the construction of the ideal state; the Parmenides between
the criticism of the Platonic ideas and of the Eleatic one or being;
the Gorgias between the art of speaking and the nature of the good;
the Sophist between the detection of the Sophist and the correlation
of ideas. The Theaetetus, the Politicus, and the Philebus have also
digressions which are but remotely connected with the main subject.

Thus the comparison of Plato's other writings, as well as the reason of
the thing, lead us to the conclusion that we must not expect to find one
idea pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention
of the writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. If each dialogue were
confined to the development of a single idea, this would appear on the
face of the dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether
the Phaedrus treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato
subjects himself to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he
gives unity of form to the different and apparently distracting topics
which he brings together. He works freely and is not to be supposed to
have arranged every part of the dialogue before he begins to write.
He fastens or weaves together the frame of his discourse loosely and
imperfectly, and which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always
be determined.

The subjects of the Phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory
passage about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are
first the false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the
inspiration of beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness;
thirdly, dialectic or the art of composition and division; fourthly, the
true rhetoric, which is based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of
persuasion nor knowledge of the truth alone, but the art of persuasion
founded on knowledge of truth and knowledge of character; fifthly, the
superiority of the spoken over the written word. The continuous thread
which appears and reappears throughout is rhetoric; this is the ground
into which the rest of the Dialogue is worked, in parts embroidered with
fine words which are not in Socrates' manner, as he says, 'in order to
please Phaedrus.' The speech of Lysias which has thrown Phaedrus into an
ecstacy is adduced as an example of the false rhetoric; the first speech
of Socrates, though an improvement, partakes of the same character; his
second speech, which is full of that higher element said to h