bstance of the work. It may be
remarked further that several of the dialogues, such as the Phaedrus,
the Sophist, and the Parmenides, have more than one subject. But it
does not therefore follow that Plato intended one dialogue to succeed
another, or that he begins anew in one dialogue a subject which he has
left unfinished in another, or that even in the same dialogue he always
intended the two parts to be connected with each other. We cannot argue
from a casual statement found in the Parmenides to other statements
which occur in the Philebus. Much more truly is his own manner described
by himself when he says that 'words are more plastic than wax' (Rep.),
and 'whither the wind blows, the argument follows'. The dialogues of
Plato are like poems, isolated and separate works, except where they are
indicated by the author himself to have an intentional sequence.

It is this method of taking passages out of their context and placing
them in a new connexion when they seem to confirm a preconceived theory,
which is the defect of Dr. Jackson's procedure. It may be compared,
though not wholly the same with it, to that method which the Fathers
practised, sometimes called 'the mystical interpretation of Scripture,'
in which isolated words are separated from their context, and receive
any sense which the fancy of the interpreter may suggest. It is akin
to the method employed by Schleiermacher of arranging the dialogues
of Plato in chronological order according to what he deems the true
arrangement of the ideas contained in them. (Dr. Jackson is also
inclined, having constructed a theory, to make the chronology of Plato's
writings dependent upon it (See J. of Philol. and elsewhere.) It may
likewise be illustrated by the ingenuity of those who employ symbols to
find in Shakespeare a hidden meaning. In the three cases the error is
nearly the same:--words are taken out of their natural context, and thus
become destitute of any real meaning.

(4) According to Dr. Jackson's 'Later Theory,' Plato's Ideas, which were
once regarded as the summa genera of all things, are now to be explained
as Forms or Types of some things only,--that is to say, of natural
objects: these we conceive imperfectly, but are always seeking in vain
to have a more perfect notion of them. He says (J. of Philol.) that
'Plato hoped by the study of a series of hypothetical or provisional
classifications to arrive at one in which nature's distribution of kinds
is app