Impossibility of teaching by written exposition assumed by Plato; the assumption intelligible in his day.
These objections (which Plato had often insisted on,[39] and which are also, in part, urged by Sokrates in the Phædrus) have considerable force, if we look to the way in which Plato conceives them. In the first place, Plato conceives the exposition as not merely written but published: as being, therefore, presented to all minds, the large majority being ignorant, unprepared, and beset with that false persuasion of knowledge which Sokrates regarded as universal. In so far as it comes before these latter, nothing is gained, and something is lost; for derision is brought upon the attempt to teach.[40] In the next place, there probably existed, at that time, no elementary work whatever for beginners in any science: the Elements of Geometry by Euclid were published more than a century after Plato’s death, at Alexandria. Now, when Plato says that written expositions, then scarcely known, would be useless to the student — he compares them with the continued presence and conversation of a competent teacher; whom he supposes not to rely upon direct exposition, but to talk much “about and about” the subject, addressing the pupil with a large variety of illustrative interrogations, adapting all that was said to his peculiar difficulties and rate of progress, and thus evoking the inherent cognitive force of the pupil’s own mind. That any Elements of Geometry (to say nothing of more complicated inquiries) could be written and published, such that an ἀγεωμέτρητος might take up the work and learn geometry by means of it, without being misled by equivocal names, bad definitions, and diagrams exhibiting the definition as clothed with special accessories — this is a possibility which Plato contests, and which we cannot wonder at his contesting.[41] The combination of a written treatise, with the oral exposition of a tutor, would have appeared to Plato not only useless but inconvenient, as restraining the full liberty of adaptive interrogation necessary to be exercised, different in the case of each different pupil.
[39] Plato, Epist. vii. 342. λόγος ἀληθής, πολλάκις μὲν ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ καὶ πρόσθεν ῥηθείς, &c.
[40] Plato (Epist. ii. 314 A) remarks this expressly: also in the Phædrus, 275 E, 276 A.
Ἄθρει δὴ περισκοπῶν, μή τις τῶν ἀμυήτων ἐπακούσῃ is the language of the Platonic Sokrates as a speaker in the Theætêtus (155 E).
[41] Some just and pertinent remarks, bearing on this subject, are made by Condorcet, in one of his Academic Éloges: “Les livres ne peuvent remplacer les leçons des maîtres habiles, lorsque les sciences n’ont pas encore fait assez de progrès, pour que les vérités, qui en forment l’ensemble, puissent êtres distribuées et rapprochées entre elles suivant un ordre systématique: lorsque la méthode d’en chercher de nouvelles n’a pas été réduite à des procédés exacts et simples, à des règles sûres et précises. Avant cette époque, il faut être déjà consommé dans une science pour lire avec utilité les ouvrages qui en traitent: et comme cette espèce d’enfance de l’art est le temps où les préjugés y regnent avec le plus d’empire, où les savants sont les plus exposés à donner leurs hypothèses pour de véritables principes, on risquerait encore de s’égarer si l’on se bornait aux leçons d’un seul maître, quand même on aurait choisi celui que la renommée place au premier rang; car ce temps est aussi celui des reputations usurpées. Les voyages sont donc alors le seul moyen de s’instruire, comme ils l’étaient dans l’antiquité et avant la découverte de l’imprimerie.” (Condorcet, Éloge de M. Margraaf, p. 349, Œuvres Complets, Paris, 1804. Éloges, vol. ii. Or Ed. Firmin Didot Frères, Paris, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 598-9.)
Standard by which Plato tested the efficacy of the expository process. — Power of sustaining a Sokratic cross-examination.
Lastly, when we see by what standard Plato tests the efficacy of any expository process, we shall see yet more clearly how he came to consider written exposition unavailing. The standard which he applies is, that the learner shall be rendered able both to apply to others, and himself to endure from others, a Sokratic Elenchus or cross-examination as to the logical difficulties involved in all the steps and helps to learning. Unless he can put to others and follow up the detective questions — unless he can also answer them, when put to himself, pertinently and consistently, so as to avoid being brought to confusion or contradiction — Plato will not allow that he has attained true knowledge.[42] Now, if we try knowledge by a test so severe as this, we must admit that no reading of written expositions will enable the student to acquire it. The impression made is too superficial, and the mind is too passive during such a process, to be equal to the task of meeting new points of view, and combating difficulties not expressly noticed in the treatise which has been studied. The only way of permanently arming and strengthening the mind, is (according to Plato) by long-continued oral interchange and stimulus, multiplied comment and discussion from different points of view, and active exercise in dialectic debate: not aiming at victory over an opponent, but reasoning out each question in all its aspects, affirmative and negative. It is only after a long course of such training — the living word of the competent teacher, applied to the mind of the pupil, and stimulating its productive and self-defensive force — that any such knowledge can be realised as will suffice for the exigencies of the Sokratic Elenchus.[43]
[42] Plato, Epist. vii. 343 D. The difficulties which Plato had here in his eye, and which he required to be solved as conditions indispensable to real knowledge — are jumped over in geometrical and other scientific expositions, as belonging not to geometry, &c., but to logic. M. Jouffroy remarks, in the Preface to his translation of Reid’s works (p. clxxiv.):—“Toute science particulière qui, au lieu de prendre pour accordées les données à priori qu’elle implique, discute l’autorité de ces données — ajoute à son objet propre celui de la logique, confond une autre mission avec la sienne, et par cela même compromet la sienne: car nous verrons tout à-l’heure, et l’histoire de la philosophic montre, quelles difficultés présentent ces problèmes qui sont l’objet propre de la logique; et nous demeurerons convaincus que, si les différentes sciences avaient eu la prétention de les éclaircir avant de passer outre, toutes peut-être en seraient encore à cette préface, et aucune n’aurait entamé sa véritable tâche.”
Remarks of a similar bearing will be found in the second paragraph of Mr. John Stuart Mill’s Essay on Utilitarianism. It has been found convenient to distinguish the logic of a science from the expository march of the same science. But Plato would not have acknowledged ἐπιστήμη, except as including both. Hence his view about the uselessness of written expository treatises.