Dr WHEWELL, ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC. 593 



The art of private persuasion is accompanied with the giving of presents, (as lovers do,) or with 

 the receiving of pay : (thus it is Dorophoric or Mistharneutic.) To receive pay as the result of 

 persuasion, is the course, either of those who merely earn their bread by supplying pleasure, 

 namely flatterers, whose art is Hedyntic ; or of those who profess for pay to teach virtue. And 

 who are they ? Plainly the Sophists. And thus Sophistic is that kind of Ktetic, Chirotic, 

 Thereutic, Zootheric, Pezotheric, Hemerotheric, Pithanurgic, Idiothereutic, Mistharneutic 

 art, which professes to teach virtue, and takes money on that account. 



The same process is pursued along several other lines of inquiry : and at the end of each 

 of them the Sophist is detected, involved in a number of somewhat obnoxious characteristics. 

 This process of division it will be observed, is at every step bifurcate, or as it is called, 

 dichotomous. Applied as it is in these examples, it is rather the vehicle of satire than of 

 philosophy. Yet, I have no doubt that this bifurcate method was admired by some of the 

 philosophers of Plato's time, as a clever and effective philosophical invention. We may the 

 more readily believe this, inasmuch as one of the most acute persons of our own time, 

 who has come nearer than any other to the ancient heads of sects in the submission with 

 which his followers have accepted his doctrines, has taken up this Dichotomous Method, and 

 praised it as the only philosophical mode of dividing a subject. I refer to Mr Jeremy 

 Bentham's Chrestomathia (published originally in 1816,) in which this exhaustive bifurcate 

 method, as he calls it, was applied to classify sciences and arts, with a view to a scheme 

 of education. How exactly the method, as recommended by him, agrees with the method 

 illustrated in the Sophist, an examination of any of his examples will shew. Thus to take 

 Mineralogy as an example : according to Bentham, Ontology is Ccenoscopic or Idioscopic : the 

 Idioscopic is Somatoscopic or Pneumatoscopic ; the Somatoscopic is Pososcopic or Poioscopic : 

 Poioscopic is Physiurgoscopic or Anthropurgoscopic : Physiurgoscopic is Uranoscopic or 

 Epigeoscopic : Epigeoscopic is Abioscopic or Embioscopic. And thus Mineralogy is the 

 Science Idioscopic, Somatoscopic, Poioscopic, Physiurgoscopic, Epigeoscopic, Abioscopic : 

 inasmuch as it is the science which regards bodies, with reference to their qualities, bodies, 

 namely, the works of nature, terrestrial, lifeless. 



I conceive that this bifurcate method is not really philosophical or valuable : but that is not 

 our business here. What we have to consider is whether this is what Plato meant by the 

 term Dialectic. 



The general description of Dialectic in the Sophistes agrees very closely with that quoted 

 from the Phaedrus, that it is the separation of a subject according to its natural divisions. 



Thus, see in the Sophist the passage § 83 : " To divide a subject according to the kinds of 

 things, so as neither to make the same kind different nor different kinds identical, is the office of 

 the Dialectical Science." And this is illustrated by observing that it is the office of the science of 

 Grammar to determine what letters may be combined and what may not ; it is the office of the 

 science of Music to determine what sounds differing as acute and grave, may be combined, and 

 what may not : and in like manner it is the office of the science of Dialectic to determine what 

 kinds may be combined in one subject and what may not. And the proof is still further 

 explained. 



In many of the Platonic Dialogues, the Dialectic which Socrates is thus represented as 



76—2 



