PHAEDRUS: There, Socrates, I suspect that you that which we wish to learn and to teach is a are right.
simple or multiform thing, and if simple, then to enquire what power it has of acting or being SOCRATES: And do you think that you can know acted upon in relation to other things, and if the nature of the soul intelligently without know-multiform, then to number the forms; and see ing the nature of the whole?
first in the case of one of them, and then in the case of all of them, what is that power of acting PHAEDRUS: Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that or being acted upon which makes each and all the nature even of the body can only be under-of them to be what they are?
stood as a whole. (Compare Charmides.) PHAEDRUS: You may very likely be right, SOCRATES: Yes, friend, and he was right:—still, Socrates.
we ought not to be content with the name of Hippocrates, but to examine and see whether his SOCRATES: The method which proceeds with-argument agrees with his conception of nature.
out analysis is like the groping of a blind man.
Yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to ad-PHAEDRUS: I agree.
mit of a comparison with the blind, or deaf. The rhetorician, who teaches his pupil to speak sci-SOCRATES: Then consider what truth as well as entifically, will particularly set forth the nature Hippocrates says about this or about any other of that being to which he addresses his speeches; nature. Ought we not to consider first whether and this, I conceive, to be the soul.