Such is the commencing portion (abbreviated or abstracted) of Plato's First Alkibiadês. It exhibits a very characteristic specimen of the Sokratico-Platonic method: both in its negative and positive aspect. By the negative, false persuasion of knowledge is exposed. Alkibiades believes himself competent to advise about just and unjust, which he has neither learnt from any teacher nor investigated for himself--which he has picked up from the multitude, and supposes to be clear to every one, but about which nevertheless there is so much difference of appreciation among the multitude, that fierce and perpetual quarrels are going on. On the positive side, Sokrates restricts himself to the function of questioning: he neither affirms nor denies any thing. It is Alkibiades who affirms or denies every thing, and who makes all the discoveries for himself out of his own mind, instigated indeed, but not taught, by the questions of his companion. [Side-note: Alkibiades is brought to admit that whatever is just, is good, honourable, expedient: and that whoever acts honourably, both does well, and procures for himself happiness thereby. Equivocal reasoning of Sokrates.] By a farther series of questions, Sokrates next brings Alkibiades to the admission that what is just, is also honourable, good, expedient--what is unjust, is dishonourable, evil, inexpedient: and that whoever acts justly, and honourably, thereby acquires happiness. Admitting, first, that an act which is good, honourable, just, expedient, &c., considered in one aspect or in reference to some of its conditions--may be at the same time bad, dishonourable, unjust, considered in another aspect or in reference to other conditions; Sokrates nevertheless brings his respondent to admit, that every act, _in so far as it is just and honourable_, is also good and expedient.[10] And he contends farther, that whoever acts honourably, does well: now every man who does well, becomes happy, or secures good things thereby: therefore the just, the honourable, and the good or expedient, coincide.[11] The argument, whereby this conclusion is here established, is pointed out by Heindorf, Stallbaum, and Steinhart, as not merely inconclusive, but as mere verbal equivocation and sophistry--the like of which, however, we find elsewhere in Plato.[12] [Footnote 10: Plato, Alkib. i. 115 B--116 A. [Greek: Ou)kou=n tê\n toiau/tên boêthei/an kalê\n me\n le/geis kata\ tê\n e)pichei/rêsin tou= sô=sai ou(=s e)/dei; tou=to d' e)sti\n a)ndri/a; . . . . kakê\n de/ ge kata\ tou\s thana/tous te kai\ ta\ e(/lkê. . . . Ou)kou=n ô(=de di/kaion prosagoreu/ein e(ka/stên tô=n pra/xeôn; ei)/per ê)=| kako\n a)perga/zetai kakê\n kalei=s, kai\ ê)=| a)gatho\n a)gathê\n klête/on. A)r' ou)=n kai\ ê)=| a)gatho\n kalo/n,--ê)=| de\ kako\n ai)schro/n? Nai/.]