es are essentially one; _Euthydemus_, in which the assumption and
'airs' of some of the Sophists are made fun of; _Cratylus_, Of the
sophistic use of words; _Gorgias_, Of the True and the False, the truly
Good and the truly Evil; _Hippias_, Of Voluntary and Involuntary Sin;
_Alcibiades_, Of Self-Knowledge; _Menexenus_, a (possibly ironical) set
oration after the manner of the Sophists, in praise of Athens.

The whole of this third series are characterised by humour, dramatic
interest, variety of personal type among the speakers, keenness rather
than depth of philosophic insight. There are many suggestions of
profounder thoughts, afterwards worked out more fully; but on the whole
these dialogues rather stimulate thought than satisfy it; the great
poet-thinker is still playing with his tools.

A higher stage is reached in the _Symposium_, which deals at once
humorously and profoundly with the subject of Love, human and divine,
and its relations to Art and Philosophy, the whole consummated in a
speech related by Socrates as having been spoken to him by Diotima, a
wise woman of Mantineia. From this speech an extract as translated by
Professor Jowett may be quoted here. It marks the transition point
from the merely playful and critical to the relatively serious and
dogmatic stage in the mind of Plato:--

{138} "Marvel not," she said, "if you believe that love is of the
immortal, as we have already several times acknowledged; for here
again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as
far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to
be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a
new existence in the place of the old. Nay even in the life of the
same individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a man is
called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between
youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and
identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and
reparation--hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always
changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul,
whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears,
never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming and
going; and equally true of knowledge, which is still more
surprising--for not only do the sciences in general come and go, so
that in respect of them we are never the same; but each of them
in