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 PREFACE.

a somewhat shorter form this Essay was read to the Oxford Philological Society on the 15th November, 1907, and there had the benefit of valuable criticisms from Mr. H. P. Richards, Mr. R. R. Marett and others. I have in consequence been enabled to realize more clearly the divergences from the current theories as to the import of the Theætetus to which my own studies had conducted me. They proved to be more extensive than I had suspected, and to involve some interesting and novel issues both of a literary and of a philosophic character. It seemed a duty, therefore, to render my conclusions accessible to the learned world, to which the problems of Platonic criticism are of perennial interest. But though my primary purpose is to raise a literary question, I have not thought it either right or possible to slur over the philosophic importance of my thesis. For the philosophical significance of the Theætetus has been very strangely misconstrued. It contains no tenable account of knowledge. It contains no refutation of Humanism. It refutes nothing but an extreme, and probably exaggerated or misapprehended, form of sensationalism. Nothing of all this has, apparently, been perceived. Nor, again, has what it does contain been fully recognized. It