inspired? He would remark that we are always searching for a belief and
deploring our unbelief, seeming to prefer popular opinions unverified and
contradictory to unpopular truths which are assured to us by the most
certain proofs: that our preachers are in the habit of praising God
'without regard to truth and falsehood, attributing to Him every species of
greatness and glory, saying that He is all this and the cause of all that,
in order that we may exhibit Him as the fairest and best of all' (Symp.)
without any consideration of His real nature and character or of the laws
by which He governs the world--seeking for a 'private judgment' and not for
the truth or 'God's judgment.' What would he say of the Church, which we
praise in like manner, 'meaning ourselves,' without regard to history or
experience? Might he not ask, whether we 'care more for the truth of
religion, or for the speaker and the country from which the truth comes'?
or, whether the 'select wise' are not 'the many' after all? (Symp.) So we
may fill up the sketch of Socrates, lest, as Phaedrus says, the argument
should be too 'abstract and barren of illustrations.' (Compare Symp.,
Apol., Euthyphro.)

He next proceeds with enthusiasm to define the royal art of dialectic as
the power of dividing a whole into parts, and of uniting the parts in a
whole, and which may also be regarded (compare Soph.) as the process of the
mind talking with herself. The latter view has probably led Plato to the
paradox that speech is superior to writing, in which he may seem also to be
doing an injustice to himself. For the two cannot be fairly compared in
the manner which Plato suggests. The contrast of the living and dead word,
and the example of Socrates, which he has represented in the form of the
Dialogue, seem to have misled him. For speech and writing have really
different functions; the one is more transitory, more diffuse, more elastic
and capable of adaptation to moods and times; the other is more permanent,
more concentrated, and is uttered not to this or that person or audience,