Even if we grant the exclusion of Plato's authorship, the hypothesis of an author belonging to the Megaric school is highly improbable: the rather, since many critics suppose (I think erroneously) that the Megarici are among those attacked in the dialogue. The suspicion that Plato is not the author of Sophistês and Politikus has undoubtedly more appearance of reason than the same suspicion as applied to other dialogues--though I think the reasons altogether insufficient. Socher observes, justly: 1. That the two dialogues are peculiar, distinguished from other Platonic dialogues by the profusion of logical classification, in practice as well as in theory. 2. That both, and especially the Sophistês, advance propositions and conclusions discrepant from what we read in other Platonic dialogues.--But these two reasons are not sufficient to make me disallow them. I do not agree with those who require so much uniformity, either of matter or of manner, in the numerous distinct dialogues of Plato. I recognise a much wider area of admissible divergence. The plain announcement contained in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Politikus themselves, that the two last are intended as sequel to the first, is in my mind a proof of sameness of authorship, not counterbalanced by Socher's objections. Why should a Megaric author embody in his two dialogues a false pretence and assurance, that they are sequel of the Platonic Theætêtus? Why should so acute a writer (as Socher admits him to be) go out of his way to suppress his own personality, and merge his fame in that of Plato? I make the same remark on the views of Suckow (Form der Platonischen Schriften, p. 87, seq., Breslau, 1855), who admits the Sophistes to be a genuine work of Plato, but declares the Politikus to be spurious; composed by some fraudulent author, who wished to give to his dialogue the false appearance of being a continuation of the Sophistes: he admits (p. 93) that it must be a deliberate deceit, if the Politikus be really the work of a different author from the Sophistês; for identity of authorship is distinctly affirmed in it.