better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from the argument, is several
times brought back again, that he may support pleasure, of which he remains
to the end the uncompromising advocate. On the other hand, the youthful
group of listeners by whom he is surrounded, 'Philebus' boys' as they are
termed, whose presence is several times intimated, are described as all of
them at last convinced by the arguments of Socrates. They bear a very
faded resemblance to the interested audiences of the Charmides, Lysis, or
Protagoras. Other signs of relation to external life in the dialogue, or
references to contemporary things and persons, with the single exception of
the allusions to the anonymous enemies of pleasure, and the teachers of the
flux, there are none.

The omission of the doctrine of recollection, derived from a previous state
of existence, is a note of progress in the philosophy of Plato. The
transcendental theory of pre-existent ideas, which is chiefly discussed by
him in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus, has given way to a
psychological one. The omission is rendered more significant by his having
occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire. Of the ideas he treats
in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his criticism of them in the
Parmenides. He touches on the same difficulties and he gives no answer to
them. His mode of speaking of the analytical and synthetical processes may
be compared with his discussion of the same subject in the Phaedrus; here
he dwells on the importance of dividing the genera into all the species,
while in the Phaedrus he conveys the same truth in a figure, when he speaks
of carving the whole, which is described under the image of a victim, into
parts or members, 'according to their natural articulation, without
breaking any of them.' There is also a difference, which may be noted,
between the two dialogues. For whereas in the Phaedrus, and also in the
Symposium, the dialectician is described as a sort of enthusiast or lover,
in the Philebus, as in all the later writings of Plato, the element of love