A previous chaos in which the elements
as yet were not, is hinted at both in the Timaeus and Statesman. The same
ingenious arts of giving verisimilitude to a fiction are practised in both
dialogues, and in both, as well as in the myth at the end of the Republic,
Plato touches on the subject of necessity and free-will. The words in
which he describes the miseries of states seem to be an amplification of
the 'Cities will never cease from ill' of the Republic. The point of view
in both is the same; and the differences not really important, e.g. in the
myth, or in the account of the different kinds of states. But the
treatment of the subject in the Statesman is fragmentary, and the shorter
and later work, as might be expected, is less finished, and less worked out
in detail. The idea of measure and the arrangement of the sciences supply
connecting links both with the Republic and the Philebus.
More than any of the preceding dialogues, the Statesman seems to
approximate in thought and language to the Laws. There is the same decline
and tendency to monotony in style, the same self-consciousness,
awkwardness, and over-civility; and in the Laws is contained the pattern of
that second best form of government, which, after all, is admitted to be
the only attainable one in this world.
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