Page:The Platonic Dialogues for English Readers, vol. 1, 1st. ed. (Whewell, 1859).pdf/16

 INTRODUCTION TO THE LACHES.

Every one that has any tinge of literature has heard of Socrates and of Plato, who lived at Athens at the time of its greatest glory, when philosophy had its birth there. To Socrates is ascribed on all hands the peculiar and important office of having set many other persons a-thinking in such a way that what is especially called philosophy then began to be prosecuted ; a way of thinking which has gone on from that time to this. To Plato we owe copious records of the conversations of Socrates, in a series of Dialogues which Plato wrote and which have come down to us. And yet in truth it is tolerably evident on the face of these Dialogues, that they are not so much records of real conversations as pictures of Socrates's manner of conversing, and of its effect on other persons; and yet again, that they are, in a great measure not even this, but Imaginary Dialogues, exhibiting the way in which Plato thought that philosophical subjects might be discussed, Socrates being almost always made a leading person in the discussion, and being generally represented as having the best of the argument. And it is these Platonic Dialogues which we are now to attempt to bring before the reader. B2