SOPHIST by Plato - Complete text

Page 20

Str. I believe that I can see how we shall soonest arrive at the answer to this question.

Theaet. How?

Str. If we can discover a line which divides ignorance into two halves. For a division of ignorance into two parts will certainly imply that the art of instruction is also twofold, answering to the two divisions of ignorance.

Theaet. Well, and do you see what you are looking for?

Str. I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale against all other sorts of ignorance put together.

Theaet. What is it?

Str. When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.

Theaet. True.

Str. And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of ignorance which specially earns the title of stupidity.

Theaet. True.

Str. What name, then, shall be given to the sort of instruction which gets rid of this?

Theaet. The instruction which you mean, Stranger, is, I should imagine, not the teaching of handicraft arts, but what, thanks to us, has been termed education in this part the world.

Str. Yes, Theaetetus, and by nearly all Hellenes. But we have still to consider whether education admits of any further division.

Theaet. We have.

Str. I think that there is a point at which such a division is possible.

Theaet. Where?

Str. Of education, one method appears to be rougher, and another smoother.

Theaet. How are we to distinguish the two?

Str. There is the time - honoured mode which our fathers commonly practised towards their sons, and which is still adopted by many - either of roughly reproving their errors, or of gently advising them; which varieties may be correctly included under the general term of admonition.

Theaet. True.

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