Note 139 — Chapter XXIX · SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS. (continued 2)

Plato, Sophist. p. 249 B. “Ipsæ ideæ per se simplices sunt et immutabiles: sunt æternæ, ac semper fuerunt ab omni liberæ mutatione,” says Stallbaum ad Platon. Republ. v. p. 476; see also his Prolegg. to the Parmenidês, pp. 39-40. This is the way in which the Platonic Ideas are presented in the Timæus, Republic, Phædon, &c., and the way in which they are conceived by the εἰδῶν φίλοι in the Sophistês, whom the Eleate seeks to confute.

Zeller’s chapter on Plato seems to me to represent not so much what we read in the separate dialogues, as the attempt of an able and ingenious man to bring out something like a consistent and intelligible doctrine which will do credit to Plato, and to soften down all the inconsistencies (see Philos. der Griech. vol. ii. pp. 394-415-429 ed. 2nd).