Republic

“And then,” said I, “when he ceases to honor these principles and to think that they are binding on him, and cannot discover the true principles, will he be likely to adopt any other way of life than that which flatters his desires?” “He will not,” he said. “He will, then, seem to have become a rebel to law and convention instead of the conformer that he was.” Necessarily. “And is not this experience of those who take up dialectics in this fashion to be expected and, as I just now said, deserving of much leniency?” “Yes, and of pity too,” he said. “Then that we may not have to pity thus your thirty-year-old disciples, must you not take every precaution when you introduce them to the study of dialectics?” “Yes, indeed,” he said. “And is it not one chief safeguard not to suffer them to taste of it while young? For I fancy you have not failed to observe that lads, when they first get a taste of disputation, misuse it as a form of sport, always employing it contentiously, and, imitating confuters, they themselves confute others. They delight like spies in pulling about and tearing with words all who approach them.” “Exceedingly so,” he said. “And when they have themselves confuted many and been confuted by many, they quickly fall into a violent distrust of all that they formerly held true; and the outcome is that they themselves and the whole business of philosophy are discredited with other men.” “Most true,” he said. “But an older man will not share this craze,” said I, “but rather choose to imitate the one who consents to examine truth dialectically than the one who makes a jest and a sport of mere contradiction, and so he will himself be more reasonable and moderate, and bring credit rather than discredit upon his pursuit.” Right, he said. “And were not all our preceding statements made with a view to this precaution our requirement that those permitted to take part in such discussions must have orderly and stable natures, instead of the present practice of admitting to it any chance and unsuitable applicant?” “By all means,” he said. “Is it enough, then, to devote to the continuous and strenuous study of dialectics undisturbed by anything else, as in the corresponding discipline in bodily exercises, twice as many years as were allotted to that?” “Do you mean six or four?” he said.