Here is a suitable termination for one of the Dialogues of Search: "My mind has been embarrassed by contradictions as yet unreconciled, but this is a stage indispensable to future improvement". We have moreover an interesting passage of arms between Rhetoric and Dialectic: two contemporaneous and contending agencies, among the stirring minds of Athens, in the time of Plato and Isokrates. The Rhetor accuses the Dialectician of departing from the conditions of reality--of breaking up the integrity of those concretes, which occur in nature each as continuous and indivisible wholes. Each of the analogous particular cases forms a continuum or concrete by itself, which may be compared with the others, but cannot be taken to pieces, and studied in separate fragments.[43] The Dialectician on his side treats the Abstract ([Greek: to\ kalo\n]) as the real Integer, and the highest abstraction as the first of all integers, containing in itself and capable of evolving all the subordinate integers: the various accompaniments, which go along with each Abstract to make up a concrete, he disregards as shadowy and transient disguises.
[Footnote 43: Plat. Hipp. Maj. 301 B. [Greek: A)lla\ ga\r dê\ su/, ô)= Sô/krates, ta\ me\n o(/la tô=n pragma/tôn ou) skopei=s, ou)d' e)kei=noi, oi(=s su\ ei)/ôthas diale/gesthai, krou/ete de\ a)polamba/nontes to\ kalo\n kai\ e(/kaston tô=n o)/ntôn e)n toi=s lo/gois katate/mnontes; dia\ tau=ta ou(/tô mega/la u(ma=s lantha/nei kai\ _dianekê= sô/mata tê=s ou)si/as pephuko/ta_.] Compare 301 E.
The words [Greek: dianekê= sô/mata tê=s ou)si/as pephuko/ta] correspond as nearly as can be to the logical term _Concrete_, opposed to _Abstract_. Nature furnishes only Concreta, not Abstracta.]
[Side-note: Men who dealt with real life, contrasted with the speculative and analytical philosophers.]
Hippias accuses Sokrates of never taking into his view Wholes, and of confining his attention to separate parts and fragments, obtained by logical analysis and subdivision. Aristophanes, when he attacks the Dialectic of Sokrates, takes the same ground, employing numerous comic metaphors to illustrate the small and impalpable fragments handled, and the subtle transpositions which they underwent in the reasoning. Isokrates again deprecates the over-subtlety of dialectic debate, contrasting it with discussions (in his opinion) more useful; wherein entire situations, each with its full clothing and assemblage of circumstances, were reviewed and estimated.[44] All these are protests, by persons accustomed to deal with real life, and to talk to auditors both numerous and commonplace, against that conscious analysis and close attention to general and abstract terms, which Sokrates first insisted on and transmitted to his disciples. On the other side, we have the emphatic declaration made by the Platonic Sokrates (and made still earlier by the Xenophontic[45] or historical Sokrates)--That a man was not fit to talk about beautiful things in the concrete--that he had no right to affirm or deny that attribute, with respect to any given subject--that he was not** even fit to live unless he could explain what was meant by The Beautiful, or Beauty in the abstract. Here are two distinct and conflicting intellectual habits, the antithesis between which, indicated in this dialogue, is described at large and forcibly in the Theætêtus.[46]