The Gift of Fire | Page 5

the world exists, but I often consider the question of when it exists.
When I am there in class, considering that young woman's question
before me, that is the world. Socrates exists. As though she were
Socrates, this blower of bubbles asks the question. She has never
thought out or named "undefined terms," "unbounded categories," or
"unexamined propositions." She can not say that a likeness should be
noted where only difference was presumed, or a difference where only
a likeness. But she can ask as though she had considered such things.
And in that moment, in the world that then and there exists, who is the
teacher and who the student? Who is Socrates?
If I have any good sense at all, will I not give her question as much
thoughtful consideration as I would have given to the same question
had it come from Socrates himself? And for two reasons, both of them
splendid?
Rather than effectively dismissing Socrates when we suppose that we
praise him as "one in billions," we might do better to attend to our
words as though we were poets, looking always deeper into and
through them. We could thus also say that Socrates is one who is truly
in billions, the most powerful confirmation that we have of what is,
after all, not merely an individual but a generally human possibility -
the mind's ability to behold and consider itself and its works. That

power is probably unavailable to infants and lunatics, but, in the
absence of some such special impediment, who can be without it? Can
it be that some of us are empty, and without that power which is the
sign of humanity? My bubble-blower certainly is not, and she is real. I
have seen her often. And in that moment when she is Socrates, I may
well be seeing the first moment of thoughtfulness in her life. Education,
real education, and not just the elaborate contraption that is better
understood as "schooling," can be nothing but the nourishment of such
moments.
I imagine some well-informed and largely wise visitor from another
world who comes to Earth to study us. He begins by choosing two
people at random, and, since time and place are of no importance to
him, but only the single fact of humanity, he chooses Socrates and me,
leaving aside for the moment every other human being. He begins with
an understanding of the single but tremendous attribute that
distinguishes us both from all other creatures of Earth. We are capable
of Reason. Capable. We can know ourselves, unlike the foxes and the
oaks, and can know that we know ourselves. He knows that while we
have appetites and urges just like all the other creatures, we have the
astonishing power of seeing them not simply as the necessary attributes
of what we are, but as separate from us in a strange way, so that we can
hold them at arm's length, turning them this way and that, and make
judgment of them, and even put them aside, saying, Yes, that is "me,"
in a way, but, when I choose, it is just a thing, not truly me, but only
mine. He sees, in short, what "human" means in "human beings."
And then he considers the specimens he has chosen, Socrates and me.
He measures that degree to which they conform to what "human"
means in "human beings." With those superior extraterrestrial powers
that imagination grants him, he will easily discover:
That I have notions, certain "sayings" in my mind, that flatly contradict
one another; believing, for instance, that I can choose for myself the
path of my life while blaming other people for the difficulty of the path.
With Socrates, this is not the case.
That my mind is full of ideas that are truly nothing more than words,

and that as to the meaning of the words I have no clear and constant
idea, behaving today as though "justice" were one thing, and tomorrow
as though it were another. That, while wanting to be happy and good, I
have no clear ideas by which I might distinguish, or might even want to
distinguish, happiness from pleasure, and goodness from social
acceptability. With Socrates, this is not the case.
That I usually believe what I believe not because I have tested and
found it coherent and consistent, and harmonious with evidence, but
because it is also believed by the right people, people like me, and
because it pleases me. And that furthermore, I live and act and speak as
though my believing were no different from my knowing. With
Socrates, this is not the case.
That I put myself forth as one who can direct and govern the minds, the
inner lives, of others, that, in fact, I make my