and later work, as might be expected, is less finished, and less worked out
in detail. The idea of measure and the arrangement of the sciences supply
connecting links both with the Republic and the Philebus.

More than any of the preceding dialogues, the Statesman seems to
approximate in thought and language to the Laws. There is the same decline
and tendency to monotony in style, the same self-consciousness,
awkwardness, and over-civility; and in the Laws is contained the pattern of
that second best form of government, which, after all, is admitted to be
the only attainable one in this world. The 'gentle violence,' the marriage
of dissimilar natures, the figure of the warp and the woof, are also found
in the Laws. Both expressly recognize the conception of a first or ideal
state, which has receded into an invisible heaven. Nor does the account of
the origin and growth of society really differ in them, if we make
allowance for the mythic character of the narrative in the Statesman. The
virtuous tyrant is common to both of them; and the Eleatic Stranger takes
up a position similar to that of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws.

VII. There would have been little disposition to doubt the genuineness of
the Sophist and Statesman, if they had been compared with the Laws rather
than with the Republic, and the Laws had been received, as they ought to
be, on the authority of Aristotle and on the ground of their intrinsic
excellence, as an undoubted work of Plato. The detailed consideration of
the genuineness and order of the Platonic dialogues has been reserved for
another place: a few of the reasons for defending the Sophist and
Statesman may be given here.

1. The excellence, importance, and metaphysical originality of the two
dialogues: no works at once so good and of such length are known to have
proceeded from the hands of a forger.