THE object of this dialogue is certainly purely philosophical. For the explanation of the idea of the beautiful in its full extent, as it embraces material things as well as immaterial, would certainly be worth the trouble, and quite as important as regards the philosophy of Plato, as the object of many of the smaller dialogues to which we have assigned a place in the larger series. But the reader, if he looks to the mode in which this subject is treated, will certainly not be surprised to find the Hippias Major only in this place in the Appendix. For it is throughout sceptical to a degree which characterises none of the others; a multitude of different explanations of the beautiful are taken up and all of them refuted. And even, when the upshot is taken of all to which the reader is conducted or referred in this process of refutation, we find it to consist only in a couple of perfectly familiar positions, which teach that the origin of the bad is not in power but in impotence! and that the beautiful and good should not be separated; and this last, indeed, is the only point upon which Socrates expresses himself with clearness and precision. In consequence of this absence of scientific tone, we cannot number the dialogue among those properly called philosophical. Thus, it does not stand in any visible connection of progressive development with any other whatever. In the persual of it, certainly, every reader is immediately reminded of the Philebus, and it is only on account of this connection, and not with a view of indicating, even in the most remote degree, a period at which the Hippias might have been written, that we assign it its present position. For in the Philebus, Plato expresses himself with the greatest precision as well upon the subject of the connection of the beautiful with the good, as upon that of the nature of the beautiful itself, and considers it not only in its moral bearing, but also according to the first elements of that which we call beautiful in material things. But no one will there find even the most distant reference to the investigations here pursued, nor again in any part of the Hippias is any proximate preparation discoverable to what is discussed in the Philebus.
In short, it must be at once manifest to every one, that a scientific treatment of the subject, the beautiful that is, in speaking of the present dialogue is almost entirely out of the question, so completely is all such kept out of sight; and quite as certain is it, that the impression which every reader must receive from the whole is, that a polemical purpose is the predominant in it. And under this purpose the dialogue has in view two remarkable explanations of the beautiful. In one of them, that the beautiful is the fitting, we easily recognise the spirit of the Hedonic schools, in so far, that is, as according to them the good is only something capriciously established, consequently agreeable and fitting. Only it may excite our surprise, that in discussing this point Socrates adheres so exclusively to a kind of almost verbal dialectics, without following his usual practice of exposing somewhat severely the notion which is the basis of the theory. With regard to the other explanation, that the beautiful is the pleasant as apprehended by sight and hearing, pointing as it certainly does to the same principles as Plato lays down in the Philebus, it would be very interesting to know who it was that brought forward this explanation in Plato’s time, or whether it was invented by himself in order to indicate that property of the beautiful which he mentions in the Philebus as the essential element in it. But, though this explanation is certainly given as lying very close at hand, notwithstanding that we cannot now point out the author of it, it is impossible to believe that the substance of these explanations which Plato puts into the mouth of Hippias about gold, and the pretty girl, was derived from any other authors. And thus it is impossible for any one to avoid asking himself, how it happens that Plato exhibits the not undistinguished sophist as guilty of such an unheard degree of stupidity, as not to be even in a condition to understand a question as to how a word is to be explained? The personal ridicule indisputably appears here under a far coarser form than anywhere else, not excepting even the Euthydemus, where the persons are probably in no instance strictly historical, and it would, exaggerated as it is, have certainly destroyed its own effect.
This manner, or rather absence of anything deserving the name, scarcely reconcileable as it is with the propriety and polish of Plato, may perhaps excite a suspicion in the minds of many as to the genuineness of the dialogue, because we might certainly meet with it very naturally in a less experienced imitator, who felt that it was necessary for him to give himself an easy task if he was to succeed in any degree in the irony and dialectics of his prototype. And the suspicion once excited, much certainly will be found apparently confirming it. Thus, at the very beginning Socrates indulges in a piece of sophistical dialectics, which might induce us to believe, that not anything, being what it is, can be useless, a piece of art which would not be unworthy of any of the persons in the Euthydemus. Were this a parody of anything of the kind resembling it, one should think that Plato would rather have put it into the mouth of the sophist than of Socrates. On the contrary, Hippias meantime exhibits in his behaviour a plain common sense which he is not quite able subsequently to keep up, and with a moderation which is not very carefully returned. on the side of Socrates. Then, in the arrangement of the whole, it certainly strikes us as something strange, that in the first half of the dialogue all explanations of the beautiful come from Hippias, and in the latter all from Socrates, who there contradicts himself, and that for the most part in an unnatural and precipitate manner, without being in any way compelled as it were to do so by the course of the dialogue, but, in fact, going out of his way for the purpose. Lastly, the play with the man in the back-ground, to whom Socrates is always obliged to render an account, is brought out into almost too coarse relief to have come from the hand of Plato—for the man threatens to beat him, like Aspasia in the Menexenus, and Socrates afterwards puts himself by name in the place of the man, without, however, its being made clear that he meant only himself from the first, and in such a manner that no particular effect whatever is produced by his doing so, and the resort to this expedient again is altogether contrary to good taste. But it might, notwithstanding, be rather precipitate to entertain the notion of making these grounds very importantly valid, and we could not justify the placing of this dialogue in the same class with those which we have strictly and unconditionally rejected. There is an abundance of pleasantry dispersed over the whole, and when we have made due allowances and considered further that this was the principal object in view, and that in the second part a variety of contemporaneous matter is criticised under the name of Hippias as well as of Socrates, we shall be readily disposed to pardon the exaggerations as well as the extravagancies of the humour which prevails in the dialogue. We may, moreover, easily see how much of the polemics generally is grounded upon self-defence. The earthenware, kitchen-furniture, and the golden mill, are purposely introduced in defiance of those who were pleased to ridicule examples taken from trifling things; and that superintending listener is to be regarded as exemplifying in the highest degree the practice which sometimes occurs when Socrates asks his interlocutor how he must answer a third person making this or that objection. And who then can say how many other personal allusions may be here concealed in consequence of which much that remains is even more beautiful than it appears to us. Even the senseless answers of Hippias may be parodies of others like them, or of the superficial manner in which the good and the beautiful were by many made to consist in this or that particular thing without penetrating into the real essence of them. But why Hippias in particular is the person to give his name to these, is a point upon which no one will look for information. Only, it is not very probable that Plato should have chosen him twice, and each time for the unfortunate hero of a private colloquy with Socrates, especially as the two dialogues have no internal relation whatever to one another. If then one of them is to be considered Platonic, and the other not, the victory will be with the larger of the two. For many traces exist that the author in the composition of the smaller dialogue had the larger before him. Particular expressions of ridicule directed against the man, which the larger dispatches in a few words, are spun out in the former with disproportionate prolixity, and the banquet of speeches to which in the larger dialogue the Sophist invites Socrates, is exactly concluded in the smaller.