nd the shorter and later work, as might be expected, is
less finished, and less worked out in detail. The idea of measure and
the arrangement of the sciences supply connecting links both with the
Republic and the Philebus.

More than any of the preceding dialogues, the Statesman seems to
approximate in thought and language to the Laws. There is the same
decline and tendency to monotony in style, the same self-consciousness,
awkwardness, and over-civility; and in the Laws is contained the pattern
of that second best form of government, which, after all, is admitted
to be the only attainable one in this world. The 'gentle violence,' the
marriage of dissimilar natures, the figure of the warp and the woof,
are also found in the Laws. Both expressly recognize the conception of
a first or ideal state, which has receded into an invisible heaven. Nor
does the account of the origin and growth of society really differ in
them, if we make allowance for the mythic character of the narrative in
the Statesman. The virtuous tyrant is common to both of them; and the
Eleatic Stranger takes up a position similar to that of the Athenian
Stranger in the Laws.

VII. There would have been little disposition to doubt the genuineness
of the Sophist and Statesman, if they had been compared with the Laws
rather than with the Republic, and the Laws had been received, as they
ought to be, on the authority of Aristotle and on the ground of their
intrinsic excellence, as an undoubted work of Plato. The detailed
consideration of the genuineness and order of the Platonic dialogues has
been reserved for another place: a few of the reasons for defending the
Sophist and Statesman may be given here.

1. The excellence, importance, and metaphysical originality of the two
dialogues: no works at once so good and of such length are known to have
proceeded from the hands of a forger.

2. The resemblances in them to other dialogues of Plato are such as
might be expected to be found in works of the same author, and not in
those of an imitator, being too subtle and minute to have been invented
by another. The similar passages and turns of thought are generally
inferior to the parallel passages in his earlier writings; and we might
a priori have expected that, if altered, they would have been improved.
But the comparison of the Laws proves that this repetition of his own
thoughts and words in an inferior form is characteristic of Plato's
later style.

3. The