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    great purpose to be served by making this circuit— -a fargreater purpose than that which Tisias aims at ; though even that is to be attained most effectually by the same means . * So much then on the subject of the art of speaking . It remains to consider in what consists propriety or impropriety of writing .

    • Do you know what mode of dealing with discourse is most agreeable to a divinity ?* ' No : do you ? ' 'lean relate what has been heard from the sages of old . Whether it is true , the gods themselves alone know . But if we could find this , should we , after that , care for the opinions of men V 'It would be ridiculous : but pray tell us what you say you have heard . ' € I have heard that at Naucratis in Egypt , there resided one of the ancient gods of that country , named Theuth , who

    first invented numbers , and calculation , and geometry , and astronomy , and dice-playing , and , among other things , writing . Now , Thamos being king in Egypt , who is likewise a god , and whom the Greeks call Ammon , Theuth went to him and expounded to him these arts , and spoke of the great advantage of communicating them to the other Egyptians . The other asked him the use of each art , and praised or blamed it according to the answer he received . Now when the art of

    writing came under consideration , Theuth said , This art will make the Egyptians wiser , and will aid their memory : for it is a help to memory and to wisdom . The other answered , Most sage Theuth * it is one thing to be able to invent an art , and another to judge of its beneficial or hurtful effects : and now you , who are the inventor of writing , have ascribed to it , from partiality , an effect the exact opposite of its real one : this

    art will produce forgetfulness in those who learn it , by causing them to trust to written memoranda , and neglect their memory . What you have discovered , therefore , is an aid not to memory , but to recollection ; and you will give to your scholars the opinion of wisdom , not the reality : for hearing much from you , without really learning it , they will appear men of great acquirements , though really for the most part ignorant and incapable /

    Phaedrus here observed , * You very easily invent Egyptian tales , or tales of any country you please / ' They say , ' replied Socrates , * that tlie firat prophecies , those at Dodona , were delivered by an oak . The men of those days , not being so wise as we moderns , were so silly as to be content to listen to an oak or a stone , provided it did but speak the truth : but to you perhaps it is of importance who the speaker is , and from whence he comes : for you do not consider merely whether the fact is or is not so . * Your reproof is just / * He then who thinks that be can leave behind him an art in a book , and he who learns it out of a

    book , and thinks he has got something clear and solid , are extremely simple , and do not know the saying of Ammon , or they would not Buppose that a written book could do any thing more than remind one who knows already . Writing is something like painting : the creatures of the latter art look very like living beings ; but , if you ask them a question , they preserve a solemn silence . Written discourses do the same : you would

    fancy , by what they say , that they had some sense in them ; but , if you wish to learn , and therefore interrogate them , they have only their first answer to return to all questions . And when the discourse- is dnoe written , it passes from hand to hand , among all sorts of persons , —those

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    Plato ' s Dialogues ; the Phadrus . f > 41

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 641, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/37/