Page:Plato, with an English translation (vol. 1 of 12) (Fowler, 1913).djvu/17

Rh thought; since, fortunately for us, the pupil not only became a teacher in his turn, but brought his artistic genius into play, and composed the memorials of philosophic talk which we know as the Dialogues. Xenophon, Antisthenes, and Aeschines were other disciples of Socrates who drew similar sketches of his teaching: the suggestion came from the "mimes" of the Syracusan Sophron,realistic studies of conversation between ordinary types of character. As Plato became more engrossed in the Socratic speculations, this artistic impulse was strengthened by the desire of recording each definite stage of thought as a basis for new discussion and advance.

When Plato was twenty years old, Socrates was over sixty, and had long been notorious in Athens for his peculiar kind of sophistry. In the Phaedo he tells how he tried, in his youth, the current scientific explanations of the universe, and found them full of puzzles. He then met with the theory of Anaxagoras, that the cause of everything is "mind." This was more promising: but it led nowhere after all, since it failed to rise above the conception of physical energy; this "mind" showed no intelligent aim. Disappointed of an assurance that the universe works for the best, Socrates betook himself to the plan of making definitions of "beautiful," "good," "large" and so on, as qualities observed in the several classes of beautiful, good and large material things, and then employing these propositions, if they appeared to be sound, for the erection of higher x