Page:The Platonic Dialogues for English Readers, vol. 1, 1st. ed. (Whewell, 1859).pdf/18

TO THE LACHES. 5 other grounds, for instance, their relation to the fate of Socrates the main character of their drama; or their connexion with the progress of opinion in the mind of Plato their author. But the present volume will contain a single class of them, which may on all these grounds be regarded as the earliest, and which we shall call Dialogues of the Socratic School.

In this designation one main fact implied is that Socrates in his conversation had some prevailing and habitual ways of thinking and talking, which are prominent in some of the Platonic Dialogues, while in others the train of thought and speculation appears to belong rather to Plato himself than to Socrates. And that this was so, we have abundant evidence. Besides Plato's Dialogues, we have other accounts, and especially Xenophon's Memorials of Socrates. In them we have, as in reading them we cannot doubt, the actual conversations of Socrates, reported with the accuracy of a Boswell, and without the colours and metamorphoses which the more independent genius of Plato bestowed upon the picture of their common friend and master. The account which Xenophon gives of Socrates's discussions with the persons about him agrees, on the whole, with the general tenour of Plato's Dialogues of the Socratic School; though even in these is a vivacity of drama which belongs especially to Plato, as the reader will soon have an opportunity of judging. We may, by the help of the accounts which have come to us, form a very complete idea of the manner and person of Socrates. Though we speak of his hearers and disciples, he was not a teacher in a lecture-room, with an official aspect and demeanour, expounding in measured tones,