Works of Plato, Volume 13

deserve to bear this name. On the other hand, the soul, full of confidence in itself, flatters itself, upon vain conjectures, that the possession of wisdom is in some way natural to it; while it can say neither in what it consists nor when and how it acquired it. Do we not recognize the portrait of this state in the search we make for wisdom, and in the despair of encountering it, a despair that surpasses the hope of attaining it, in those among us who are capable of examining in a reflective and sustained manner, by all sorts of discourses and at all times, what happens in themselves and in others? Shall we agree or not that the thing is thus?
CLINIAS. We shall agree, Stranger, but while keeping the hope of perhaps arriving one day with your help to know the truth on the object in question.
THE ATHENIAN. We must therefore traverse first all the sciences called vulgarly by this name, although they do not communicate wisdom to the one who studies them or who possesses them, so that after having put them aside, we may try to expose those that serve our design, and to make them our study. And to begin with the arts relative to the primary needs of the human race, let us consider that they are the most necessary and, to tell the truth, the first of all the arts; that he who possesses them may well have passed for wise in the beginnings; but that today, far from being a title of wisdom, this pretended science would rather be for him a subject of injurious reproaches. We are going to make the enumeration of these arts, and show that whoever aspires to obtain the prize of virtue avoids applying himself to them, to devote himself to the search for prudence practical wisdom and instruction. The first art is that which, if one believes tradition, turned the first men from feeding