Instruction

In private conversation, when any universal assertion is made about generation and essence, we know that such persons are tremendous argufiers, and are able to impart their own skill to others.

Do they not profess to make men able to dispute about law and about politics in general?

In all and every art, what the craftsman should answer is written down in a popular form, so that others may learn.

Yes. The art of disputation is a power of disputing about all things

But do you suppose this possible? for perhaps your young eyes may see things which to our duller sight do not appear.

Then why has the sophistical art such a mysterious power?

How do the Sophists make young men believe in their supreme and universal wisdom? For if they neither disputed nor were thought to dispute rightly, or being thought to do so were deemed no wiser for their controversial skill, then, to quote your own observation, no one would give them money or be willing to learn their art.

But they are willing.

Yes, and the reason, as I should imagine, is that they are supposed to have knowledge of those things about which they dispute?

They dispute about all things?

Therefore, to their disciples, they appear to be all-wise. But they are not; for that was shown to be impossible.

Then the Sophist has been shown to have a sort of conjectural or apparent knowledge only of all things, which is not the truth?

Let us now take an illustration, which will still more clearly explain his nature.

I will tell you, and you shall answer me, giving your very closest attention. Suppose that a person were to profess, not that he could speak or dispute, but that he knew how to make and do all things, by a single art.

I see that you do not understand the first word that I utter, for you do not understand the meaning of ‘all.’

Under all things, I include you and me, and also animals and trees.

Suppose a person to say that he will make you and me, and all creatures.

Yes; and I say that he is also the maker of the sea, and the earth, and the heavens, and the gods, and of all other things; and, further, that he can make them in no time, and sell them for a few pence.

He who professes by one art to make all things is really a painter, and by the painter’s art makes resemblances of real things which have the same name with them; and he can deceive the less intelligent sort of young children, to whom he shows his pictures at a distance, into the belief that he has the absolute power of making whatever he likes.

There is an imitative art of reasoning.

It is possible to enchant the hearts of young men by words poured through their ears, when they are still at a distance from the truth of facts, by exhibiting to them fictitious arguments, and making them think that they are true, and that the speaker is the wisest of men in all things.

But as time goes on, and their hearers advance in years, and come into closer contact with realities, and have learnt by sad experience to see and feel the truth of things, are not the greater part of them compelled to change many opinions which they formerly entertained, so that the great appears small to them, and the easy difficult, and all their dreamy speculations are overturned by the facts of life?

The wish of all of us, who are your friends, is and always will be to bring you as near to the truth as we can without the sad reality. And now I should like you to tell me, whether the Sophist is not visibly a magician and imitator of true being; or are we still disposed to think that he may have a true knowledge of the various matters about which he disputes?

Then we must place him in the class of magicians and mimics.

Now our business is not to let the animal out, for we have got him in a sort of dialectical net, and there is one thing which he decidedly will not escape.

The inference that he is a juggler.

Then, clearly, we should as soon as possible to divide the image-making art, and go down into the net, and, if the Sophist does not run away from us, to seize him according to orders and deliver him over to reason, who is the lord of the hunt, and proclaim the capture of him.

If he creeps into the recesses of the imitative art, and secretes himself in one of them, to divide again and follow him up until in some sub-section of imitation he is caught. For our method of tackling each and all is one which neither he nor any other creature will ever escape in triumph.