The value of these debates in the Platonic dialogues consists in their raising questions like the preceding, for the reflection of the reader--whether the Platonic Sokrates may or may not be represented as taking what we think the right view of the question. For a Dialogue of Search, the great merit is, that it should be suggestive; that it should bring before our attention the conditions requisite for a right and proper use of these common ethical epithets, and the state of circumstances which is tacitly implied whenever any one uses them. No man ever learns to reflect upon the meaning of such familiar epithets, which he has been using all his life--unless the process be forced upon his attention by some special conversation which brings home to him an uncomfortable sentiment of perplexity and contradiction. If a man intends to acquire any grasp of ethical or political theory, he must render himself master, not only of the sound arguments and the guiding analogies but also of the unsound arguments and the misleading analogies, which bear upon each portion of it. [Side-note: Antithesis between Rhetoric and Dialectic.] There is one other point of similitude deserving notice, between the Greater and Lesser Hippias. In both of them, Hippias makes special complaint of Sokrates, for breaking the question in pieces and picking out the minute puzzling fragments--instead of keeping it together as a whole, and applying to it the predicates which it merits when so considered.[79] Here is the standing antithesis between Rhetoric and Dialectic: between those unconsciously acquired mental combinations which are poured out in eloquent, impressive, unconditional, and undistinguishing generalities--and the logical analysis which resolves the generality into its specialities, bringing to view inconsistencies, contradictions, limits, qualifications, &c. I have already touched upon this at the close of the Greater Hippias. [Footnote 79: Plato, Hipp. Min. 369 B-C. [Greek: Ô)= Sô/krates, a)ei\ su/ tinas toiou/tous ple/keis lo/gous, kai\ a)polamba/nôn o(/ a)\n ê)=| duschere/staton tou= lo/gou, tou/tou e)/chei kata\ smikro\n e)phapto/menos, kai\ ou)ch o(/lô a)gôni/zei tô=| pra/gmati, peri\ o(/tou a)\n o( lo/gos ê)=|], &c. A remark of Aristotle (Topica, viii. 164, b. 2) illustrates this dissecting function of the Dialectician. [Greek: e)/sti ga/r, ô(s a(plô=s ei)pei=n, dialektiko\s o( protatiko\s kai\ e)nstatiko/s; e)/sti de\ to\ me\n protei/nesthai, e(\n poiei=n ta\ plei/ô (dei= ga\r e(\n o(/lô| lêphthê=nai pro\s o(\ o( lo/gos), to\ d' e)ni/stasthai, to\ e(n polla/; ê)\ ga\r diairei=, ê)\ a)nairei=, to\ me\n didou/s, to\ de\ ou)/, tô=n proteinome/nôn.]] CHAPTER XIV. HIPPARCHUS--MINOS.