The Gift of Fire | Page 5

the world. Socrates exists. As though she were Socrates, this blower of bubbles asks the question. She has never thought out or named "undefined terms," "unbounded categories," or "unexamined propositions." She can not say that a likeness should be noted where only difference was presumed, or a difference where only a likeness. But she can ask as though she had considered such things. And in that moment, in the world that then and there exists, who is the teacher and who the student? Who is Socrates?
If I have any good sense at all, will I not give her question as much thoughtful consideration as I would have given to the same question had it come from Socrates himself? And for two reasons, both of them splendid?
Rather than effectively dismissing Socrates when we suppose that we praise him as "one in billions," we might do better to attend to our words as though we were poets, looking always deeper into and through them. We could thus also say that Socrates is one who is truly in billions, the most powerful confirmation that we have of what is, after all, not merely an individual but a generally human possibility - the mind's ability to behold and consider itself and its works. That power is probably unavailable to infants and lunatics, but, in the absence of some such special impediment, who can be without it? Can it be that some of us are empty, and without that power which is the sign of humanity? My bubble-blower certainly is not, and she is real. I have seen her often. And in that moment when she is Socrates, I may well be seeing the first moment of thoughtfulness in her life. Education, real education, and not just the elaborate contraption that is better understood as "schooling," can be nothing but the nourishment of such moments.
I imagine some well-informed and largely wise visitor from another world who comes to Earth to study us. He begins by choosing two people at random, and, since time and place are of no importance to him, but only the single fact of humanity, he chooses Socrates and me, leaving aside for the moment every other human being. He begins with an understanding of the single but tremendous attribute that distinguishes us both from all other creatures of Earth. We are capable of Reason. Capable. We can know ourselves, unlike the foxes and the oaks, and can know that we know ourselves. He knows that while we have appetites and urges just like all the other creatures, we have the astonishing power of seeing them not simply as the necessary attributes of what we are, but as separate from us in a strange way, so that we can hold them at arm's length, turning them this way and that, and make judgment of them, and even put them aside, saying, Yes, that is "me," in a way, but, when I choose, it is just a thing, not truly me, but only mine. He sees, in short, what "human" means in "human beings."
And then he considers the specimens he has chosen, Socrates and me. He measures that degree to which they conform to what "human" means in "human beings." With those superior extraterrestrial powers that imagination grants him, he will easily discover:
That I have notions, certain "sayings" in my mind, that flatly contradict one another; believing, for instance, that I can choose for myself the path of my life while blaming other people for the difficulty of the path. With Socrates, this is not the case.
That my mind is full of ideas that are truly nothing more than words, and that as to the meaning of the words I have no clear and constant idea, behaving today as though "justice" were one thing, and tomorrow as though it were another. That, while wanting to be happy and good, I have no clear ideas by which I might distinguish, or might even want to distinguish, happiness from pleasure, and goodness from social acceptability. With Socrates, this is not the case.
That I usually believe what I believe not because I have tested and found it coherent and consistent, and harmonious with evidence, but because it is also believed by the right people, people like me, and because it pleases me. And that furthermore, I live and act and speak as though my believing were no different from my knowing. With Socrates, this is not the case.
That I put myself forth as one who can direct and govern the minds, the inner lives, of others, that, in fact, I make my living as one who can do that, but that my own actions are governed, more often than not, by desire or whim. With Socrates, this is not the case.
That I seem to have a