[51] Lysis, p. 223, ad fin. Καταγέλαστοι γεγόναμεν ἐγώ τε, γέρων ἀνήρ, καὶ ὑμεῖς. See Munk, p. 25.
No intentional sequence or interdependence of the dialogues can be made out.
I cannot therefore accede to this “natural arrangement of the Platonic dialogues,” assumed to have been intended by Plato, and founded upon the progress of Sokrates as he stands exhibited in each, from youth to age — which Munk has proposed in his recent ingenious volume. It is interesting to be made acquainted with that order of the Platonic dialogues which any critical student conceives to be the “natural order”. But in respect to Munk as well as to Schleiermacher, I must remark that if Plato had conceived and predetermined the dialogues, so as to be read in one natural peremptory order, he would never have left that order so dubious and imperceptible, as to be first divined by critics of the nineteenth century, and understood by them too in several different ways. If there were any peremptory and intentional sequence, we may reasonably presume that Plato would have made it as clearly understood as he has determined the sequence of the ten books of his Republic.
Principle of arrangement adopted by Hermann is reasonable — successive changes in Plato’s point of view: but we cannot explain either the order or the causes of these changes.
The principle of arrangement proposed by K. F. Hermann (approved also by Steinhart and Susemihl) is not open to the same antecedent objection. Not admitting any preconceived, methodical, intentional, system, nor the maintenance of one and the same successive philosophical point of view throughout — Hermann supposes that the dialogues as successively composed represent successive phases of Plato’s philosophical development and variations in his point of view. Hermann farther considers that these variations may be assigned and accounted for: first pure Sokratism, next the modifications experienced from Plato’s intercourse with the Megaric philosophers, — then the influence derived from Kyrênê and Egypt — subsequently that from the Pythagoreans in Italy — and so forth. The first portion of this hypothesis, taken generally, is very reasonable and probable. But when, after assuming that there must have been determining changes in Plato’s own mind, we proceed to inquire what these were, and whence they arose, we find a sad lack of evidence for the answer to the question. We neither know the order in which the dialogues were composed, — nor the date when Plato first began to compose, — nor the primitive philosophical mind which his earliest dialogues represented, — nor the order of those subsequent modifications which his views underwent. We are informed, indeed, that Plato went from Athens to visit Megara, Kyrênê, Egypt, Italy; but the extent or kind of influence which he experienced in each, we do not know at all.[52] I think it a reasonable presumption that the points which Plato had in common with Sokrates were most preponderant in the mind of Plato immediately after the death of his master: and that other trains of thought gradually became more and more intermingled as the recollection of his master became more distant. There is also a presumption that the longer, more elaborate, and more transcendental dialogues (among which must be ranked the Phædrus), were composed in the full maturity of Plato’s age and intellect: the shorter and less finished may have been composed either then or earlier in his life. Here are two presumptions, plausible enough when stated generally, yet too vague to justify any special inferences: the rather, if we may believe the statement of Dionysius, that Plato continued to “comb and curl his dialogues until he was eighty years of age”.[53]
[52] Bonitz (in his instructive volume, Platonische Studien, Wien, 1858, p. 5) points out how little we know about the real circumstances of Plato’s intellectual and philosophical development: a matter which most of the Platonic critics are apt to forget.
I confess that I agree with Strümpell, that it is impossible to determine chronologically, from Plato’s writings, and from the other scanty evidence accessible to us, by what successive steps his mind departed from the original views and doctrines held and communicated by Sokrates (Strümpell, Gesch. der Griechen, p. 294, Leipsic, 1861).
[53] Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verbor. p. 208; Diog. L. iii. 37; Quintilian, viii. 6.
F. A. Wolf, in a valuable note upon the διασκευασταὶ (Proleg. ad Homer. p. clii.) declares, upon this ground, that it is impossible to determine the time when Plato composed his best dialogues. “Ex his collatis apparet διασκευάζειν a veteribus magistris adscitum esse in potestatem verbi ἐπιδιασκευάζειν: ut in Scenicis propé idem esset quod ἀναδιδάσκειν — h. e. repetito committere fabulam, sed mutando, addendo, detrahendo, emendatam, refictam, et secundis curis elaboratam. Id enim facere solebant illi poetæ sæpissimé: mox etiam alii, ut Apollonius Rhodius. Neque aliter Plato fecit in optimis dialogis suis: quam ob causam exquirere non licet, quando quisque compositus sit; quum in scenicis fabulis saltem ex didascaliis plerumque notum sit tempus, quo editæ sunt.”
Preller has a like remark (Hist. Phil. ex Font. Loc. Context., sect. 250).