[Footnote h: The necessity of determining the _connotation_ of the Class-term is distinctly put forward by Sokrates--Xenophon, Memorab. III. 14, 2. [Greek: lo/gô| o)/ntos peri\ o)noma/tôn, iph' oi(ô=| e)/rgô| e(/kaston ei)/ê--E)/choimen a)\n (e)\phê) ei)pei=n, e)pi\ poiô=| pote\ e)/rgô| a)/nthrôpos o)pso/phagos kalei=tai?] &c., also the remarkable passage IV., 6. 13--15, Plato, Sophistes, p. 218 B. [Greek: tou)/noma mo/non e)/chomen koinê=| to\ de\ e)/rgon, e)ph' ô(=| kalou=men], &c.]
I pass now from Sokrates to Plato. It is true, as we read in the Analysis, (p. 271) that Plato "was so deeply struck with the importance of Classification, that he seems to have regarded it as the sum of all philosophy." But what Plato thus admired was not the Classification that he found prevalent around him, such as this chapter of the Analysis depicts. Here Plato perfectly agreed with Sokrates. Among his immortal dialogues, several of the very best are devoted to the illustration of the Sokratic point of view: to the cross-examination and exposure of the minds around him, instructed as well as vulgar, in respect to the general terms familiarly used in speech. The Platonic questions and answers are framed to shew how little the respondents understand beneath those current generalities on which every one talks with confidence and fluency--and how little they can avoid contradiction or inconsistency, when their class-terms are confronted with particulars. In fact, Plato goes so far as to intimate that these uncertified classifications,-- generated in each man's mind by merely learning the application of words, and imbibed unconsciously, without special teaching, through the contagion of ordinary society--are rather worse than ignorance: inasmuch as they are accompanied by a false persuasion of knowledge. It would be (in the opinion of Plato) a comparative improvement, if this state of mental confusion, creating a false persuasion of knowledge, were broken up; and if there were substituted in place thereof positive ignorance, together with the naked and painful consciousness of being really ignorant. Only in this way could the mind of the learner be stimulated to active effort in the acquisition of genuine knowledge.[i]