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 virtues. It is a genuine development of Socratic thought. And it is this more than any other single feature which gives the Republic a prophetic significance as “an attempt towards anticipating the work of future generations.”

VI. Euthydemus, Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus (the dialectical dialogues).—Even in the most advanced metaphysics of the Republic there is a hyperbolical, transcendental tendency, from which Plato ultimately to some extent worked himself free. But it was not in conversation with “dear Glaucon,” or “between the lines” of an ethico-political writing, that this partial emancipation could be effectually attained. We have now to consider a series of dialogues, probably intended for a narrower circle of readers, in which Plato grapples directly with the central difficulties of his own theory of knowing and being. It is not necessary to assume that all of these are later than the Republic. The position of the Euthydemus and Parmenides in the order of composition is very uncertain. The Theaetetus has points of affinity with the Republic. The Sophist, Politicus and Philebus are in a later style. But, on account of their cognate subject-matter, these six dialogues may be conveniently classed together in a group by themselves. And the right place for such a group is intermediate between the Republic and the Laws.

The unity of the object of definition, the identity of virtue and knowledge, the existence of an absolute good, which would be universally followed if universally known, and of a standard of truth which is implied in the confession of ignorance, were postulates underlying the Socratic process, which in so far made no claim to be a “philosophy without assumptions.” These postulates, when once apprehended, drew Plato on to speculate concerning the nature, the object and the method of knowledge. Now, so far as we have hitherto followed him, his speculation has either been associated with ethical inquiry, or has been projected in a poetical and semi-mythical form. In the Phaedrus however, the vision of ideas was expressly conjoined with an outline of psychology and a foreshadowing of scientific method. And, while the opposition of ideas to phenomena and of knowledge to opinion has been repeatedly assumed, it has also been implied that there is a way between them, and. that the truth can only be approached by man through interrogation of experience. For it is nowhere supposed that the human inquirer is from the first in a position to deduce facts from ideas. Much rather, the light of the ideas is one which fitfully breaks in upon experience as men struggle towards the universal.

But it is not less true that the metaphysical aspirations from which Socrates had seemed to recall men's thoughts had been reawakened in consequence of the impulse which Socrates