But now, leaving the prelude, let us proceed to the hymn.

What, then, is the nature of dialectic, and what are the paths which lead thither ?' Dear Glaucon, you cannot follow me here.
There can be no revelation of the absolute truth to one who has not been disciplined in the previous sciences.

But that there is a science of absolute truth, which is attained in some way very different from those now practised, I am confident.

For all other arts or sciences are relative to human needs and opinions; and the mathematical sciences are but a dream or hypothesis of true being, and never analyse their own principles.

Dialectic alone rises to the principle which is above hypotheses, converting and gently leading the eye of the soul out of the barbarous slough of ignorance into the light of the upper world, with the help of the sciences which we have been describing--sciences, as they are often termed, although they require some other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than science, and this in our previous sketch was understanding.