20 26 28 renders the words of Cornarius, and Steinhart does not contradict him): to which authorities I have to add an opinion which I highly value, that of my friend and former pupil Mr R. D. Archer-Hind, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. I had never felt disposed to follow Bekker in printing the passage as an unquestioned portion of the text; yet I hardly know that I regret having given my readers the opportunity of seeing and estimating that which conciliated the favour of so many eminent scholars. My own judgment in a case of this kind I regard as of little or no value. PP. 35, 144. St. 166 A. Socrates, who up to this point has seemed to play with the doctrine of his intended victim Protagoras, as a cat with a wretched mouse, sometimes expounding and apparently supporting it, but only to strike it immediately with a harder blow, now professes to make a formal defence of it in the name of its author, for the express purpose of obliging Theodorus to take his turn in the dialogue, instead of Theaetetus, and submit to an elenchus, in defence of his old friend Protagoras. Tòv què is an assumption of dignity: a man like me.' PP. 52, 166. St. 179 A. if he had tried...a man's own self. In this translation we follow the reading e τοὺς συνόντας ἔπειθεν instead of the vulgate εἰ μὴ. Prof. Campbell, though he keeps el un in the text, accepts emendation in his note, but prefers ei dy. I can have no doubt that avròs must not be referred to Protagoras by reading aur after it, but that the sense must be as I have given it, avròs avт@, 'a man's own self.' So Prof. Jowett (who also reads dn) 'every one for himself." B. pp. 56, 172. St. 182 Β. ἀλλ ̓ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων κ.τ.λ. The meaning of this passage can be none other than what is given in my translation, which is the same as Prof. Jowett's in effect. But how the Greek construction is to be explained is doubtful. Prof. Campbell's note gives very faint assistance, and neither Heindorf's ἑαυτῶν for ἀμφοτέρων, nor ἀποτικτόμενα for ἀποτίκτοντα, fully satisfy. All we can say of the place is―medicam manum expectat. 38 pp. 82, 209. St. 201, C. It is commonly supposed that the words εἰπόντος του ἀκούσας refer to Antisthenes. 44 As respects the definition of knowledge, this dialogue only arrives at certain negative conclusions; namely, that knowledge is neither perception, nor true opinion, nor true opinion combined with rational explanation. Yet, in the course of it, Plato has achieved certain objects, which he had in mind, and which he valued. For (1) he has paid a debt of gratitude to his Megarian friends and hosts, Eucleides and Terpsion; (2) he has shewn what he afterwards declared by his inscription on the Academy, undeis aуewμéтρηTоs eiσírw, that mathematical studies (i.e. exact science) are a necessary avenue to mental studies (¿.e. to transcendental or abstract science); (3) he has shewn that minds capable of pursuing the former with success are not necessarily capable of mastering the latter: this he indicates by the nature of Theodorus, which is unphilosophic, as compared with that of Theaetetus, who is an apt student of philosophy; (4) he has confuted doctrines (Protagorean and Heracleitean), which he considers erroneous and mischievous, and has exhibited the errors of the great leader of that sophistic band, which he had, from his master Socrates, a mission to combat and defeat; (5) he has found a noble opportunity to develope those moral and political doctrines, as to the struggle of philosophic truth against fallacious rhetoric, which he mooted in the Gorgias, and developed more fully in the Republic at a later time; (6) he does achieve a positive result by the victorious assertion of a central seat of thought, to which all perceptions are conveyed, and so converted into ideas: this is vx, the soul of man. The subsequent elenchi, which confute the second and third definitions attempted by Theodorus, seem to me little more than gladiatorial wordfights, intended by Plato to exercise and display the dialectic skill which he had acquired at Megara, and at the same time to amuse and puzzle the minds of his readers by the parables or myths of the waxen tablet and the dovecage. But he may have had more serious aims in these elenchi than are obvious to my mind. CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. |