The real contrast between the competitors, consists, first in the pretensions--next in the method. The two Sophists are described as persons of exorbitant arrogance, professing to teach virtue,[12] and claiming a fee as if they did teach it: Sokrates disdains the fee, doubts whether such teaching is possible, and professes only to encourage or help forward on the road a willing pupil. The pupil in this case is a given subject, Kleinias, a modest and intelligent youth: and the whole scene passes in public before an indiscriminate audience. To such a pupil, what is needed is, encouragement and guidance. Both of these are really administered by the questions of Sokrates, which are all suggestive and pertinent to the matter in hand, though failing to reach a satisfactory result: moreover, Sokrates attends only to Kleinias, and is indifferent to the effect on the audience around. The two Sophists, on the contrary, do not say a word pertinent to the object desired. Far from seeking (as they promised) to encourage Kleinias,[13] they confuse and humiliate him from the beginning: all their implements for teaching consist only of logical puzzles; lastly, their main purpose is to elicit applause from the by-standers, by reducing both the modest Kleinias and every other respondent to contradiction and stand-still. [Footnote 12: Plat. Euthydêm. pp. 273 D, 275 A, 304 B.] [Footnote 13: Plat. Euthyd. p. 278 C. [Greek: e)pha/tên ga\r e)pidei/xasthai tê\n protreptikê\n sophi/an.]] [Side-note: Abuse of fallacies by the Sophists--their bidding for the applause of the by-standers.] Such is the real contrast between Sokrates and the two Sophists, and such is the real scene which we read in the dialogue. The presence, as well as the loud manifestations of an indiscriminate crowd in the Lykeium, are essential features of the drama.[14] The point of view which Plato is working out, is, the abusive employment, the excess, and the misplacement, of logical puzzles: which he brings before us as administered for the humiliation of a youth who requires opposite treatment, in the prosecution of an object which they do not really promote and before undiscerning auditors, for whose applause the two Sophists are bidding.[15] The whole debate upon these fallacies is rendered ridiculous; and when conducted with Ktesippus, degenerates into wrangling and ribaldry. [Footnote 14: The [Greek: o)/chlos] (surrounding multitude) is especially insisted on in the first sentence of the dialogue, and is perpetually adverted to throughout all the recital of Sokrates to Kriton, pp. 276 B-D, 303 B.] [Footnote 15: Plat. Euthydêm. p. 303 B.] [Side-note: Comparison of the Euthydêmus with the Parmenidês.]