560 Schleiermacher on Plato's Apology. negligencieSj as here and in the following dialogue (the Crito), which is probably of like origin. All this together renders it a very natural conjecture, that these forms of speech were originally copied from Socrates, and are therefore to be num- bered among the specimens of the mimic art of Plato, who endeavoured in a certain degree to copy the style of the persons whom he introduces, if it had peculiarities which jus- tified him in so doing. And any one who tries this observ- ation by applying it to Plato'^s different works, especially in the order in which I have arranged them, will find it very strongly confirmed by the trial. The cause why such an imitation was not attempted by other disciples of Socrates, was probably this : that on the one hand it really required no little art to bend these peculiarities of a careless colloquial style under the laws of written discourse, and to amalgamate them with the regular beauty of expression, and on the other hand, it called for more courage to meet the censure of minute critics than Xenophon probably possessed. But this is not the place for entering further into this question. One circumstance however must still be noticed, which might be alledged against the genuineness of this work, and with more plausibility indeed than any other : that it wants the dress of the dialogue, in which Plato presents all his other works, and which he has given even to the Menexenus, though in other respects that like this consists of nothing more than a speech. Why therefore it may be asked, should the Apology, which so easily admitted of this ornament, be the only work of Plato that is destitute of it ? Convincing as this sounds, the weight of all other arguments is too strong not to counter- balance this scruple, and we reply to the objection as follows. In the first place it is possible that the dialogic form had not then become so indispensable with Plato as it afterwards was : which may serve as an answer for those who are inclined to set a great value on the dress of the Menexenus; or Plato himself distinguished this work from his other writings too much to think of subjecting it to the same law, Besides it would in general be very unworthy of Plato, to consider the dialogue, even in those works where it is not very intimately blended with the main mass of the composition, as nothing more than an ornament arbitrarily appended to them : it always has it^ mean^
