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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: and the example of Socrates, which he has represented in the form of the
Dialogue, seem to have misled him. For speech and writing have really
different functions; the one is more transitory, more diffuse, more elastic
and capable of adaptation to moods and times; the other is more permanent,
more concentrated, and is uttered not to this or that person or audience,
but to all the world. In the Politicus the paradox is carried further; the
mind or will of the king is preferred to the written law; he is supposed to
be the Law personified, the ideal made Life.
Yet in both these statements there is also contained a truth; they may be
compared with one another, and also with the other famous paradox, that
'knowledge cannot be taught.' Socrates means to say, that what is truly
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