stead, which nobody supposes him to have done. But for the purpose of awakening the true idea of science, the sophists must have been the most welcome of all disputants to him, since they had reduced their opinions into the most perfect form; and hence were proud of them themselves, and were peculiarly ad- mired by others. If, therefore, he could succeed in exposing their weakness, the value of a principle so triumphantly applied would be rendered most conspicuous.
But in order to shew the imperfection of the current con- ceptions both in the theories of the Sophists, and in common life, if the issue was not to be left to chance, some certain method was requisite. For it was often necessary in the course of the process to lay down intermediate notions, which it was necessary to define to the satisfaction of both parties ; otherwise, all that was done would afterwards have looked like a paltry surprise ; and the contradiction between the proposition in question, and one that was admitted, could never be detected without ascertaining what notions might or might not be con- nected with a given one. Now this method is laid down in the two problems which Plato states in the Phaedrus, as the two main elements in the art of dialectics, that is, to know first how correctly to combine multiplicity in unity, and again to divide a complex unity according to its nature into a multiplicity, and next to know what notions may or may not be connected to- gether. It is by this means that Socrates became the real founder of dialectics, which continued to be the soul of all the great edifices reared in later times by Greek philosophy, and by its decided prominence, constitutes the chief distinction between the later period and the earlier; so that one cannot l)ut com- mend the historical instinct which has assigned so high a station to him. At the same time this is not meant to deny, that Euclid and Plato carried this science, as well as the rest, farther toward maturity; but it is manifest that in its first principles, Socrates possessed it as a science, and practised it as an art, in a manner peculiar to himself. For the construction of all So- cratic dialogues, as well of those doubtfully ascribed to Plato, and of those attributed with any degree of probability to other original disciples of Socrates, as of all those reported in the Memorabilia, hinges without any exception on this point. The same inference results from the testimony of Aristotle (Metaph.
