exploring truth alone. According to this division is framed the following
scheme, or table:

DIALOGUES[24]

Sceptical Disputative Embarrassing Confuting Inquisitive Exciting Assisting
Dogmatical Demonstrative Analytical Inductional Authoritative Magisterial
Traditional

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[24]We have, given us by Diogenes Laertius, another division of the
characters, as he calls them, of Plato's writings, different from that
exhibited in the scheme above. This we have thought proper to subjoin, on
account of its antiquity and general reception.

Dialogues

Diadectic Speculative Physical Logical Practical Ethical Political
Inquisitive Gymnastic Maieutic Peirastic Agonistic Endeietic Anatreptic

The learned reader will observe the latter half of the dialogues, according
to this scheme, to be described by metaphors taken from the gymnastic art:
the dialogues, here termed gymnastic, being imagined to bear a similitude
to that exercise; the agonistic, to the combat. In the lowest subdivision,
indeed, the word maieutic is a metaphor of another kind, fully explained in
Plato's Theaetetus: the maieutic dialogues, however, were supposed to
resemble giving the rudiments of the art; as the peirastic were, to
represent a skirmish, or trial of proficiency; the endeietic were, it
seems, likened to the exhibiting a specimen of skill; and the anatreptic,
to presenting the spectacle of a thorough defeat, or sound drubbing. The