ept perhaps in the Euthydemus of Plato,
we find no other trace in Greek philosophy; he combines the teacher of
virtue with the Eristic; while in his omniscience, in his ignorance
of himself, in his arts of deception, and in his lawyer-like habit of
writing and speaking about all things, he is still the antithesis of
Socrates and of the true teacher.

II. The question has been asked, whether the method of 'abscissio
infinti,' by which the Sophist is taken, is a real and valuable logical
process. Modern science feels that this, like other processes of formal
logic, presents a very inadequate conception of the actual complex
procedure of the mind by which scientific truth is detected and
verified. Plato himself seems to be aware that mere division is an
unsafe and uncertain weapon, first, in the Statesman, when he says that
we should divide in the middle, for in that way we are more likely to
attain species; secondly, in the parallel precept of the Philebus,
that we should not pass from the most general notions to infinity, but
include all the intervening middle principles, until, as he also says
in the Statesman, we arrive at the infima species; thirdly, in the
Phaedrus, when he says that the dialectician will carve the limbs of
truth without mangling them; and once more in the Statesman, if we
cannot bisect species, we must carve them as well as we can. No better
image of nature or truth, as an organic whole, can be conceived than
this. So far is Plato from supposing that mere division and subdivision
of general notions will guide men into all truth.

Plato does not really mean to say that the Sophist or the Statesman
can be caught in this way. But these divisions and subdivisions were
favourite logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and while
indulging his dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to logical
method, he delights also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons
borrowed from his own armoury. As we have already seen, the division
gives him the opportunity of making the most damaging reflections on
the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to exhibit him in the most
discreditable light.

Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that
an animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a
single definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain
a definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection
scarcely occurred to them that the