Originally the word _felony_ had a meaning; it denoted all offences, the penalty of which included forfeiture of lands or goods, but subsequent Acts of Parliament have declared various offences to be felonies without enjoining that penalty, and have taken away that penalty from others which continue nevertheless to be called felonies, insomuch that the acts so called have now no property whatever in common save that of being unlawful and punishable."] [Footnote 38: Aristot. Topic, i. 106, a. 21. [Greek: Ta\ pollachô=s lego/mena--ta\ pleonachô=s lego/mena]--are perpetually noted and distinguished by Aristotle.] [Side-note: Analogy between the explanations here ascribed to Sokrates, and those given by the Xenophontic Sokrates in the Memorabilia.] We read in the Xenophontic Memorabilia a dialogue between Sokrates and Aristippus, on this same subject--What is the Beautiful, which affords a sort of contrast between the Dialogues of Search and those of Exposition. In the Hippias Major, we have the problem approached on several different sides, various suggestions being proposed, and each successively disallowed, on reasons shown, as failures: while in the Xenophontic dialogue, Sokrates declares an affirmative doctrine, and stands to it--but no pains are taken to bring out the objections against it and rebut them. The doctrine is, that the Beautiful is coincident with the Good, and that both of them are resolvable into the Useful: thus all beautiful objects, unlike as they may be to the eye or touch, bear that name because they have in common the attribute of conducing to one and the same purpose--the security, advantage, or gratification, of man, in some form or other. This is one of the three explanations broached by the Platonic Sokrates, and afterwards refuted by him, in the Hippias: while his declaration (which Hippias puts aside as unseemly)--that a pot and a wooden soup-ladle conveniently made are beautiful is perfectly in harmony with that of the Xenophontic Sokrates, that a basket for carrying dung is beautiful, if it performs its work well.[39] We must moreover remark, that the objections whereby the Platonic Sokrates, after proposing the doctrine and saying much in its favour, finds himself compelled at last to disallow it--these objections are not produced and refuted, but passed over without notice, in the Xenophontic dialogue, wherein Sokrates affirms it decidedly.[40] The affirming Sokrates, and the objecting Sokrates, are not on the stage at once. [Footnote 39: Xen. Mem. iii. 6, 2, 7; iv. 6, 8. Plato, Hipp. Maj. 288 D, 290 D.