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559 Schleiermacher on Plato's Apology. 559 fact we find he has done. For a critic who should undertake the task of mending this speech would find a great deal in it to alter. Thus the charge of misleading the young is not re- pelled with arguments by any means so cogent as it might have been, nor is sufficient stress by a great deal laid on the fact, that Socrates had done everything in the service of Apollo, for defending him against the charge of disbelief of the ancient gods : and any one with his eyes only half open may discover other weak points of the like kind, which are not so grounded in the character of Socrates that Plato should have been compelled to copy them. Nothing therefore is more probable, than that in this speech we possess as faithful a transcript of Socrates'^ real defense, as Plato'^s practised memory enabled him to make, allowing for the necessary difference between a written speech and one carelessly spoken. But perhaps some one may say : If Plato, supposing him to be the author of this work, did no- thing more than record what he had heard: what reason is there for insisting on this fact, or how can it be known, that it was he, and not some other among the friends of Socrates who were present at the trial .'^ Such an objector, if he is familiar with the style of Plato, need only be referred to the whole aspect of the Apology, which distinctly shews that it can have proceeded from no pen but Plato'^s. For in it Socrates speaks exactly as Plato makes him speak, a manner in which, so far as we can judge from all we have left, he was not made to speak by any of his other scholars. And this resemblance is so indisputable, that it may serve as a foundation for a remark of some importance. For it suggests the question : Whether certain peculiarities of the Platonic dialogue, particularly the imaginary questions and answers inserted in a sentence, and the accumulation of several sen- tences comprehended under one, and often expanded much too amply for this subordinate place, together with the in- terruption almost inevitably arising from this cause in the original structure of the period : whether these pecuHarities, seeing that we find them so predominant here, ought not properly to be referred to Socrates. They occur in Plato most frequently where he is imitating Socrates closest; but nowhere so frequently, and so little clear of their accompanying