If we are to find any common purpose pervading and binding together all the dialogues, it must not be a didactic purpose, in the sense above defined. The value of them consists, not in the result, but in the discussion — not in the conclusion, but in the premisses for and against it. In this sense all the dialogues have value, and all the same sort of value — though not all equal in amount. In different dialogues, the same subject is set before you in different ways: with remarks and illustrations sometimes tending towards one theory, sometimes towards another. It is for you to compare and balance them, and to elicit such result as your reason approves. The Platonic dialogues require, in order to produce their effect, a supplementary responsive force, and a strong effective reaction, from the individual reason of the reader: they require moreover that he shall have a genuine interest in the process of dialectic scrutiny (τὸ φιλομαθές, φιλόλογον)[106] which will enable him to perceive beauties in what would appear tiresome to others.
[106] Plato, Republic, v. p. 475; compare Phædon, pp. 89-90. Phædrus, p. 230 E.
Such manner of proceeding may be judicious or not, according to the sentiment of the critic. But it is at any rate Platonic. And we have to recall this point of view when dismissing the Kratylus, which presents much interest in the premisses and conflicting theories, with little or no result. It embodies the oldest speculations known to us respecting the origin, the mode of signification, and the functions of words as an instrument: and not the least interesting part of it, in my judgment, consists in its etymological conjectures, affording evidence of a rude etymological sense which has now passed away.
CHAPTER XXXII
PHILEBUS.
The Philêbus, which we are now about to examine, is not merely a Dialogue of Search, but a Dialogue of Exposition, accompanied with more or less of search made subservient to the exposition. It represents Sokrates from the first as advancing an affirmative opinion — maintaining it against Philêbus and Protarchus — and closing with a result assumed to be positively established.[1]
[1] Schleiermacher says, about the Philêbus (Einleit. p. 136) — “Das Ganze liegt fertig in dem Haupte des Sokrates, und tritt mit der ganzen Persönlichkeit und Willkühr einer zusammenhängenden Rede heraus,” &c.
Character, Personages, and Subject of the Philêbus.
The question is, Wherein consists the Good — The Supreme Good — Summum Bonum. Three persons stand before us: the youthful Philêbus: Protarchus, somewhat older, yet still a young man: and Sokrates. Philêbus declares that The Good consists in pleasure or enjoyment; and Protarchus his friend advocates the same thesis, though in a less peremptory manner. On the contrary, Sokrates begins by proclaiming that it consists in wisdom or intelligence. He presently however recedes from this doctrine, so far as to admit that wisdom, alone and per se, is not sufficient to constitute the Supreme Good: and that a certain combination of pleasure along with it is required. Though the compound total thus formed is superior both to wisdom and to pleasure taken separately, yet comparing the two elements of which it is compounded, wisdom (Sokrates contends) is the most important of the two, and pleasure the least important. Neither wisdom nor pleasure can pretend to claim the first prize; but wisdom is fully entitled to the second, as being far more cognate than pleasure is, with the nature of Good.