[726] Compare two passages in Plato’s Protagoras, c. 49, p. 329, A, and c. 94, p. 348, D; and the Phædrus, c. 138-140, p. 276, A, E.
[727] Plato, Men. c. 13. p. 80, A. ὁμοιότατος τῇ πλατείᾳ νάρκῃ τῇ θαλασσίᾳ.
[728] This tripartite graduation of the intellectual scale is brought out by Plato in the Symposion, c. 29, p. 204, A, and in the Lysis, c. 33, p. 218, A.
The intermediate point of the scale is what Plato here, though not always, expresses by the word φιλόσοφος, in its strict etymological sense, “a lover of knowledge;” one who is not yet wise, but who, having learned to know and feel his own ignorance, is anxious to become wise,—and has thus made what Plato thought the greatest and most difficult step towards really becoming so.
[729] The effect of the interrogatory procedure of Sokratês, in forcing on the minds of youth a humiliating consciousness of ignorance and an eager anxiety to be relieved from it, is not less powerfully attested in the simpler language of Xenophon, than in the metaphorical variety of Plato. See the conversation with Euthydêmus, in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, iv, 2; a long dialogue which ends by the confession of the latter (c. 39): Ἀναγκάζει με καὶ ταῦτα ὁμολογεῖν δηλονότι ἡ ἐμὴ φαυλότης· καὶ φροντίζω μὴ κράτιστον ᾖ μοι σιγᾶν· κινδυνεύω γὰρ ἁπλῶς οὐδὲν εἰδέναι. Καὶ πάνυ ἀθύμως ἔχων ἀπῆλθε· καὶ νομίσας τῷ ὄντι ἀνδράποδον εἶναι: compare i, 1, 16.
This same expression, “thinking himself no better than a slave,” is also put by Plato into the mouth of Alkibiadês, when he is describing the powerful effect wrought on his mind by the conversation of Sokratês (Symposion, c. 39, p. 215, 216): Περικλέους δὲ ἀκούων καὶ ἄλλων ἀγαθῶν ῥητόρων εὖ μὲν ἡγούμην, τοιοῦτον δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἔπασχον, οὐδὲ τεθορύβητό μου ἡ ψυχὴ οὐδ᾽ ἠγανάκτει ὡς ἀνδραποδωδῶς διακειμένου. Ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὸ τούτου τοῦ Μαρσύου πολλάκις δὴ οὕτω διετέθην, ὥστε μοι δόξαι μὴ βιωτὸν εἶναι ἔχοντι ὡς ἔχω.
Compare also the Meno, c. 13, p. 79, E, and Theætet. c. 17, 22, p. 148, E, 151, C, where the metaphor of pregnancy, and of the obstetric art of Sokratês, is expanded: πάσχουσι δὲ δὴ οἱ ἐμοὶ ξυγγιγνόμενοι καὶ τοῦτο ταὐτὸν ταῖς τικτούσαις· ὠδίνουσι γὰρ καὶ ἀπορίας ἐμπίμπλανται νυκτάς τε καὶ ἡμέρας πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ ἐκεῖναι. Ταύτην δὲ τὴν ὠδῖνα ἐγείρειν τε καὶ ἀποπαύειν ἡ ἐμὴ τέχνη δύναται.—Ἐνίοτε δὲ, οἳ ἄν μὴ μοι δόξωσιν πως ἐγκύμονες εἶναι, γνοὺς ὅτι οὐδὲν ἐμοῦ δέονται, πάνυ εὐμενῶς προμνῶμαι, etc.
[730] There is a striking expression of Xenophon, in the Memorabilia, about Sokratês and his conversation (i, 2, 14):—
“He dealt with every one just as he pleased in his discussions,” says Xenophon: τοῖς δὲ διαλεγομένοις αὐτῷ πᾶσι χρώμενον ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ὅπως ἐβούλετο.
[731] I know nothing so clearly illustrating both the subjects and the method chosen by Sokratês, as various passages of the immortal criticisms in the Novum Organon. When Sokratês, as Xenophon tells us, devoted his time to questioning others: “What is piety? What is justice? What is temperance, courage, political government?” etc., we best understand the spirit of his procedure by comparing the sentence which Bacon pronounces upon the first notions of the intellect,—as radically vicious, confused, badly abstracted from things, and needing complete reexamination and revision,—without which, he says, not one of them could be trusted:—