The main purpose of Sokrates is to drive Alkibiades into self-contradictions, and to force upon him a painful consciousness of ignorance and mental defect, upon grave and important subjects, while he is yet young enough to amend it. Towards this purpose he is made to lay claim to a divine mission similar to that which the real Sokrates announces in the Apology[61] A number of perplexing questions and difficulties are accumulated: it is not meant that these difficulties are insoluble, but that they cannot be solved by one who has never seriously reflected on them--by one who (as the Xenophontic Sokrates says to Euthydemus),[62] is so confident of knowing the subject that he has never meditated upon it at all. The disheartened Alkibiades feels the necessity of improving himself and supplicates the assistance of Sokrates:[63] who reminds him that he must first determine what "Himself" is. Here again we find ourselves upon the track of Sokrates in the Platonic Apology, and under the influence of the memorable inscription at Delphi--_Nosce teipsum_. Your mind is yourself; your body is a mere instrument of your mind: your wealth and power are simple appurtenances or adjuncts. To know yourself, which is genuine Sophrosynê or temperance, is to know your mind: but this can only be done by looking into another mind, and into its most intelligent compartment: just as the eye can only see itself by looking into the centre of vision of another eye.[64] [Footnote 61: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 124 C-127 E.] [Footnote 62: Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 36. [Greek: A)lla\ tau=ta me/n, e)/phê o( Sôkra/tês, i)/sôs, dia\ to\ spho/dra posteu/ein ei)de/nai, ou)d' e)/skepsai.]] [Footnote 63: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 128-132 A.] [Footnote 64: Plato, Alkib. i. p. 133. A Platonic metaphor, illustrating the necessity for two separate minds co-operating in dialectic colloquy.] [Side-note: Sokrates furnishes no means of solving these difficulties. He exhorts to Justice and Virtue--but these are acknowledged Incognita.]