Euthydemus | Page 3

also provide on request at no additional
cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form
(or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small
Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

EUTHYDEMUS
by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.
The Euthydemus, though apt to be regarded by us only as an elaborate

jest, has also a very serious purpose. It may fairly claim to be the oldest
treatise on logic; for that science originates in the misunderstandings
which necessarily accompany the first efforts of speculation. Several of
the fallacies which are satirized in it reappear in the Sophistici Elenchi
of Aristotle and are retained at the end of our manuals of logic. But if
the order of history were followed, they should be placed not at the end
but at the beginning of them; for they belong to the age in which the
human mind was first making the attempt to distinguish thought from
sense, and to separate the universal from the particular or individual.
How to put together words or ideas, how to escape ambiguities in the
meaning of terms or in the structure of propositions, how to resist the
fixed impression of an 'eternal being' or 'perpetual flux,' how to
distinguish between words and things--these were problems not easy of
solution in the infancy of philosophy. They presented the same kind of
difficulty to the half- educated man which spelling or arithmetic do to
the mind of a child. It was long before the new world of ideas which
had been sought after with such passionate yearning was set in order
and made ready for use. To us the fallacies which arise in the
pre-Socratic philosophy are trivial and obsolete because we are no
longer liable to fall into the errors which are expressed by them. The
intellectual world has become better assured to us, and we are less
likely to be imposed upon by illusions of words.
The logic of Aristotle is for the most part latent in the dialogues of
Plato. The nature of definition is explained not by rules but by
examples in the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, Meno,
Euthyphro, Theaetetus, Gorgias, Republic; the nature of division is
likewise illustrated by examples in the Sophist and Statesman; a
scheme of categories is found in the Philebus; the true doctrine of
contradiction is taught, and the fallacy of arguing in a circle is exposed
in the Republic; the nature of synthesis and analysis is graphically
described in the Phaedrus; the nature of words is analysed in the
Cratylus; the form of the syllogism is indicated in the genealogical
trees of the Sophist and Statesman; a true doctrine of predication and an
analysis of the sentence are given in the Sophist; the different meanings
of one and being are worked out in the Parmenides. Here we have most
of the important elements of logic, not yet systematized or reduced to
an art or science, but scattered up and down as they would naturally

occur in ordinary discourse. They are of little or no use or significance
to us; but because we have grown out of the need of them we should
not therefore despise them. They are still interesting and instructive for
the light which they shed on the history of the human mind.
There are indeed many old fallacies which linger among us, and new
ones are constantly springing up. But they are not of the kind to which
ancient logic can be usefully applied. The weapons of common sense,
not the analytics of Aristotle, are needed for their overthrow. Nor is the
use of the Aristotelian logic any longer natural to us. We no longer put
arguments into the form of syllogisms like the schoolmen; the simple
use of language has been, happily, restored to us. Neither do we discuss
the nature of the proposition, nor extract hidden truths from the copula,
nor dispute any