PYTHAGORAS TO PLATO the young on purpose; and if he is doing so unwittingly he should be educated rather than prosecuted (26a) Socrates, in the Apology, did not claim to possess himself the wisdom that is suYcient to keep a man from wrongdoing Instead, he said that he relied on an inner divine voice, which would intervene if ever he was on the point of taking a wrong step (41d) So far from being an atheist, his whole life was dedicated to a divine mission, the campaign to expose false wisdom which was prompted by the Delphic oracle What would really be a betrayal of God would be to desert his post through fear of death If he were told that he could go free on condition that he abandon philosophical inquiry, he would reply, ‘Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy’ (29d) The early dialogues of Plato portray Socrates carrying out his philosophical mission Typically, the dialogue will be named after a personage who claims knowledge of a certain subject or who can be taken to represent a certain virtue: thus the Ion, on poetry, is named after a prizewinning rhapsode (a reciter of Homer), and the Laches, on courage, is named after a distinguished general Charmides and Lysis, on passion, temperance, and friendship, are named after two bright young men who commanded a circle of aristocratic admirers In each dialogue Socrates seeks a scientiWc account or deWnition of the topic under discussion, and by questioning reveals that the eponymous protagonist is unable to give one The dialogues all end with the ostensible failure of the inquiry, conWrming the conclusion in the Apology that those who might most be expected to possess wisdom on particular topics fail, under examination, to exhibit it The search for deWnitions serves diVerent purposes in diVerent dialogues: a deWnition of justice is sought in Republic in order to determine whether justice beneWts its possessor, and a deWnition of piety is sought in the Euthyphro in order to settle a particular diYcult case of conscience But Aristotle was right to pick out the search as a notable feature of Socratic method The method has sometimes been criticized as involving the fallacious claim that we cannot ever know whether some particular action is or is not, say, just or pious unless we can give a watertight deWnition of justice and piety Such a claim would be inconsistent with Socrates’ regular practice in the course of his elenchus of seeking agreement whether particular actions (such as returning a borrowed knife to 43