[497e]
he
said, “our exposition must be completed by making this
plain.” “It will be no lack of will,” I said,
“but if anything,1 a lack of ability, that
would prevent that. But you shall observe for yourself my zeal. And note
again how zealously and recklessly I am prepared to say that the state ought
to take up this pursuit in just the reverse of our present fashion.2” “In what
way?” “At present,”
1 For the idiomatic ἀλλ᾽ εἴπερ Cf. Parmen. 150 B, Euthydem. 296 B, Thompson on Meno,Excursus 2, pp. 258-264, Aristot.An. Post. 91 b 33, Eth. Nic. 1101 a 12, 1136 b 25, 1155 b 30, 1168 a 12, 1174 a 27, 1180 b 27, Met. 1028 a 24, 1044 a 11, Rhet. 1371 a 16.
2 What Plato here deprecates Callicles in the Gorgias recommends, 484 C-D. For the danger of premature study of dialectic cf. 537 D-E ff. Cf. my Idea of Education in Plato's Republic, p. 11. Milton develops the thought with characteristic exuberance, Of Education: “They present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics . . . to be tossed an turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeds of controversy,” etc.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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