Theaetetus | Page 8

who is never guilty of a fallacy himself, and is the

great detector of the errors and fallacies of others. But this natural
presumption is disturbed by the discovery that the Sophists are
sometimes in the right and Socrates in the wrong. Like the hero of a
novel, he is not to be supposed always to represent the sentiments of
the author. There are few modern readers who do not side with
Protagoras, rather than with Socrates, in the dialogue which is called by
his name. The Cratylus presents a similar difficulty: in his etymologies,
as in the number of the State, we cannot tell how far Socrates is serious;
for the Socratic irony will not allow him to distinguish between his real
and his assumed wisdom. No one is the superior of the invincible
Socrates in argument (except in the first part of the Parmenides, where
he is introduced as a youth); but he is by no means supposed to be in
possession of the whole truth. Arguments are often put into his mouth
(compare Introduction to the Gorgias) which must have seemed quite
as untenable to Plato as to a modern writer. In this dialogue a great part
of the answer of Protagoras is just and sound; remarks are made by him
on verbal criticism, and on the importance of understanding an
opponent's meaning, which are conceived in the true spirit of
philosophy. And the distinction which he is supposed to draw between
Eristic and Dialectic, is really a criticism of Plato on himself and his
own criticism of Protagoras.
The difficulty seems to arise from not attending to the dramatic
character of the writings of Plato. There are two, or more, sides to
questions; and these are parted among the different speakers.
Sometimes one view or aspect of a question is made to predominate
over the rest, as in the Gorgias or Sophist; but in other dialogues truth
is divided, as in the Laches and Protagoras, and the interest of the piece
consists in the contrast of opinions. The confusion caused by the irony
of Socrates, who, if he is true to his character, cannot say anything of
his own knowledge, is increased by the circumstance that in the
Theaetetus and some other dialogues he is occasionally playing both
parts himself, and even charging his own arguments with unfairness. In
the Theaetetus he is designedly held back from arriving at a conclusion.
For we cannot suppose that Plato conceived a definition of knowledge
to be impossible. But this is his manner of approaching and
surrounding a question. The lights which he throws on his subject are
indirect, but they are not the less real for that. He has no intention of

proving a thesis by a cut-and-dried argument; nor does he imagine that
a great philosophical problem can be tied up within the limits of a
definition. If he has analyzed a proposition or notion, even with the
severity of an impossible logic, if half-truths have been compared by
him with other half-truths, if he has cleared up or advanced popular
ideas, or illustrated a new method, his aim has been sufficiently
accomplished.
The writings of Plato belong to an age in which the power of analysis
had outrun the means of knowledge; and through a spurious use of
dialectic, the distinctions which had been already 'won from the void
and formless infinite,' seemed to be rapidly returning to their original
chaos. The two great speculative philosophies, which a century earlier
had so deeply impressed the mind of Hellas, were now degenerating
into Eristic. The contemporaries of Plato and Socrates were vainly
trying to find new combinations of them, or to transfer them from the
object to the subject. The Megarians, in their first attempts to attain a
severer logic, were making knowledge impossible (compare Theaet.).
They were asserting 'the one good under many names,' and, like the
Cynics, seem to have denied predication, while the Cynics themselves
were depriving virtue of all which made virtue desirable in the eyes of
Socrates and Plato. And besides these, we find mention in the later
writings of Plato, especially in the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Laws, of
certain impenetrable godless persons, who will not believe what they
'cannot hold in their hands'; and cannot be approached in argument,
because they cannot argue (Theat; Soph.). No school of Greek
philosophers exactly answers to these persons, in whom Plato may
perhaps have blended some features of the Atomists with the vulgar
materialistic tendencies of mankind in general (compare Introduction to
the Sophist).
And not only was there a conflict of opinions, but the stage which the
mind had reached presented other difficulties hardly intelligible to us,
who live in a different cycle of human thought. All times of mental
progress are times of confusion;