PLATONIC DIALOGUES. 479 



The argument thus sketched is clear, consistent, steadily progres- 

 sive, and (on the premises assumed) conclusive. 



"Were it not for Stallbaum's extraordinary comment, I would con- 

 sider it unnecessary to say anything regarding the logical propriety 

 of the interchange (C) of the terms holy and God-loved. We must 

 distinguish between a judgment in which one thing is merely pre- 

 dicated of another — as " God is good " — and a definition exhibiting 

 the full and exact nature of the thing defined — as " a triangle is a 

 three-sided figure." In the latter case, wherever the expression 

 triangle occurs, we may without error replace it by three-sided figure : 

 and conversely. But of course such a procedure would in the 

 former case be absurd. Now Stallbaum actually argues that the 

 passage under consideration, without some such addition as Bast has 

 suggested, involves a fallacy, inasmuch as, the holy having been 

 defined to be the God-loved, ocrtov and ^eo^tXes are thereafter treated 

 as interchangeable terms ! How could the learned critic forget that 

 the proposition, "holiness is that which is loved by the Gods," is 

 taken, throughout the argument, not as the mere predication of a 

 quality which may belong to other objects as well as to holiness, but 

 as a definition exhibiting exactly the essential nature of holiness ? 

 A passage of the Protagoras may be referred to by way of illustra- 

 tion. Protagoras had been led to identify the pleasant and the good, 

 so as to make the proposition, " the good is that which is pleasant," 

 a definition exhibiting the exact nature of the good. He had also 

 asserted that men often do evil, knowing that it is evil, in conse- 

 quence of being overcome by pleasures. Here Socrates takes him 

 up, and insists that pleasure be replaced by good, according to the 

 definition which had been given of the latter term ; which being 

 done, the doctrine of Protagoras is reduced to this : that men often 

 do evil, knowing that it is evil, in consequence of being overcome by 

 good, rj yeXoLov Xeycrc Trpay/xa, ei TrparreL tis xa/ca, y ty vwo-kwv oti KUKa 

 icTTLv, 6v Seov dura TrpamLv, r}TTco/x,€i/os vtto to>v ayaOuiv. — (Protagoras, 

 § 111. Bekker.) 



It may be observed, that, while endeavouring to prove that mo- 

 rality (more precisely, holiness) is not dependent on the will of 

 God, Plato does not represent it as independent of the nature 

 of God. In fact, in his maturest dialogues, as we may afterwards 

 have occasion to point out, he connects all eternal and unchange- 



