imated in the story of the Thracian; (3) The
tendency of the age to verbal distinctions, which here, as in the
Protagoras and Cratylus, are ascribed to the ingenuity of Prodicus;
and to interpretations or rather parodies of Homer or Hesiod, which are
eminently characteristic of Plato and his contemporaries; (4) The germ
of an ethical principle contained in the notion that temperance is
'doing one's own business,' which in the Republic (such is the shifting
character of the Platonic philosophy) is given as the definition, not
of temperance, but of justice; (5) The impatience which is exhibited by
Socrates of any definition of temperance in which an element of science
or knowledge is not included; (6) The beginning of metaphysics and logic
implied in the two questions: whether there can be a science of science,
and whether the knowledge of what you know is the same as the knowledge
of what you do not know; and also in the distinction between 'what you
know' and 'that you know,' (Greek;) here too is the first conception of
an absolute self-determined science (the claims of which, however,
are disputed by Socrates, who asks cui bono?) as well as the first
suggestion of the difficulty of the abstract and concrete, and one of
the earliest anticipations of the relation of subject and object, and
of the subjective element in knowledge--a 'rich banquet' of metaphysical
questions in which we 'taste of many things.' (7) And still the mind
of Plato, having snatched for a moment at these shadows of the future,
quickly rejects them: thus early has he reached the conclusion that
there can be no science which is a 'science of nothing' (Parmen.). (8)
The conception of a science of good and evil also first occurs here, an
anticipation of the Philebus and Republic as well as of moral philosophy
in later ages.

The dramatic interest of the Dialogue chiefly centres in the youth
Charmides, with whom Socrates talks in the kindly spirit of an elder.
His childlike simplicity and ingenuousness are contrasted with the
dialectical and rhetorical arts of Critias, who is the grown-up man of
the world, having a tincture of philosophy. No hint is given, either
here or in the Timaeus, of the infamy which attaches to the name of the
latter in Athenian history. He is simply a cultivated person who, like
his kinsman Plato, is ennobled by the connection of his family with
Solon (Tim.), and had been the follower, if not the disciple, both
of Socrates and of