?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And when did you think that you were ignorant--if you
consider, you will find that there never was such a time?

ALCIBIADES: Really, Socrates, I cannot say.

SOCRATES: Then you did not learn them by discovering them?

ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.

SOCRATES: But just before you said that you did not know them by
learning; now, if you have neither discovered nor learned them, how and
whence do you come to know them?

ALCIBIADES: I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew them
through my own discovery of them; whereas, in truth, I learned them in
the same way that other people learn.

SOCRATES: So you said before, and I must again ask, of whom? Do tell me.

ALCIBIADES: Of the many.

SOCRATES: Do you take refuge in them? I cannot say much for your
teachers.

ALCIBIADES: Why, are they not able to teach?

SOCRATES: They could not teach you how to play at draughts, which you
would acknowledge (would you not) to be a much smaller matter than
justice?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And can they teach the better who are unable to teach the
worse?

ALCIBIADES: I think that they can; at any rate, they can teach many far
better things than to play at draughts.

SOCRATES: What things?

ALCIBIADES: Why, for example, I learned to speak Greek of them, and I
cannot say who was my teacher, or to whom I am to attribute my knowledge
of Greek, if not to those good-for-nothing teachers, as you call them.

SOCRATES: Why, yes, my friend; and the many are good enough teachers
of Greek, and some of their instructions in that line may be justly
praised.

ALCIBIADES: Why is that?

SOCRATES: Why, because they have the qualities which good teachers ought
to have.

ALCIBIADES: What qualities?

SOCRATES: Why, you know that knowledge is the first qualification of any
teacher?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if they know, they must agree together and not differ?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And would you say that they knew the things about which they
differ?

ALCIBIADES: No.

SOCRATES: Then how can they teach them?

ALCIBIADES: They cannot.

SOCRATES: Well, but do you imagine that the many would differ about the
nature of wood and stone? are they not agreed if you ask them what they
are? and do they not run to fetch the same thing, when they want a
piece of wood or a stone? And so in similar cases, which I suspect to be
pretty nearly all that you mean by speaki