Contradiction with the character and declarations of Sokrates.
In fact, the Platonic Sokrates expressly proclaims himself (in the Apology as well as in the other dialogues just named) to be ignorant and incapable of teaching anything. His mission was to expose the ignorance of those, who fancy that they know without really knowing: he taught no one anything, but he cross-examined every one who would submit to it, before all the world, and in a manner especially interesting to young men. Sokrates mentions that these young men not only listened with delight, but tried to imitate him as well as they could, by cross-examining others in the same manner:[186] and in mentioning the fact, he expresses neither censure nor regret, but satisfaction in the thought that the chance would be thereby increased, of exposing that false persuasion of knowledge which prevailed so widely everywhere. Now Plato, in the passage just cited from the Republic, blames this contagious spirit of cross-examination on the part of young men, as a vice which proved the mischief of dialectic debate addressed to them at that age. He farther deprecates the disturbance of “those opinions which they have heard from the lawgiver respecting what is just and honourable”. But it is precisely these opinions which, in the Alkibiadês, Menon, Protagoras, and other dialogues, the Platonic Sokrates treats as untaught, if not unteachable:— as having been acquired, no man knew how, without the lessons of any assignable master and without any known period of study:— lastly, as constituting that very illusion of false knowledge without real knowledge, of which Sokrates undertakes to purge the youthful mind, and which must be dispelled before any improvement can be effected in it.[187]
[186] Plato, Apolog. Sokrat c. 10, p. 23 D, c. 22, p. 33 C, c. 27, p. 37 E, c. 30, p. 39 C.
[187] Plato, Sophist. p. 230.
The remarks here made upon the effect of Dialectic upon youth coincide with the accusation of Melêtus against Sokrates.
We thus see, that the dictum forbidding dialectic debate with youth — cited from the seventh book of the Republic, which Plato there puts into the mouth of Sokrates — is decidedly anti-Sokratic; and anti-Platonic, in so far as Plato represents Sokrates. It belongs indeed to the case of Melêtus and Anytus, in their indictment against Sokrates before the Athenian dikastery. It is identical with their charge against him, of corrupting youth, and inducing them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of established customs and opinions heard from their elders.[188] Now the Platonic Sokrates is here made to declare explicitly, that dialectic debate addressed to youth does really tend to produce this effect:— to render them lawless, immoral, disputatious. And when we find him forbidding all such discourse at an earlier age than thirty years — we remark as a singular coincidence, that this is the exact prohibition which Kritias and Charikles actually imposed upon Sokrates himself, during the shortlived dominion of the Thirty Oligarchs at Athens.[189]
[188] Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 19-49. Compare Aristophanes, Nubes, 1042-1382.
[189] Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2, 33-38.
Isokrates complains that youthful students took more delight in disputation than he thought suitable; nevertheless he declares that youth, and not mature age, is the proper season for such exercises, as well as for Geometry and Astronomy (Orat. xii. Panathen. s. 29-31, p. 239).
Contrast between the real Sokrates, as a dissenter at Athens, and the Platonic Sokrates, framer and dictator of the Platonic Republic.