153

Logic IV. 159
to that question should be such as should meet the approbation of the students. To this end, it was desirable that it should be marked by good common sense and not by philosophical extravagance. Then it must be remembered that Plato himself was the gentleman and the poet almost as much as he was the philosopher. Anything approaching to cynicism would disgust him quite as much as [Cyrenaicism?], if not more. Thus, he would easily persuade himself of the sincerity of the conclusions of this dialogue, although there really was a better Plato than this, and a more logical.
Since the method is the main thing in this dialogue, let us look at the method. The question being whether pleasure or knowledge was the greatest good, or if neither, what was so, what should have been done first of all was upon the one hand to point out that pleasure is nothing but the instinctive response of our nature.