‘So, then, do you call “dialectician” the person who grasps the account of the being of each thing? Surely you will not say that someone who has no account, to the extent that he is unable to give that account to himself and to another, has understanding of it?’

‘How could I say so?’ he said.

‘So likewise for the good: someone who cannot distinguish the idea of the good in account by marking it off from everything else, and who cannot get through all the tests of what he thinks as if through a battle, nor is eager to test it according to the way things are, rather than according to opinion, and who cannot progress through all these things without his account collapsing – such a person you will surely say, knows neither the good itself, nor any other good.’

‘So you would legislate, would you, that they should most of all receive that education through which they would be able to ask and answer questions in the most knowledgeable way?’

‘Yes, I would so legislate – and you with me, too.’

‘So do you suppose,’ I said, ‘that dialectic lies at the top for us, like a copingstone on our studies, and that there is no other subject that should rightly be put higher than it, but that it provides now the end to our inquiries into education?’ (534d8–535a1)