



Produced by Sue Asscher





EUTHYDEMUS

by Plato


Translated by Benjamin Jowett





INTRODUCTION.

The Euthydemus, though apt to be regarded by us only as an elaborate
jest, has also a very serious purpose. It may fairly claim to be
the oldest treatise on logic; for that science originates in the
misunderstandings which necessarily accompany the first efforts of
speculation. Several of the fallacies which are satirized in it reappear
in the Sophistici Elenchi of Aristotle and are retained at the end of
our manuals of logic. But if the order of history were followed, they
should be placed not at the end but at the beginning of them; for they
belong to the age in which the human mind was first making the attempt
to distinguish thought from sense, and to separate the universal from
the particular or individual. How to put together words or ideas, how
to escape ambiguities in the meaning of terms or in the structure of
propositions, how to resist the fixed impression of an 'eternal being'
or 'perpetual flux,' how to distinguish between words and things--these
were problems not easy of solution in the infancy of philosophy. They
presented the same kind of difficulty to the half-educated man which
spelling or arithmetic do to the mind of a child. It was long before
the new world of ideas which had been sought after with such passionate
yearning was set in order and made ready for use. To us the fallacies
which arise in the pre-Socratic philosophy are trivial and obsolete
because we are no longer liable to fall into the errors which are
expressed by them. The intellectual world has become better assured to
us, and we are less likely to be imposed upon by illusions of words.

The logic of Aristotle is for the most part latent in the dialogues
of Plato. The nature of definition is explained not by rules but by
examples in the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthyphro,
Theaetetus, Gorgias, Republic; the nature of division is likewise
illustrated by examples in the Sophist and Statesman; a scheme of
categories is found in the Philebus; the true doctrine of contradiction
is taught, and the fallacy of arguing in a circle is exposed in the
Republic; the nature of synthesis and analysis is graphically described
in the Phaedrus; the nature of words is analysed in the Cratylus; the
form of the syllogism is indicated in the genealogical trees of the
Sophist and Statesman; a true doctrine of predication and an analysis of
the sentence are given in the Sophist; the different meanings of one
and being are worked out in the Parmenides. Here we have most of the
important elements of logic, not yet systematized or reduced to an art
or science, but scattered up and down as they would naturally occur in
ordinary discourse. They are of little or no use or significance to
us; but because we have grown out of the need of them we should not
therefore despise them. They are still interesting and instructive for
the light which they shed on the history of the human mind.

There are indeed many old fallacies which linger among us, and new
ones are constantly springing up. But they are not of the kind to which
ancient logic can be usefully applied. The weapons of common sense, not
the analytics of Aristotle, are needed for their overthrow. Nor is the
use of the Aristotelian logic any longer natural to us. We no longer put
arguments into the form of syllogisms like the schoolmen; the simple use
of language has been, happily, restored to us. Neither do we discuss the
nature of the proposition, nor extract hidden truths from the copula,
nor dispute any longer about nominalism and realism. We do not confuse
the form with the matter of knowledge, or invent laws of thought, or
imagine that any single science furnishes a principle of reasoning to
all the rest. Neither do we require categories or heads of argument to
be invented for our use. Those who have no knowledge of logic, like some
of our great physical philosophers, seem to be quite as good reasoners
as those who have. Most of the ancient puzzles have been settled on the
basis of usage and common sense; there is no need to reopen them. No
science should raise problems or invent forms of thought which add
nothing to knowledge and are of no use in assisting the acquisition of
it. This seems to be the natural limit of logic and metaphysics; if they
give us a more comprehensive or a more definite view of the different
spheres of knowledge they are to be studied; if not, not. The better
part of ancient logic appears hardly in our own day to have a separate
existence; it is absorbed in two other sciences: (1) rhetoric, if indeed
this ancient art be not also fading away into literary criticism; (2