilful untruth than to blunder into an unintentional false statement. Yet the analogy of the arts and professions seems to show that the man who errs intentionally, if there is such a person, is a better man than he who errs unintentionally. (The suggested thought, of course, is that there "is no such person." The man who knows what is good will always aim at this and at nothing else,—the familiar doctrine of Socrates.) Ion, Menexenus.—Both these are "occasional" works. Socrates had said that he found the poets, who as a class are commonly reckoned "wise," quite unable to explain to him how they came to say their best things, or what they meant by them. (Apol. 22 a.–c.) The Ion develops this thought into the theory that neither the poet, nor his interpreter the "rhapsode," produces his effects "by science," i.e., as a result of conscious "artistry"; the effect in both cases is due to a non-rational "inspiration," or, as we now say, "native genius." (The importance of this is that it rules out appeal to the poets as specially competent authorities on the conduct of life.) The Menexenus, which professes to repeat a "funeral oration" learned from the famous Aspasia, is apparently meant as a satire on "patriotic" distortion of history. Apparently the "discourses" satirized are those of Pericles in Thucydides, Lysias (Lysias II.) and Isocrates (the Panegyricus). The singular anachronism by which Socrates (and Aspasia) are represented as commenting on the events of the Corinthian War down to the year 387 must be intentional, whatever its object.