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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: and hoot at him, until either he is clamoured down and retires of himself;
or if he persist, he is dragged away or put out by the constables at the
command of the prytanes. This is their way of behaving about professors of
the arts. But when the question is an affair of state, then everybody is
free to have a say--carpenter, tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and
poor, high and low--any one who likes gets up, and no one reproaches him,
as in the former case, with not having learned, and having no teacher, and
yet giving advice; evidently because they are under the impression that
this sort of knowledge cannot be taught. And not only is this true of the
state, but of individuals; the best and wisest of our citizens are unable
to impart their political wisdom to others: as for example, Pericles, the
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