Of all this (continues Sokrates) the genuine philosopher is the reverse. He neither possesses, nor cares to possess, the accomplishments of the lawyer and politician. He takes no interest in the current talk of the city; nor in the scandals afloat against individual persons. He does not share in the common ardour for acquiring power or money; nor does he account potentates either happier or more estimable for possessing them. Being ignorant and incompetent in the affairs of citizenship as well as of common life, he has no taste for club-meetings or joviality. His mind, despising the particular and the practical, is absorbed in constant theoretical research respecting universals. He spares no labour in investigating--What is man in general? and what are the attributes, active and passive, which distinguish man from other things? He will be overthrown and humiliated before the Dikastery by a clever rhetor. But if this opponent chooses to ascend out of the region of speciality, and the particular ground of injustice alleged by A against B--into the general question, What is justice or injustice? Wherein do they differ from each other or from other things? What constitutes happiness and misery? How is the one to be attained and the other avoided?--If the rhetor will meet the philosopher on this elevated ground, then he will find himself put to shame and proved to be incompetent, in spite of all the acute stratagems of his petty mind.[138] He will look like a child and become ashamed of himself:[139] but the philosopher is noway ashamed of his incompetence for slavish pursuits, while he is passing a life of freedom and leisure among his own dialectics.[140] [Footnote 138: Plato, Theæt. pp. 175-176.] [Footnote 139: Plato, Theæt. p. 177 B.] [Footnote 140: Plato, Theæt. p. 175 E.] [Side-note: Purpose of dialogue to qualify for a life of philosophical Search.]