FORE:It is in this last conversation that the historical Socrates most nearly resembles the Socrates of Platos Apologia. Instead, however, of leaving Euthydmus to the consciousness of his ignorance, as the latter would have done, he proceeds, in Xenophons account, to direct the young mans studies according to the simplest and clearest principles; and we have another conversation where religious truths are instilled by the same catechetical process.92 Here the erotetic method is evidently a mere didactic artifice, and Socrates could easily have written out his lesson under the form of a regular demonstration. But there is little doubt that in other cases he used it as a means for giving increased precision to his own ideas, and also for testing their validity, that, in a word, the habit of oral communication gave him a familiarity with logical processes which could not otherwise have been acquired. The same cross-examination that acted as a spur on the mind of the respondent, reacted as a bridle on the mind of the interrogator, obliging him to make sure beforehand of every assertion that he put forward, to study the mutual bearings of his beliefs, to analyse them into their component elements, and to examine the relation in which they collectively stood to the opinions generally accepted. It has already been stated that Socrates gave the erotetic method two new applications; we now see in what direction they tended. He made it a vehicle for positive instruction, and he also made it an instrument for self-discipline, a help to fulfilling the Delphic precept, Know thyself. The second application was even more important than the first. With us literary trainingthat is, the practice of continuous reading and compositionis so widely diffused, that conversation has become142 rather a hindrance than a help to the cultivation of argumentative ability. The reverse was true when Socrates lived. Long familiarity with debate was unfavourable to the art of writing; and the speeches in Thucydides show how difficult it was still found to present close reasoning under the form of an uninterrupted exposition. The traditions of conversational thrust and parry survived in rhetorical prose; and the crossed swords of tongue-fence were represented by the bristling chevaux de frise of a laboured antithetical arrangement where every clause received new strength and point from contrast with its opposing neighbour.To paint Socrates at his highest and his best, it was necessary to break through the narrow limits of his historic individuality, and to show how, had they been presented to him, he would have dealt with problems outside the experience of a home-staying Athenian citizen. The founder of idealismthat is to say, the realisation of reason, the systematic application of thought to lifehad succeeded in his task because he had embodied the noblest elements of the Athenian Dmos, orderliness, patriotism, self-control, and publicity of debate, together with a receptive intelligence for improvements effected in other states. But, just as the impulse which enabled those qualities to tell decisively on Greek history at a moment of inestimable importance came from the Athenian aristocracy, with its Dorian sympathies, its adventurous ambition, and its keen attention to foreign affairs, so also did Plato, carrying the same spirit into philosophy, bring the dialectic method into contact with older and broader currents of speculation, and employ it to recognise the whole spiritual activity of his race.
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