ALCIBIADES: Your silence, Socrates, was always a surprise to me. I never could understand why you followed me about, and now that you have begun to speak again, I am still more amazed. Whether I think all this or not, is a matter about which you seem to have already made up your mind, and therefore my denial will have no effect upon you. But granting, if I must, that you have perfectly divined my purposes, why is your assistance necessary to the attainment of them? Can you tell me why? SOCRATES: You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. I think, however, that I can prove to you the truth of what I am saying, if you will grant me one little favour. ALCIBIADES: Yes, if the favour which you mean be not a troublesome one. SOCRATES: Will you be troubled at having questions to answer? ALCIBIADES: Not at all. SOCRATES: Then please to answer. ALCIBIADES: Ask me. SOCRATES: Have you not the intention which I attribute to you? ALCIBIADES: I will grant anything you like, in the hope of hearing what more you have to say. SOCRATES: You do, then, mean, as I was saying, to come forward in a little while in the character of an adviser of the Athenians? And suppose that when you are ascending the bema, I pull you by the sleeve and say, Alcibiades, you are getting up to advise the Athenians--do you know the matter about which they are going to deliberate, better than they?--How would you answer? ALCIBIADES: I should reply, that I was going to advise them about a matter which I do know better than they. SOCRATES: Then you are a good adviser about the things which you know? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And do you know anything but what you have learned of others, or found out yourself? ALCIBIADES: That is all. SOCRATES: And would you have ever learned or discovered anything, if you had not been willing either to learn of others or to examine yourself? ALCIBIADES: I should not. SOCRATES: And would you have been willing to learn or to examine what you supposed that you knew? ALCIBIADES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: Then there was a time when you thought that you did not know what you are now supposed to know? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: I think that I know tolerably well the extent of your acquirements; and you must tell me if I forget any of them: according to my recollection, you learned the arts of writing, of playing on the lyre, and of wrestling; the flute you never would learn; this is the sum of your accomplishments, unless there were some which you acquired in secret; and I think that secrecy was hardly possible, as you could not have come out of your door, either by day or night, without my seeing you. ALCIBIADES: Yes, that was the whole of my schooling. SOCRATES: And are you going to get up in the Athenian assembly, and give them advice about writing? ALCIBIADES: No, indeed. SOCRATES: Or about the touch of the lyre? ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.