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



approving, appears to include the form of Dialogue, as well as the subdivision of the subject 

 into its various branches. Socrates is presented as attaching so much importance to this form, 

 that in the Protagoras (§ 65) he rises to depart, because his opponent will not conform to 

 this practice. And generally in Plato, Dialectic is opposed to Rhetoric, as a string of short 

 questions and answers to a continuous dissertation. 



Xenophon also seems to imply (Mem. iv. 5, 11) that Socrates included in his notion of 

 Dialectic the form of Dialogue as well as the division of the subject. 



But that the method of close Dialogue was not called Dialectic by the author of the 

 Sophist, we have good evidence in the work itself. Among other notions which are analysed 

 by the bifurcate division here exhibited, is that of getting by contest (Agonistic, previously 

 given as a division of Ktetic.) Now getting by contest may be by peaceful trial of superiority, 

 or by fight : (Hamilletic or Machetic.) The fight may be of body against body, or of 

 words against words : these may be called Biastic and Amphisbetic. The fight of words 

 about right and wrong, may be by long discourses opposed to each other, as in judicial cases ; 

 or by short questions and answers : the former may be called Dicanic, the latter Antilogic. Of 

 these colloquies, about right and wrong, some are natural and spontaneous, others artificial and 

 studied : the former need no special name ; the latter are commonly called Eristic. Of Eristic 

 colloquies, some are a source of expense to those who hold them, some of gain : that is, they 

 are Chrematophthoric or Chrematistic : the former, the occupation of those who talk for 

 pleasure's and for company's sake, is Adoleschic, wasteful garrulity ; the latter, that of those 

 who talk for the sake of gain, is Sophistic. And thus Sophistic is an art Eristic, which is part 

 of Antilogic, which is part of Amphisbetic, which is part of Agonistic, which is part of Chirotic, 

 which is a part of Ktetic. (§ 23.) 



We may notice here an indication that satire rather than exact reason directs these 

 analyses; in that Sophistic, which was before a part of the thereutic branch of chirotic and 

 ktetic, is here a part of the other branch, agonistic. 



But the remark which I especially wish to make here is, that the art of discussing 

 points of right and wrong by short questions and answers, being here brought into view, 

 is not called Dialectic, which we might have expected; but Antilogic. It would seem there- 

 fore that the Author of the Sophist did not understand by Dialectic such a process as Socrates 

 describes in Xenophon; (Mem. iv. 5, 11, 12;) where he says it was called Dialectic, 

 because it was followed by persons dividing things into their kinds in conversation ; 

 (kowti f&ovheveadai SiaXeyovras :) or such as the Socrates of Plato insisted upon in the 

 Protagoras and the Gorgias. Of the two elements which the Dialectical Process of 

 Socrates implied, Division of the subject and Dialogue, the author of the Sophistes does not 

 claim the name of Dialectic for either, and seems to reject it for the second. 



But without insisting upon the name, are we to suppose that the Dichotomous Method of 

 the Sophistes Dialogue, (I may add of the Politicus, for the method is the same in this Dialogue 

 also,) is the method of division of a subject according to its natural members, of which 

 Plato speaks in the Phasdrus ? 



If the Sophistes be the work of Plato, the answer is difficult either way. If this method 

 be Plato's Dialectic, how came he to omit to say so there ? how came he even to seem to deny 



