Note 694 — Chapter LXVIII · SOKRATES.

As one specimen among many, see Plato, Theætet. c. 11, p. 146, D. It is maintained by Brandis, and in part by C. Heyder (see Heyder, Kritische Darstellung und Vergleichung der Aristotelischen und Hegelschen Dialektik, part i, pp. 85, 129), that the logical process, called division, is not to be considered as having been employed by Sokratês along with definition, but begins with Plato: in proof of which they remark that, in the two Platonic dialogues called Sophistês and Politicus, wherein this process is most abundantly employed, Sokratês is not the conductor of the conversation.

Little stress is to be laid on this circumstance, I think; and the terms in which Xenophon describes the method of Sokratês (διαλέγοντας κατὰ γένη τὰ πράγματα, Mem. iv, 5, 12) seem to imply the one process as well as the other: indeed, it was scarcely possible to keep them apart, with so abundant a talker as Sokratês. Plato doubtless both enlarged and systematized the method in every way, and especially made greater use of the process of division, because he pushed the dialogue further into positive scientific research than Sokratês.