Introduction and Analysis

The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as the
metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the Philebus).
There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the Sophist and
Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical discussions; the
poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no taste for abstruse
metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues to the later ones.
Plato is conscious of the change, and in the Statesman expressly accuses
himself of a tediousness in the two dialogues, which he ascribes to his
desire of developing the dialectical method. On the other hand, the
kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in the Sophist the crown and summit
of the Platonic philosophy--here is the place at which Plato most nearly
approaches to the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being. Nor will the
great importance of the two dialogues be doubted by any one who forms a
conception of the state of mind and opinion which they are intended to
meet. The sophisms of the day were undermining philosophy; the denial of
the existence of Not-being, and of the connexion of ideas, was making truth
and falsehood equally impossible. It has been said that Plato would have
written differently, if he had been acquainted with the Organon of
Aristotle. But could the Organon of Aristotle ever have been written
unless the Sophist and Statesman had preceded? The swarm of fallacies
which arose in the infancy of mental science, and which was born and bred
in the decay of the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by
Aristotle, but by Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the
nature of the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis
and analysis, of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and
the processes of induction and deduction are constantly employed in the
dialogues of Plato. The 'slippery' nature of comparison, the danger of
putting words in the place of things, the fallacy of arguing 'a dicto
secundum,' and in a circle, are frequently indicated by him. To all these
processes of truth and error, Aristotle, in the next generation, gave
distinctness; he brought them together in a separate science. But he is
not to be regarded as the original inventor of any of the great logical
forms, with the exception of the syllogism.

There is little worthy of remark in the characters of the Sophist. The
most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from the field of
argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic stranger, who is
described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is supposed to have
descended from a higher world in order to convict the Socratic circle of
error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to intimate by the