of recollection and of the Platonic ideas; the questions, whether virtue
can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many. (iv) They have a want
of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and later period;
and a youthful beauty and grace which is wanting in the later ones. (v)
Their resemblance to one another; in all the three boyhood has a great
part. These reasons have various degrees of weight in determining their
place in the catalogue of the Platonic writings, though they are not
conclusive. No arrangement of the Platonic dialogues can be strictly
chronological. The order which has been adopted is intended mainly for the
convenience of the reader; at the same time, indications of the date
supplied either by Plato himself or allusions found in the dialogues have
not been lost sight of. Much may be said about this subject, but the
results can only be probable; there are no materials which would enable us
to attain to anything like certainty.

The relations of knowledge and virtue are again brought forward in the
companion dialogues of the Lysis and Laches; and also in the Protagoras and
Euthydemus. The opposition of abstract and particular knowledge in this
dialogue may be compared with a similar opposition of ideas and phenomena
which occurs in the Prologues to the Parmenides, but seems rather to belong
to a later stage of the philosophy of Plato.


CHARMIDES, OR TEMPERANCE

by

Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett