to separate the different sections and to draw out the subject of each particular one in its order; but whoever thinks that he has therewith discovered the sense of the whole, proclaiming plan and arrangement as easy and simple, can hardly suppose this dialogue in any other predicament than the very worst, and this with great injustice. For he must suppose that no arranging idea whatever is the basis of the whole, but that every thing spins out accidentally from what precedes, as much without unity as without art and purpose. On the contrary, whosoever desires not to miss the object and idea of the whole, in which much that is complex is interwoven throughout, must trace accurately the connection of every particular, and into these the reader is now to be preliminarily introduced.

1. First of all Socrates endeavours, by means of a sceptical investigation into the nature and the peculiar art of the sophists, to bring the young man who desires to be taken to Protagoras, to reflect upon his purpose. This investigation is as it were continued by Protagoras quite as indirectly, though from a different point, in a short lecture delivered after a request for it had been preferred, upon the extent and antiquity of sophistics. And in this he partly exposes the boldness of his public profession to this trade, partly deduces the thing itself as of considerable antiquity, not indeed from the most ancient philosophers, but from poets and artists. Not anything however, uninvolved or definite comes out respecting the art until Socrates, in a short dialogical section, extracts from him thus much, that political virtue is properly that which constitutes the object of his instruction.

2.

Hereupon Socrates, in a continuous speech, lays down the position, slightly sketched indeed, but supported by instances and the expressions of general opinion, that no instruction can be imparted in this matter; to which Protagoras offers a counterproof, partly in a myth about the origin of men and of social life, partly also by endeavouring, in some further investigations, to turn the same instances of ordinary modes of acting, which Socrates had brought forward, to favour his own proposition.

3. On occasion of what is adduced by Protagoras, Socrates, after some premonitory hints as to the difference between an epideictic lecture and a dialogue, annexes a discussion of the latter form upon the question of the unity or plurality of the virtues, in which he first compels his opponent, who maintains their plurality, to oppose justice and piety to one another, and then when Protagoras has great difficulty in extricating himself from this dilemma, Socrates courteously breaks off, forces from him in a second course the confession that discretion also and wisdom must be identical, and at length is on the point of proving the same of justice, when Protagoras violently starting off in order to break the thread, brings forward a long, but exclusively empirical discussion upon the nature of the Good.

4. Hence arise naturally new explanations as to the nature of the dialogue, and while fresh terms have to be entered into for the contest, since the affair has taken the form of a regular philosophical prize-fight, to the increasing pleasure of the noble youths the nearer it had approached that form, Prodicus and Hippias now find opportunity for coming forward in their own way, with short speeches. And Socrates also, with regard to the proposal to choose an umpire, delivers his opinion in a

form which, with all its brevity, is distinguished above all others by the strict dialectic process observed in it.

5. According to the conditions proposed by Socrates, Protagoras has now become the questioner, and after introducing a poem of Simonides, continues the dialogue concerning virtue, without however any definite point being visible to which he would conduct by this method, but only the endeavour to involve Socrates in contradictions. Socrates, however, first, as respondent, not only repels Protagoras, but also carries on further a pleasant by-fight with Prodicus, and afterwards himself explains this poem in a continuous discourse, in which the position that all evil is only willed from error, is assumed to be the general opinion of all wise men, and also a derivation of philosophy from the worldly wisdom of the Lacedæmonians and Cretans introduced, but at last a serious tone being taken up, the discussion is brought to an end with the conclusion that by such argumentations taken from poets, nothing can be gained for the establishment of ideas.

6. Upon this, lastly, the Dialogue is again taken up, and Socrates is now the questioner in it, and in that character continues to shew that virtue is only oneknowledge, science, of that namely which is to be donę First he shews this of courage, and after removing an only apparently sound objection of Protagoras, he makes him allow, half voluntarily, that there is no good but pleasure, and no evil but pain, whence it follows, as a very easy consequence, that all virtue is nothing but a science of calculation and comparative measurement. And thus the contradiction is brought to light by Socrates himself, that on the one side Protagoras, who still maintains his ability to teach virtue, has refused

to allow that it is science, while on the other Socrates has himself been at the pains to prove this, though his purpose went to dispute every supposition in favour of the possibility of teaching Virtue.

From this short summary of the details it must be at once sufficiently clear, that even here the common methods of viewing the dialogue, inasmuch as they could not comprehend the whole, but went to satisfy themselves with a part, have as good as failed altogether. Some for instance, separating what is inseparable, as they will do even in the plastic arts, have directed their attention exclusively to what can be considered only as the colouring of the whole, the uninterrupted irony, which certainly has been admired by every reader yet of this dialogue. It cannot indeed be overlooked that Plato here allows this his peculiar talent to play in a vast range, and with great self conscious skill, whence they who put a high value upon his study of the Mimes, and his approximation to the comic, might easily take up the notion that this ironical treatment, or annihilation as it might be called of the sophists, is to be understood as the chief object of the Protagoras. This is not indeed the place for deciding whether these acquired perfections, for such at least they are represented, were valued to the same degree and in the same sense by Plato himself as they are by some of his admirers; two things however are certain, and sufficient to justify the view taken in the present instance. For, on the one hand, what every eye however inattentive universally observes in the dialogue, is far from being the highest kind of irony, either of Plato generally, or of this work in particular, but only that subordinate imitative colouring which may be met with

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not unfrequently even among the moderns, otherwise so little given to irony, under a more modern name. Again it is to be remarked, that every imitation of the peculiarities and manners of particular persons proceeds only from an endeavour after truth in the representation of the speakers, and therefore supposes at once that something is to be said, and what it is to be, that consequently this ironical imitation may occur any where in Plato, and certainly does so occur, when any point is discussed with these opponents of Socratic wisdom and modes of thinking, not only as mere ornament, but as a means connected with the end, in order to make the truth of the whole palpable, and to authenticate it by a careful removal of every thing unnatural and exaggerated; but that for that very reason it should never be conceived as the first or proper object, because then in the first place the exaggeration would be unavoidable, and in the next the philosophical object, without which certainly no larger work of Plato is ever framed, must either have been subordinate, or have been completely wanting.

Others on the contrary, too eager for the real treasure, and not even fortunate discoverers because they sought without knowing their ground, have only adhered to one of the questions started, as if that one were to be here decided, whether it were that of the communicability of virtue or its unity or plurality; for any one who thus takes up only some particular point, must necessarily waver. And how insufficient this proceeding is appears from the fact, that from such a point of view several parts of the dialogue do not admit of any explanation whatever; as for instance, the two sources mentioned of the sophistical art and