Note (return) — Chapter IX

In what are usually regarded as the purely Socratic dialogues, 479 Plato evidently designs to exhibit this method of Socrates. They proceed continually on the firm conviction that there is a standard or criterion of truth in the reason of man, and that, by reflection, man can apprehend and recognize the truth. To awaken this power of reflection; to compel men to analyze their language and their thoughts; to lead them from the particular and the contingent, to the universal and the necessary; and to teach them to test their opinions by the inward standard of truth, was the aim of Socrates. These dialogues are a picture of the conversations of Socrates. They are literally an education of the thinking faculty. Their purpose is to discipline men to think for themselves, rather than to furnish opinions for them. In many of these dialogues Socrates affirms nothing. After producing many arguments, and examining a question on all sides, he leaves it undetermined. At the close of the dialogue he is as far from a declaration of opinions as at the commencement. His grand effort, like that of Bacon's, is to furnish men a correct method of inquiry, rather than to apply that method and give them results.