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From this point of view thus taken up, much contained in this work may be now more correctly understood. From it, first of all, the necessity of the examples, at least for a living composition like that of Plato’s, becomes evident, and these examples could only be either completely or as good as completely finished speeches. Whence the propriety of their position before the theoretical part, and the necessity of a fiction for the purpose of introducing them, naturally follows. But in order to facilitate the comparison, Plato needed an example of the common illogical method no less than one of his own, and after the last again he was obliged to accomplish ends of an opposite nature if he wished to shew the influence of the peculiar tendency of that period upon the whole discussion, and at the same time to produce that logical semblance which leads unobserved from one contradiction to another. On this account, therefore, no one, we conceive, would wish to overlook the first of the two Socratic speeches from a preference for the second, as it is only by the most accurate comparison that both can be understood aright. Thus the entirely different tone of each, according to its purpose, will become evident. For in the one we have the pervading direction of the speech to the understanding and to sober worldly-mindedness, the expression moreover, notwithstanding all the rhythmical accumulation of words, preserved transparent and cold— thus it indisputably is that a mind must be treated which it is intended to lead to a contempt of passion by directing its views to a late future; in the other, on the contrary, we have the inspired tone, the exaltation of beauty to an equal rank with the highest moral ideas, and its close connection with the Eternal and Infinite; the manner moreover in which indulgence is demanded for the sensuous system, without however concealing that it is only indulgence; thus it is that with indulgence to the imagination a young and noble mind must be wrought upon, which, like that of a growing Hellenic boy, springs fresh out of the school of the poetic art. Truly it could not easily be better proved than is done by this collocation, how necessary on every occasion it is to consider in what way a given mind can be influenced to a given object. In like manner from this point of view it will appear natural that these examples should be taken from a subject appertaining to Philosophy, because in a subject of this description Plato found himself most on his own peculiar ground, and because this was at the same time necessary, in order as well to verify, practically, as it were, the theory of the extension of the Art of Speaking beyond the circle of political and civil affairs, as to suggest a fitting rule for comparison between that more narrow province, and this the more extended, the sphere of the production of splendid philosophical works. Now if Plato had determined to start from an example actually given, and that example one which had already submitted to the laws of rhetoric, it will not be risking too much as to the range of his knowledge and reading at that time, to say, that his choice must have been extremely limited. For except the declamations of the Sophist, which were indeed works so unsound that for Plato with such views and principles to place himself in comparison with them would have been productive of no honour, and which moreover, as soon as Rhetoric and Sophistry began to separate, lost their consequence more and more from that point of view, there could be little else for him to choose but these erotic rhetorical essays of Lysias, who moreover, from possessing to a certain degree fundamental principles, was a more worthy opponent than ever an orator out of the poeticising school of Gorgias.
But this is just the point at which the insufficiency even of this view must strike every one. For why should Plato have wished to confine himself by such a self-imposed law, and that too quite contrary to his own method? Or is it not usual with him to put into the mouth of his Interlocutors what they have never said, liable to the sole condition that it be like them and appropriate? And what therefore should have hindered him from composing a speech in any one’s name, unless he found one at hand upon a subject for which he not only had a peculiar interest, but which also stood precisely in the closest connection with the immediate object of this dialogue. For that love is indeed a moral object, and that in the method in which it is here treated of, there lies at bottom something like an apology for Socrates who was accused of it in an unworthy sense, this would be perhaps sufficient cause for introducing it as one of those subordinate points of the second rank which we meet with not sparingly here in the introduction generally, in the transitions and in various allusions; but when anything stands in such relation to the whole as these speeches do, then it becomes incumbent upon us to discover a necessary connection between it and the main idea of the whole. Now if the main idea here were nothing but the correction of the notion of rhetoric, in that case love and beauty, which form the subject matter of these speeches, would be, as regards this point, purely accidental. But this is just Plato’s method, and it is the triumph of his master-mind that in his great and rich-wrought forms nothing is without its use, and that he leaves nothing for chance or blind caprice to determine, but with him every thing is proportionate and co-operative according to his subjects’ range. And how should we miss this intelligence altogether in this place, above all others, where the principles which he adduces are pronounced in the clearest manner?
Thus, therefore, it is at once evident that this is not yet the correct view, and not taken from the point from which alone a survey may be had of the whole, and every particular appear in its proper form and position, but that we must seek out another, connecting every thing still more accurately. But there are yet other reasons at hand which would not allow us to stop here. For is it likely that it could have been a principal object with Plato to compose a treatise upon the technicals of rhetoric? and would this in any way agree with his other purposes as a writer? or is it not rather the case that nothing similar ever occurs again, and the Phædrus would then stand isolated in a manner in which a far less important work, in the case of this master, could scarcely be allowed to stand? Nay more, even in the second part, though it is from this that the standing point for this view is taken, still much remains inexplicable and strange on the supposition that it is the right one. For this second part not only expatiates greatly upon love and beauty as the subject of the first, but upon the form of that part and rhetoric generally. For all that is said of rhetoric is suddenly extended to poetry and politics as well, for these too are arts, and it can escape no one that, properly speaking, even rhetoric itself is set ‘up and treated of only as an example, and the same even is said of it almost as of the speeches delivered, that, setting aside the higher laws which must be exhibited therein, its whole operation and business is nothing but child’s-play. In such wise, therefore, we are driven from an outer to an inner, and as this last does itself in turn soon become an outer, we push still onwards even unto the innermost soul of the whole work, which is no other than the inward spirit of those higher laws, the art, namely, of unshackled thought and informing communication, or, dialectics. For which all else in this dialogue is but preparation, in order to bring about the discovery of it in the Socratic method by the exhibition of its spirit in a well known particular, and that one in which an exclusively scientific form was in part generally recognized, and in part easy to exhibit. Now not only does Plato intend to celebrate this art as the root of every other ramification to which that name can apply, but, while in all other arts we are indeed to recognise it, it is itself to appear to every one as something much higher and perfectly divine, which is to be learnt and practised, by no means for their sake, but for its own and for that of a divine existence. Now the original object of dialectics is found in ideas, which he therefore here describes with all the ardour of first love, and thus it is philosophy that Plato here extols, independently and wholly, as the highest of all objects, and as the foundation of every thing estimable and beautiful, and for whom he may triumphantly demand that her claims to these titles be universally recognised. And it is just because philosophy fully appears here not only as an inward state, but, in accordance with its nature, as extending and communicating itself, that it is necessary to bring to consciousness and to exhibit the impulse which forces it outwards from within, and which is nothing but that genuine and divine love which raises itself above every other, originating in and proceeding upon any notion of advantage, as philosophy does by its nature excel their subordinate arts which are content to play either with pleasure or profit. For however much the attainment of the object of that impulse must be the effect of art and of the judgment that arranges its details, still the impulse itself appears as something originally existing and ever at work in the mind of the finished and perfect man, seeking its object from without, consequently as passion and divine inspiration. Hence, therefore, all problems are solved, and this approves itself to be the real unity of the work—bringing out every thing, vivifying and connecting all.
This object then, considered in connection with the manner in which it is brought forward, irrevocably secures to the Phædrus the first place among the works of Plato. To this conclusion we are moreover at once led, when we observe that in this exposition of philosophy the consciousness of the philosophical impulse and method is far more intimate and powerful than that of the philosophical matter, which therefore only appears mythically, as if, on the one hand, it were still unripe for logical exposition, and, on the other, repressed to a certain degree by that predominant consciousness. Now this was very naturally the first state into which a worthily reflecting scholar of Socrates, and one already possessed with the art, must have been transported by the mode of teaching pursued by that philosopher. For these two, impulse and method, were in all his conversations the constant and ever unchanging elements, with which therefore the mind would be most possessed, which, as to the matter, he used but to moot particular questions in particular detail, without selection or connected purpose. In later times, however, Plato, in proportion as the objects of philosophy had revealed themselves to him more clearly, and he had practised the method more fully through all his productions and brought it to honour, would have abstained from making it the core of a composition of such extent in the manner in which he has here done. Moreover, the excessive, and almost boisterous and triumphant exultation, which at once and of itself points clearly enough to the acquisition of a newly gained good, relates only to the discovery of the first principles, and the Phædrus exhibits, less than any other dialogue, a great and already acquired readiness in the application of this method. Moreover it points in a variety of ways to the poetic essays of Plato which preceded his philosophising. For any one who holds Plato in proper estimation, will not be willing to believe that he composed poetry only in the thoughtlessness of youth, but rather that he took it up seriously, and contemplated in very early times, and upon grounds of art, all effects produced upon the mind of man. Thus the power which Socrates possessed of convincing and influencing the mind with all the apparent artlessness of his arguments, must still have appeared to Plato as a master-art never surpassed, and have filled him with admiration and love. This then, under such circumstances and in such a mind, inclined by nature to favour the notion of the unity of the two, naturally exhibited itself in a reference of philosophy to art, the process of which at the same time contained an explanation and defence of his transition from the latter to the former. And, next, his immediate choice of rhetoric, which was not his own art, is conceivable upon the grounds that, more than poetry, it aims at conviction, and because he could not compare what Socrates effected in it by the science of dialectics, with anything nearer than what the sophists and rhetoricians thought to effect by mere empiricism.
But if such arguments, however accurately they combine with the only true center-point of the whole, should still appear to any one insufficient to decide the period at which the work was written, let him further mark the innumerable proofs of the youthfulness of the work generally. Now these are to be found immediately in its whole style and colouring. It has a great inclination to the epideictic—to an ostentation of convincing power and superiority; for not only, first, the opponent set up is conquered with little trouble, and afterwards, in every instance in what follows, the preceding position outbidden, but even philosophy itself, in order to give it a lustre and excite our admiration, is praised chiefly, because it leaves far behind what men most praise and admire. Now this is in part involved in the subject-matter; but, in Plato subject and execution are thus necessarily consequent one upon the other, and the spirit is youthful throughout in which that general design is applied and continually worked upwards, through ascending degrees, till it reaches a point of extravagance. Look, first of all, but at the second speech—that speech which annihilates Lysias, then at the counter-speech which crushes, still more powerfully, the two preceding; observe how in them Plato showily appropriates to himself the great triumph of the Sophists, of defending opposite propositions one after the other, and, withal, the elaborate display immediately made of abundance of matter; in that every contradictory detail is despised as regards the speech itself, and only premised in the dialogues as prefatory to it; then the apologetic confidence, which does not even attempt to deprecate the name of Eros as regards Socrates, or assume a milder instead, but even in a prayer for health and happiness, ends with love. Further, the investigation which declares what is most beautiful in this speech to be nothing but child’s-play, and rejects it along with the first as if it were nothing; the bantering challenge to Lysias; the droll, comprehensive, and almost confusing polemics against the early rhetoricians, ridiculing unsparingly even what is good in their labours, because it does not proceed from right principles—and this to a length of which he would scarcely have thought them deserving at a later period, and which does itself make a somewhat ostentatious show of extent of reading; finally, as the culminating point in this epideixis, the exalted contempt, genuinely Socratic, for all writing and all oratorical speaking. Even in the outward form this youthful spirit betrays itself, in the constantly renewed luxuriance of the secondary subjects introduced at every resting point; in an animation in the dialogue, which cannot be quite defended against charges of effort and affectation; lastly also, in a somewhat immoderate introduction of the religious, and here and there even in a certain awkwardness in the transitions, not indeed in the speeches, but in the dialogistic half.
With this view, moreover, the historical indications in the work itself accurately coincide, leaving as they do no doubt remaining as to the time in which the dialogue plays, so to speak. It would indeed be useless to attempt to draw any proof whatever from these, and generally, with the exception of a few cases in which the impossibility of the composition prior to a certain period is self-evident, it would be folly to form any conclusion upon historical grounds as to the time at which any work of Plato was written, if we are to grant what is maintained in Athenæus, that Phædrus could have been no contemporary at all of Socrates. For what writer ever allowed himself such latitude, unless he was one in whose eyes nothing was improbable, and for whom no impropriety was too great? Not indeed that Plato was to be bound to strict historical accuracy, or as if no offence against the order of time is to be met with in him. On the contrary, it may indeed be the case in dialogues which were transposed into a period pretty remote from that of their composition, that he starts away from, and leaves, his hypothetical grounds, whether from error of memory and negligence, or from his knowingly sacrificing historical truth for sake of a certain effect. But this is one thing, and it is another to introduce, as must here be the case, two men as the only acting personages, who, as every one knew, were not even in existence at the same time. And what was likely to have influenced Plato to such a course? For one circumstance of the Phædrus would be then of no value for the dialogue, as there could be no want of a contemporary confidant and admirer of Lysias among the young Athenians, and any one to whom he had here transferred the character of Phædrus, might have also delivered the speech spoken by him in the Symposium. Nay, what cause could there have been for making this same impossible interlocutor come forward in the Protagoras, where, as a mute spectator, he only swells the accumulated crowd? We would not therefore take this even upon the word of Athenæus unless he communicates to us some of his more accurate sources of information as to this Phædrus, and so unproven an accusation is not to prevent us from treating our dialogue, in what we have to say further, as if it were possible to draw conclusions from historical relations contained in it. This premised, we add that two very well known personages are there mentioned in a very decisive manner—Lysias, namely, and Isocrates. Lysias, in Ol. LXXXIV. 1, had travelled at the age of fifteen years to Thurium, and returned, as Dionysius tells us, when forty-seven years old, in the first year of the ninety-second Olympiad, from which period his great fame as an orator first commences. Now if we allow still some years to pass before Phædrus can say of him, as something generally granted, that he wrote best of all his contemporaries, this dialogue cannot have been held earlier than in the ninety-third Olympiad. And certainly not later, for Lysias could not well be more than fifty years old to write of and expound love-matters without shame, as Isocrates, two and twenty years younger, could not have been much above thirty, to be brought forward as a young man. To this may be added the mention of Polemarchus as a living personage, who, according to Plutarch and the composer of the Lives of the Ten Orators, perished in the anarchy. Now all this does indeed point immediately only to the time at which the dialogue may have taken place: but when considered more accurately, we have from these grounds the further result, that it cannot have been written much later; in which case it is at once self-evident, that Plato, who at that time had not been long a scholar of Socrates, could not as yet have written anything of this description, but that the Phædrus was the first burst of the inspiration drawn from Socrates. For, first, every man’s own feeling will tell him that the manner in which Plato introduces the speech of Lysias could only have had its proper effect while this publication was fresh in the memory of the readers of the Phædrus, and that upon the contrary supposition there would not only be a degree of awkwardness about it, but it would be difficult even to conceive how Plato should have fallen in with it. Nay, when we consider further how hardly he treats Lysias, he would have subjected himself to a heavy charge of injustice, had he at a later period in his criticism upon him taken for the basis of it an old and almost forgotten piece, and one long ago superseded by many far more perfect. Moreover to what end the mention of Polemarchus’ transition to Philosophy? For, as he died so soon after it, he could scarcely have supplied an illustrious example for a later period than the one we have fixed upon. But what chiefly speaks in favour of the composition of the dialogue contemporaneously with those occurrences is the prophecy respecting Isocrates which appears towards the end of the dialogue, and which cannot possibly have been spoken retrospectively, namely that he would far surpass all rhetoricians hitherto, and rise to a higher kind of composition. For supposing what this orator afterwards performed to have answered Plato’s expectations, it was in that case, to say the least of it, ridiculous to make this be predicted at a far earlier period; but if Isocrates did not come up to those expectations, Plato would in that case knowingly and purposely have either told a false prophecy of Socrates, or falsely attributed such to him. But that prophecy seems to have reference to an idea, which in several passages in this dialogue is almost expressed, that Plato would have gladly realised, by predicting its existence, an Athenian school of eloquence upon the principles of Logic in opposition to that corrupted and corrupting Sicilian school; and that he wished, if possible, to invite the support of Lysias, who is considered as standing intermediate between the two. If we regard from this point of view the manner in which Anaxagoras, Pericles and Hippocrates are here brought forward, this supposition may well find support, and even such an idea, so much of it at least as concerns the interests of his native city, can only be attributed to Plato’s youth at the time.
In opposition then to all these arguments, which from so many different points all meet in the same centre, what Tennemann adduces in favour of a far later period for the composition of the Phædrus, almost the last of Plato’s existence as a writer, can have little weight. For, as regards the Egyptian story, there is indeed no occasion here to suppose with Ast a proverbial mode of speaking, but Plato himself gives us a pretty clear hint that this tale was composed by himself, and in order to have done so, he need not necessarily have been in that country any more than he actually brought from Thrace the Thracian Leaf mentioned in the Charmides with the Philosophy involved in it. And as to the second ground, namely, the similarity between what is said in this dialogue of the effect of writing, and what occurs to the same purpose in the seventh of the Platonic letters; it would seem that Tennemann himself did not mean the expressions in the Phædrus to apply to the same particular case which is the basis of the discussions in that letter, and consequently that he does not maintain that the Phædrus was not written till after Plato’s visit to the younger Dionysius. But he only thinks, in general, that here also disagreeable circumstances in consequence of writing must have preceded such expressions as we find in the Phædrus. But of this there is no trace at all to be found; and be the case as it may with that letter, the depreciation of writing in comparison with true and living philosophical communication is itself perfectly intelligible as a justification of Socrates’ abstinence from writing, and as a sentiment inspired by that method of teaching which Plato at that time despaired of ever imitating in written treatises, though he afterwards learnt to do so, and did not end with believing to the same extent in the utter incommunicability of Philosophy, although, as we see, he was well aware from the first that it could not be learnt historically. But perhaps that author does in reality hold to another ground still behind that already brought forward; namely, that in the Phædrus so much that is Platonic appears, while he is only disposed to consider those writings of an early date which connect themselves immediately with Socrates, and in which the peculiar style of Plato is still wanting, esteeming so large a work and with such a subject as only adapted to later times. But every skilful and self-experienced person will certainly allow that true philosophizing does not commence with any particular point, but with a breathing of the whole, and that the personal character of the writer, as well as the peculiarities of his modes of thought and views of things in general, must be to be found in the first commencement of the really free and independent expression of his sentiments. Why, therefore, should not the communication of the Platonic philosophy begin thus? Or if we are to believe that Plato was not merely for a certain period a simply passive learner, but also wrote as such, then it would be necessary to be able to point out a marked division between these two opposite classes of his works, a task which no one would be in a condition to perform. For the existence in the Phædrus of the germs of nearly the whole of his system, is hardly to be denied; but then their undeveloped state is quite as clear, and at the same time their imperfection betrays itself so clearly in that direct method in the conduct of the dialogue which constitutes the peculiar superiority of Plato, throughout the continuous and uninterrupted course of the last half, that it may be expected that skilful readers will agree as to the position to be assigned to this dialogue.
Among the grounds here adduced for this arrangement, that old tradition which distinguished the Phædrus as the first of Plato’s works, has, not improperly, considering the importance of the subject, found no place. For Diogenes and Olympiodorus refer the origin of this tradition to no competent testimony; on the contrary, what these authors say tends rather to favour the hypothesis, that this arrangement was only supposed already in early times, in order to destroy several objections made to this dialogue; as to whether, for instance, the language of it kept within the limits of pure prose, or indeed whether the whole investigation was not excusable only in consideration of the youth of the writer. It is evident what is meant by the last, namely, the erotic question; but in the first allegation one of the most eminent masters of antiquity agrees, and that in no gentle manner—I mean Dionysius. What the nature of the case may be as regards that point, will best appear from what still remains for us to do; namely, to add certain preliminary elucidations concerning the particular details of the work.
The Introduction is praised by Dionysius, and without taking offence at the piece of natural description in it, he accounts it an instance of that homely and temperate style, which, as the peculiar province of the school of Socrates, belongs, he thinks, to Plato in even an eminent degree. The first speech which Phædrus reads to Socrates he clearly recognizes as a work of the celebrated orator, a point upon which no one will entertain a doubt, although an English Philologist has laid a penalty on the belief of it. Now if more had remained to us of the collection of Lysias’ erotic publications, we should be better able to judge of the relation of this speech to others of that writer, as regards the art and character displayed in it. This here however is not deserving of much praise in itself; for the uniformity in the moulding of the particular propositions, as well as the mode of connecting them, could hardly be given in the translation to the vicious extent to which they exist, and the indefiniteness of expression which almost always admits of several meanings, is a crux for the interpreter. Now supposing the others to have been like this, the whole was an attempt, not indeed thoughtlessly entered upon, but still perfectly unsuccessful, towards an extension in the Art of Speaking. Then the first Socratic speech carries forward the principle of Lysias more thoroughly and clearly worked out. Now here Dionysius at once censures the invocation to the Muses which precedes it, thinking that it comes down suddenly like storm and tempest from a clear sky, destroying the pure prose—a tastless piece of poetastry. And Dionysius adds that Plato means soon to acknowledge himself that this is a specimen of high sounding sentences and dithyrambs, with great pomp of words and little meaning, when he says to Phædrus that he should be surprised at nothing in the sequel, for that what he is now uttering is not far short of dithyrambs. Now as to that invocation to the Muses, we might perhaps allow an affectation in the sportive derivations in it; but, looking to the whole structure, scarcely any one would be disposed to deny its claim to the title of prose. By the surprise, on the contrary, which Plato expresses at the dithyrambic nature of his sentences, he certainly did not intend to express any censure upon himself. For any one who pays attention to the passage in which this occurs, will easily discover that it does not refer to any kind of Poetic inspiration; but that Plato only intended, certainly not to his own disadvantage, to attract notice to the distinction between his own rhythmus and that of Lysias. For in the latter all the periods are turned with a monotonous uniformity, one like another split into antitheses; and the whole speech is pervaded by one and the same extremely flat melody. In that of Plato on the contrary, the rhythmus is in continuous gradation, so that he begins, where his ideas are far-fetched, with short propositions at a quick step, and as the speech advances from the general to the particular, the sentences also become more developed and articulated; until at last the orator, when he has reached a culminating point, hovers around it, and as it were poises himself in a slowly revolving period. Yet, notwithstanding, the structure of these periods appears, to us at least, perfectly prosaic, as also the epithets are taken from the philosophical and not from the poetical province of the subject. So that to see how far the censure of Dionysius, which can strictly refer only to the feet of the words, is grounded in truth, could be the privilege of Grecian ears alone, as it is evident that Plato’s Theory upon this point, rests upon different grounds from that of Dionysius. To us, who do not inquire quite so much into this matter, the fulness of expression seems actually to reach only to the extremest limits of language unfettered by metre, and in this respect certainly Plato himself intended to be epideictic. In the second speech of Socrates, that famous Myth is, lastly, beyond doubt the most important part, for sake of which all other matter in this dialogue has been unfairly thrown into the back-ground. The consequence of this has been, that not even the Myth itself has been throughout rightly understood. For the Love has, for the most part, been taken in a far too abstract and limited sense, and much has been overlooked or childishly trifled away. Least of all has the fact been remarked, that it is the fundamental Myth from which all that succeed and enter into the whole system of the Platonic Philosophy are developed; so that the more the subject-matter of it, at advanced stages, passes from the mythic into the scientific, the remainder is ever shaped out with less pretension, and becomes more vividly mythical. So that Plato here seems most expressly to assume the privilege of interweaving Myths with the expositions of his Philosophy. Though all this cannot be here regularly proved, but must verify itself by the sequel. Now as to what relates to the particular subject of the Myth, but little definite can be adduced in illustration of the imaginative in it; and the cosmographical conceptions especially which are the basis of it, are the more difficult to explain, as the Myth rests quite on the boundary between the Natural and Supernatural. More accurate solutions of it would certainly be more welcome than that discovery which Heyne some time since communicated, that the horses in this Myth were borrowed from Parmenides, which will hardly be discovered after a perusal of the fragment referred to. For the identity in a comparison, rests not so much upon the image, as upon a similar application of it to the object. Moreover, more would be implied in that assertion than that learned person probably intended, namely, that Plato borrowed his division of the Soul from Parmenides. In our confessed uncertainty as to particulars, it may however be said in general, that several of the conceptions in this Myth seem to be worked out from one another; and that, as several expressions are derived from the mysteries, a more perfect understanding of them would probably contribute most towards an explanation. On this account a still more accurate acquaintance with the Pythagorean Philosophemes may not be supposed to be the true key even to the mythology, still less to the doctrine of the human mind, as also the Platonic doctrine of renewed recollection is hardly to be explained from Pythagoras. Moreover the bulk of this Myth is evidently treated as a by-work to add to the pomp of the whole, and to harmonize the strictly allegorical parts of it. Wherefore we must beware of entering too much into details in the explanation, and rather be satisfied with only comprehending aright those philosophical indications, which Plato himself marks as such in the delivery. It might be adduced as a consequence, sufficiently immediate and but little attended to, that in every case a man’s character is not originated during the course of his life, but exists in him from the first. What Tiedemann however has discovered in the notion that the essentially existent is beheld, not in heaven, but in the region beyond heaven, can hardly be implied in it. But it might be most difficult to explain what is said very particularly of the various character of men according as they have been more or less penetrated by the Eternal. If therefore still greater faults do not lie concealed under the considerable varieties in the readings, the whole passage might perhaps belong to that class of decorations in which we are not to look for too much. And, generally, it is impossible to draw attention too much to the fact, how completely every thing in this dialogue is meant and applied rhetorically, so that even here, where untamed imagination has been so often discovered, like the wild horse as it were of the Platonic philosophy hurrying the wiser one along with it, Plato appears rather with all the judgment of a master. And even supposing that in the detail this composition carried him near the borders of a province that did not belong to him, as Dionysius even compares one passage with a passage in Pindar, still the style is in the main prosaic throughout. For to sketch an image, as is here done, first with a few strokes in the outline, and then to work it out further step by step, as regularity required, could not be endured in a poem.
With regard to the second part of the dialogue, after all that has already been said in general, there is nothing further to remark, except that, although not fully applied to practice, it was the origin of that improved rhetoric which dates its commencement from Aristotle, who owes much to this work. The remarks will explain particular difficulties, and thus the reader will be detained no longer in the vestibule of this splendid and genial work.