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permits it, nor from the pointless way in which Socrates expresses his opinion, that he must certainly be a great orator by reason of Aspasia's instructions, nor from the coarse jest, that he nearly got a beating on account of his slowness at learning, and that he would even dance naked for love of Menexenus. It is certainly a very pardonable suspicion, that this setting is probably the work of another author, who gladly set himself to construct a dialogue out of the speech, and thought it impossible that a Platonic creation should come into the world without Socrates. Such a person may then have easily given in Aspasia an awkward imitation of Diotima, and thus have fallen unsuspectingly into an anachronism with which none of the others of Plato are at all comparable: I mean, that Socrates delivers a speech referring completely and entirely to something that did not ensue until long after his death, and that he professes to have this speech from Aspasia, who must have been already dead long before him. And thus it would be in vain to look for any serious meaning in the promise given by Socrates to produce yet more such state speeches from the mouth of his mis

tress.

V. THE LARGER HIPPIAS.

THE object of this dialogue is certainly purely philosophical. For the explanation of the idea of the beautiful in its full extent, as it embraces material things as well as immaterial, would certainly be worth the trouble, and quite as important as regards the philosophy of Plato, as the object of many of the smaller

dialogues to which we have assigned a place in the larger series. But the reader, if he looks to the mode in which this subject is treated, will certainly not be surprised to find the Hippias Major only in this place in the Appendix. For it is throughout sceptical to a degree which characterises none of the others; a multitude of different explanations of the beautiful are taken up and all of them refuted. And even, when the upshot is taken of all to which the reader is conducted or referred in this process of refutation, we find it to consist only in a couple of perfectly familiar positions, which teach that the origin of the bad is not in power but in impotence! and that the beautiful and good should not be separated; and this last, indeed, is the only point upon which Socrates expresses himself with clearness and precision. In consequence of this absence of scientific tone, we cannot number the dialogue among those properly called philosophical. Thus, it does not stand in any visible connection of progressive development with any other whatever. In the persual of it, certainly, every reader is immediately reminded of the Philebus, and it is only on account of this connection, and not with a view of indicating, even in the most remote degree, a period at which the Hippias might have been written, that we assign it its present position. For in the Philebus, Plato expresses himself with the greatest precision as well upon the subject of the connection of the beautiful with the good, as upon that of the nature of the beautiful itself, and considers it not only in its moral bearing, but also according to the first elements of that which we call beautiful in material things. But no one will there find even the most distant reference to the in

vestigations here pursued, nor again in any part of the Hippias is any proximate preparation discoverable to what is discussed in the Philebus.

In short, it must be at once manifest to every one, that a scientific treatment of the subject, the beautiful that is, in speaking of the present dialogue is almost entirely out of the question, so completely is all such kept out of sight; and quite as certain is it, that the impression which every reader must receive from the whole is, that a polemical purpose is the predominant in it. And under this purpose the dialogue has in view two remarkable explanations of the beautiful. In one of them, that the beautiful is the fitting, we easily recognise the spirit of the Hedonic schools, in so far, that is, as according to them the good is only something capriciously established, consequently agreeable and fitting. Only it may excite our surprise, that in discussing this point Socrates adheres so exclusively to a kind of almost verbal dialectics, without following his usual practice of exposing somewhat severely the notion which is the basis of the theory. With regard to the other explanation, that the beautiful is the pleasant as apprehended by sight and hearing, pointing as it certainly does to the same principles as Plato lays down in the Philebus, it would be very interesting to know who it was that brought forward this explanation in Plato's time, or whether it was invented by himself in order to indicate that property of the beautiful which he mentions in the Philebus as the essential element in it. But, though this explanation is certainly given as lying very close at hand, notwithstanding that we cannot now point out the author of it, it is impossible to believe that the substance of these explanations which

Plato puts into the mouth of Hippias about gold, and the pretty girl, was derived from any other authors. And thus it is impossible for any one to avoid asking himself, how it happens that Plato exhibits the not undistinguished sophist as guilty of such an unheard degree of stupidity, as not to be even in a condition to understand a question as to how a word is to be explained? The personal ridicule indisputably appears here under a far coarser form than anywhere else, not excepting even the Euthydemus, where the persons are probably in no instance strictly historical, and it would, exaggerated as it is, have certainly destroyed its own effect.

This manner, or rather absence of anything deserving the name, scarcely reconcileable as it is with the propriety and polish of Plato, may perhaps excite a suspicion in the minds of many as to the genuineness of the dialogue, because we might certainly meet with it very naturally in a less experienced imitator, who felt that it was necessary for him to give himself an easy task if he was to succeed in any degree in the irony and dialectics of his prototype. And the suspicion once excited, much certainly will be found apparently confirming it. Thus, at the very beginning Socrates indulges in a piece of sophistical dialectics, which might induce us to believe, that not anything, being what it is, can be useless, a piece of art which would not be unworthy of any of the persons in the Euthydemus. Were this a parody of anything of the kind resembling it, one should think that Plato would rather have put it into the mouth of the sophist than of Socrates. On the contrary, Hippias meantime exhibits in his behaviour a plain common sense which he is not quite able

subsequently to keep up, and with a moderation which is not very carefully returned on the side of Socrates. Then, in the arrangement of the whole, it certainly strikes us as something strange, that in the first half of the dialogue all explanations of the beautiful come from Hippias, and in the latter all from Socrates, who there contradicts himself, and that for the most part in an unnatural and precipitate manner, without being in any way compelled as it were to do so by the course of the dialogue, but, in fact, going out of his way for the purpose. Lastly, the play with the man in the back-ground, to whom Socrates is always obliged to render an account, is brought out into almost too coarse relief to have come from the hand of Plato-for the man threatens to beat him, like Aspasia in the Menexenus, and Socrates afterwards puts himself by name in the place of the man, without, however, its being made clear that he meant only himself from the first, and in such a manner that no particular effect whatever is produced by his doing so, and the resort to this expedient again is altogether contrary to good taste. But it might, notwithstanding, be rather precipitate to entertain the notion of making these grounds very importantly valid, and we could not justify the placing of this dialogue in the same class with those which we have strictly and unconditionally rejected. There is an abundance of pleasantry dispersed over the whole, and when we have made due allowances and considered further that this was the principal object in view, and that in the second part a variety of contemporaneous matter is criticised under the name of Hippias as well as of Socrates, we shall be readily disposed to pardon the exaggerations as well as the extravagancies of the humour which

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