perhaps in the Euthydemus of Plato, we find no other trace in Greek
philosophy; he combines the teacher of virtue with the Eristic; while in
his omniscience, in his ignorance of himself, in his arts of deception, and
in his lawyer-like habit of writing and speaking about all things, he is
still the antithesis of Socrates and of the true teacher.

II. The question has been asked, whether the method of 'abscissio
infinti,' by which the Sophist is taken, is a real and valuable logical
process. Modern science feels that this, like other processes of formal
logic, presents a very inadequate conception of the actual complex
procedure of the mind by which scientific truth is detected and verified.
Plato himself seems to be aware that mere division is an unsafe and
uncertain weapon, first, in the Statesman, when he says that we should
divide in the middle, for in that way we are more likely to attain species;
secondly, in the parallel precept of the Philebus, that we should not pass
from the most general notions to infinity, but include all the intervening
middle principles, until, as he also says in the Statesman, we arrive at
the infima species; thirdly, in the Phaedrus, when he says that the
dialectician will carve the limbs of truth without mangling them; and once
more in the Statesman, if we cannot bisect species, we must carve them as
well as we can. No better image of nature or truth, as an organic whole,
can be conceived than this. So far is Plato from supposing that mere
division and subdivision of general notions will guide men into all truth.

Plato does not really mean to say that the Sophist or the Statesman can be
caught in this way. But these divisions and subdivisions were favourite
logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and while indulging his
dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to logical method, he delights
also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons borrowed from his own
armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity