was, or was known, or could be spoken. Let us imagine disputes carried
on with religious earnestness and more than scholastic subtlety, in
which the catchwords of philosophy are completely detached from their
context. (Compare Theaet.) To such disputes the humour, whether of Plato
in the ancient, or of Pope and Swift in the modern world, is the natural
enemy. Nor must we forget that in modern times also there is no fallacy
so gross, no trick of language so transparent, no abstraction so barren
and unmeaning, no form of thought so contradictory to experience, which
has not been found to satisfy the minds of philosophical enquirers at a
certain stage, or when regarded from a certain point of view only. The
peculiarity of the fallacies of our own age is that we live within them,
and are therefore generally unconscious of them.

Aristotle has analysed several of the same fallacies in his book 'De
Sophisticis Elenchis,' which Plato, with equal command of their true
nature, has preferred to bring to the test of ridicule. At first we
are only struck with the broad humour of this 'reductio ad absurdum:'
gradually we perceive that some important questions begin to emerge.
Here, as everywhere else, Plato is making war against the philosophers
who put words in the place of things, who tear arguments to tatters, who
deny predication, and thus make knowledge impossible, to whom ideas
and objects of sense have no fixedness, but are in a state of perpetual
oscillation and transition. Two great truths seem to be indirectly
taught through these fallacies: (1) The uncertainty of language,
which allows the same words to be used in different meanings, or with
different degrees of meaning: (2) The necessary limitation or relative
nature of all phenomena. Plato is aware that his own doctrine of
ideas, as well as the Eleatic Being and Not-being, alike admit of being
regarded as verbal fallacies. The sophism advanced in the Meno, 'that
you cannot enquire either into what you know or do not know,' is
lightly touched upon at the commencement of the Dialogue; the thesis of
Protagoras, that everything is true to him to whom it seems to be
true, is satirized. In contrast with these fallacies is maintained the
Socratic doctrine that happiness is gained by knowledge. The grammatical
puzzles with which the Dialogue concludes probably contain allusions
to tricks of language which may have been practised by the disciples
of Prodicus or Antisthenes. They