But it is time to exchange the less important investigation of the external circumstances for the consideration of the internal subject of this somewhat complicated dialogue, one perhaps not quite so thoroughly understood as it is multifariously praised. It is indeed very easy to separate the different sections and to draw out the subject of each particular one in its order; but whoever thinks that he has therewith discovered the sense of the whole, proclaiming plan and arrangement as easy and simple, can hardly suppose this dialogue in any other predicament than the very worst, and this with great injustice. For he must suppose that no arranging idea whatever is the basis of the whole, but that every thing spins out accidentally from what precedes, as much without unity as without art and purpose. On the contrary, whosoever desires not to miss the object and idea of the whole, in which much that is complex is interwoven throughout, must trace accurately the connection of every particular, and into these the reader is now to be preliminarily introduced.

1. First of all Socrates endeavours, by means of a sceptical investigation into the nature and the peculiar art of the sophists, to bring the young man who desires to be taken to Protagoras, to reflect upon his purpose. This investigation is as it were continued by Protagoras quite as indirectly, though from a different point, in a short lecture delivered after a request for it had been preferred, upon the extent and antiquity of sophistics. And in this he partly exposes the boldness of his public profession to this trade, partly deduces the thing itself as of considerable antiquity, not indeed from the most ancient philosophers, but from poets and artists. Not anything however, uninvolved or definite comes out respecting the art until Socrates, in a short dialogical section, extracts from him thus much, that political virtue is properly that which constitutes the object of his instruction.

2. Hereupon Socrates, in a continuous speech, lays down the position, slightly sketched indeed, but supported by instances and the expressions of general opinion, that no instruction can be imparted in this matter; to which Protagoras offers a counterproof, partly in a myth about the origin of men and of social life, partly also by endeavouring, in some further investigations, to turn the same instances of ordinary modes of acting, which Socrates had brought forward, to favour his own proposition.

3. On occasion of what is adduced by Protagoras, Socrates, after some premonitory hints as to the difference between an epideictic lecture and a dialogue, annexes a discussion of the latter form upon the question of the unity or plurality of the virtues, in which he first compels his opponent, who maintains their plurality, to oppose justice and piety to one another, and then when Protagoras has great difficulty in extricating himself from this dilemma, Socrates courteously breaks off, forces from him in a second course the confession that discretion also and wisdom must be identical, and at length is on the point of proving the same of justice, when Protagoras violently starting off in order to break the thread, brings forward a long, but exclusively empirical discussion upon the nature of the Good.

4. Hence arise naturally new explanations as to the nature of the dialogue, and while fresh terms have to be entered into for the contest, since the affair has taken the form of a regular philosophical prize-fight, to the increasing pleasure of the noble youths the nearer it had approached that form, Prodicus and Hippias now find opportunity for coming forward in their own way, with short speeches. And Socrates also, with regard to the proposal to choose an umpire, delivers his opinion in a form which, with all its brevity, is distinguished above all others by the strict dialectic process observed in it.

5. According to the conditions proposed by Socrates, Protagoras has now become the questioner, and after introducing a poem of Simonides, continues the dialogue concerning virtue, without however any definite point being visible to which he would conduct by this method, but only the endeavour to involve Socrates in contradictions. Socrates, however, first, as respondent, not only repels Protagoras, but also carries on further a pleasant by-fight with Prodicus, and afterwards himself explains this poem in a continuous discourse, in which the position that all evil is only willed from error, is assumed to be the general opinion of all wise men, and also a derivation of philosophy from the worldly wisdom of the Lacedæmonians and Cretans introduced, but at last a serious tone being taken up, the discussion is brought to an end with the conclusion that by such argumentations taken from poets, nothing can be gained for the establishment of ideas.

6. Upon this, lastly, the Dialogue is again taken up, and Socrates is now the questioner in it, and in that character continues to shew that virtue is only one—knowledge, science, of that namely which is to be done. First he shews this of courage, and after removing an only apparently sound objection of Protagoras, he makes him allow, half voluntarily, that there is no good but pleasure, and no evil but pain, whence it follows, as a very easy consequence, that all virtue is nothing but a science of calculation and comparative measurement. And thus the contradiction is brought to light by Socrates himself, that on the one side Protagoras, who still maintains his ability to teach virtue, has refused to allow that it is science, while on the other Socrates has himself been at the pains to prove this, though his purpose went to dispute every supposition in favour of the possibility of teaching Virtue.

From this short summary of the details it must be at once sufficiently clear, that even here the common methods of viewing the dialogue, inasmuch as they could not comprehend the whole, but went to satisfy themselves with a part, have as good as failed altogether. Some for instance, separating what is inseparable, as they will do even in the plastic arts, have directed their attention exclusively to what can be considered only as the colouring of the whole, the uninterrupted irony, which certainly has been admired by every reader yet of this dialogue. It cannot indeed be overlooked that Plato here allows this his peculiar talent to play in a vast range, and with great self conscious skill, whence they who put a high value upon his study of the Mimes, and his approximation to the comic, might easily take up the notion that this ironical treatment, or annihilation as it might be called of the sophists, is to be understood as the chief object of the Protagoras. This is not indeed the place for deciding whether these acquired perfections, for such at least they are represented, were valued to the same degree and in the same sense by Plato himself as they are by some of his admirers; two things however are certain, and sufficient to justify the view taken in the present instance. For, on the one hand, what every eye however inattentive universally observes in the dialogue, is far from being the highest kind of irony, either of Plato generally, or of this work in particular, but only that subordinate imitative colouring which may be met with not unfrequently even among the moderns, otherwise so little given to irony, under a more modern name. Again it is to be remarked, that every imitation of the peculiarities and manners of particular persons proceeds only from an endeavour after truth in the representation of the speakers, and therefore supposes at once that something is to be said, and what it is to be, that consequently this ironical imitation may occur any where in Plato, and certainly does so occur, when any point is discussed with these opponents of Socratic wisdom and modes of thinking, not only as mere ornament, but as a means connected with the end, in order to make the truth of the whole palpable, and to authenticate it by a careful removal of every thing unnatural and exaggerated; but that for that very reason it should never be conceived as the first or proper object, because then in: the first place the exaggeration would be unavoidable, and in the next the philosophical object, without which certainly no larger work of Plato is ever framed, must either have been subordinate, or have been completely wanting.

Others on the contrary, too eager for the real treasure, and not even fortunate discoverers because they sought without knowing their ground, have only adhered to one of the questions started, as if that one were to be here decided, whether it were that of the communicability of virtue or its unity or plurality; for any one who thus takes up only some particular point, must necessarily waver. And how insufficient this proceeding is appears from the fact, that from such a point of view several parts of the dialogue do not admit of any explanation whatever; as for instance, the two sources mentioned of the sophistical art and of Philosophy, and the whole discussion respecting the poem of Simonides, moreover that even such matter as is more closely connected with those questions does not advance but is continually beginning again from the first in a manner almost far-fetched and certainly singular: nay, to express it in a word, how could the main point of the whole be involved in an investigation, of which it is said at the end of it, ironically indeed on the one hand, but very truly on the other, that as far as bringing it to a decision was concerned, it had been pursued poorly and confusedly enough.

Now whoever attends not only to this or that point, in this dialogue, but to every thing, to the frequently interspersed and cursory hints which in Plato least of any writer admit of being overlooked, to the change of the form in the different sections, to what is continually recurring in and between these sections, notwithstanding all the multiplicity of subjects—whoever does this will recognize, in this very dispute respecting the form and method, the main purpose of the whole; the purpose, namely, to praise and ennoble the dialogistic form of Socrates, and to proclaim it as the proper form of all genuine philosophical communication, in opposition to all sophistical forms, all of which therefore make their appearance, not even the method of commentating upon passages of poets excepted. If we place ourselves in this true centre point of the work, we see first, in the most decided manner, how very closely this dialogue connects itself by manifold ramifications with the Phædrus. For as there the inward spirit of the philosophizing process was exhibited, so the outward form is here discovered, and what results, as such, is criticised. Further, as in that dialogue the investigation respecting the method was interwoven also with the exposition of the communicative impulse, and that not the common one whose object it is, from a feeling of vanity, to spread a falsely so-called and really empty knowledge, but an impulse which is to form the mind by means of ideas, so that every thing else is grounded upon the ethical as the base of the Socratic philosophy; so also here, the question regarding the possibility of satisfying that impulse is the subject on which the different forms are to display themselves, and submit to comparison, and that in such a manner that in this dialogue also the argument exclusively treats of the communication of the ethical, which is the very point that constitutes the meaning of the question as to the communicability of virtue. Nay, even in what concerns the outward conformation of the whole, a striking connection between the two manifests itself, inasmuch as in this dialogue also the form of a pitched contest arises agreeably to the then condition of things; only still more vividly set forth, as at that time the sophists were connected with the philosophers more nearly than the orators were, so that even the polemical turn of the Phædrus appears to be here continued and advanced. Moreover from this point the arrangement of the whole and of every particular in its place intelligibly manifests itself, and that movement which from almost every other point seems only circular, now assumes, on the contrary, the appearance of a beautiful and regular progression. For while by the comparison of the forms the deficiency of the sophistical methods is made all the more evident the further this dialogue advances, and exposes itself still more in examples; of how easily epideictic discourse lends itself to seduce the hearers from the true point in question, and how much even that is beautiful in appearance several persons together may throw off without ever understanding one another, and how on the contrary, the dialogistic form brings the true meaning of every one to light, traces out the point of distinction, and, provided only that it is not met on one side by total absence of all meaning, discovers the original error; co-ordinately with all this, by means of the continually renewed expositions of the subject from all sides, the causes are always and continually developing themselves, which must prevent the sophists from attaining a better method, and which made them well content to frame a worse. And these causes are the absence of the genuine philosophical impulse and the base enterprises and purposes for sake of which they chiefly exercised their art. And this harmony which must work its effect, like all that is beautiful in art, even though it is not recognised upon its own grounds, is certainly for the most part the source of the extreme delight which most readers take in this perfect work. Thus the first speech of Protagoras at once discovers his self-conceit and avarice—thus in the very first piece of dialogue, where he is content to oppose the reverse of discretion to knowledge also, it becomes evident, when virtue is to be divided, and consequently the distinction between the theoretical and practical eminently obtains, that he is totally destitute of all perception of it. If however this was a piece of dulness wantonly attributed by Plato to this man, it would in that case be sufficiently devoid of art. But it refers undoubtedly to something which Plato and his contemporaries had before their eyes, it matters not whether relatively to Protagoras or some one else. For that philosopher is here less himself than the representative of his sect. In like manner the sequel further discovers that it fares no better with Protagoras in regard of the distinction between the pleasant and the good. And if, at the conclusion, when Socrates exposes to him the great contradiction in which he is involved, we learn that he has not reflected even in the slightest degree upon the conditions necessary for the instruction of others, or upon the notion of virtue in which he would instruct them; we have been meanwhile convinced how far removed he must continue from that method, the grand principle of which consists in bringing the nursling of philosophy to self-consciousness, and compelling him to independent thought. Such a method, then, has the dialogistic proved itself meanwhile to be; it is a method which brings all this to view, and applies those testing points, offering them for recognition or rejection, by overlooking which, Protagoras discovers himself to be a person who has never recognised moral truth, and consequently has never endeavoured to attain moral objects as the end of his philosophy. And it is the projection of these points and the trial whether the right can in any way be found which is the aim of the manifold artificial and dialectic turns which Socrates makes, which can only be falsely accounted as technicalities and sophisms in him, by one totally unacquainted with the Platonic method. On the contrary, if we compare them with the execution of the Phædrus, they are the very points which at once constitute a clear proof of Plato’s advancement as a philosophical artist. For in the Phædrus we do indeed find that indirect process which forms as it were the essential character of all Plato’s dialogues, particularly those not immediately constructive, we find it, I say, sufficiently predominant in the whole of the composition, but only very sparingly applied in the details; but in this we have it pursued no less in the details than in the whole generally, so that the Protagoras is upon the whole a more perfect attempt to imitate in writing the living and inspired language of the wise man. As also the dialectic maxims of deception and undeception delivered in the Phædrus, are put into practice with that laborious industry with which able pupils in an art, who have already made considerable progress, or rising masters in the same, seek every tolerable opportunity in their exercises for exhibiting any of the secrets they have discovered before the eyes of the skilful adept. But it is not only the practical dialectics, and the commendatory recognition of the genuine form of philosophical art which appears here further advanced than in the Phædrus, but also the scientific bearing is improved. The proposition indeed that virtue is the knowledge of what is to be done or chosen, and, consequently, that vice is only error, this proposition, however serious Plato may have been in making it, is not here put into a definite form and brought forward directly as his opinion, but, left as it is indefinite, it belongs rather to the web in which he entangles those who have not yet possessed themselves of the true idea of the good; which results in part from the evidently ironical treatment of the whole proposition, partly from the connection into which it is so easily placed with that utterly un-Socratic and un-Platonic view that the good is nothing but the pleasant, partly also from the resulting application of what in virtue might be knowledge and science to the arts of measuring and arithmetic. But at all events we here find some indirect notices tending towards what certainly must precede the decision of the question, the more accurate definition namely of the idea of knowledge. Thus the apparent contradiction which Socrates himself detects, involved in the fact that he disputes the communicability of virtue, and yet maintains that it is knowledge, this is evidently an enticement held out to reflect upon the relation of knowledge to teaching, after consideration of what had been already said in the Phædrus upon the nature of ideas. The opposition in reference to the School of Heraclitus between being (τὸ εἶναι) and becoming (τὸ γίγνεσθαι) although at the same time ironical as regards the Protagoras, has a similar tendency. As also the subordinate question of the unity or plurality of virtue is only a particular case belonging to the more general investigation into the nature of unity or plurality, or the manner in which the general ideas communicate with particulars, so that the doctrine of ideas here begins to pass from the mythical province into the scientific, and by the very principles brought forward in it, the Protagoras contains, over and above its own immediate object, the germs of several succeeding works of Plato, and that in such a manner that it is at once clear even from this that it is of an earlier date than all other dialogues in which these questions are treated more at length.

Now as to the myth brought forward by Protagoras, there is no need to number it as some have done, good-naturedly raising it to an exalted rank, among those of Plato’s own; on the contrary, if not the property of Protagoras himself, as seems likely, though there is no evidence to confirm the supposition, yet the manner in which Plato applies it makes it much more probable that it is at all events composed in his spirit. For precisely as is natural to one of a coarsely materialistic mode of thinking, whose philosophy does not extend beyond immediate sensuous experience, the reasoning principle in men is only viewed as a recompence for their deficient corporeal conformation, and the idea of right with the feeling of shame as requisites for a sensuous existence, and as something not introduced into the minds of men until a later period. Hence also the proof contained in this myth, because Plato could not give any other colouring to such a view, is very oratorically stated, as he does not so much spare investigations upon principles as make the want of them perceptible, since even what he has properly to explain is not connected with the course of the narrative, but is only adduced as a command of Zeus. It appears also strange on that account in respect of the style, and probably imitated after Protagoras. And, as to Socrates’ opinion of the poem of Simonides, of which nothing but this fragment is preserved to us, namely, that it must be a censure upon the apophthegm of Pittacus, this is not to be taken merely as a jest. At least we are in possession of another poem generally ascribed to Simonides, in which the resemblance in manner and style to this is not to be mistaken, which stands in a similar polemical relation to the epigram of Cleobulus quoted in the Phædrus, who was also himself one of the seven wise men.

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