Throughout the various Platonic dialogues, we find alternately two distinct and opposite methods of handling--the generalising of the special, and the specialising of the general. In Alkibiadês I, the specialising of the general preponderates--as it does in most of the conversations of the Xenophontic Memorabilia: the number of exemplifying particulars is unusually great. Sokrates does not accept as an answer a general term, without illustrating it by several of the specific terms comprehended under it: and this several times on occasions when an instructed reader thinks it superfluous and tiresome: hence, partly, the inclination of some modern critics to disallow the dialogue. But we must recollect that though a modern reader practised in the use of general terms may seize the meaning at once, an Athenian youth of the Platonic age would not be sure of doing the same. No conscious analysis had yet been applied to general terms: no grammar or logic then entered into education. Confident affirmation, without fully knowing the meaning of what is affirmed, is the besetting sin against which Plato here makes war: and his precautions for exposing it are pushed to extreme minuteness. So, too, in the Sophistês and Politikus, when he wishes to illustrate the process of logical division and subdivision, he applies it to cases so trifling and so multiplied, that Socher is revolted and rejects the dialogues altogether. But Plato himself foresees and replies to the objection; declaring expressly that his main purpose is, not to expound the particular subject chosen, but to make manifest and familiar the steps and conditions of the general classifying process--and that prolixity cannot be avoided.[66] We must reckon upon a similar purpose in Alkibiadês I. The dialogue is a specimen of that which Aristotle calls Inductive Dialectic, as distinguished from Syllogistic: the Inductive he considers to be plainer and easier, suitable when you have an ordinary collocutor--the Syllogistic is the more cogent, when you are dealing with a practised disputant.[67] [Footnote 66: Plato, Politikus, 285-286.] [Footnote 67: Aristotel. Topic. i. 104, a. 16. [Greek: Po/sa tô=n lo/gôn ei)/dê tô=n dialektikô=n--e)/sti de\ to\ me\n e)pagôgê/, to\ de\ sullogismo/s . . . . e)/sti d' ê( me\n e)pagôgê\ pithanô/teron kai\ saphe/steron kai\ kata\ tê\n ai)/sthêsin gnôrimô/teron kai\ toi=s polloi=s koino/n; o( de\ sullogismo\s biastikô/teron kai\ pro\s tou\s a)ntilogikou\s e)nerge/steron.]] [Side-note: Alkibiadês II. leaves its problem avowedly undetermined.]