, and that you promise to make men good citizens?

That, Socrates, is exactly the profession which I make.

Then, I said, you do indeed possess a noble art, if there is no mistake
about this; for I will freely confess to you, Protagoras, that I have
a doubt whether this art is capable of being taught, and yet I know not
how to disbelieve your assertion. And I ought to tell you why I am of
opinion that this art cannot be taught or communicated by man to man. I
say that the Athenians are an understanding people, and indeed they are
esteemed to be such by the other Hellenes. Now I observe that when we
are met together in the assembly, and the matter in hand relates to
building, the builders are summoned as advisers; when the question is
one of ship-building, then the ship-wrights; and the like of other arts
which they think capable of being taught and learned. And if some person
offers to give them advice who is not supposed by them to have any skill
in the art, even though he be good-looking, and rich, and noble, they
will not listen to him, but laugh and hoot at him, until either he is
clamoured down and retires of himself; or if he persist, he is dragged
away or put out by the constables at the command of the prytanes. This
is their way of behaving about professors of the arts. But when the
question is an affair of state, then everybody is free to have a
say--carpenter, tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high
and low--any one who likes gets up, and no one reproaches him, as in
the former case, with not having learned, and having no teacher, and yet
giving advice; evidently because they are under the impression that this
sort of knowledge cannot be taught. And not only is this true of the
state, but of individuals; the best and wisest of our citizens are
unable to impart their political wisdom to others: as for example,
Pericles, the father of these young men, who gave them excellent
instruction in all that could be learned from masters, in his own
department of politics neither taught them, nor gave them teachers; but
they were allowed to wander at their own free will in a sort of hope
that they would light upon virtue of their own accord. Or take
another example: there was Cleinias the younger brother of our friend
Alcibiades, of whom this very same Pericles was the guardian; and he
being in fact under the apprehension that Cleinias would be corrupted by
Alcibiades, took him away, and placed him in the