[537c]
and
they will be required to gather the studies which they disconnectedly pursued as
children in their former education into a comprehensive survey1 of their affinities with one another and
with the nature of things.” “That, at any rate, he said, is
the only instruction that abides with those who receive it.”
“And it is also,” said I, “the chief test of the
dialectical nature and its opposite. For he who can view things in their
connection is a dialectician; he who cannot, is not.” “I
concur,” he said. “With these qualities in mind,”
I said,
1 σύνοψιν: cf. 531 D. This thought is endlessly repeated by modern writers on education. Cf. Mill, Diss. and Disc. iv. 336; Bagley, The Educative Process, p. 180: “The theory of concentration proposed by Ziller . . . seeks to organize all the subject matter of instruction into a unifies system, the various units of which shall be consciously related to one another in the minds of the pupils”; Haldane, The Philosophy of Humanism, p. 94: “There was a conference attended by representatives of various German Universities . . . which took place at Hanstein, not far from Göttingen in May 1921. . . . The purpose of the movement is nominally the establishment of a Humanistic Faculty. But in this connection ‘faculty’ does not mean a separate faculty of humanistic studies. . . . The real object is to bring these subjects into organic relation to one another.” Cf. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, vol. i. p. 4 “So true is it that, as Plato puts it, the metaphysician is a ‘synoptical’ man.” Cf. also Aristot.Soph. El. 167 a 38διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι συνορᾶν τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ τὸ ἕτερον. Stenzel, Dialektik, misuses the passage to support the view that Plato's dialectic still looks for unity and not for divisions and distinctions, as in the Sophist. Cf. also ibid. p.72.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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