Here ends the dialogue called Charmidês[32] after the interchange of a few concluding compliments, forming part of the great dramatic richness which characterises this dialogue from the beginning. I make no attempt to reproduce this latter attribute; though it is one of the peculiar merits of Plato in reference to ethical enquiry, imparting to the subject a charm which does not naturally belong to it. I confine myself to the philosophical bearing of the dialogue. According to the express declaration of Sokrates, it ends in nothing but disappointment. No positive result is attained. The problem — What is Temperance? — remains unsolved, after four or five different solutions have been successively tested and repudiated.
[32] See [Appendix] at end of chapter.
The Charmides is an excellent specimen of Dialogues of Search. Abundance of guesses and tentatives, all ultimately disallowed.
The Charmidês (like the Lachês) is a good illustrative specimen of those Dialogues of Search, the general character and purpose of which I have explained in my eighth chapter. It proves nothing: it disproves several hypotheses: but it exhibits (and therein consists its value) the anticipating, guessing, tentative, and eliminating process, without which no defensible conclusions can be obtained — without which, even if such be found, no advocate can be formed capable of defending them against an acute cross-examiner. In most cases, this tentative process is forgotten or ignored: even when recognised as a reality, it is set aside with indifference, often with ridicule. A writer who believes himself to have solved any problem, publishes his solution together with the proofs; and acquires deserved credit for it, if those proofs give satisfaction. But he does not care to preserve, nor do the public care to know, the steps by which such solution has been reached. Nevertheless in most cases, and in all cases involving much difficulty, there has been a process, more or less tedious, of tentative and groping — of guesses at first hailed as promising, then followed out to a certain extent, lastly discovered to be untenable. The history of science,[33] astronomical, physical, chemical, physiological, &c., wherever it has been at all recorded, attests this constant antecedence of a period of ignorance, confusion, and dispute, even in cases where ultimately a solution has been found commanding the nearly unanimous adhesion of the scientific world. But on subjects connected with man and society, this period of dispute and confusion continues to the present moment. No unanimity has ever been approached, among nations at once active in intellect and enjoying tolerable liberty of dissent. Moreover — apart from the condition of different sciences among mature men — we must remember that the transitive process, above described, represents the successive stages by which every adult mind has been gradually built up from infancy. Trial and error — alternate guess and rejection, generation and destruction of sentiments and beliefs — is among the most widespread facts of human intelligence.[34] Even those ordinary minds, which in mature life harden with the most exemplary fidelity into the locally prevalent type of orthodoxy, — have all in their earlier years gone through that semi-fluid and indeterminate period, in which the type to come is yet a matter of doubt — in which the head might have been permanently lengthened or permanently flattened, according to the direction in which pressure was applied.
[33] It is not often that historians of science take much pains to preserve and bring together the mistaken guesses and tentatives which have preceded great physical discoveries. One instance in which this has been ably and carefully done is in the ‘Biography of Cavendish,’ the chemist and natural philosopher, by Dr. Geo. Wilson.
The great chemical discovery of the composition of water, accomplished during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, has been claimed as the privilege of three eminent scientific men — Cavendish, Watt, and Lavoisier. The controversy on the subject, voluminous and bitter, has been the means of recording each successive scientific phase and point of view. It will be found admirably expounded in this biography. Wilson sets forth the misconceptions, confusion of ideas, approximations to truth seen but not followed out, &c., which prevailed upon the scientific men of that day, especially under the misleading influence of the “phlogiston theory,” then universally received.
To Plato such a period of mental confusion would have been in itself an interesting object for contemplation and description. He might have dramatised it under the names of various disputants, with the cross-examining Elenchus, personified in Sokrates, introduced to stir up the debate, either by first advocating, then refuting, a string of successive guesses and dreams (Charmidês, 173 A) of his own, or by exposing similar suggestions emanating from others; especially in regard to the definition of phlogiston, an entity which then overspread and darkened all chemical speculation, but which every theorist thought himself obliged to define. The dialogues would have ended (as the Protagoras, Lysis, Charmidês, &c., now end) by Sokrates deriding the ill success which had attended them in the search for an explanation, and by his pointing out that while all the theorists talked familiarly about phlogiston as a powerful agent, none of them could agree what it was.
See Dr. Wilson’s ‘Biography of Cavendish,’ pp. 36-198-320-325, and elsewhere.
[34] It is strikingly described by Plato in one of the most remarkable passages of the speech of Diotima in the Symposion, pp. 207-208.
Trial and Error, the natural process of the human mind. Plato stands alone in bringing to view and dramatising this part of the mental process. Sokrates accepts for himself the condition of conscious ignorance.