Note 10 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

Respecting Plato’s lectures, see Brandis (Gesch. der Griech.-Röm. Phil. vol. ii. p. 180 seq., 306-319); also Trendelenburg, Platonis De Ideis et Numeris Doctrina, pp. 3, 4, seq.

Brandis, though he admits that Plato’s lectures were continuous discourses, thinks that they were intermingled with discussion and debate: which may have been the case, though there is no proof of it. But Schleiermacher goes further, and says (Einleitung. p. 18), “Any one who can think that Plato in these oral Vorträgen employed the Sophistical method of long speeches, shows such an ignorance as to forfeit all right of speaking about Plato”. Now the passage from Aristoxenus, given in the preceding note, is our only testimony; and it distinctly indicates a continuous lecture to an unprepared auditory, just as Protagoras or Prodikus might have given. K. F. Hermann protests, with good reason, against Schleiermacher’s opinion. (Ueber Plato’s schriftstellerische Motive, p. 289.)

The confident declaration just produced from Schleiermacher illustrates the unsound basis on which he and various other Platonic critics proceed. They find, in some dialogues of Plato, a strong opinion proclaimed, that continuous discourse is useless for the purpose of instruction. This was a point of view which, at the time when he composed these dialogues, he considered to be of importance, and desired to enforce. But we are not warranted in concluding that he must always have held the same conviction throughout his long philosophical life, and in rejecting as un-platonic all statements and all compositions which imply an opposite belief. We cannot with reason bind down Plato to a persistence in one and the same type of compositions.