15. Socratic Dialogue and Method. -- (1) The Socratic Dialogue and Irony. Socrates has given its name to an original method of research invented and utilized by him. He taught in the form of a dialogue. In the streets, squares and other public places, he accosted whomsoever he happened to meet and asked their opinion on some philosophical question or other. Usually finding their replies to be inaccurate, he was wont to take them delicately to task, show the inadmissible consequences that followed from their answers, and so gradually lead up the discussion to a more explicit and emphatic assertion of his own opinion: such was the procedure since known by the name of Socratic Irony. It is in keeping with the method of his philosophy.

(2) The Socratic Induction. Socrates' method is based altogether on what is termed Socratic Induction. The cardinal point of all philosophy, nay, of all science whatever, is, he tells us, the forming of general intellectual representations of things. To attain to this, he scrutinizes the concrete experiences of ordinary daily life, and by the aid of numerous comparisons draws out the universal idea that lies hidden away under the various appearances of particular things and events. Simultaneously he establishes the objectivity of human knowledge -- against the sophists, whom he consistently and perseveringly opposes. This induction of his is a simple derivation of the general from the particular, a means by which we form for ourselves the notion and definition of a thing. It has not yet the demonstrative character it assumed later on with Aristotle. Socrates himself describes it as the art of delivering the mind of a universal idea (maieutikê technê). Such is the method, or formal side, of his philosophy. What now is its content?