The following is Chapter Two of the translation and commentary of Plato's Euthydemus, by the fictional author Justus Shepherd. You can find the first few installments here:
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“What followed, Crito, how do I narrate?” Socrates paused from his story. “It is no small task describing the infinite wisdom of the two brothers. Now Euthydemus, if I remember right, began nearly as follows.”
“Oh, Clinias,” Euthydemus had said, “are those who learn the wise or the ignorant?
Clinias, being overpowered by the question, blushed. He gave Socrates a puzzled looked.
“Take courage,” Socrates had said, “and answer like a man whichever you think. I believe that you will derive the greatest benefit from their questioning.”
“Whichever he answers,” said Dionysodorus, leaning into Socrates’ ear, and his face beaming with laughter, “I prophesy that he will be refuted.”
While he had said this, Cleinias gave his answer before Socrates had time to warn him of the predicament in which he was placed. He answered, “those who learn are the wise.”
Euthydemus proceeded, “There are some whom you would call teachers, are there not?”
Clinias agreed.
“And they are the teachers of those who learn? The grammar teacher and the music teacher used to teach you and the other boys, and you were the learners?”
“Yes.”
“And when you were learners you did not as yet know the things which you were learning?”
“No,” he said.
“And were you wise then?”
“No, indeed,” he said.
“But if you were not wise, you were unlearned?”
“Certainly.”
“You then, learning what you did not know, were unlearned when you were learning?”
Clinias nodded.
“Then the unlearned learn, and not the wise, Clinias, as you imagine.”
The followers of Euthydemus laughed and cheered in a chorus. Then, before the boy had time to catch his breath, Dionysodorus took him in hand, and said, “Yes, Clinias, and when the grammar teacher dictated anything to you, were they the wise boys or the unlearned who learned the dictation?”
“The wise,” replied Clinias.
“Then, after all, the wise are the learners and not the unlearned, and your last answer to Euthydemus was wrong.”
Once more, the admirers of the two heroes, in ecstasy at their wisdom, gave way to another peal of laughter, while everyone else stood silent and amazed. Euthydemus, observing this, determined to
persevere with the boy. To heighten the effect, he went on asking another similar question. Like double turn of an expert dancer, he said, “Do those who learn, learn what they know, or what they do not know?”
Dionysodorus whispered to Socrates again, “That, Socrates, is just another of the same sort.”
“Good heavens, Socrates said, “and your last question was so good!”
“Like all our other questions, Socrates,” he replied.
“I see the why you have such a good reputation among your disciples.”
Meanwhile, Clinias had answered Euthydemus, “Those who learn, learn what they do not know.”
“Do you not know letters?”
Clinias nodded.
“All letters?”
“Yes.”
“But when the teacher dictates to you, does he not dictate letters?”
Clinias assented.
“Then if you know all letters, he dictates that which you know?”
Clinias hesitated but agreed.
“Then,” Dionysodorus jumped in, “you do not learn that which he dictates, but only he who does not know letters learns?”
“No,” said Clinias, “but I do learn.”
“Then,” Euthydemus continued, “you learn what you know if you know all the letters?”
Clinias agreed.
“Then you were wrong in your answer.”
The word was hardly out of his mouth when Dionysodorus took up the argument, like a ball which he caught, and had another throw at the boy. “Clinias,” he said, “Euthydemus is deceiving you. For tell me now, is not learning acquiring knowledge of that which one learns?”
Clinias agreed.
“And knowing is having knowledge at the time?”
He agreed.
“And not knowing is not having knowledge at the time?”
He admitted that.
“And are those who acquire those who have or not have a thing?”
“Those who do not have.”
“And have you not admitted that those who do not know are of the number of those who have not?”
He nodded.
“Then those who learn are of the class of those who acquire, and not of those who have?"
He agreed.
“Then, Clinias, he said, those who do not know learn, and not those who know.”
Euthydemus was about to give the boy a third fall, but Socrates knew that he was in deep water, and he wanted to give him a respite.
Socrates took him aside and said, “You must not be surprised, Clinias, at the singularity of their mode of speech. I say this because you may not understand what they are doing with you. They are only initiating you. Now, they are just prancing and dancing about you, and will next proceed to initiate you; imagine then that you have gone through the first part of the sophistical ritual, which, as Prodicus says, begins with initiation into the correct use of terms. The two foreign gentlemen, perceiving that you did not know, wanted to explain to you that the word "to learn" has two meanings, and is used, first, in the sense of acquiring knowledge of some matter of which you previously have no knowledge, and also, when you have the knowledge, in the sense of reviewing this matter, whether something done or spoken by the light of this newly-acquired knowledge. The latter is generally called knowing rather than learning, but the word learning is also used. And you did not see, as they explained to you, that the term is employed of two opposite sorts of men – of those who know, and of those who do not know. There was a similar trick in the second question, when they asked you whether men learn what they know or what they do not know. These parts of learning are not serious, and therefore I say that the gentlemen are not serious, but are only playing with you. For if a man had all that sort of knowledge that ever was, he would not be at all the wiser; he would only be able to play with men, tripping them up and over setting them with distinctions of words. He is like a person who pulls away a chair from someone when he is about to sit down, and then laughs at his friend overturned and laid on his back. You should regard all that has passed between you and them as merely play. But in what is to follow I am certain that they will exhibit to you their serious purpose."
Socrates then turned back to the brothers. “And now, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus,” he said, “I think that we have had enough of this. Will you let me see you explaining to the young man how he is to apply himself to the study of virtue and wisdom? And I will first show you what I conceive to be the nature of the task, and the sort of a discourse I desire to hear. If I do this in a very inartistic and ridiculous manner, do not laugh at me.”