THE SOPHISTA OF PLATO, &c. 



151 



principle in common, under the image of a battle between gods and giants ; and fewer still, 

 had they conceived the design, would have executed it with a touch at once so firm and so 

 fine. What inferior master could have kept up so well, and with so little effort, the fiction of 

 a hunt after a fierce and wily beast, by which the Eleatic Stranger sustains the ardent 

 ThejBtetus amid the toil and weariness of a prolonged logical exercitation ? Or who could so 

 skilfully have interwoven that exercitation itself with matter so grave and various as that 

 of which the dialogue in its central portion is made up ? If vivacity in the conversations, 

 easy and natural transitions from one subject to another, pungency of satire^ delicate persi- 

 flage, and idiomatic raciness of phrase are elements of dramatic power, I know no dialogue 

 more dramatic than the Sophista. The absence of any elaborate exhibition of character or 

 display of passion is, under the circumstances, an excellence and not a defect : as such 

 elements would have disturbed the harmony of the composition, and have been as much out 

 of place as in the Timceus, or in some of the later books of the Republic — to say nothing of 

 the Cratylus and Parmenides, which resemble this dialogue in so many particulars that those 

 who condemn it, logically give up the other two also. 



The Sophista, it is well known, is professedly a continuation of the Thecetetus. The 

 same interlocutors meet, with an addition in the person of an Eleatic Stranger, and they meet 

 by appointment : for at the conclusion of the Thecetetus Socrates bespeaks an interview for 

 the following day, of which he is reminded by Theodorus in the opening sentence of the 

 Sophista. The Politicus or Statesman is, in like manner, a professed continuation of the 

 Sophist. The connexion, however, between these two is on the surface much closer than 

 that between the Thecetetus and the Sophista. In the Thecetetus we are not informed what is 

 to be the subject of the next day's talk, but in the Sophista^ three subjects are proposed for 

 consideration — the Sophist, the Philosopher, and the Statesman; and the choice is left to the 

 new-comer, who selects the Sophist as the theme of that day's conversation. The third day is 

 devoted to the Statesman, who is made the subject of an investigation similar to that pursued 

 in the case of the Sophist. In both dialogues the professed object of the persons engaged is 

 to obtain a definition, and the method pursued is that called by the ancient Logicians, and by 

 the Schoolmen after them, the method of Division. We are left to infer that the Philosopher 

 was to be handled on the fourth day in like fashion. Instead of this projected Tetralogy, we 

 have only a Trilogy. No dialogue exists under the title of (^CKoaoCpo^, and the ingenuity 

 of commentators has been taxed to account for the deficiency^. It is tolerably certain 

 that Plato never wrote a dialogue under this title, and it seems idle to speculate on the 

 causes or motives of this omission. It is more to the purpose to observe, that there is no 

 connexion apparent on the surface between the subject-matter of the Tlwoetetus and that of 



' As a specimen of this, take the argument with the ytj- 

 yeveis, 246 D, seq., and the mock solemnity with which the 

 ' Ens' of the eio<oj» <^i\oi is described, 249 a. 



- P. 217 A. 



' Schleiermacher, for instance, conceives that the omission is 

 intentional, and that we must look for the missing portrait in 

 the Symposium and Phaedo ; of which the first teaches us how 

 a philosopher should live, the latter how he should die. This is 



one of those "Schleiermachersche Grillen" which contribute to 

 the amusement even of his admirers. Stallbaum seems to think 

 that the title of the Parmenides may originally have been 

 4>i/\do-o</)o9, a conjecture which does not seem to me probable, 

 and which I should not have noticed, had it not found 

 favour in the eyes of a gentleman of this University, for whose 

 critical acumen I entertain the greatest respect. 



