No More Learning

[545]

PHIDIPPIDES. To make you better used to them, I would you were hung.

STREPSIADES. A curse upon you! you insult your master!

SOCRATES. "I would you were hung! " What a stupid speech! and so
emphatically spoken! How can one ever get out of an accusation with such
a tone, summon witnesses or touch or convince? And yet when we think,
Hyperbolus learnt all this for one talent!

STREPSIADES. Rest undisturbed and teach him. 'Tis a most intelligent
nature. Even when quite little he amused himself at home with making
houses, carving boats, constructing little chariots of leather, and
understood wonderfully how to make frogs out of pomegranate rinds.
Teach
him both methods of reasoning, the strong and also the weak, which by
false arguments triumphs over the strong; if not the two, at least the
false, and that in every possible way.

SOCRATES. 'Tis Just and Unjust Discourse themselves that shall instruct
him. [546]

STREPSIADES. I go, but forget it not, he must always, always be able to
confound the true.

JUST DISCOURSE. Come here! Shameless as you may be, will you dare to show
your face to the spectators?

UNJUST DISCOURSE. Take me where you list. I seek a throng, so that I may
the better annihilate you.

JUST DISCOURSE. Annihilate me! Do you forget who you are?

UNJUST DISCOURSE. I am Reasoning.