23. SOCRATES: THE SOCRATIC METHOD.--Socrates spent his life in teaching, and in teaching according to an original method, which has preserved his name. He had the genius of interrogation. To question all whom he met, either at the gymnasium or in the streets; to question the sophists in order to convince them of their errors and to confound their arrogance, and presumptuous young men in order to teach them the truth of which they were ignorant; to question great and small, statesmen and masons, now Pericles and now a shopkeeper; to question always and everywhere in order to compel every one to form clear ideas; such was the constant occupation and passion of his life. When he allowed himself to dream of the future life, he said smilingly that he hoped to continue in the Elysian Fields the habits of the Athenian Agora, and still to interrogate the shades of the mighty dead. With Socrates, conversation became an art, and the dialogue a method. He scarcely ever employed the didactic form, or that of direct teaching. He addressed himself to his interlocutor, urged him to set forth his ideas, harassed him with questions often somewhat subtile, skilfully led him to recognize the truth which he himself had in mind, or the rather permitted him to go off on a false route in order finally to discover to him his error and to sport with his confusion; and all this with an art of wonderful analysis, with a subtilty of reasoning pushed almost to an extreme, and also with a great simplicity of language, and with examples borrowed from common life, such as we are accustomed to call intuitive examples. 24. THE SOCRATIC IRONY.--To form an intelligible account of the Socratic method, it is necessary to distinguish its two essential phases. Socrates followed a double method and sought a double end. In the first case, he wished to make war against error and to refute false opinions. Then he resorted to what has been called the Socratic _irony_.[28] He raised a question as one who simply desired to be instructed. If there was the statement of an error in the reply of the respondent, Socrates made no objection to it, but pretended to espouse the ideas and sentiments of his interlocutor. Then, by questions which were adroit and sometimes insidious, he forced him to develop his opinions, and to display, so to speak, the whole extent of his folly, and the next instant slyly brought him face to face with the consequences, which were so absurd and contradictory that he ended in losing confidence, in becoming involved in his conclusions, and finally in making confession of his errors. 25. MAIEUTICS, OR THE ART OF GIVING BIRTH TO IDEAS.--Analogous processes constituted the other part of the Socratic method, that which he himself called _maieutics_, or the art of giving birth to ideas.