Vll 



of Exposition, wherein is announced some positive dogma. The great 

 interest, in Mr. Grote's eyes, attaches to the first, the Dialogues of Search ; 

 never before were the peculiarities manifested by these put in such strong 

 relief. They were the consummation of Grecian Dialectic, or free discus- 

 sion and argumentation between opposing opinions, which had been begun 

 by Zeno, and w r as practised by Socrates in his indiscriminate cross 

 examination of the Athenian citizens ; from Socrates it was adopted by 

 Plato. " A string of objections never answered, and of difficulties without 

 solution, may appear to many persons nugatory, as well as tiresome. To 

 Plato they did not appear so. At the time when most of his dialogues 

 were composed, he considered that the search after truth was at once the 

 noblest occupation and the highest pleasure of life." This negative pro- 

 cedure involved with it the assertion of an unfettered judgment upon all 

 questions whatsoever ; in short, perfect toleration of difTerences of opinion. 

 For this Socrates cheerfully suffered martyrdom. Plato also, in his nega- 

 tive days, made noble appeals on behalf of freedom of thought. From 

 intense fellow-feeling with the same cause, Mr. Grote dwells emphatically 

 upon this aspect of Plato. " The orthodox public do not recognize in 

 any individual citizen a right to scrutinize their creed, and to reject it if not 

 approved by his own rational judgment." " ' Nornos 3 (Law and Custom), 

 ' King of all,' exercises plenary power, spiritual as well as temporal, over 

 individual minds, moulding both emotions and intellect according to the 

 local type." To the protest by Socrates and Plato against this despotism 

 in the ancient world, Grote, on every opportunity, adds an equally strenuous 

 remonstrance against the like despotism in modern times. 



From a very early period of life he had studied profoundly the influence 

 of men's feelings or emotions in corruptiug their sense of truth. Several 

 of his most famous disquisitions have consisted in the illustration of this 

 subject, more especially his handling of the Grecian Legends and his 

 chapters on Socrates. As an historian of philosophy, he habitually traces 

 the operation of this bias, which he held to be very far from extinct in the 

 present day, although less often present in Physical science than in Ethical 

 and Psychological doctrines. 



At the age of 70 he commenced his work on Aristotle. Neither he nor 

 any of his intimate friends could detect the slightest falling off in his 

 intellectual vigour, yet he was painfully conscious of a diminution in his 

 working pace ; so that after six years he had executed but a fraction of 

 his survey of the Aristotelian writings. What he has left amply maintains 

 his reputation gained by the 4 Plato.' He has exhaustively analyzed, in 

 his peculiarly luminous style, the whole of the treatises comprised under 

 the 'Organon,' being all the works that have been the fountains of the 

 common scholastic logic — Categories, Be Interpretatione, Analyticu priora 

 and post eriora, and Sophistic Elenchi ; together with an elaborate account 

 of the large treatise, the Topica, seldom adverted to, but valuable in his 

 eyes, as exhibiting the methodized Dialectical debate of thexlthenian schools. 



