THREE: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.
19 August 2015, John Doe
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THREE:"Who'll lend me a few hundreds?" Leona Lalage cried with a red spot on her cheeks.
THREE:These are difficulties which Teichmüller has, no doubt, fully weighed and put aside as not sufficiently strong to invalidate his conclusions. I have stated them in order to show that enough can be said for the old view to justify the republication of what was written on the assumption of its unquestionable truth. Moreover, researches conducted with so much skill and learning as those of Teichmüller demand some public acknowledgment in a work like the present, even when the results are such that the writer cannot see his way to accepting them as satisfactorily made out. There are many English scholars more competent than I am to discuss the whole question at issue. Perhaps these lines may induce some of them to give it the attention which it merits, but which, in England at least, it does not seem to have as yet received.
THREE: