plan or sequence in the dialogues, and not only holds each to be complete in itself and isolated, but even careless of contradicting the rest, and often openly inconsistent with them. It follows logically that all dialogues not discredited by external evidence must be accepted, such a thing as internal improbability being seldom admissible. The great and continuous divergence of opinion among the German Platonists, who have now for 100 years exhausted all possible combinations without establishing any sure results, almost compels us to adopt the third theory in the main. A few general guide-posts are perhaps not denied by anybody. These are, for example, that the purely Socratic and questioning dialogues were written when Plato was fresh from the converse of Socrates; that after his travels in Italy and Sicily he approached Pythagorean metaphysics, and thus brings out principles perfectly foreign to Socrates under his authority. Furthermore, dialogues like the Euthydemus show a polemical antagonism to Antisthenes and Isocrates, or some such persons, who were rivals as heads of schools; these are to be referred to the more active period of his life, while such didactic and dogmatic dialogues as the Laws, which was certainly written in Plato's old age, seem to indicate the latest form of his teaching, and the temper of his decaying years. With the exception of these, and perhaps a few more such generalities, nothing certain ever has been ascertained as to the logical order of the Platonic writings. § 413. For convenience' sake, and in order to afford some frame wherein we may arrange the diverse pieces, the plan of Zeller,1 put forth without much dogmatism, may be followed as reasonable, and fairly probable; but the great work of Grote has for ever destroyed the hope of any surer results. Following this division, we may regard the first, a purely Socratic group, as consisting of the Lesser Hippias, Lysis, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Euthyphron, Apology, and Criton. In these there is no Pythagoreanism, no attempt at a philosophy of nature; they are purely ethical, and concerned with virtue in the Socratic sense, as one and reducible to knowledge. Plato, pp. 115, sq. Next come the Gorgias, Menon, Theatetus, and Euthydemus, in which the doctrine of Ideas, moral theories of the state after death, the theory of Reminiscence, and sundry Pythagorean elements begin to appear. The Phædrus, about whose date the widest diversity of opinion exists, may have been an introduction to this group. Next come the dialogues, which, while presupposing both Pythagoreanism and the theory of Ideas, introduce us to Eleatic and Megarian philosophy, abstruse and dry in character: these are the Cratylus, Sophist, Politicus, Parmenides, and Philebus, and to these Zeller appends the two most celebrated of all, the Symposium and Phædon, which latter is often placed shortly after the death of Socrates, though its doctrines show a large advance on Plato's earlier works. Towards the end of his life come the Republic, Timæus, Critias, and Laws. Zeller, in this list, omits the Ion and Menexenus, as well as the Epistles and first Alcibiades. I think the former two are not spurious, or at least proved spurious, and feel the danger of determining such matters without very strong evidence. I venture to assert that no modern German critic would have admitted either the Lesser Hippias or Laws, and that their spuriousness would now be an accepted fact, had not Aristotle chanced to allude to them in passages of still remaining works. While such mentions of Aristotle are of course conclusive (if precise) as to the authenticity of a dialogue, nothing can be inferred from his silence. Thus the Protagoras, one of the most universally accepted, has no early guarantee whatever. The extant allusions of this kind, both direct and indirect, are collected with great care by Bonitz in his valuable Index Aristotelicus, and are discussed by Zeller,1 who will not, however, admit the Menexenus, in spite of a direct reference in Aristotle's Rhetoric, on account of ' internal improbabilities.' So indelible is the habit of preferring à priori speculations to external evidence! § 414. I must add a word on the chronological order of the dialogues, which need not be the same as the logical order, for Plato may have composed a prior composition, dramatically, as an afterthought or introduction to an already 1 pp. 54-77. 1 existing dialogue. Again, such a dialogue as the Phado, which in dramatic propriety should follow immediately on the Apology, is supposed with good reason to be a very distant afterthought to an early group. There is no direct evidence that any dialogue whatever was published during the lifetime of Socrates, except the anecdote in Diogenes,' that Socrates, on hearing the Lysis read, exclaimed, 'Herakles, what a number of lies this youth has told about me!' This Grote rejects, and argues with great force that Plato published nothing till after the death of Socrates, and when he had at least reached his twenty-eighth year. We have no evidence to decide the question, though Grote's argument is rendered probable by the fact that several of the apparently earliest dialogues are written about the accusation and death of Socrates, and must therefore fall after this date. So also the group called the second in Zeller's list, above given, alludes to events which happened 395-4 B.C., and is later than that date. We have hardly any other chronological data, unless we argue that striking inconsistencies imply a lapse of some years for their growth. Thus the theory of the Protagoras, that virtue is the intelligent pursuit of happiness, and the balancing of lesser pains against greater rewards-this theory is contradicted in the Gorgias, where the identity of the good and the pleasant is distinctly controverted as an immoral doctrine. Again, Pericles and Isocrates, who are greatly praised by name in the Phædrus, are rudely handled and severely censured in the Gorgias and Euthydemus, if indeed Isocrates is the philosopher-politician alluded to in the latter. If the Ecclesiazusa of Aristophanes were directed against Plato's Republic, we should obtain a minor limit (391 B.C.), which is contrary to all probability, as that dialogue has unmistakeable evidences of maturity in views and dogmatism in tone. The absence of all direct mention of Plato in the play permits us to reject it as positive testimony. The author of the seventh Platonic Letter speaks as if the Republic were an early work, but probably upon this very evidence, whereas the play itself 2 shows many reasons for believing that Plato is not in view. 2 Cf. Zeller, p. 139, note. iii. § 35. § 415. It seems hardly necessary in this general sketch to give a particular abstract of each of the dialogues, for purely metaphysical discussions are foreign to our plan, and the actual texts are easily accessible, not to speak of the admirable and classical versions of Schleiermacher, the Stuttgart translators (40 vols., 1869), and Mr. Jowett. I shall therefore confine myself to general indications of their contents, while in a few typical cases a fuller treatment will include the broad features which recur in divers discussions. And first let us consider the form adopted by Plato and other followers of Socrates—the philosophical dialogue.1 § 416. It is in no sense true that Plato was the originator of this literary form, though most of his commentators attempt to add this to his other merits. But it is certain that he was the greatest artist of this kind which Greece, or perhaps the world, ever saw, and that as he drew into one all the partial truths of earlier philosophy, so he united in his works all the various kinds and attempts of his forerunners in the use of dramatic prose. His early biographers asserted that he studied carefully the mimes of Sophron, which were apparently prose and city idylls, portraying character and manners among the lower classes at Syracuse. In the Poetic, indeed, all similarity between these mimes and Plato's dialogues is flatly denied ; but the assertions of the Poetic are so inaccurate and conflicting, that I attach little weight to them, and think this denial, if true, refers to the subject-matter only. At all events, it is certain that in this school of Sophron and Xenarchus characterdrawing was attained by prose dialogue, perhaps the truest forerunner of the Roman satura or medley. I turn next to another model, which must have been before Plato's eyes, and in which dialogue must have played an important part -the Memoirs of Ion of Chios, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos. 1 The definition given by Albinus (Isagoge, c. i.) is very complete, and each member of it reasoned out : Ἔστι τοίνυν οὐκ ἄλλο τι, ἢ λόγος ἐξ ἐρωτήσεως καὶ ἀποκρίσεως συγκείμενος περί τινος τῶν πολιτικῶν καὶ φιλοσοφῶν πραγμάτων, μετὰ τῆς πρεπούσης ηθοποιΐας τῶν παραλαμβανομένων προσώπων, καὶ τῆς κατὰ τὴν λέξιν παρασκευῆς. 2 Cf. Vol. I. § 240. These works are not known, or not quoted, by writers of this period, and are, as I have above said,1 liable to suspicion on this account; but if they existed in Plato's day, as is alleged, he must necessarily have known them, and the extracts in Athenæus show us how essential dialogue and character-drawing must have been to them. The use of rapid question and reply is fully understood by Herodotus, who perpetually enlivens his history with dialogue; and even by Thucydides, who in two or three striking passages 2 exchanges the tameness of his narrative for this more striking form. I am here speaking of the shorter and simpler dialogues in both historians; for the more elaborate discussions, such as that of Xerxes and Artabanus in the one, and the Melian dialogue in the other, are rather upon a tragic model than upon that of any earlier prose dialogue, nor indeed do they aim at any special characterdrawing, as Albinus points out. Of course the great influence and popularity of tragedy and comedy must have stimulated all contemporary literature in the same direction. Most young authors of the day-Plato among the number-aspired to be dramatic leaders of thought, like the great poets, who had remodelled all Greek poetry. We even saw how the legal oratory of the day assumed the dramatic tone, and how the orator composed, his speech according to the very character of the client who spoke it. This dramatising of court speeches is perhaps the closest parallel we can find to the philosophical dialogue, as a piece of nooita or character-painting. Along with all these indirect antecedents, we are distinctly told that the form of dialogue had been already employed for philosophical teaching by Alexamenos of Teos-to us a bare name— and the Eleatic Zeno. We see plainly in the antinomies of the latter how dialogue, with prompt question and answer, was the most natural and almost necessary form for his writings to assume. But this was pure dialectic, dry metaphysical subtlety and counter-subtlety, and was doubtless devoid of all grace and poetry. Perhaps in the Philebus, the Sophistes, and the Parmenides, Plato copied this dry and unattractive, but scientifically invaluable, method of enquiry. 1 1 p. 42. 2 Cf. above, p. 115. |