With regard to the first speech of Socrates on Love (p. 237, C., to 241, D.) it appears to us that it is not so much 'an example of the false rhetoric,' as a proof how much better and more logically even a paradoxical subject can be treated by a dialectician than by a mere rhetorician. The hit at Phædrus for having given no definition whatever of his subject (p. 237, C.) is one of the points of contrast which is very significant; and there is this subtle irony underlying the whole speech, that whereas Socrates undertook to prove that χαρίζεσθαι μὴ ἐρῶντι was better than χαρίζεσθαι ἐρῶντι, his essay is made to turn, in fact, simply on the latter point, μὴ χαρίζεσθαι ἐρῶντι, so as to be a diatribe against vicious παιδεραστία; only a word or two at the end being added in _apparent_ sanction of the other, and by way of verbally fulfilling the engagement he had made: λέγω οὖν ἑνὶ λόγῳ, ὅτι ὅσα τὸν ἕτερον λελοιδορήκαμεν, τῷ ἑτέρῳ τἀναντία τούτων ἀγαθὰ πρόσεστι(p. 341, _fin._) And the _palinodia_, or pretended recantation (p. 244, _seq._), cleverly pursues the same theme, by showing that love, in its philosophical and nonsensual phase, is a divine emotion, and the source of every blessing to man. The famous allegory that follows, which means that Reason should control Passion, gives a sketch of the orderly and well-trained man, gradually recovering, even as the depraved mind gradually loses, the impressions and memories of the god-like existence men enjoyed in a previous state. The latter part of the dialogue hangs on to the allegory, not indeed very directly; rather, we should say, it reverts to the former part, and is intended to show, by a critique of the two essays, that no essayist or speech-maker can hope to succeed, who derives all his art from rules and treatises and the pedantic phraseology of the teachers. He must trust to dialectic, _i.e._, the science of hard and close reasoning, if he would rise above mere δημηγορία, or clap-trap; and psychology itself must form the basis of dialectic.