The Doctrines of the Great Educators

the great educators witli a consideration of the Greek thinkers.At a time of intellectual unrest in Greece, about the fourth or the third century before the Christian era, a new school of teaching came into being.The enlargement of the intellec- tual horizon resulting from the unrest that ensued de- manded a class of men who could impart quickly every kind of knowledge ; and to satisfy this demand all sorts and conditions were pressed into the service of Education and classed under the general title " Sophist."" Is not a sophist one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul ?" it is asked in the Protagoras.^Fencingmasters like Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus,^Prodicus with his stock of philological subtleties,^and Protagoras " the wisest of all living men,"* declared themselves "the only professors of moral improvement."T he teaching of the Sophists was unsystematic ; it was also limited to the few who could pay for it,*" and we » §313.* Plato's testimonial to them reads as follows {Euikydcmnf, §282): " They are capital at fighting in armour, and -will tcacli the art to anyone who pays them ; and also they are most skilful in legal warfare ; tliey will plead themselves and teach others to speak and to compose speeclies which will have an effect ui)on tlie courts.And this was only the beginning of their wisdom, but they have carried out tlie ])ancratiasti(t art to the very end, and have mastered the only mode of fighting whicli had been hitherto neglected by them ; and now no one dares to look at them ; such is their skill in the war of words that they can refute any proposition whether true or false."^Protagoras, ^MO.Cf. Euthydemus, ^211.•> Protagoras, § 309.' Laches, § 18()." Protagoras was the first to accept ])aymcnt (Protagoras, § 348):" You proclaim in the face of Hellas that you are a Sophist or teacher of virtue or education and are the first that demanded ])ay in return."His method of exacting payment-a fonn of payment by results was as follows {Protagoras, §328) : " When a man has been my pupil, if he likes he pays my price, but there is no compulsion ; and if he does ' Of. metaphor of midwife in Theadefus, § 150 ; also Symposium, § 209.* Symposium, § 204.PLATO 5 taught him-his own ignorance ; to imbue them with a divine discontent ; to make them feel, as Alcibiades puts it,i "the serpent's sting," "the pang of philosophy."And in his defence Socrates neither disowned his mission nor his method : I am that gadfly," he tells his judges,"which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you."A characteristic of the method of Socrates was the necessity for having a companion in the pursuit of truth.Anyone sufficed for this purpose, and Socrates had many devices for luring men into this search, though not in- frequently they were unwilling companions who soon discovered that for the lookers on " there is amusement in it."^In the Protagoras Socrates is represented as saying :" When anyone apprehends alone, he immediately goes about and searches for some one to whom he may communi- cate it and with whom he may establish it.""*The principle implied is that if one other can be convinced, then all others can likewise be persuaded, and consequently the belief in question is universally valid.Carlyle expresses the same idea when he cites the statement : " It is certain my con- viction gains infmitely, the moment another soul will be- lieve in it."The dialogue is thus a necessary and essential feature of the method of Socrates.In the Socratic discourses three stages can generally be distinguished ; first, the stage called by Plato " opinion," in which the individual is unable to give valid reasons for his knowledge or supposed knowledge ; second, the destruc- tive or analytic stage, in which the indi\'idual is brought to realise that he does not know what he assumed he knew, * Symposium, § 217

Political science · Sociology · Religious Education and Schools

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