As noted at various points in the commentaries, Socrates implements the entire arsenal of Western logic and rhetoric to accomplish his end of rarifying and finally fixing the point of a given dialogue. If we may adopt the Shakespearean metaphor of art as a mirror held up to nature, it may be that, for philosophy, we see ourselves mirrored in the arguments we advance and are made intellectually and spiritually better for having reflected so much and having been so reflected.