Phaedrus — Plato

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXV moil offspring are fairer and more immortal. In such deep fashion would Plato, the pagan, realize the maxim, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. PLATO THE TEACHER. Socrates and Plato have universal fame as teachers. Their fame is usually attributed to their development of the so-called Socratic method of teaching. That device requires, therefore, special consideration.

Socrates and Plato believed that the truth is latent in the soul; that to waken this latent truth into clear consciousness is very difficult; that the highest means of achieving this end is systematic reflection ; and that systematic reflection in its stepby-step approach to clear knowledge takes naturally the verbal form of a series of questions and answers.

They used this device in their own most difficult investigations, and with their most mature disciples.

They sometimes used it with less mature disciples, and even with illiterate persons. (So, for example, in a passage from thfe Meno, much quoted in educational journals, Socraltrs, by a series of questions, leads an illiterate slave boy to see for himself the truth of a simple geometrical proposition.) They used the device at times ironically, that is, for the purpose of revealing to an antagonist the contradictions between his different assertions.

Finally, it is not to be denied that they sometimes used the device in a manner which seems grossly sophistical, and it would be difficult to prove that in all such cases the sophistry is ironical.

XXX VI GENERAL INTRODUCTION The Socratic method, more or less perfectly understood, has had great influence upon professional Pedagogy.

In many schools for the professional training of teachers, and in many schools in charge of teachers professionally trained, systematic questioning of this sort is looked upon as ideal teaching ; and there is no lack of conscientious endeavor to prepare for use in recitation, series of questions which shall lead the child mind to take the logical steps which given occasions require.

One who doubts the value of such systematic questioning may usually be converted by hearing a single typical recitation conducted by a master of the art. The power of such a recitation to touch, move, chasten, and direct the soul is so evident, that if Socrates and Plato had taught us nothing but how to do such work their fame as teachers would be justified.

"'' If, however, systematic questioning were the whole Socratic art, we should be obliged to say that that art stands in unfavorable contrast with many other arts and occupations. For in most arts and occupations, systematic procedure is not the sole or highest ideal. On the contrary, it is the open secret of successful men generally that system must bow to circumstance.

A great business man knows that the method of running a railroad and the method of running a kerosene wagon cannot be interchanged with profit to either, and perhaps uses both methods at the same time for the benefit of the same corporation {e,g,, The Standard Oil Company). A great lawyer knows well the power of technicality, but also when to leave the little men chopping logic

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXVII over legal trivialities, and rest his case upon a common sense principle which the highest courts will declare to be the law. A great general conforms to the rules of military science when he is fighting British Regulars, and abandons those rules when he is fighting Indians in ambush. (Compare Washington in the Revolution and Washington at Braddock's Defeat.) A great statesman has a task not unlike that of the teacher.

He has to deal with human beings. He has to lead them if he can, from their present position to a higher. He has to instruct, persuade, convert, — achieve with the folk essentially the same things that the teacher has to achieve with the smaller folk. In doing this work he does not underestimate the educational value of formalities, of platforms, statutes, decisions, and executive acts.

He knows the power of logical argument in print or on the stump, and indeed the occasional value of Socratic questioning as a weapon in debate. (See, for example, the use of formal questions in the Lincoln-Douglass debate.) But no master statesman wins his place as leader, teacher, father of the folk, by any sort of systematic procedure. He meets men face to face. He looks them through to the marrow.

He is subtle as a lover to find the right word or the right silence. He wins men for his idea by winning them for himself. As Tennyson says : ** He lays his mind upon them, and they believe in his belief.** In presence of such ideals and achievements among men of affairs, what can be said of systematic Socratic questioning as the sole or highest ideal for teaching? Is there nothing in a child but logical