And when did you think that you were ignorant—if you consider, you will find that there never was such a time?
ALCIBIADES: Really, Socrates, I cannot say.
SOCRATES: Then you did not learn them by discovering them?
ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: But just before you said that you did not know them by learning; now, if you have neither discovered nor learned them, how and whence do you come to know them?
ALCIBIADES: I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew them through my own discovery of them; whereas, in truth, I learned them in the same way that other people learn.
SOCRATES: So you said before, and I must again ask, of whom? Do tell me.
ALCIBIADES: Of the many.
SOCRATES: Do you take refuge in them? I cannot say much for your teachers.
ALCIBIADES: Why, are they not able to teach?
SOCRATES: They could not teach you how to play at draughts, which you would acknowledge (would you not) to be a much smaller matter than justice?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And can they teach the better who are unable to teach the worse?
ALCIBIADES: I think that they can; at any rate, they can teach many far better things than to play at draughts.
SOCRATES: What things?
ALCIBIADES: Why, for example, I learned to speak Greek of them, and I cannot say who was my teacher, or to whom I am to attribute my knowledge of Greek, if not to those good-for-nothing teachers, as you call them.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, my friend; and the many are good enough teachers of Greek, and some of their instructions in that line may be justly praised.
ALCIBIADES: Why is that?
SOCRATES: Why, because they have the qualities which good teachers ought to have.
ALCIBIADES: What qualities?
SOCRATES: Why, you know that knowledge is the first qualification of any teacher?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And if they know, they must agree together and not differ?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you say that they knew the things about which they differ?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: Then how can they teach them?
ALCIBIADES: They cannot.
SOCRATES: Well, but do you imagine that the many would differ about the nature of wood and stone? are they not agreed if you ask them what they are? and do they not run to fetch the same thing, when they want a piece of wood or a stone? And so in similar cases, which I suspect to be pretty nearly all that you mean by speaking Greek.
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: These, as we were saying, are matters about which they are agreed with one another and with themselves; both individuals and states use the same words about them; they do not use some one word and some another.
ALCIBIADES: They do not.
SOCRATES: Then they may be expected to be good teachers of these things?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if we want to instruct any one in them, we shall be right in sending him to be taught by our friends the many?
ALCIBIADES: Very true.
SOCRATES: But if we wanted further to know not only which are men and which are horses, but which men or horses have powers of running, would the many still be able to inform us?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And you have a sufficient proof that they do not know these things and are not the best teachers of them, inasmuch as they are never agreed about them?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And suppose that we wanted to know not only what men are like, but what healthy or diseased men are like—would the many be able to teach us?
ALCIBIADES: They would not.
SOCRATES: And you would have a proof that they were bad teachers of these matters, if you saw them at variance?
ALCIBIADES: I should.
SOCRATES: Well, but are the many agreed with themselves, or with one another, about the justice or injustice of men and things?
ALCIBIADES: Assuredly not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: There is no subject about which they are more at variance?
ALCIBIADES: None.
SOCRATES: I do not suppose that you ever saw or heard of men quarrelling over the principles of health and disease to such an extent as to go to war and kill one another for the sake of them?
ALCIBIADES: No indeed.
SOCRATES: But of the quarrels about justice and injustice, even if you have never seen them, you have certainly heard from many people, including Homer; for you have heard of the Iliad and Odyssey?
ALCIBIADES: To be sure, Socrates.
SOCRATES: A difference of just and unjust is the argument of those poems?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: Which difference caused all the wars and deaths of Trojans and Achaeans, and the deaths of the suitors of Penelope in their quarrel with Odysseus.
ALCIBIADES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians and Boeotians fell at Tanagra, and afterwards in the battle of Coronea, at which your father Cleinias met his end, the question was one of justice—this was the sole cause of the battles, and of their deaths.
ALCIBIADES: Very true.
SOCRATES: But can they be said to understand that about which they are quarrelling to the death?
ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: And yet those whom you thus allow to be ignorant are the teachers to whom you are appealing.
ALCIBIADES: Very true.
SOCRATES: But how are you ever likely to know the nature of justice and injustice, about which you are so perplexed, if you have neither learned them of others nor discovered them yourself?
ALCIBIADES: From what you say, I suppose not.
SOCRATES: See, again, how inaccurately you speak, Alcibiades!
ALCIBIADES:
