a public proceeding: (Idiothereutic or Demosiothereutic.) The art of private persuasion is accompanied with the giving of presents, (as lovers do,) or with the receiving of pay: (thus it is Dorophoric or Mistharneutic.) To receive pay as the result of persuasion, is the course, either of those who merely earn their bread by supplying pleasure, namely flatterers, whose art is Hedyntic; or of those who profess for pay to teach virtue. And who are they? Plainly the Sophists. And thus Sophistic is that kind of Ktetic, Chirotic, Thereutic, Zootheric, Pezotheric, Hemerotheric, Pithanurgic, Idiothereutic, Mistharneutic art, which professes to teach virtue, and takes money on that account.

The same process is pursued along several other lines of inquiry: and at the end of each of them the Sophist is detected, involved in a number of somewhat obnoxious characteristics. This process of division it will be observed, is at every step bifurcate, or as it is called, dichotomous. Applied as it is in these examples, it is rather the vehicle of satire than of philosophy. Yet, I have no doubt that this bifurcate method was admired by some of the philosophers of Plato's time, as a clever and effective philosophical invention. We may the more readily believe this, inasmuch as one of the most acute persons of our own time, who has come nearer than any other to the ancient heads of sects in the submission with which his followers have accepted his doctrines, has taken up this Dichotomous Method, and praised it as the only philosophical mode of dividing a subject. I refer to Mr Jeremy Bentham's Chrestomathia (published originally in 1816), in which this exhaustive bifurcate method, as he calls it, was applied to classify sciences and arts, with a view to a scheme of education. How exactly the method, as recommended by him, agrees with the method illustrated in the Sophist, an examination of any of his examples will show. Thus to take Mineralogy as an example: according to Bentham, Ontology is Conoscopic or Idioscopic: the Idioscopic is Somatoscopic or Pneumatoscopic; the Somatoscopic is Pososcopic or Poioscopic: Poioscopic is Physiurgoscopic or Anthropurgoscopic: Physiurgoscopic is Uranoscopic or Epigeoscopic: Epigeoscopic is Abioscopic or Embioscopic. And thus Mineralogy is the Science Idioscopic, Somatoscopic, Poioscopic, Physiurgoscopic, Epigeoscopic, Abioscopic: inasmuch as it is the science which regards bodies, with reference to their qualities,— bodies, namely, the works of nature, terrestrial, lifeless.

I conceive that this bifurcate method is not really philosophical or valuable: but that is not our business here. What we have to consider is whether this is what Plato meant by the term Dialectic. The general description of Dialectic in the Sophistes agrees very

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closely with that quoted from the Phædrus, that it is the separation of a subject according to its natural divisions.

Thus, see in the Sophist the passage § 83: "To divide a subject according to the kinds of things, so as neither to make the same kind different nor different kinds identical, is the office of the Dialectical Science." And this is illustrated by observing that it is the office of the science of Grammar to determine what letters may be combined and what may not; it is the office of the science of Music to determine what sounds differing as acute and grave, may be combined, and what may not: and in like manner it is the office of the science of Dialectic to determine what kinds may be combined in one subject and what may not. And the proof is still further explained.

In many of the Platonic Dialogues, the Dialectic which Socrates is thus represented as approving, appears to include the form of Dialogue, as well as the subdivision of the subject into its various branches. Socrates is presented as attaching so much importance to this form, that in the Protagoras (§ 65) he rises to depart, because his opponent will not conform to this practice. And generally in Plato, Dialectic is opposed to Rhetoric, as a string of short questions and answers to a continuous dissertation.

Xenophon also seems to imply (Mem. iv. 5, 11) that Socrates included in his notion of Dialectic the form of Dialogue as well as the division of the subject.

But that the method of close Dialogue was not called Dialectic by the author of the Sophist, we have good evidence in the work itself. Among other notions which are analysed by the bifurcate division here exhibited, is that of getting by contest (Agonistic, previously given as a division of Ktetic). Now getting by contest may be by peaceful trial of superiority, or by fight: (Hamilletic or Machetic). The fight may be of body against body, or of words against words: these may be called Biastic and Amphisbetic. The fight of words about right and wrong, may be by long discourses opposed to each other, as in judicial cases; or by short questions and answers: the former may be called Dicanic, the latter Antilogic. Of these colloquies, about right and wrong, some are natural and spontaneous, others artificial and studied: the former need no special name; the latter are commonly called Eristic. Of Eristic colloquies, some are a source of expense to those who hold them, some of gain: that is, they are Chrematophthoric or Chrematistic: the former, the occupation of those who talk for pleasure's and for company's sake, is Adoleschic, wasteful garrulity; the latter, that of those who talk for the sake of gain, is Sophistic.

And thus Sophistic is an art Eristic, which is part of Antilogic, which is part of Amphisbetic, which is part of Agonistic, which is part of Chirotic, which is a part of Ktetic. (§ 23.)

We e may notice here an indication that satire rather than exact reason directs these analyses; in that Sophistic, which was before a part of the thereutic branch of chirotic and ktetic, is here a part of the other branch, agonistic.

But the remark which I especially wish to make here is, that the art of discussing points of right and wrong by short questions and answers, being here brought into view, is not called Dialectic, which we might have expected; but Antilogic. It would seem therefore that the Author of the Sophist did not understand by Dialectic such a process as Socrates describes in Xenophon; (Mem. Iv. 5, 11, 12;) where he says it was called Dialectic, because it was followed by persons dividing things into their kinds in conversation: (κοινῇ βουλεύεσθαι διαλέγοντας :) or such as the Socrates of Plato insisted upon in the Protagoras and the Gorgias. Of the two elements which the Dialectical Process of Socrates implied, Division of the subject and Dialogue, the author of the Sophistes does not claim the name of Dialectic for either, and seems to reject it for the second.

But without insisting upon the name, are we to suppose that the Dichotomous Method of the Sophistes Dialogue, (I may add of the Politicus, for the method is the same in this Dialogue also,) is the method of division of a subject according to its natural members, of which Plato speaks in the Phædrus?

If the Sophistes be the work of Plato, the answer is difficult either way. If this method be Plato's Dialectic, how came he to omit to say so there? how came he even to seem to deny it? But on the other hand, if this dichotomous division be a different process from the division called Dialectic in the Phædrus, had Plato two methods of division of a subject? and yet has he never spoken of them as two, or marked their distinction?

This difficulty would be removed if we were to adopt the opinion, to which others, on other grounds, have been led, that the Sophistes, though of Plato's time, is not Plato's work. The grounds of this opinion are, that the doctrines of the Sophistes are not Platonic: (the doctrine of Ideas is strongly impugned and weakly defended :) Socrates is not the principal speaker, but an Eleatic stranger: and there is, in the Dialogue, none of the dramatic character which we generally have in Plato. The Dialogue seems to be the work of some Eleatic opponent of Plato, rather than his.

(Rep. B. vII.) But we can have no doubt that the Phædrus

contains Plato's real view of the nature of Dialectic, as to its form; let us see how this agrees with the view of Dialectic, as to its matter and object, given in the seventh Book of the Republic.

According to Plato, Real Existences are the objects of the exact sciences (as number and figure, of Arithmetic and Geometry). The things which are the objects of sense are transitory phenomena, which have no reality, because no permanence. Dialectic deals with Realities in a more general manner. This doctrine is everywhere inculcated by Plato, and particularly in this part of the Republic. He does not tell us how we are to obtain a view of the higher realities, which are the objects of Dialectic: only he here assumes that it will result from the education which he enjoins. He says (§ 13) that the Dialectic Process ( diakeλtiký μébodos) alone leads to true science: it makes no assumptions, but goes to First Principles, that its doctrines may be firmly grounded: and thus it purges the eye of the soul, which was immersed in barbaric mud, and turns it upward; using for this purpose the aid of the sciences which have been mentioned. But when Glaucon inquires about the details of this Dialectic, Socrates says he will not then answer the inquiry. We may venture to say, that it does not appear that he had any answer ready.

Let us consider for a moment what is said about a philosophy rendering a reason for the First Principles of each Science, which the Science itself cannot do. That there is room for such a branch of philosophy in some sciences, we easily see. Geometry, for instance, proceeds from Axioms, Definitions and Postulates; but by the very nature of these terms, does not prove these First Principles. These the Axioms, Definitions and Postulates,―are, I conceive, what Plato here calls the Hypotheses upon which Geometry proceeds, and for which it is not the business of Geometry to render a reason. According to him, it is the business of "Dialectic" to give a just account of these "Hypotheses." What then is Dialectic?

(Aristotle.) It is, I think, well worthy of remark, that Aristotle, giving an account in many respects different from that of Plato, of the nature of Dialectic, is still led in the same manner to consider Dialectic as the branch of philosophy which renders a reason for First Principles. In the Topics, we have a distinction drawn between reasoning demonstrative, and reasoning dialectical: and the distinction is this:-( Top. 1. 1) that demonstration is by syllogisms from true first principles, or from true deductions from such principles; and that the Dialectical Syllogism is that which syllogizes from probable propositions ( évôó¿wv). And he adds that

probable propositions are those which are accepted by all, or by the greatest part, or by the wise. In the next chapter, he speaks of the uses of Dialectic, which, he says, are three, mental discipline, debates, and philosophical science. And he adds (Top. 1. 2, 6) that it is also useful with reference to the First Principles in each Science for from the appropriate Principles of each science we cannot deduce anything concerning First Principles, since these principles are the beginning of reasoning. But from the probable principles in each province of science we must reason concerning First Principles: and this is either the peculiar office of Dialectic, or the office most appropriate to it; for it is a process of investigation, and must lead to the Principles of all methods.

That a demonstrative science, as such, does not explain the origin of its own First Principles, is undoubtedly true. Geometry does not undertake to give a reason for the Axioms, Definitions, and Postulates. This has been attempted, both in ancient and in modern times, by the Metaphysicians. But the Metaphysics employed on such subjects has not commonly been called Dialectic. The term has certainly been usually employed rather as describing a Method, than as determining the subject of investigation. Of the Faculty which apprehends First Principles, both according to Plato and to Aristotle, I will hereafter say a few words.

The object of the dichotomous process pursued in the Sophistes, and its result in each case, is a Definition. Definition also was one of the main features of the inquiries pursued by Socrates, Induction being the other; and indeed in many cases Induction was a series of steps which ended in Definition. And Aristotle also taught a peculiar method, the object and result of which was the construction of Definitions:-namely his Categories. This method is one of division, but very different from the divisions of the Sophistes. His method begins by dividing the whole subject of possible inquiry into ten heads or Categories-Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Position, Habit, Action, Passion. These again are subdivided: thus Quality is Habit or Disposition, Power, Affection, Form. And we have an example of the application of this method to the construction of a Definition in the Ethics; where he determines Virtue to be a Habit with certain additional limitations.

Thus the Induction of Socrates, the Dichotomy of the Eleatics, the Categories of Aristotle, may all be considered as methods by which we proceed to the construction of Definitions. If, by any method, Plato could proceed to the construction of a Definition, or rather of an Idea, of the Absolute Realities on which First Principles depend, such a method would correspond with the notion of