Chapter XII: Alkibiades I. and II (2)

[Footnote 48: Xenoph. Mem. i. 4, 1. [Greek: skepsa/menoi mê\ mo/non a(\ e)kei=nos] (Sokrates) [Greek: _kolastêri/ou e(/neka _tou/s pa/nt' oi)ome/nous ei)de/nai e)rôtô=n ê)/legchen, a)lla\ kai\ a(\ le/gôn sunême/reue toi=s sundiatri/bousin], &c. So in the Platonic Lysis, the youthful Lysis says to Sokrates "Talk to Menexenus, [Greek: i(/n' au)to\n kola/sê|s]" (Plat. Lysis, 211 B). And Sokrates himself says, a few lines before (210 E), [Greek: Ou(/tô chrê\ toi=s paidikoi=s diale/gesthai, tapeinou=nta kai\ suste/llonta, kai\ mê\ ô(/sper su\ chaunou=nta kai\ diathru/ptonta.]]

[Side-note: Fitness of the name and character of Alkibiades for idealising this feature in Sokrates.]

If Plato wished to idealise this feature in the character of Sokrates, no name could be more suitable to his purpose than that of Alkibiades: who, having possessed as a youth the greatest personal beauty (to which Sokrates was exquisitely sensible) had become in his mature life distinguished not less for unprincipled ambition and insolence, than for energy and ability. We know the real Alkibiadês both from Thucydides and Xenophon, and we also know that Alkibiades had in his youth so far frequented the society of Sokrates as to catch some of that dialectic ingenuity, which the latter was expected and believed to impart.[49] The contrast, as well as the companionship, between Sokrates and Alkibiades was eminently suggestive to the writers of Sokratic dialogues, and nearly all of them made use of it, composing dialogues in which Alkibiades was the principal name and figure.[50] It would be surprising indeed if Plato had never done the same: which is what we must suppose, if we adopt Schleiermacher's view, that both Alkibiadês I. and II. are spurious. In the Protagoras as well as in the Symposion, Alkibiades figures; but in neither of them is he the principal person, or titular hero, of the piece. In Alkibiadês I. and II., he is introduced as the solitary respondent to the questions of Sokrates--[Greek: kolastêri/ou e(/neka]: to receive from Sokrates a lesson of humiliation such as the Xenophontic Sokrates administers to Glaukon and Euthydemus, taking care to address the latter when alone.[51]

[Footnote 49: The sensibility of Sokrates to youthful beauty is as strongly declared in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (i. 3, 8-14), as in the Platonic Lysis, Charmidês, or Symposion.

The conversation reported by Xenophon between Alkibiades, when not yet twenty years of age, and his guardian Perikles, the first man in Athens--wherein Alkibiades puzzles Perikles by a Sokratic cross-examination--is likely enough to be real, and was probably the fruit of his sustained society with Sokrates (Xen. Memor. i. 2, 40).]

[Footnote 50: Stallbaum observes (Prolegg. ad Alcib. i. p. 215, 2nd ed.), "Ceterum etiam Æschines, Euclides, Phædon, et Antisthenes, dialogos _Alcibiadis_ nomine inscriptos composuisse narrantur".

Respecting the dialogues composed by Æschines, see the first note to this chapter.]

[Footnote 51: Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 8.]

[Side-note: Plato's manner of replying to the accusers of Sokrates. Magical influence ascribed to the conversation of Sokrates.]

I conceive Alkibiadês I. and II. as composed by Plato among his earlier writings (perhaps between 399-390 B.C.)[52] giving an imaginary picture of the way in which "Sokrates handled every respondent just as he chose" (to use the literal phrase of Xenophon[53]): taming even that most overbearing youth, whom Aristophanes characterises as the lion's whelp.[54] In selecting Alkibiades as the sufferer under such a chastising process, Plato rebuts in his own ideal style that charge which Xenophon answers with prosaic directness--the charge made against Sokrates by his enemies, that he taught political craft without teaching ethical sobriety; and that he had encouraged by his training the lawless propensities of Alkibiades.[55] When Schleiermacher, and others who disallow the dialogue, argue that the inordinate insolence ascribed to Alkibiades, and the submissive deference towards Sokrates also ascribed to him, are incongruous and incompatible attributes,--I reply that such a conjunction is very improbable in any real character. But this does not hinder Plato from combining them in one and the same ideal character, as we shall farther see when we come to the manifestation of Alkibiades in the Symposion: in which dialogue we find a combination of the same elements, still more extravagant and high-coloured. Both here and there we are made to see that Sokrates, far from encouraging Alkibiades, is the only person who ever succeeded in humbling him. Plato attributes to the personality and conversation of Sokrates an influence magical and almost superhuman: which Cicero and Plutarch, proceeding probably upon the evidence of the Platonic dialogues, describe as if it were historical fact. They represent Alkibiades as shedding tears of sorrow and shame, and entreating Sokrates to rescue him from a sense of degradation insupportably painful.[56] Now Xenophon mentions Euthydemus and other young men as having really experienced these profound and distressing emotions.[56] But he does not at all certify the same about Alkibiades, whose historical career is altogether adverse to the hypothesis. The Platonic picture is an _idéal_, drawn from what may have been actually true about other interlocutors of Sokrates, and calculated to reply to Melêtus and his allies.

[Footnote 52: The date which I here suppose for the composition of Alkib. i. (_i.e._ after the death of Sokrates, but early in the literary career of Plato), is farther sustained (against those critics who place it in 406 B.C. or 402 B.C. before the death of Sokrates) by the long discourse (p. 121-124) of Sokrates about the Persian and Spartan kings. In reference to the Persian monarchy Sokrates says (p. 123 B), [Greek: e)pei/ pot' e)gô\ ê(/kousa a)ndro\s a)xiopi/stou tô=n a)nabebêko/tôn para\ basile/a, o(\s e)/phê parelthei=n chô/ran pa/nu pollê\n kai\ a)gathê/n--ê(\n kalei=n tou\s e)pichôri/ous zô/nên tê=s basile/ôs gunaiko/s], &c. Olympiodorus and the Scholiast both suppose that Plato here refers to Xenophon and the Anabasis, in which a statement very like this is found (i. 4, 9). It is plain, therefore, that _they_ did not consider the dialogue to have been composed before the death of Sokrates. I think it very probable that Plato had in his mind Xenophon (either his Anabasis, or personal communications with him); but at any rate visits of Greeks to the Persian court became very numerous between 399-390 B.C., whereas Plato can hardly have seen any such visitors at Athens in 406 B.C. (before the close of the war), nor probably in 402 B.C., when Athens, though relieved from the oligarchy, was still in a state of great public prostration. Between 399 B.C. and the peace of Antalkidas (387 B.C.), visitors from Greece to the interior of Persia became more and more frequent, the Persian kings interfering very actively in Grecian politics. Plato may easily have seen during these years intelligent Greeks who had been up to the Persian court on military or political business. Both the Persian kings and the Spartan kings were then in the maximum of power and ascendancy--it is no wonder therefore that Sokrates should here be made to dwell upon their prodigious dignity in his discourse with Alkibiades. Steinhart (Einl. p. 150) feels the difficulty of reconciling this part of the dialogue with his hypothesis that it was composed in 406 B.C.: yet he and Stallbaum both insist that it must have been composed before the death of Sokrates, for which they really produce no grounds at all.]

[Footnote 53: Xen. Mem. i. 2, 14. [Greek: toi=s de\ dialegome/nois au)tô=| pa=si chrô/menon e)n toi=s lo/gois o(/pôs bou/loito.]]

[Footnote 54: Aristoph. Ran. 1431. [Greek: ou) chrê\ le/ontos sku/mnon e)n po/lei tre/phein.] Thucyd. vi. 15. [Greek: phobêthe/ntes ga\r au)tou=] (Alkib.) [Greek: oi( polloi\ to\ me/gethos tê=s te kata\ to\ e(autou= sô=ma paranomi/as e)s tê\n di/aitan, kai\ tê=s dianoi/as ô(=n kath' e(\n e(/kaston, e)n o(/tô| gi/gnoito, e)/prassen, ô(s turanni/dos e)pithumou=nti pole/mioi kathe/stasan], &c.]

[Footnote 55: Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 17.]

[Footnote 56: Cicero, Tusc. Disp. iii. 32, 77; Plutarch, Alkib. c. 4-6. Compare Plato, Alkib. i. p. 127 D, 135 C; Symposion, p. 215-216.]

[Footnote 57: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, 39-40.]

[Side-note: The purpose proclaimed by Sokrates in the Apology is followed out in Alkib. I. Warfare against the false persuasion of knowledge.]

Looking at Alkibiadês I. and II. in this point of view, we shall find them perfectly Sokratic both in topics proclaimed and in manner--whatever may be said about unnecessary prolixity and common-place here and there. The leading ideas of Alkibiadês I. may be found, nearly all, in the Platonic Apology. That warfare, which Sokrates proclaims in the Apology as having been the mission of his life, against the false persuasion of knowledge, or against beliefs ethical and æsthetical, firmly entertained without having been preceded by conscious study or subjected to serious examination--is exemplified in Alkibiadês I. and II. as emphatically as in any Platonic composition. In both these dialogues, indeed (especially in the first), we find an excessive repetition of specialising illustrations, often needless and sometimes tiresome: a defect easily intelligible if we assume them to have been written when Plato was still a novice in the art of dialogic composition. But both dialogues are fully impregnated with the spirit of the Sokratic process, exposing, though with exuberant prolixity, the firm and universal belief, held and affirmed by every one even at the age of boyhood, without any assignable grounds or modes of acquisition, and amidst angry discordance between the affirmation of one man and another. The emphasis too with which Sokrates insists upon his own single function of merely questioning, and upon the fact that Alkibiades gives all the answers and pronounces all the self-condemnation with his own mouth[58]--is remarkable in this dialogue: as well as the confidence with which he proclaims the dialogue as affording the only, but effective, cure.[59] The ignorance of which Alkibiades stands unexpectedly convicted, is expressly declared to be common to him with the other Athenian politicians: an exception being half allowed to pass in favour of the semi-philosophical Perikles, whom Plato judges here with less severity than elsewhere[60]--and a decided superiority being claimed for the Spartan and Persian kings, who are extolled as systematically trained from childhood.

[Footnote 58: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 112-113.]

[Footnote 59: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 127 E.]

[Footnote 60: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 118-120.]

[Side-note: Difficulties multiplied for the purpose of bringing Alkibiades to a conviction of his own ignorance.]

The main purpose of Sokrates is to drive Alkibiades into self-contradictions, and to force upon him a painful consciousness of ignorance and mental defect, upon grave and important subjects, while he is yet young enough to amend it. Towards this purpose he is made to lay claim to a divine mission similar to that which the real Sokrates announces in the Apology[61] A number of perplexing questions and difficulties are accumulated: it is not meant that these difficulties are insoluble, but that they cannot be solved by one who has never seriously reflected on them--by one who (as the Xenophontic Sokrates says to Euthydemus),[62] is so confident of knowing the subject that he has never meditated upon it at all. The disheartened Alkibiades feels the necessity of improving himself and supplicates the assistance of Sokrates:[63] who reminds him that he must first determine what "Himself" is. Here again we find ourselves upon the track of Sokrates in the Platonic Apology, and under the influence of the memorable inscription at Delphi--_Nosce teipsum_. Your mind is yourself; your body is a mere instrument of your mind: your wealth and power are simple appurtenances or adjuncts. To know yourself, which is genuine Sophrosynê or temperance, is to know your mind: but this can only be done by looking into another mind, and into its most intelligent compartment: just as the eye can only see itself by looking into the centre of vision of another eye.[64]

[Footnote 61: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 124 C-127 E.]

[Footnote 62: Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 36. [Greek: A)lla\ tau=ta me/n, e)/phê o( Sôkra/tês, i)/sôs, dia\ to\ spho/dra posteu/ein ei)de/nai, ou)d' e)/skepsai.]]

[Footnote 63: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 128-132 A.]

[Footnote 64: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 133.

A Platonic metaphor, illustrating the necessity for two separate minds co-operating in dialectic colloquy.]

[Side-note: Sokrates furnishes no means of solving these difficulties. He exhorts to Justice and Virtue--but these are acknowledged Incognita.]

At the same time, when, after having convicted Alkibiades of deplorable ignorance, Sokrates is called upon to prescribe remedies--all distinctness of indication disappears. It is exacted only when the purpose is to bring difficulties and contradictions to view: it is dispensed with, when the purpose is to solve them. The conclusion is, that assuming happiness as the acknowledged ultimate end,[65] Alkibiades cannot secure this either for himself or for his city, by striving for wealth and power, private or public: he can only secure it by acquiring for himself, and implanting in his country-men, justice, temperance, and virtue. This is perfectly Sokratic, and conformable to what is said by the real Sokrates in the Platonic Apology. But coming at the close of Alkibiadês I., it presents no meaning and imparts no instruction: because Sokrates had shown in the earlier part of the dialogue, that neither he himself, nor Alkibiades, nor the general public, knew what justice and virtue were. The positive solution which Sokrates professes to give, is therefore illusory. He throws us back upon those old, familiar, emotional, associations, unconscious products and unexamined transmissions from mind to mind--which he had already shown to represent the fancy of knowledge without the reality--deep-seated belief without any assignable intellectual basis, or outward standard of rectitude.

[Footnote 65: Plat. Alkibiad. i. p. 134.]

[Side-note: Prolixity of Alkibiadês I.--Extreme multiplication of illustrative examples--How explained.]

Throughout the various Platonic dialogues, we find alternately two distinct and opposite methods of handling--the generalising of the special, and the specialising of the general. In Alkibiadês I, the specialising of the general preponderates--as it does in most of the conversations of the Xenophontic Memorabilia: the number of exemplifying particulars is unusually great. Sokrates does not accept as an answer a general term, without illustrating it by several of the specific terms comprehended under it: and this several times on occasions when an instructed reader thinks it superfluous and tiresome: hence, partly, the inclination of some modern critics to disallow the dialogue. But we must recollect that though a modern reader practised in the use of general terms may seize the meaning at once, an Athenian youth of the Platonic age would not be sure of doing the same. No conscious analysis had yet been applied to general terms: no grammar or logic then entered into education. Confident affirmation, without fully knowing the meaning of what is affirmed, is the besetting sin against which Plato here makes war: and his precautions for exposing it are pushed to extreme minuteness. So, too, in the Sophistês and Politikus, when he wishes to illustrate the process of logical division and subdivision, he applies it to cases so trifling and so multiplied, that Socher is revolted and rejects the dialogues altogether. But Plato himself foresees and replies to the objection; declaring expressly that his main purpose is, not to expound the particular subject chosen, but to make manifest and familiar the steps and conditions of the general classifying process--and that prolixity cannot be avoided.[66] We must reckon upon a similar purpose in Alkibiadês I. The dialogue is a specimen of that which Aristotle calls Inductive Dialectic, as distinguished from Syllogistic: the Inductive he considers to be plainer and easier, suitable when you have an ordinary collocutor--the Syllogistic is the more cogent, when you are dealing with a practised disputant.[67]

[Footnote 66: Plato, Politikus, 285-286.]

[Footnote 67: Aristotel. Topic. i. 104, a. 16. [Greek: Po/sa tô=n lo/gôn ei)/dê tô=n dialektikô=n--e)/sti de\ to\ me\n e)pagôgê/, to\ de\ sullogismo/s . . . . e)/sti d' ê( me\n e)pagôgê\ pithanô/teron kai\ saphe/steron kai\ kata\ tê\n ai)/sthêsin gnôrimô/teron kai\ toi=s polloi=s koino/n; o( de\ sullogismo\s biastikô/teron kai\ pro\s tou\s a)ntilogikou\s e)nerge/steron.]]

[Side-note: Alkibiadês II. leaves its problem avowedly undetermined.]

It has been seen that Alkibiadês I, though professing to give something like a solution, gives what is really no solution at all. Alkibiadês II., similar in many respects, is here different, inasmuch as it does not even profess to solve the difficulty which had been raised. The general mental defect--false persuasion of knowledge without the reality--is presented in its application to a particular case. Alkibiades is obliged to admit that he does not know what he ought to pray to the Gods for: neither what is _good_, to be granted, nor what is _evil_, to be averted. He relies upon Sokrates for dispelling this mist from his mind: which Sokrates promises to do, but adjourns for another occasion.

[Side-note: Sokrates commends the practice of praying to the Gods for favours undefined--his views about the semi-regular, semi-irregular agency of the Gods--he prays to them for premonitory warnings.]

Sokrates here ascribes to the Spartans, and to various philosophers, the practice of putting up prayers in undefined language, for good and honourable things generally. He commends that practice. Xenophon tells us that the historical Sokrates observed it:[68] but he tells us also that the historical Sokrates, though not praying for any special presents from the Gods, yet prayed for and believed himself to receive special irregular revelations and advice as to what was good to be done or avoided in particular cases. He held that these special revelations were essential to any tolerable life: that the dispensations of the Gods, though administered upon regular principles on certain subjects and up to a certain point, were kept by them designedly inscrutable beyond that point: but that the Gods would, if properly solicited, afford premonitory warnings to any favoured person, such as would enable him to keep out of the way of evil, and put himself in the way of good. He declared that to consult and obey oracles and prophets was not less a maxim of prudence than a duty of piety: for himself, he was farther privileged through his divine sign or monitor, which he implicitly followed.[69] Such premonitory warnings were the only special favour which he thought it suitable to pray for--besides good things generally. For special presents he did not pray, because he professed not to know whether any of the ordinary objects of desire were good or bad. He proves in his conversation with Euthydêmus, that all those acquisitions which are usually accounted means of happiness--beauty, strength, wealth, reputation, nay, even good health and wisdom--are sometimes good or causes of happiness, sometimes evil or causes of misery; and therefore cannot be considered either as absolutely the one or absolutely the other.[70]

[Footnote 68: Xenoph. Mem. i. 3, 2; Plat. Alk. ii. p. 143-148.]

[Footnote 69: These opinions of Sokrates are announced in various passages of the Xenophontic Memorabilia, i. 1, 1-10--[Greek: e)/phê de\ dei=n, a(\ me\n matho/ntas poiei=n e)/dôkan oi( theoi/, mantha/nein; a(\ de\ mê\ dê=la toi=s a)nthrô/pois e)sti/, peira=sthai dia\ mantikê=s para\ tô=n theô=n puntha/nesthai; tou\s theou\s ga/r, oi(=s a)\n ô)=sin i(/leô|, sêmai/nein]--i. 3, 4; i. 4, 2-15; iv. 3, 12; iv. 7, 10; iv. 8, 5-11.]

[Footnote 70: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, 31-32-36.[Greek: Tau=ta ou)=n pote\ me\n ô)phelou=nta pote\ de\ bla/ptonta, ti/ ma=llon a)gatha\ ê)\ kaka/ e)stin?]]

[Side-note: Comparison of Alkibiadês II. with the Xenophontic Memorabilia, especially the conversation of Sokrates with Euthydemus. Sokrates not always consistent with himself.]

This impossibility of determining what is good and what is evil, in consequence of the uncertainty in the dispensations of the Gods and in human affairs--is a doctrine forcibly insisted on by the Xenophontic Sokrates in his discourse with Euthydêmus, and much akin to the Platonic Alkibiadês II., being applied to the special case of prayer. But we must not suppose that Sokrates adheres to this doctrine throughout all the colloquies of the Xenophontic Memorabilia: on the contrary, we find him, in other places, reasoning upon such matters, as health, strength, and wisdom, as if they were decidedly good.[71] The fact is, that the arguments of Sokrates, in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, vary materially according to the occasion and the person with whom he is discoursing: and the case is similar with the Platonic dialogues: illustrating farther the questionable evidence on which Schleiermacher and other critics proceed, when they declare one dialogue to be spurious, because it contains reasoning inconsistent with another.

[Footnote 71: For example, Xen. Mem. iv. 5, 6--[Greek: sophi/an to\ me/giston a)gatho/n], &c.]

We find in Alkibiadês II. another doctrine which is also proclaimed by Sokrates in the Xenophontic Memorabilia: that the Gods are not moved by costly sacrifice more than by humble sacrifice, according to the circumstances of the offerer:[72] they attend only to the mind of the offerer, whether he be just and wise: that is, "whether he knows what ought to be done both towards Gods and towards men".[73]

[Footnote 72: Plato, Alkib. ii. p. 149-150; Xen. Mem. i. 3. Compare Plato, Legg. x. p. 885; Isokrat. ad Nikok.]

[Footnote 73: Plato, Alkib. ii. p. 149 E, 150 B.]

[Side-note: Remarkable doctrine of Alkibiadês II.--that knowledge is not always Good. The knowledge of Good itself is indispensable: without that, the knowledge of other things is more hurtful than beneficial.]

But we find also in Alkibiadês II. another doctrine, more remarkable. Sokrates will not proclaim absolutely that knowledge is good, and that ignorance is evil. In some cases, he contends, ignorance is good; and he discriminates which the cases are. That which we are principally interested in knowing, is _Good_, or The _Best_--The _Profitable_:[74] phrases used as equivalent. The knowledge of this is good, and the ignorance of it mischievous, under all supposable circumstances. And if a man knows good, the more he knows of everything else, the better; since he will sure to make a good use of his knowledge. But if he does not know good, the knowledge of other things will be hurtful rather than beneficial to him. To be skilful in particular arts and accomplishments, under the capital mental deficiency supposed, will render him an instrument of evil and not of good. The more he knows--and the more he believes himself to know--the more forward will he be in acting, and therefore the greater amount of harm will he do. It is better that he should act as little as possible. Such a man is not fit to direct his own conduct, like a freeman: he must be directed and controlled by others, like a slave. The greater number of mankind are fools of this description--ignorant of good: the wise men who know good, and are fit to direct, are very few. The wise man alone, knowing good, follows reason: the rest trust to opinion, without reason.[75] He alone is competent to direct both his own conduct and that of the society.

[Footnote 74: Plato, Alkib. ii. p. 145 C. [Greek: O(/stis a)/ra ti tô=n toiou/tôn oi)=den, e)a\n me\n pare/pêtai au)tô=| ê( tou= belti/stou e)pistê/mê--au)tê\ d' ê)=n ê( au)tê\ dê/pou ê(per kai\ ê( tou= ô)pheli/mou]--also 146 B.]

[Footnote 75: Plato, Alkib. ii. p. 146 A-D. [Greek: a)/neu nou= do/xê| pepisteuko/tas.]]

The stress which is laid here upon the knowledge of good, as distinguished from all other varieties of knowledge--the identification of the good with the profitable, and of the knowledge of good with reason ([Greek: nou=s]), while other varieties of knowledge are ranked with opinion ([Greek: do/xa])--these are points which, under one phraseology or another, pervade many of the Platonic dialogues. The old phrase of Herakleitus--[Greek: Polumathi/ê no/on ou) dida/skei]--"much learning does not teach reason"--seems to have been present to the mind of Plato in composing this dialogue. The man of much learning and art, without the knowledge of good, and surrendering himself to the guidance of one or other among his accomplishments, is like a vessel tossed about at sea without a pilot.[76]

[Footnote 76: Plato, Alkib. ii. p. 147 A. [Greek: o( de\ dê\ tê\n kaloume/nên poluma/theia/n te kai\ polutechni/an kektême/nos, o)rphano\s de\ ô)\n tau/tês tê=s e)pistê/mês, a)go/menos de\ u(po\ mia=s e(ka/stês tô=n a)/llôn], &c.]

[Side-note: Knowledge of Good--appears postulated and divined, in many of the Platonic dialogues, under different titles.]

What Plato here calls the knowledge of Good, or Reason--the just discrimination and comparative appreciation of Ends and Means--appears in the Politikus and Euthydêmus, under the title of the Regal or Political Art, of employing or directing[77] the results of all other arts, which are considered as subordinate: in the Protagoras, under the title of art of calculation or mensuration: in the Philêbus, as measure and proportion: in the Phædrus (in regard to rhetoric) as the art of turning to account, for the main purpose of persuasion, all the special processes, stratagems, decorations, &c., imparted by professional masters. In the Republic, it is personified in the few venerable Elders who constitute the Reason of the society, and whose directions all the rest (Guardians and Producers) are bound implicitly to follow: the virtue of the subordinates consisting in this implicit obedience. In the Leges, it is defined as the complete subjection in the mind, of pleasures and pains to right Reason,[78] without which, no special aptitudes are worth having. In the Xenophontic Memorabilia, it stands as a Sokratic authority under the title of Sophrosynê or Temperance:[79] and the Profitable is declared identical with the Good, as the directing and limiting principle for all human pursuits and proceedings.[80]

[Footnote 77: Plato, Politikus, 292 B, 304 B, 305 A; Euthydêmus, 291 B, 292 B. Compare Xenophon, Oekonomicus, i. 8, 13.]

[Footnote 78: Leges, iii. 689 A-D, 691 A.]

[Footnote 79: Xenoph. Memor. i. 2. 17; iv. 3. 1.]

[Footnote 80: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 6, 8; iv. 7, 7.]

[Side-note: The Good--the Profitable--what is it?--How are we to know it? Plato leaves this undetermined.]

But what are we to understand by the _Good_, about which there are so many disputes, according to the acknowledgment of Plato as well as of Sokrates? And what are we to understand by the Profitable? In what relation does it stand to the Pleasurable and the Painful?

These are points which Plato here leaves undetermined. We shall find him again touching them, and trying different ways of determining them, in the Protagoras, the Gorgias, the Republic, and elsewhere. We have here the title and the postulate, but nothing more, of a comprehensive Teleology, or right comparative estimate of ends and means one against another, so as to decide when, how far, under what circumstances, &c., each ought to be pursued. We shall see what Plato does in other dialogues to connect this title and postulate with a more definite meaning.