Dialogues

suppose yourself even when a child to have known the nature of just and unjust? Alcibiades Certainly; and I did know then. Socrates And when did you discover them⁠—not, surely, at the time when you thought that you knew them? Alcibiades Certainly not. Socrates And when did you think that you were ignorant⁠—if you consider, you will find that there never was such a time? Alcibiades Really, Socrates, I cannot say. Socrates Then you did not learn them by discovering them? Alcibiades Clearly not. Socrates But just before you said that you did not know them by learning; now, if you have neither discovered nor learned them, how and whence do you come to know them? Alcibiades I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew them through my own discovery of them; whereas, in truth, I learned them in the same way that other people learn. Socrates So you said before, and I must again ask, of whom? Do tell me. Alcibiades Of the many. Socrates Do you take refuge in them? I cannot say much for your teachers. Alcibiades Why, are they not able to teach? Socrates They could not teach you how to play at draughts, which you would acknowledge (would you not) to be a much smaller matter than justice? Alcibiades Yes. Socrates And can they teach the better who are unable to teach the worse? Alcibiades I think that they can; at any rate, they can teach many far better things than to play at draughts. Socrates What things? Alcibiades Why, for example, I learned to speak Greek of them, and I cannot say who was my teacher, or to whom I am to attribute my knowledge of Greek, if not to those good-for-nothing teachers, as you call them. Socrates Why, yes, my friend; and the many are good enough teachers of Greek, and some of their instructions in that line may be justly praised. Alcibiades Why is that? Socrates Why, because they have the qualities which good teachers ought to have. Alcibiades What qualities? Socrates Why, you know that knowledge is the first qualification of any teacher? Alcibiades Certainly. Socrates And if they know, they must agree together and not differ? Alcibiades Yes. Socrates And would you say that they knew the things about which they differ? Alcibiades No. Socrates Then how can they teach them? Alcibiades They cannot. Socrates Well, but do you imagine that the many would differ about the nature of wood and stone? are they not agreed if you ask them what they are? and do they not run to fetch the same thing, when they want a piece of wood or a stone? And so in similar cases, which I suspect to be pretty nearly all that you mean by speaking Greek. Alcibiades True. Socrates These, as we were saying, are matters about which they are agreed with one another and with themselves; both individuals and states use the same words about them; they do not use some one word and some another. Alcibiades They do not. Socrates Then they may be expected to be good teachers of these things? Alcibiades Yes. Socrates And if we want to instruct anyone in them, we shall be right in sending him to be taught by our friends the many? Alcibiades Very true. Socrates But if we wanted further to know not only which are men and which are horses, but which men or horses have powers of running, would the many still be able to inform us? Alcibiades Certainly not. Socrates And you have a sufficient proof that they do not know these things and are not the best teachers of them, inasmuch as they are never agreed about them? Alcibiades Yes. Socrates And suppose that we wanted to know not only what men are like, but what healthy or diseased men are like⁠—would the many be able to teach us? Alcibiades They would not. Socrates And you would have a proof that they were bad teachers of these matters, if you saw them at variance? Alcibiades I should. Socrates Well, but are the many agreed with themselves, or with one another, about the justice or injustice of men and things? Alcibiades Assuredly not, Socrates. Socrates There is no subject about which they are more at variance? Alcibiades None. Socrates I do not suppose that you ever saw or heard of men quarrelling over the principles of health and disease to such an extent as to go to war and kill one another for the sake of them? Alcibiades No indeed. Socrates But of the quarrels about justice and injustice, even if you have never seen them, you have certainly heard from many people, including Homer; for you have heard of the Iliad and Odyssey? Alcibiades To be sure, Socrates. Socrates A difference of just and unjust is the argument of those poems? Alcibiades True. Socrates Which difference caused all the wars and deaths of Trojans and Achaeans, and the deaths of the suitors of Penelope in their quarrel with Odysseus. Alcibiades Very true. Socrates And when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians and Boeotians fell at Tanagra, and afterwards in the battle of Coronea, at which your father Cleinias met his end, the question was one of justice⁠—this was the sole cause of the battles, and of their deaths. Alcibiades Very true. Socrates But can they be said to understand that about which they are quarrelling to the death? Alcibiades Clearly not. Socrates And yet those whom you thus allow to be ignorant are the teachers to whom you are appealing. Alcibiades Very true. Socrates But how are you ever likely to know the nature of justice and injustice, about which you are so perplexed, if you have neither learned them of others nor discovered them yourself? Alcibiades From what you say, I suppose not. Socrates See, again, how inaccurately you speak, Alcibiades! Alcibiades In what respect? Socrates In saying that I say so. Alcibiades Why, did you not say that I know nothing of the just and unjust? Socrates No; I did not. Alcibiades Did I, then? Socrates Yes. Alcibiades How was that? Socrates Let me explain. Suppose I were to ask you which is the greater number, two or one; you would reply “two”? Alcibiades I should. Socrates And by how much greater? Alcibiades By one. Socrates Which of us now says that two is more than one? Alcibiades I do. Socrates Did not I ask, and