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I: Socrates wishes to find out how people should live, and he listens to the voice in his soul
Socrates was born in Greece, in the city of Athens.
Socrates' father was a working-man, a stonemason, and his mother was a midwife (...). Because of this, Socrates often said that his mother was a grandmother (...); she helped people to be born, and he did the same, except that he helped not people but people's ideas to be born.2
Socrates' father taught him his craft and also sent him to school3 to learn reading and writing and other subjects. In Athens all men were literate, and there were many different schools. There were the poorest schools, where the children studied in the courtyard and sketched letters with twigs in the sand. There were wealthier schools, where they learned their letters, drawing, and counting, and read poetry. There were the very best schools, where the pupils studied everything that the Greeks of that time knew.
From his youth Socrates was very apt and keen to learn, and his father sent him to the best school. At school Socrates studied all the subjects (...) and read works by all the best Greek writers.
Socrates finished his learning and returned to his father and once again began to work his craft, hewing stones. Socrates was a good worker, but he often fell into thought while he was working. Socrates thought about how he had studied all the subjects and learned everything that was taught, and how he had not discovered anything which he and other people needed to know.
"One must," thought Socrates, "follow this through and understand how a man should live. As it is, we learn many things, and yet our learning does us no good. Even if we found all the stars in the sky and counted all the rocks in the sea and taught everyone everything that I know, our lives would not be any the better for it. All of us people bustle around, everyone out for his own good (...), but if you take stock, we are preparing evil instead of good for ourselves. And not one of us knows where the real good for man...