Euthydemus | Page 8

and unmeaning, no form of
thought so contradictory to experience, which has not been found to
satisfy the minds of philosophical enquirers at a certain stage, or when
regarded from a certain point of view only. The peculiarity of the
fallacies of our own age is that we live within them, and are therefore
generally unconscious of them.
Aristotle has analysed several of the same fallacies in his book 'De
Sophisticis Elenchis,' which Plato, with equal command of their true
nature, has preferred to bring to the test of ridicule. At first we are only

struck with the broad humour of this 'reductio ad absurdum:' gradually
we perceive that some important questions begin to emerge. Here, as
everywhere else, Plato is making war against the philosophers who put
words in the place of things, who tear arguments to tatters, who deny
predication, and thus make knowledge impossible, to whom ideas and
objects of sense have no fixedness, but are in a state of perpetual
oscillation and transition. Two great truths seem to be indirectly taught
through these fallacies: (1) The uncertainty of language, which allows
the same words to be used in different meanings, or with different
degrees of meaning: (2) The necessary limitation or relative nature of
all phenomena. Plato is aware that his own doctrine of ideas, as well as
the Eleatic Being and Not- being, alike admit of being regarded as
verbal fallacies. The sophism advanced in the Meno, 'that you cannot
enquire either into what you know or do not know,' is lightly touched
upon at the commencement of the Dialogue; the thesis of Protagoras,
that everything is true to him to whom it seems to be true, is satirized.
In contrast with these fallacies is maintained the Socratic doctrine that
happiness is gained by knowledge. The grammatical puzzles with
which the Dialogue concludes probably contain allusions to tricks of
language which may have been practised by the disciples of Prodicus or
Antisthenes. They would have had more point, if we were acquainted
with the writings against which Plato's humour is directed. Most of the
jests appear to have a serious meaning; but we have lost the clue to
some of them, and cannot determine whether, as in the Cratylus, Plato
has or has not mixed up purely unmeaning fun with his satire.
The two discourses of Socrates may be contrasted in several respects
with the exhibition of the Sophists: (1) In their perfect relevancy to the
subject of discussion, whereas the Sophistical discourses are wholly
irrelevant: (2) In their enquiring sympathetic tone, which encourages
the youth, instead of 'knocking him down,' after the manner of the two
Sophists: (3) In the absence of any definite conclusion--for while
Socrates and the youth are agreed that philosophy is to be studied, they
are not able to arrive at any certain result about the art which is to teach
it. This is a question which will hereafter be answered in the Republic;
as the conception of the kingly art is more fully developed in the
Politicus, and the caricature of rhetoric in the Gorgias.
The characters of the Dialogue are easily intelligible. There is Socrates

once more in the character of an old man; and his equal in years, Crito,
the father of Critobulus, like Lysimachus in the Laches, his fellow
demesman (Apol.), to whom the scene is narrated, and who once or
twice interrupts with a remark after the manner of the interlocutor in
the Phaedo, and adds his commentary at the end; Socrates makes a
playful allusion to his money-getting habits. There is the youth Cleinias,
the grandson of Alcibiades, who may be compared with Lysis,
Charmides, Menexenus, and other ingenuous youths out of whose
mouths Socrates draws his own lessons, and to whom he always seems
to stand in a kindly and sympathetic relation. Crito will not believe that
Socrates has not improved or perhaps invented the answers of Cleinias
(compare Phaedrus). The name of the grandson of Alcibiades, who is
described as long dead, (Greek), and who died at the age of forty-four,
in the year 404 B.C., suggests not only that the intended scene of the
Euthydemus could not have been earlier than 404, but that as a fact this
Dialogue could not have been composed before 390 at the soonest.
Ctesippus, who is the lover of Cleinias, has been already introduced to
us in the Lysis, and seems there too to deserve the character which is
here given him, of a somewhat uproarious young man. But the chief
study of all is the picture of the two brothers, who are unapproachable
in their effrontery, equally careless of what they say to others and of
what is said to them, and never at a loss. They are 'Arcades ambo et
cantare pares et respondere parati.'