be of later date. The punishment of evil is
to be like evil men (Laws), as he says also in the Theaetetus. Compare
again the dependence of tragedy and comedy on one another, of which he
gives the reason in the Laws--'For serious things cannot be understood
without laughable, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man
is really to have intelligence of either'; here he puts forward the
principle which is the groundwork of the thesis of Socrates in the
Symposium, 'that the genius of tragedy is the same as that of comedy,
and that the writer of comedy ought to be a writer of tragedy also.'
There is a truth and right which is above Law (Laws), as we learn also
from the Statesman. That men are the possession of the Gods (Laws), is
a reflection which likewise occurs in the Phaedo. The remark, whether
serious or ironical (Laws), that 'the sons of the Gods naturally
believed in the Gods, because they had the means of knowing about them,'
is found in the Timaeus. The reign of Cronos, who is the divine ruler
(Laws), is a reminiscence of the Statesman. It is remarkable that in the
Sophist and Statesman (Soph.), Plato, speaking in the character of the
Eleatic Stranger, has already put on the old man. The madness of the
poets, again, is a favourite notion of Plato's, which occurs also in the
Laws, as well as in the Phaedrus, Ion, and elsewhere. There are traces
in the Laws of the same desire to base speculation upon history which
we find in the Critias. Once more, there is a striking parallel with
the paradox of the Gorgias, that 'if you do evil, it is better to be
punished than to be unpunished,' in the Laws: 'To live having all goods
without justice and virtue is the greatest of evils if life be immortal,
but not so great if the bad man lives but a short time.'

The point to be considered is whether these are the kind of parallels
which would be the work of an imitator. Would a forger have had the wit
to select the most peculiar and characteristic thoughts of Plato; would
he have caught the spirit of his philosophy; would he, instead of openly
borrowing, have half concealed his favourite ideas; would he have formed
them into a whole such as the Laws; would he have given another
the credit which he might have obtained for himself; would he have
remembered and made use of other passages of the Platonic writings and
have never deviated into the phraseology of them? Without pressing
such arguments as absolutely certain, we must a