[Side-note: Sokrates, while continually finding fault with other teachers, refused to teach himself--difficulty of finding an excuse for his refusal. The Theagês furnishes an excuse.] In this manner, the Theagês is made by Plato to exhibit one way of parrying the difficulty frequently addressed to Sokrates by various hearers: "You tell us that the leading citizens cannot even teach their own sons, and that the Sophists teach nothing worth having: you perpetually call upon us to seek for better teachers, without telling us where such are to be found. We entreat you to teach us yourself, conformably to your own views." If a leader of political opposition, after years employed in denouncing successive administrators as ignorant and iniquitous, refuses, when invited, to take upon himself the business of administration--an intelligent admirer must find some decent pretence to colour the refusal. Such a pretence is found for Sokrates in the Theagês: "I am not my own master on this point. I am the instrument of a divine ally, without whose active working I can accomplish nothing: who forbids altogether my teaching of one man--tolerates, without assisting, my unavailing lessons to another--assists efficaciously in my teaching of a third, in which case alone the pupil receives any real benefit. The assistance of this divine ally is given or withheld according to motives of his own, which I cannot even foretell, much less influence. I should deceive you therefore if I undertook to teach, when I cannot tell whether I shall do good or harm." The reply of Theagês meets this scruple. He asks permission to make the experiment, and promises to propitiate the divine auxiliary by prayer and sacrifice; under which reserve Sokrates gives consent. [Side-note: Plato does not always, nor in other dialogues, allude to the divine sign in the same way. Its character and working essentially impenetrable. Sokrates a privileged person.]