done, and can even point it out in several passages, where the decomposing hand has grown tired of its work : so it is in the other case with the philosophical basis. One finds some parallels with Plato, other fragments are detected in other ways: and the only inference to be drawn from the scarcity of these passages is, that Xenophon understood his business ; unless we choose to say, that as Aristotle is sup- posed to have held his philosophical discourses in the fore- noon, and the exoteric in the afternoon (Gellius N. A. xx. 5), Socrates reversed this order, and in the morning held con- versations in the marketplace with the artisans, and others who were less familiar with him, which Xenophon found it easier to divest of their philosophical aspect : but that of an evening, in the walks, and wrestlingschools, he engaged in those subtiler, deeper, and wittier dialogues with his favorites, which it was reserved for Plato to imitate, embellish, and expand, while he connected his own investigations with them.
And thus, to fill up the blank which Xenophon has mani- festly left, we are still driven back to the Socrates of Plato, and the shortest way of releasing ourselves from the difficulty, would be to find a rule by which we could determine, what is the reflex, and the property, of Socrates in Plato, and what his own invention and addition. Only the problem is not to be solved by a process such as that adopted by Meiners, whose critical talent is of a kind to which this subject in general was not very well suited. For if in all that Plato has left we are to select only what is least speculative, least artificial, least poetical, and hence, for so we are taught, least enthusiastic, we shall indeed still retain much matter for this more refined and pregnant species of dialogues, to season Xenophon's tediousness, but it will be impossible in this way to discover any properly philosophical basis in the constitution of Socrates. For if we exclude all depth of speculation, nothing is left but results, without the grounds and methodical principles on which they depend, and which therefore Socrates can only have possest instinctively, that is without the aid of philosophy. The only safe method seems to be, to inquire : What may Socrates have been, over and above what Xenophon has described, without how- ever contradicting the strokes of character, and the practical
