ALKIBIADES II. brings out a Platonic position as to the Good.  There are a number of things that are good, as health, money, family, but there is farther required the skill to apply these in proper measure to the supreme end of life.  All knowledge is not valuable; there may be cases where ignorance is better.  What we are principally interested in knowing is the Good, the Best, the Profitable.  The man of much learning, without this, is like a vessel tossed on the sea without a pilot.[6]

In HIPPIAS MINOR, appears an extreme statement of the doctrine, common to Sokrates and Plato, identifying virtue with knowledge, or giving exclusive attention to the intellectual element of conduct.  It is urged that a mendacious person, able to tell the truth if he chooses, is better than one unable to tell it, although wishing to do so; the knowledge is of greater worth than the good disposition.

In MINOS (or the Definition of Law) he refuses to accept the decree of the state as a law, but postulates the decision of some Ideal wise man.  This is a following out of the Sokratic analogy of the professions, to a purely ideal demand; the wise man is never producible.  In many dialogues (Kriton, Laches, &c.) the decision of some Expert is sought, as a physician is consulted in disease; but the Moral expert is unknown to any actual community.

In LACHES, the question ‘what is Virtue?’ is put; it is argued under the special virtue of Courage.  In a truly Sokratic dialogue, Sokrates is in search of a definition of Courage; as happens in the search dialogues, there is no definite result, but the drift of the discussion is to make courage a mode of intelligence, and to resolve it into the grand desideratum of the knowledge of good and evil—­belonging to the One Wise Man.

CHARMIDES discusses Temperance.  As usual with Plato in discussing the virtues, with a view to their Logical definition, he presupposes that this is something beneficial and good.  Various definitions are given of Temperance; and all are rejected; but the dialogue falls into the same track as the Laches, in putting forward the supreme science of good and evil.  It is a happy example of the Sokratic manner and purpose, of exposing the conceit of knowledge, the fancy that people understand the meaning of the general terms habitually employed.

LYSIS on Friendship, or Love, might be expected to furnish some ethical openings, but it is rather a piece of dialectic, without result, farther than to impart the consciousness of ignorance.  If it suggests anything positive, it is the Idea of Good, as the ultimate end of affection.  The subject is one of special interest in ancient Ethics, as being one of the aspects of Benevolent sentiment in the Pagan world.  In Aristotle we first find a definite handling of it.