with that of Ast, who rejects the Menon altogether as unworthy of Plato. Every one of these dissentient critics has _something_ to say for his opinion, while none of them (in my judgment) can make out anything like a conclusive case. The mistake consists in assuming that there must have been a peremptory order and intentional interdependence among the Platonic Dialogues, and next in trying to show by internal evidence what that order was.] [Side-note: None of the philosophers were satisfied with the answer here made by Plato--that verification consists in appeal to pre-natal experience.] Not one of these schools was satisfied with the very peculiar answer which the Platonic Sokrates here gives to the question. When truth is presented to us (he intimates), we recognise it as an old friend after a long absence. We know it by reason of its conformity to our antecedent, pre-natal, experience (in the Phædon, such pre-natal experience is restricted to commerce with the substantial, intelligible, Ideas, which are not mentioned in the Menon): the soul or mind is immortal, has gone through an indefinite succession of temporary lives prior to the present, and will go through an indefinite succession of temporary lives posterior to the present--"longæ, canitis si cognita, vitæ Mors media est". The mind has thus become omniscient, having seen, heard, and learnt every thing, both on earth and in Hades: but such knowledge exists as a confused and unavailable mass, having been buried and forgotten on the commencement of its actual life. Since all nature is in universal kindred, communion, or interdependence, that which we hear or see here, recalls to the memory, by association, portions of our prior forgotten omniscience.[40] It is in this recall or reminiscence that search, learning, acquisition of knowledge, consists. Teaching and learning are words without meaning: the only process really instructive is that of dialectic debate, which, if indefatigably prosecuted, will dig out the omniscience buried within.[41] So vast is the theory generated in Plato's mind, by his worship of dialectic, respecting that process of search to which more than half of his dialogues are devoted. [Footnote 40: The doctrine of communion or interdependence pervading all Nature, with one continuous cosmical soul penetrating everywhere, will be found set forth in the kosmology of the Timæus, pp. 37-42-43. It was held, with various modifications, both by the Pythagoreans and the Stoics. Compare Cicero, Divinat. ii. 14-15; Virgil, Æneid vi. 715 seqq.; Georgic. iv. 220; Sextus Empir. adv. Mathem. ix. 127; Ekphantus Pythagoreus ap. Stobæum, Tit. 48, vol. ii. p. 320, Gaisford.