 That dialectic is geared to this end is somewhat obscured in the subsequent discussion in the Phaedrus. First of all, Plato turns away from this issue in his long depiction of the iniquities of contemporary rhetoricians, when he constrasts their efforts with scientific rhetoric. And Plato continues this excursion with a discussion of speaking and writing, culminating in his famous ‘critique of writing’. Second, although Plato makes ample use of the method of collection and division in later dialogues such as the Sophist and the Statesman, he seems to pay little heed to problems of ethics, with the exception of the Philebus. But the aptness of the dialectical method in discerning the nature of the good has already been emphasized in the Republic (534b–c): “ Unless someone can distinguish in an account the Form of the good from everything else, can survive all refutation as if in battle... you will say that he does not know the good itself or any other good.” Brief as these remarks are, they show that the application of dialectic to the understanding and pursuit of the good is of central importance. That the Good is nowhere subjected to such treatment must be due to the enormity of the task involved in undertaking a systematic identification of all that is good, and in distinguishing good things from each other, as well as from the Form of the Good. Although it is unclear whether Plato had already refined the dialectical method in the systematic way indicated in the Phaedrus, the hints contained in the Republic about a ‘longer way’ (435d; 504b) to determine the nature of justice and the other virtues seem to suggest that the the development of a systematic method of collection and division was ‘in the works’. As a closer look at the much later Philebus will show, the determination of what is good about each kind of thing presupposes more than a classification by collection and division. For in addition, the internal structure of each kind of entity has to be determined. Knowledge is not confined to the comprehension of the objects’ being, identity, difference and other external interrelations that exist in a given field. It also presupposes the knowledge of what constitutes the objects’ internal unity and complexity. It would, of course, be rather presumptuous to claim that Plato had not seen the need to investigate the ontological ‘anatomy’, as well as taxonomy, of the Forms from early on. But as the late dialogues show, it took him quite some effort to develop the requisite conceptual tools for such analyses. 