[Sidenote: APPENDIX I.]
It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings
of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which
is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues
of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the
Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty
concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to
him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato,
and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are
taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular
author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the
genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more
likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation,
than longer ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or
panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those,
again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later
age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a
motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which
seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in
some classical author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no
instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines
excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no
object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator,
the ‘literary hack’ of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant
originality or genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for
and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the
Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines,
Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are
all said to have composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very
likely to have occurred. Greek literature in the third century before
Christ was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of
regular publication, or printing, or binding, or even of distinct titles.
An unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works
bore the same character; and the name once appended easily obtained
authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the works and
opinions of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist,
the difference between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as
to ourselves. The Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are
but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away.
And we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness
of a particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.
[Sidenote: _Criteria of genuineness._]
These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of
genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato’s which Aristotle
attributes to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3)
great excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of
the Platonic writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be
distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various
degrees of importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning
Plato, under their own names, e. g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the
Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They
may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in
the case of really great works, e. g. the Phaedo, this is not credible;
those again which are quoted but not named, are still more defective
in their external credentials. There may be also a possibility that
Aristotle was mistaken, or may have confused the master and his scholars
in the case of a short writing; but this is inconceivable about a more
important work, e. g. the Laws, especially when we remember that he was
living at Athens, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during
the last twenty years of Plato’s life. Nor must we forget that in all his
numerous citations from the Platonic writings he never attributes any
passage found in the extant dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly,
we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and
the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials
may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length, (3)
excellence, and (4) accordance with the general spirit of his writings.
Indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient
Greek authors may be summed up under two heads only: (1) excellence; and
(2) uniformity of tradition—a kind of evidence, which though in many
cases sufficient, is of inferior value.
[Sidenote: _Inferior works not necessarily spurious._]
Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion
that nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been
ascribed to Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of
them, including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by
the ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute,
Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and
external evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there
still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either
that they are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth,
or possibly like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly
the compositions of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some
contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of
Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate
his master. Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we
should lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of
execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive
of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself,
or who writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who
exhibits the greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of
sentences, and in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared
with his later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who
can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship
extending over above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual
activity, as well as of political and literary transition? Certainly not
Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as
wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his
later writings from Aristotle.
[Sidenote: _The Lesser Hippias._]
The dialogues which have been translated in the first Appendix, and which
appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings,
are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First
Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are
cited by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, iv. 29, 5, the latter
in the Rhetoric, iii. 14, 11. Neither of them are expressly attributed to
Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to
passages in the extant dialogues. From the mention of ‘Hippias’ in the
singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with
a second dialogue bearing the same name. Moreover, the mere existence
of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of a First and Second Alcibiades,
does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon both of them. Though a very
clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias does not appear to contain
anything beyond the power of an imitator, who was also a careful student
of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent. The motive or leading
thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen. Mem. iv. 2, 21, and
there is no similar instance of a ‘motive’ which is taken from Xenophon
in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of
the genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic
spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and
treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will
detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning
upon Homer, in the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the doctrine that vice is
ignorance, traces of a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last
point we are doubtful, as in some of the other dialogues, whether the
author is asserting or overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely
following the argument ‘whither the wind blows.’ That no conclusion
is arrived at is also in accordance with the character of the earlier
dialogues. The resemblances or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras,
and Euthydemus, which have been observed in the Hippias, cannot with
certainty be adduced on either side of the argument. On the whole, more
may be said in favour of the genuineness of the Hippias than against it.
[Sidenote: _Menexenus: Alcibiades I._]
The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is
interesting as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators
praised ‘the Athenians among the Athenians,’ falsifying persons and
dates, and casting a veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history.
It exhibits an acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and
was, perhaps, intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper
place of the Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical
opening and the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier
dialogues; the oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the
speeches in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison
of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is
expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the
subject, in the same manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested
by the slight mention of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus
in the Republic, cp. 465 A; and the Theages by the mention of Theages
in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades seems to be
founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. i. 3, 1. A similar taste for
parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the Protagoras, in the
Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.
To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First
Alcibiades, which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the
greatest merit, and is somewhat longer than any other of them, though not
verified by the testimony of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance
with the Symposium in the description of the relations of Socrates and
Alcibiades. Like the Lesser Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be
compared to the earlier writings of Plato. The motive of the piece may,
perhaps, be found in that passage of the Symposium in which Alcibiades
describes himself as self-convicted by the words of Socrates (216 B, C).
For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher has spoken of this
dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At the same time,
the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more transparent than in
the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that Alcibiades was a
favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues bearing this
name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to contemporaries of
Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real external evidence
(for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot be regarded
as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of the highest marks either of
poetical or philosophical excellence; and (3) considering that we have
express testimony to the existence of contemporary writings bearing
the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on the
genuineness of the extant dialogue.
[Sidenote: _Various degrees of genuineness._]
Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an
absolute line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of
Plato. They fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may
have been degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there
are certainly degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The
traditions of the oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have
formed the basis of semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the
same mixed character which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates,
although the form of them is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike
the writings of Aristotle, seem never to have been confused with the
writings of his disciples: this was probably due to their definite form,
and to their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we have
offered in the Appendix to the criticism of the reader may be partly
spurious and partly genuine; they may be altogether spurious;—that is an
alternative which must be frankly admitted. Nor can we maintain of some
other dialogues, such as the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus,
that no considerable objection can be urged against them, though greatly
over-balanced by the weight (chiefly) of internal evidence in their
favour. Nor, on the other hand, can we exclude a bare possibility that
some dialogues which are usually rejected, such as the Greater Hippias
and the Cleitophon, may be genuine. The nature and object of these
semi-Platonic writings require more careful study and more comparison of
them with one another, and with forged writings in general, than they
have yet received, before we can finally decide on their character. We do
not consider them all as genuine until they can be proved to be spurious,
as is often maintained and still more often implied in this and similar
discussions; but should say of some of them, that their genuineness is
neither proven nor disproven until further evidence about them can be
adduced. And we are as confident that the Epistles are spurious, as that
the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine.
[Sidenote: _The doubtful works neither numerous nor important._]
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under
the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients
themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly
doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and
growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth
debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato,
either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting
questions to the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the
general reader.