The Platonic dialogues do not present a doctrine; they prepare the way for philosophizing. They are intended to perform the function of a living teacher who makes his students think, who knows which ones should be led further and which ones should be kept away from the mysteries, and who makes them exercise the same faculties and virtues in studying his words as they would have to use in studying nature in-dependently. One must philosophize to understand them. There is a Platonic teaching, but it is no more to be found in any of the speeches than is the thought of Shakespeare to be found in the utterances of any particular character. That thought is in none of the parts but is somehow in the whole, and the process of arriving at it is more subtle than that involved in reading a treatise. One must look at the microcosm of the drama just as one would look at the macrocosm of the world which it represents. Every detail of that world is an effect of the underlying causes which can be grasped only by the mind but which can be unearthed only by using all the senses as well. Those causes are truly known only when they are come to by way of the fullest consciousness of the world which they cause. Otherwise one does not know what to look for nor can one know the full power of the causes. A teaching which gives only the principles remains abstract and is mere dogma, for the student himself does not know what the principles explain nor does he know enough of the world to be sure. that their explanations are anything more than partial. It is this rich consciousness of the phenomena on which the dialogues insist, and they themselves provide a training in it.