Perhaps the most important contribution to the history of Greek philosophy that has been made during the last twenty years is to be found in the work under-taken by Professors Burnet and A. E. Taylor in reconstructing the personality of the historical Socrates. There is, by this time, fairly general agreement that it is not to Xenophon's Memorabilia but to Plato's dialogues that we must go if we are to attempt to understand what Socrates meant for his own age and (...) for all time. But Socrates' gain has been Plato's loss. We are compelled to deny to Plato any power of really original thinking until at least his fortieth year. He is, indeed, still left in possession of supreme literary and dramatic genius; but all that he wrote, down to and including the Republic, is not the fruit of his own thought, but the careful record of the thought of Socrates. (shrink)