_Socr._ But he who thinks that in a written discourse, on whatever
subject, there must necessarily be much that is sportive, and that no
discourse, in prose or verse, deserving of much study, has ever been
written or spoken, as those declamations used to be spoken without
discrimination and instructive method, for the sake of persuasion, but
that in truth the best of them were for the purpose of reminding those
who already know, but that only in discourses taught and spoken for the
sake of instruction, and really written in the soul about things just,
and beautiful, and good, there is found what is clear and perfect and
worthy of study; and that such discourses ought to be called as it were
their author’s legitimate offspring; first of all that which is in
himself, if it is there by his own invention, then any children or
brothers of the former that have at the same time worthily sprung up in
the souls of others; whoever thinks thus and dismisses all others, that
man, Phædrus, appears to be such a one as you and I should pray that we
might become.