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.
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.
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.
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, the latter in the
Rhetoric. 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., 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.
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; 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. 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 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. 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.
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 overbalanced 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.
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.