ABSTRACT
In The Republic, where he describes the constitution of his ideal state, Plato talks a little about the education of the people who will live in it. He makes the famous point that quite advanced mathematical truths can be drawn from children when they are asked the right questions in the right order, and his own philosophical method, in his dialogues, is very like this. He treats his interlocutors as children and by small, simple, logical, stealthy questions gradually draws out of them some part of the Platonic system of ideas-a system that has in one way or another dominated the mental life of the Western world ever since.
