[21] Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 23 A, 28 A.
The same defects also confessed in many of the Platonic and Xenophontic dialogues.
Moreover, it is not merely in the declarations of Sokrates himself before the Athenian Dikasts, but also in the Platonic Sokrates as exhibited by Plato in very many of his dialogues, that the same efficiency, and the same deficiency, stand conspicuous. The hearer is convicted of ignorance, on some familiar subject which he believed himself to know: the protreptic stimulus is powerful, stinging his mind into uneasiness which he cannot appease except by finding some tenable result: but the didactic supplement is not forthcoming. Sokrates ends by creating a painful feeling of perplexity in the hearers, but he himself shares the feeling along with them. — It is this which the youth Protarchus deprecates, at the beginning of the Platonic Philêbus;[22] and with which Hippias taunts Sokrates, in one of the Xenophontic conversations[23] — insomuch that Sokrates replies to the taunt by giving a definition of the Just (τὸ δίκαιον), upon which Hippias comments. But if the observations ascribed by Xenophon to Hippias are a report of what that Sophist really said, we only see how inferior he was to Sokrates in the art of cross-questioning: for the definition given by Sokrates would have been found altogether untenable, if there had been any second Sokrates to apply the Elenchus to it.[24] Lastly, Xenophon expressly tells us, that there were others also, who, both in speech and writing, imputed to Sokrates the same deficiency on the affirmative side.[25]
[22] Plato, Philêbus, p. 20 A.
[23] Xenoph. Memor. iv. 4, 9-11.
[24] We need only compare the observations made by Hippias in that dialogue, to the objections raised by Sokrates himself in his conversation with Euthydêmus, Xen. Mem. iv. 4, 2, and to the dialogue of the youthful Alkibiades (evidently borrowed from Sokrates) with Perikles, ib. i. 2, 40-47.
[25] Xenoph. Memor. i. 4, 1. εἰ δέ τινες Σωκράτην νομίζουσιν, ὡς ἕνιοι γράφουσί τε καὶ λέγουσι περὶ αὐτοῦ τεκμαιρόμενοι, προτρέψασθαι μὲν ἀνθρώπους ἐπ’ ἀρετὴν κράτιστον γεγονέναι, προαγαγεῖν δὲ ἐπ’ αὐτὴν οὐχ ἱκανόν — σκεψάμενοι μὴ μόνον, &c.
See also Cicero, De Oratore, i. 47, 204, in which Sokrates is represented as saying that concitatio (προτροπὴ) was all that people required: they did not need guidance: they would find out the way for themselves: and Yxem, Ueber Platon’s Kleitophon, pp. 5-12.
Forcible, yet respectful, manner in which these defects are set forth in the Kleitophon. Impossible to answer them in such a way as to hold out against the negative Elenchus of a Sokratic pupil.
The Platonic Kleitophon corresponds, in a great degree, to these complaints of Protarchus and others, as well as to the taunt of Hippias. The case is put, however, with much greater force and emphasis: as looked at, not by an opponent and outsider, like Hippias — nor by a mere novice, unarmed though eager, like Protarchus — but by a companion of long standing, who has gone through the full course of negative gymnastic, is grateful for the benefit derived, and feels that it is time to pass from the lesser mysteries to the greater. He is sick of perpetual negation and stimulus: he demands doctrines and explanations, which will hold good against the negative Elenchus of Sokrates himself. But this is exactly what Sokrates cannot give. His mission from the Delphian God finishes with the negative: inspiration fails him when he deals with the affirmative. He is like the gadfly (his own simile) in stimulating the horse — and also in furnishing no direction how the stimulus is to be expended. His affirmative dicta, — as given in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, are for the most part plain, home-bred, good sense, — in which all the philosophical questions are slurred over, and the undefined words, Justice, Temperance, Holiness, Courage, Law, &c., are assumed to have a settled meaning agreed to by every one: while as given by Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere, they are more speculative, highflown, and poetical,[26] but not the less exposed to certain demolition, if the batteries of the Sokratic Elenchus were brought to bear upon them. The challenge of Kleitophon is thus unanswerable. It brings out in the most forcible, yet respectful, manner the contrast between the two attributes of the Sokratic mind: in the negative, irresistible force and originality: in the affirmative, confessed barrenness alternating with honest, acute, practical sense, but not philosophy. Instead of this, Plato gives us transcendental hypotheses, and a religious and poetical ideal; impressive indeed to the feelings, but equally inadmissible to a mind trained in the use of the Sokratic tests.