Euthydemus | Page 4

longer about nominalism and realism. We do not
confuse the form with the matter of knowledge, or invent laws of
thought, or imagine that any single science furnishes a principle of
reasoning to all the rest. Neither do we require categories or heads of
argument to be invented for our use. Those who have no knowledge of
logic, like some of our great physical philosophers, seem to be quite as
good reasoners as those who have. Most of the ancient puzzles have
been settled on the basis of usage and common sense; there is no need
to reopen them. No science should raise problems or invent forms of
thought which add nothing to knowledge and are of no use in assisting
the acquisition of it. This seems to be the natural limit of logic and
metaphysics; if they give us a more comprehensive or a more definite
view of the different spheres of knowledge they are to be studied; if not,
not. The better part of ancient logic appears hardly in our own day to
have a separate existence; it is absorbed in two other sciences: (1)
rhetoric, if indeed this ancient art be not also fading away into literary
criticism; (2) the science of language, under which all questions
relating to words and propositions and the combinations of them may
properly be included.
To continue dead or imaginary sciences, which make no signs of
progress and have no definite sphere, tends to interfere with the
prosecution of living ones. The study of them is apt to blind the
judgment and to render men incapable of seeing the value of evidence,
and even of appreciating the nature of truth. Nor should we allow the
living science to become confused with the dead by an ambiguity of

language. The term logic has two different meanings, an ancient and a
modern one, and we vainly try to bridge the gulf between them. Many
perplexities are avoided by keeping them apart. There might certainly
be a new science of logic; it would not however be built up out of the
fragments of the old, but would be distinct from them--relative to the
state of knowledge which exists at the present time, and based chiefly
on the methods of Modern Inductive philosophy. Such a science might
have two legitimate fields: first, the refutation and explanation of false
philosophies still hovering in the air as they appear from the point of
view of later experience or are comprehended in the history of the
human mind, as in a larger horizon: secondly, it might furnish new
forms of thought more adequate to the expression of all the diversities
and oppositions of knowledge which have grown up in these latter days;
it might also suggest new methods of enquiry derived from the
comparison of the sciences. Few will deny that the introduction of the
words 'subject' and 'object' and the Hegelian reconciliation of opposites
have been 'most gracious aids' to psychology, or that the methods of
Bacon and Mill have shed a light far and wide on the realms of
knowledge. These two great studies, the one destructive and corrective
of error, the other conservative and constructive of truth, might be a
first and second part of logic. Ancient logic would be the propaedeutic
or gate of approach to logical science,--nothing more. But to pursue
such speculations further, though not irrelevant, might lead us too far
away from the argument of the dialogue.
The Euthydemus is, of all the Dialogues of Plato, that in which he
approaches most nearly to the comic poet. The mirth is broader, the
irony more sustained, the contrast between Socrates and the two
Sophists, although veiled, penetrates deeper than in any other of his
writings. Even Thrasymachus, in the Republic, is at last pacified, and
becomes a friendly and interested auditor of the great discourse. But in
the Euthydemus the mask is never dropped; the accustomed irony of
Socrates continues to the end...
Socrates narrates to Crito a remarkable scene in which he has himself
taken part, and in which the two brothers, Dionysodorus and
Euthydemus, are the chief performers. They are natives of Chios, who
had settled at Thurii, but were driven out, and in former days had been
known at Athens as professors of rhetoric and of the art of fighting in

armour. To this they have now added a new accomplishment--the art of
Eristic, or fighting with words, which they are likewise willing to teach
'for a consideration.' But they can also teach virtue in a very short time
and in the very best manner. Socrates, who is always on the look-out
for teachers of virtue, is interested in the youth Cleinias, the grandson
of the great Alcibiades, and is desirous that he should have the benefit
of their instructions. He