expressed in Plato's other
writings. Lastly, they wonder how the mind which conceived the Republic
could have left the Critias, Hermocrates, and Philosophus incomplete or
unwritten, and have devoted the last years of life to the Laws.

The questions which have been thus indirectly suggested may be
considered by us under five or six heads: I, the characters; II, the
plan; III, the style; IV, the imitations of other writings of Plato;
V; the more general relation of the Laws to the Republic and the other
dialogues; and VI, to the existing Athenian and Spartan states.

I. Already in the Philebus the distinctive character of Socrates has
disappeared; and in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Statesman his function of
chief speaker is handed over to the Pythagorean philosopher Timaeus, and
to the Eleatic Stranger, at whose feet he sits, and is silent. More and
more Plato seems to have felt in his later writings that the character
and method of Socrates were no longer suited to be the vehicle of his
own philosophy. He is no longer interrogative but dogmatic; not 'a
hesitating enquirer,' but one who speaks with the authority of a
legislator. Even in the Republic we have seen that the argument which is
carried on by Socrates in the old style with Thrasymachus in the first
book, soon passes into the form of exposition. In the Laws he is nowhere
mentioned. Yet so completely in the tradition of antiquity is Socrates
identified with Plato, that in the criticism of the Laws which we find
in the so-called Politics of Aristotle he is supposed by the writer
still to be playing his part of the chief speaker (compare Pol.).

The Laws are discussed by three representatives of Athens, Crete, and
Sparta. The Athenian, as might be expected, is the protagonist or chief
speaker, while the second place is assigned to the Cretan, who, as
one of the leaders of a new colony, has a special interest in the
conversation. At least four-fifths of the answers are put into his
mouth. The Spartan is every inch a soldier, a man of few words himself,
better at deeds than words. The Athenian talks to the two others,
although they are his equals in age, in the style of a master
discoursing to his scholars; he frequently praises himself; he
entertains a very poor opinion of the understanding of his companions.
Certainly the boastfulness and rudeness of the Laws is the reverse of
the refined irony and courtesy which characterize the earlier dialogues.
We are no longe