PLATONIC DIALOGUES. 487 



baum remarks : " Quae quidem conclusio quam arguta, quamque 

 iijfirma sit, nemo nou videt." It is doing Plato gross injustice, how- 

 ever, to father such weakness upon him. We may perhaps be of 

 opinion, that, in winding up his argument, he does not express him- 

 self so fully as he might have done ; but the reasoning, as he baa 

 left it, may have been sufficient for those to whom it was addressed; 

 and, at any rate, he is entitled to a candid and liberal interpretation 

 of his language. What he should have said, to render bis argument 

 logically complete, is sufficiently obvious. Starting with the simple 

 fact, that, in this life, say Lj, the soul has in it true opinions ca- 

 pable of being developed into knowledge, be has inferred (c) that 

 the same thing holds good of a previous life, say L^. Now, in order 

 that he might reach his grand conclusion, it was only necessary for 

 bim to add, that, by a repetition of the reasoning, the same thing 

 could be shewn to hold good regarding a still prior life, say Lg ; and 

 so on, without limit. The terms Lj, L^, L3, &c., forming an infi- 

 nite series, carry us back through all time (Travra y^povov) ; and, let 

 us recede into the past as far as we please, we never reach a point 

 where the soul is not in possession of latent true opinions, or, 

 what is involved in this, where it is not found in the condition of 

 having learned (tov act ^ovov fjLe/xadrjKvta ia-Tai) This is manifestly 

 what Plato should have said. Is it not what he has said ? In sub- 

 stance, I believe it is. His statement is exactly to the following 

 effect : true opinions are in the soul of any one, both while he is a 

 man, and while he is not [not simply before he became a man, but 

 (6v aV jx-q rj dvOpomos) during all the time when he was not a man, ia 

 other words, throughout thie whole time that preceded his birth] ; 

 therefore, &c. The first position here laid down, that true opinions 

 are in a person's soul while he is a man, has been proved by the 

 example of Meno's attendant. The proof of the next position, that 

 true opinions were in the person during the whole of the time when 

 he was not a man, has not indeed been fully drawn out in a formal 

 manner. But having demonstrated (as he conceives himself to have 

 done) that true opinions were in the soul in a life anterior to the 

 present, and having demonstrated this as a corollary from the fact 

 that they are in the soul in the present life, Plato probably thought 

 that his readers would have no difficulty in perceiving for themselves 

 that the same considerations which evince the present life to be the 

 sequel of a preceding, in whicb the soul had true opinions in it, are 



