notions of other men. There is no evidence that either the idea of good or
the conception of a perfect state were comprehended in the Socratic
teaching, though he certainly dwelt on the nature of the universal and of
final causes (cp. Xen. Mem.; Phaedo); and a deep thinker like him, in his
thirty or forty years of public teaching, could hardly have failed to touch
on the nature of family relations, for which there is also some positive
evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem.) The Socratic method is nominally
retained; and every inference is either put into the mouth of the
respondent or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates. But
any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation grows
wearisome as the work advances. The method of enquiry has passed into a
method of teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the same thesis is
looked at from various points of view. The nature of the process is truly
characterized by Glaucon, when he describes himself as a companion who is
not good for much in an investigation, but can see what he is shown, and
may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more fluently than another.

Neither can we be absolutely certain that Socrates himself taught the
immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in the
Republic (cp. Apol.); nor is there any reason to suppose that he used myths
or revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction, or that he
would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek mythology. His
favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention is made of the daemonium,
or internal sign, which is alluded to by Socrates as a phenomenon peculiar
to himself. A real element of Socratic teaching, which is more prominent
in the Republic than in any of the other Dialogues of Plato, is the use of
example and illustration (Greek): 'Let us apply the test of common
instances.' 'You,' says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, 'are so
unaccustomed to speak in images.' And this use of examples or images,
though truly Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into