of the writings of Plato. There are two, or more, sides to questions; and
these are parted among the different speakers. Sometimes one view or
aspect of a question is made to predominate over the rest, as in the
Gorgias or Sophist; but in other dialogues truth is divided, as in the
Laches and Protagoras, and the interest of the piece consists in the
contrast of opinions. The confusion caused by the irony of Socrates, who,
if he is true to his character, cannot say anything of his own knowledge,
is increased by the circumstance that in the Theaetetus and some other
dialogues he is occasionally playing both parts himself, and even charging
his own arguments with unfairness. In the Theaetetus he is designedly held
back from arriving at a conclusion. For we cannot suppose that Plato
conceived a definition of knowledge to be impossible. But this is his
manner of approaching and surrounding a question. The lights which he
throws on his subject are indirect, but they are not the less real for
that. He has no intention of proving a thesis by a cut-and-dried argument;
nor does he imagine that a great philosophical problem can be tied up
within the limits of a definition. If he has analyzed a proposition or
notion, even with the severity of an impossible logic, if half-truths have
been compared by him with other half-truths, if he has cleared up or
advanced popular ideas, or illustrated a new method, his aim has been
sufficiently accomplished.

The writings of Plato belong to an age in which the power of analysis had
outrun the means of knowledge; and through a spurious use of dialectic, the
distinctions which had been already 'won from the void and formless
infinite,' seemed to be rapidly returning to their original chaos. The two
great speculative philosophies, which a century earlier had so deeply
impressed the mind of Hellas, were now degenerating into Eristic. The
contemporaries of Plato and Socrates were vainly trying to find new
combinations of them, or to transfer them from the object to the subject.