Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/129

 118 CRITICAL NOTICES I Prof. Teichrniiller has tried, he says in his Preface, " to recover her royal dignity for Philosophy," amid what he characterises as the general plebeianism of modern thought. This has necessarily led him to deal with Plato. And to understand Plato's teaching we must find out the chronological sequence of his works, and their relation to the Parteien of his time. " The Platonic question has entered on a new stadium : " all previous methods in its investigation have failed : Zeller (whom Prof. Teichmiiller always recommends to his classes as giving the best introduction to such investigations) is absolutely deficient in method, or at best employs only the "principle of the majority": Susemihl and other well-known names are only historically interesting. Prof. Teichmiiller 's own method is the " comparative method with unlimited perspective " : which admits of a twofold division, into special and universal. The former is based on the artistic character of Plato's Dialogues, " which is here " (in these volumes) "for the first time clearly settled": the latter is a "heuristic" method, declared to be unknown to Logic hitherto, and based on the "principle of co-ordination," described also, in Prof. Teichmiiller's peculiar language, as " syllogismus inves- tigatorius ". The general result attained by the application of the method is, that the dialogues are Streitschriften, polemical writings called forth by the various "literary feuds" in which Plato, according to Prof. Teichmiiller, was throughout his life engaged. Thus (1) the Phaedo and the Symposium would not have been written, at least in the form in which we know them, but for Polycrates's attack upon Socrates (i. 122) ; and (2) the Laws, containing references to the Nicomache.an Ethics, while the Nicomachean Ethics contains none to the Laws, furnishes a reply to Aristotle's criticisms, e.g., on the kicovaiov, of Plato (i. 162 ff.). Conclusions like these which make two of the most important of Plato's works merely answers to an obscure rhetorician, and presuppose the composition of the Ethics by Aristotle at the age of 32 or 33 require firm premisses and unimpeachable argument. In a review it is not convenient to go into such detail as Prof. Teichmiiller's exposition of his theory in (2) would demand : he gives six "quotations or allusions" in the Lairs, which he interprets as bearing on Aristotle's criticism : it must suffice here to express an opinion that no such reference is unavoidably forced upon an unprejudiced reader, and that several of his attempted references (''/., that about the truvaia-^^, pp. 172, 3) postulate the necessity of lifi-r>ir!xi-he Fehden between any two writers who in the same age utter any but the same thought about the same thing. In regard to (1) the I'lnn'tln and Si/nt//o.-'/iiii, Prof. Teichmiiller may best speak for himself, with nothing extenuated nor aught set down in malice. " As Polycrates's miserable accusation against Socrates," he says, " had appeared. ;md as Isocrates, the most eminent stylist of the time, had also lowered Socrates's