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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: interpreted by his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy. We
are not concerned to determine what is the residuum of truth which remains
for ourselves. His truth may not be our truth, and nevertheless may have
an extraordinary value and interest for us.
I cannot agree with Mr. Grote in admitting as genuine all the writings
commonly attributed to Plato in antiquity, any more than with Schaarschmidt
and some other German critics who reject nearly half of them. The German
critics, to whom I refer, proceed chiefly on grounds of internal evidence;
they appear to me to lay too much stress on the variety of doctrine and
style, which must be equally acknowledged as a fact, even in the Dialogues
regarded by Schaarschmidt as genuine, e.g. in the Phaedrus, or Symposium,
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