To appreciate fully the drift of the Euthydemus, we should imagine a mental
state in which not individuals only, but whole schools during more than one
generation, were animated by the desire to exclude the conception of rest,
and therefore the very word 'this' (Theaet.) from language; in which the
ideas of space, time, matter, motion, were proved to be contradictory and
imaginary; in which the nature of qualitative change was a puzzle, and even
differences of degree, when applied to abstract notions, were not
understood; in which there was no analysis of grammar, and mere puns or
plays of words received serious attention; in which contradiction itself
was denied, and, on the one hand, every predicate was affirmed to be true
of every subject, and on the other, it was held that no predicate was true
of any subject, and that nothing was, or was known, or could be spoken.
Let us imagine disputes carried on with religious earnestness and more than
scholastic subtlety, in which the catchwords of philosophy are completely
detached from their context. (Compare Theaet.) To such disputes the
humour, whether of Plato in the ancient, or of Pope and Swift in the modern
world, is the natural enemy. Nor must we forget that in modern times also
there is no fallacy so gross, no trick of language so transparent, no
abstraction so barren and unmeaning, no form of thought so contradictory to
experience, which has not been found to satisfy the minds of philosophical
enquirers at a certain stage, or when regarded from a certain point of view
only. The peculiarity of the fallacies of our own age is that we live
within them, and are therefore generally unconscious of them.

Aristotle has analysed several of the same fallacies in his book 'De
Sophisticis Elenchis,' which Plato, with equal command of their true
nature, has preferred to bring to the test of ridicule. At first we are
only struck with the broad humour of this 'reductio ad absurdum:' gradually
we perceive that some important questions begin to emerge. Here, as