terms. He can only produce out of their armoury the sophism, 'that you
can neither enquire into what you know nor into what you do not know;'
to which Socrates replies by his theory of reminiscence.

To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly
tending in the previous Dialogues. But the new truth is no sooner found
than it vanishes away. 'If there is knowledge, there must be teachers;
and where are the teachers?' There is no knowledge in the higher sense
of systematic, connected, reasoned knowledge, such as may one day be
attained, and such as Plato himself seems to see in some far off vision
of a single science. And there are no teachers in the higher sense of
the word; that is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit
of enquiry in their pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or
impart to them ready-made information for a fee of 'one' or of 'fifty
drachms.' Plato is desirous of deepening the notion of education, and
therefore he asserts the paradox that there are no educators. This
paradox, though different in form, is not really different from the
remark which is often made in modern times by those who would depreciate
either the methods of education commonly employed, or the standard
attained--that 'there is no true education among us.'

There remains still a possibility which must not be overlooked. Even
if there be no true knowledge, as is proved by 'the wretched state of
education,' there may be right opinion, which is a sort of guessing
or divination resting on no knowledge of causes, and incommunicable to
others. This is the gift which our statesmen have, as is proved by the
circumstance that they are unable to impart their knowledge to their
sons. Those who are possessed of it cannot be said to be men of science
or philosophers, but they are inspired and divine.

There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms
the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not
mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of
human life. To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of
all things the most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing
to admit that 'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);'
and he is at the same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which
governs the world with a higher wisdom. There are many instincts,
judgments, and anticipations of the human mind which canno