Here ends the dialogue called Charmidês[32] after the interchange of a few concluding compliments, forming part of the great dramatic richness which characterises this dialogue from the beginning. I make no attempt to reproduce this latter attribute; though it is one of the peculiar merits of Plato in reference to ethical enquiry, imparting to the subject a charm which does not naturally belong to it. I confine myself to the philosophical bearing of the dialogue. According to the express declaration of Sokrates, it ends in nothing but disappointment. No positive result is attained. The problem--What is Temperance?--remains unsolved, after four or five different solutions have been successively tested and repudiated. [Footnote 32: See Appendix at end of chapter.] [Side-note: The Charmides is an excellent specimen of Dialogues of Search. Abundance of guesses and tentatives, all ultimately disallowed.] The Charmidês (like the Lachês) is a good illustrative specimen of those Dialogues of Search, the general character and purpose of which I have explained in my eighth** chapter. It proves nothing: it disproves several hypotheses: but it exhibits (and therein consists its value) the anticipating, guessing, tentative, and eliminating process, without which no defensible conclusions can be obtained--without which, even if such be found, no advocate can be formed capable of defending them against an acute cross-examiner. In most cases, this tentative process is forgotten or ignored: even when recognised as a reality, it is set aside with indifference, often with ridicule. A writer who believes himself to have solved any problem, publishes his solution together with the proofs; and acquires deserved credit for it, if those proofs give satisfaction. But he does not care to preserve, nor do the public care to know, the steps by which such solution has been reached. Nevertheless in most cases, and in all cases involving much difficulty, there has been a process, more or less tedious, of tentative and groping--of guesses at first hailed as promising, then followed out to a certain extent, lastly discovered to be untenable. The history of science,[33] astronomical, physical, chemical, physiological, &c., wherever it has been at all recorded, attests this constant antecedence of a period of ignorance, confusion, and dispute, even in cases where ultimately a solution has been found commanding the nearly unanimous adhesion of the scientific world. But on subjects connected with man and society, this period of dispute and confusion continues to the present moment. No unanimity has ever been approached, among nations at once active in intellect and enjoying tolerable liberty of dissent. Moreover--apart from the condition of different sciences among mature men--we must remember that the transitive process, above described, represents the successive stages by which every adult mind has been gradually built up from infancy.