f Thamus and Theuth, or the funeral oration of
Aspasia (if genuine), or the pretence of Socrates in the Cratylus that
his knowledge of philology is derived from Euthyphro, the invention
is really due to the imagination of Plato, and may be compared to the
parodies of the Sophists in the Protagoras. Numerous fictions of this
sort occur in the Dialogues, and the gravity of Plato has sometimes
imposed upon his commentators. The introduction of a considerable
writing of another would seem not to be in keeping with a great work of
art, and has no parallel elsewhere.

In the second speech Socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians
at their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the
art.' True to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech
which he makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (Compare
Symp.) Regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech
seems to consist chiefly in a better arrangement of the topics; he
begins with a definition of love, and he gives weight to his words by
going back to general maxims; a lesser merit is the greater liveliness
of Socrates, which hurries him into verse and relieves the monotony of
the style.

But Plato had doubtless a higher purpose than to exhibit Socrates as the
rival or superior of the Athenian rhetoricians. Even in the speech of
Lysias there is a germ of truth, and this is further developed in the
parallel oration of Socrates. First, passionate love is overthrown by
the sophistical or interested, and then both yield to that higher view
of love which is afterwards revealed to us. The extreme of commonplace
is contrasted with the most ideal and imaginative of speculations.
Socrates, half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the
disguise of Lysias, but he is also in profound earnest and in a deeper
vein of irony than usual. Having improvised his own speech, which is
based upon the model of the preceding, he condemns them both. Yet the
condemnation is not to be taken seriously, for he is evidently trying
to express an aspect of the truth. To understand him, we must make
abstraction of morality and of the Greek manner of regarding the
relation of the sexes. In this, as in his other discussions about love,
what Plato says of the loves of men must be transferred to the loves
of women before we can attach any serious meaning to his words. Had he
lived in our times he would have made the transposition himse