path: root/76464-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76464 ***



=Transcriber’s Note=

Bold surrounding =text=; italics surrounding _text_.

There are two types of sidenote in this book. The sidenotes in _italics_
are the original page headers, and have been preserved as a guide to the
conversation (they sometimes repeat from page to page). The sidenotes not
in italics are the “marginal analyses” referred to on the title page,
which were printed in the margins alongside the text. They have been
joined together into complete sentences where necessary. All sidenotes
have been placed at the nearest paragraph break.

Note on changes made to the text is at the end.




    THE

    DIALOGUES OF PLATO

    _JOWETT_

    VOL. II.




    THE

    DIALOGUES OF PLATO

    TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

    _WITH ANALYSES AND INTRODUCTIONS_

    BY

    B. JOWETT, M.A.

    MASTER OF BALLIOL COLLEGE
    REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
    DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN

    _IN FIVE VOLUMES_

    VOL. II

    THIRD EDITION

    _REVISED AND CORRECTED THROUGHOUT, WITH MARGINAL ANALYSES
    AND AN INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND PROPER NAMES_

    OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
    AMERICAN BRANCH
    NEW YORK: 91 AND 93, FIFTH AVENUE
    LONDON: HENRY FROWDE
    1892

    COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY MACMILLAN & CO.
    Printed at the De Vinne Press.




CONTENTS.


                           PAGE

    MENO                      1

    EUTHYPHRO                65

    APOLOGY                  95

    CRITO                   137

    PHAEDO                  157

    GORGIAS                 267

    APPENDIX I:—

        LESSER HIPPIAS      433

        ALCIBIADES I        457

        MENEXENUS           511

    APPENDIX II:—

        ALCIBIADES II       535

        ERYXIAS             555




MENO.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Meno._]

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

    This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who =Steph.= 70
    asks ‘whether virtue can be taught.’ Socrates replies that
    he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known         71
    any one who did. ‘Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was
    at Athens.’ Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a bad
    memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell
    him his own notion, which is probably not very different from
    that of Gorgias? ‘O yes—nothing easier: there is the virtue         72
    of a man, of a woman, of an old man, and of a child; there is
    a virtue of every age and state of life, all of which may be easily
    described.’

    Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the       73
    virtues and not a definition of the notion which is common to
    them all. In a second attempt Meno defines virtue to be ‘the
    power of command.’ But to this, again, exceptions are taken.
    For there must be a virtue of those who obey, as well as of those
    who command; and the power of command must be justly or not
    unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that justice is
    virtue: ‘Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other
    virtues, such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round   74
    is a figure, and black and white are colours, and yet there are
    other figures and other colours. Let Meno take the examples
    of figure and colour, and try to define them.’ Meno confesses
    his inability, and after a process of interrogation, in which Socrates
    explains to him the nature of a ‘simile in multis,’ Socrates        75
    himself defines figure as ‘the accompaniment of colour.’ But
    some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the
    word ‘colour;’ and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere
    disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and
    more philosophical definition, into which no disputed word is
    allowed to intrude: ‘Figure is the limit of form.’ Meno imperiously 76
    insists that he must still have a definition of colour.
    Some raillery follows; and at length Socrates is induced to reply,
    ‘that colour is the effluence of form, sensible, and in due proportion
    to the sight.’ This definition is exactly suited to the taste
    of Meno, who welcomes the familiar language of Gorgias and
    Empedocles. Socrates is of opinion that the more abstract or
    dialectical definition of figure is far better.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 78-81._]

    Now that Meno has been made to understand the nature of
    a general definition, he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman,
    and in the words of a poet, ‘that virtue is to delight in           77
    things honourable, and to have the power of getting them.’
    This is a nearer approximation than he has yet made to a complete
    definition, and, regarded as a piece of proverbial or popular
    morality, is not far from the truth. But the objection is urged,
    ‘that the honourable is the good,’ and as every one equally desires
    the good, the point of the definition is contained in the words,    78
    ‘the power of getting them.’ ‘And they must be got justly or
    with justice.’ The definition will then stand thus: ‘Virtue is the
    power of getting good with justice.’ But justice is a part of       79
    virtue, and therefore virtue is the getting of good with a part of
    virtue. The definition repeats the word defined.
    Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect     80
    of a torpedo’s shock upon him. When he talks with other
    persons he has plenty to say about virtue; in the presence of
    Socrates, his thoughts desert him. Socrates replies that he is
    only the cause of perplexity in others, because he is himself
    perplexed. He proposes to continue the enquiry. But how,
    asks Meno, can he enquire either into what he knows or into
    what he does not know? This is a sophistical puzzle, which,         81
    as Socrates remarks, saves a great deal of trouble to him who
    accepts it. But the puzzle has a real difficulty latent under it,
    to which Socrates will endeavour to find a reply. The difficulty
    is the origin of knowledge:—

[Sidenote: _Analysis 81-93._]

    He has heard from priests and priestesses, and from the poet
    Pindar, of an immortal soul which is born again and again in
    successive periods of existence, returning into this world when
    she has paid the penalty of ancient crime, and, having wandered
    over all places of the upper and under world, and seen and known
    all things at one time or other, is by association out of one thing
    capable of recovering all. For nature is of one kindred; and
    every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed into all       82
    knowledge. The existence of this latent knowledge is further
    proved by the interrogation of one of Meno’s slaves, who, in
    the skilful hands of Socrates, is made to acknowledge some
    elementary relations of geometrical figures. The theorem that
    the square of the diagonal is double the square of the side—that 83-85
    famous discovery of primitive mathematics, in honour of which
    the legendary Pythagoras is said to have sacrificed a hecatomb—is
    elicited from him. The first step in the process of teaching
    has made him conscious of his own ignorance. He has had the
    ‘torpedo’s shock’ given him, and is the better for the operation.
    But whence had the uneducated man this knowledge? He had            86
    never learnt geometry in this world; nor was it born with him;
    he must therefore have had it when he was not a man. And
    as he always either was or was not a man, he must have always
    had it. (Cp. Phaedo, 73 B.)

    After Socrates has given this specimen of the true nature of
    teaching, the original question of the teachableness of virtue is
    renewed. Again he professes a desire to know ‘what virtue is’
    first. But he is willing to argue the question, as mathematicians   87
    say, under an hypothesis. He will assume that if virtue is knowledge,
    then virtue can be taught. (This was the stage of the               88
    argument at which the Protagoras concluded.)

[Sidenote: _Analysis 93-100._]

    Socrates has no difficulty in showing that virtue is a good,
    and that goods, whether of body or mind, must be under the
    direction of knowledge. Upon the assumption just made, then,
    virtue is teachable. But where are the teachers? There are          89
    none to be found. This is extremely discouraging. Virtue is no
    sooner discovered to be teachable, than the discovery follows that
    it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and is not teachable.
    In this dilemma an appeal is made to Anytus, a respectable and      90
    well-to-do citizen of the old school, and a family friend of Meno,
    who happens to be present. He is asked ‘whether Meno shall          91
    go to the Sophists and be taught.’ The suggestion throws him into   92
    a rage. ‘To whom, then, shall Meno go?’ asks Socrates. To           93
    any Athenian gentleman—to the great Athenian statesmen of past
    times. Socrates replies here, as elsewhere (Laches 179 C foll.;
    Prot. 319 foll.), that Themistocles, Pericles, and other great men, 94
    had sons to whom they would surely, if they could have done so,
    have imparted their own political wisdom; but no one ever heard
    that these sons of theirs were remarkable for anything except
    riding and wrestling and similar accomplishments. Anytus is
    angry at the imputation which is cast on his favourite statesmen,
    and on a class to which he supposes himself to belong (cp.
    95 A); he breaks off with a significant hint. The mention of        95
    another opportunity of talking with him (99 E), and the suggestion
    that Meno may do the Athenian people a service by pacifying
    him (100), are evident allusions to the trial of Socrates.

    Socrates returns to the consideration of the question ‘whether
    virtue is teachable,’ which was denied on the ground that there
    are no teachers of it: (for the Sophists are bad teachers, and the  96
    rest of the world do not profess to teach). But there is another
    point which we failed to observe, and in which Gorgias has never
    instructed Meno, nor Prodicus Socrates. This is the nature of
    right opinion. For virtue may be under the guidance of right        97
    opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion is for practical
    purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of being taught,
    and is also liable, like the images of Daedalus, to ‘walk off,’     98
    because not bound by the tie of the cause. This is the sort of
    instinct which is possessed by statesmen, who are not wise or
    knowing persons, but only inspired or divine. The higher virtue,    99
    which is identical with knowledge, is an ideal only. If the statesman
    had this knowledge, and could teach what he knew, he would
    be like Tiresias in the world below,—‘he alone has wisdom,         100
    but the rest flit like shadows.’

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be taught?
No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern times. But
in the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind could rise
to a general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular virtues of
courage, liberality, and the like. And when a hazy conception of this
ideal was attained, it was only by a further effort that the question of
the teachableness of virtue could be resolved.

[Sidenote: _Virtue, knowledge, and true opinion._]

The answer which is given by Plato is paradoxical enough, and seems
rather intended to stimulate than to satisfy enquiry. Virtue is
knowledge, and therefore virtue can be taught. But virtue is not taught,
and therefore in this higher and ideal sense there is no virtue and no
knowledge. The teaching of the Sophists is confessedly inadequate, and
Meno, who is their pupil, is ignorant of the very nature of general
terms. He can only produce out of their armoury the sophism, ‘that you
can neither enquire into what you know nor into what you do not know;’ to
which Socrates replies by his theory of reminiscence.

To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly
tending in the previous Dialogues. But the new truth is no sooner found
than it vanishes away. ‘If there is knowledge, there must be teachers;
and where are the teachers?’ There is no knowledge in the higher sense
of systematic, connected, reasoned knowledge, such as may one day be
attained, and such as Plato himself seems to see in some far off vision
of a single science. And there are no teachers in the higher sense of
the word; that is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit
of enquiry in their pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or
impart to them ready-made information for a fee of ‘one’ or of ‘fifty
drachms.’ Plato is desirous of deepening the notion of education, and
therefore he asserts the paradox that there are no educators. This
paradox, though different in form, is not really different from the
remark which is often made in modern times by those who would depreciate
either the methods of education commonly employed, or the standard
attained—that ‘there is no true education among us.’

There remains still a possibility which must not be overlooked. Even
if there be no true knowledge, as is proved by ‘the wretched state of
education,’ there may be right opinion, which is a sort of guessing or
divination resting on no knowledge of causes, and incommunicable to
others. This is the gift which our statesmen have, as is proved by the
circumstance that they are unable to impart their knowledge to their
sons. Those who are possessed of it cannot be said to be men of science
or philosophers, but they are inspired and divine.

[Sidenote: _Reminiscence and immortality._]

There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms
the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not
mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of
human life. To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of all
things the most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing to
admit that ‘probability is the guide of life[1];’ and he is at the same
time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which governs the world with a
higher wisdom. There are many instincts, judgments, and anticipations of
the human mind which cannot be reduced to rule, and of which the grounds
cannot always be given in words. A person may have some skill or latent
experience which he is able to use himself and is yet unable to teach
others, because he has no principles, and is incapable of collecting
or arranging his ideas. He has practice, but not theory; art, but not
science. This is a true fact of psychology, which is recognized by Plato
in this passage. But he is far from saying, as some have imagined, that
inspiration or divine grace is to be regarded as higher than knowledge.
He would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the philosopher,
or the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.

Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an
unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only has
knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There may be
a sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But there
is no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he is
deriding the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or of
oracles in the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking of
the daemonium of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right opinion,
as well as the higher one of science, in the spirit of one who desires
to include in his philosophy every aspect of human life; just as he
recognizes the existence of popular opinion as a fact, and the Sophists
as the expression of it.

[Sidenote: _Some lesser traits of the Dialogue._]

This Dialogue probably contains the first intimation of the doctrine of
reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul.[2] The proof is very
slight even slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had
abstract ideas in a previous state, they must have always had them, and
their souls therefore must have always existed (86 A). For they must
always have been either men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words
is transparent. And Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their
weakness; for he adds immediately afterwards, ‘I have said some things
of which I am not altogether confident.’ (Cp. Phaedo 114 D, 115 D.) It
may be observed, however, that the fanciful notion of pre-existence
is combined with a true but partial view of the origin and unity of
knowledge, and of the association of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any
particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the
individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be
appropriated by strenuous exertion.

The idealism of Plato is here presented in a less developed form than
in the Phaedo and Phaedrus. Nothing is said of the pre-existence of
ideas of justice, temperance, and the like. Nor is Socrates positive of
anything but the duty of enquiry (86 B). The doctrine of reminiscence
too is explained more in accordance with fact and experience as arising
out of the affinities of nature (ἅτε τῆς φύσεως ὅλης συγγενοῦς οὔσης).
Modern philosophy says that all things in nature are dependent on one
another; the ancient philosopher had the same truth latent in his mind
when he affirmed that out of one thing all the rest may be recovered. The
subjective was converted by him into an objective; the mental phenomenon
of the association of ideas (cp. Phaedo 73 foll.) became a real chain of
existences. The germs of two valuable principles of education may also
be gathered from the ‘words of priests and priestesses:’ (1) that true
knowledge is a knowledge of causes (cp. Aristotle’s theory of ἐπιστήμη);
and (2) that the process of learning consists not in what is brought to
the learner, but in what is drawn out of him.

Some lesser points of the dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the
acute observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is
embellished with poetical language, to the better and truer one (76
D); or (2) the shrewd reflection, which may admit of an application to
modern as well as to ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made
large fortunes, this must surely be a criterion of their powers of
teaching, for that no man could get a living by shoemaking who was not
a good shoemaker (91 C); or (3) the remark, conveyed almost in a word,
that the verbal sceptic is saved the labour of thought and enquiry οὐδὲν
δεῖ τῷ τοιούτῳ ζητήσεως, (80 E). Characteristic also of the temper of
the Socratic enquiry is, (4) the proposal to discuss the teachableness
of virtue under an hypothesis, after the manner of the mathematicians
(87 A); and (5) the repetition of the favourite doctrine which occurs
so frequently in the earlier and more Socratic Dialogues, and gives a
colour to all of them—that mankind only desire evil through ignorance
(77, 78 foll.); (6) the experiment of eliciting from the slave-boy the
mathematical truth which is latent in him, and (7) the remark (84 B) that
he is all the better for knowing his ignorance.

[Sidenote: _Characters of Meno and Anytus._]

The character of Meno, like that of Critias, has no relation to the
actual circumstances of his life. Plato is silent about his treachery
to the Ten Thousand Greeks, which Xenophon has recorded, as he is also
silent about the crimes of Critias. He is a Thessalian Alcibiades,
rich and luxurious—a spoilt child of fortune, and is described as the
hereditary friend of the great king. Like Alcibiades he is inspired
with an ardent desire of knowledge, and is equally willing to learn
of Socrates and of the Sophists. He may be regarded as standing in
the same relation to Gorgias as Hippocrates in the Protagoras to the
other great Sophist. He is the sophisticated youth on whom Socrates
tries his cross-examining powers just as in the Charmides, the Lysis,
and the Euthydemus, ingenuous boyhood is made the subject of a similar
experiment. He is treated by Socrates in a half-playful manner suited to
his character; at the same time he appears not quite to understand the
process to which he is being subjected. For he is exhibited as ignorant
of the very elements of dialectics, in which the Sophists have failed
to instruct their disciple. His definition of virtue as ‘the power
and desire of attaining things honourable,’ like the first definition
of justice in the Republic, is taken from a poet. His answers have a
sophistical ring, and at the same time show the sophistical incapacity to
grasp a general notion.

Anytus is the type of the narrow-minded man of the world, who is
indignant at innovation, and equally detests the popular teacher and
the true philosopher. He seems, like Aristophanes, to regard the new
opinions, whether of Socrates or the Sophists, as fatal to Athenian
greatness. He is of the same class as Callicles in the Gorgias, but of
a different variety; the immoral and sophistical doctrines of Callicles
are not attributed to him. The moderation with which he is described is
remarkable, if he be the accuser of [Sidenote: _Relation of the Meno to
other Dialogues._]

Socrates, as is apparently indicated by his parting words. Perhaps Plato
may have been desirous of showing that the accusation of Socrates was
not to be attributed to badness or malevolence, but rather to a tendency
in men’s minds. Or he may have been regardless of the historical truth
of the characters of his dialogue, as in the case of Meno and Critias.
Like Chaerephon (Apol. 21) the real Anytus was a democrat, and had joined
Thrasybulus in the conflict with the Thirty.

The Protagoras arrived at a sort of hypothetical conclusion, that if
‘virtue is knowledge, it can be taught.’ In the Euthydemus, Socrates
himself offered an example of the manner in which the true teacher
may draw out the mind of youth; this was in contrast to the quibbling
follies of the Sophists. In the Meno the subject is more developed; the
foundations of the enquiry are laid deeper, and the nature of knowledge
is more distinctly explained. There is a progression by antagonism of
two opposite aspects of philosophy. But at the moment when we approach
nearest, the truth doubles upon us and passes out of our reach. We seem
to find that the ideal of knowledge is irreconcilable with experience. In
human life there is indeed the profession of knowledge, but right opinion
is our actual guide. There is another sort of progress from the general
notions of Socrates, who asked simply, ‘what is friendship?’ ‘what is
temperance?’ ‘what is courage?’ as in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches,
to the transcendentalism of Plato, who, in the second stage of his
philosophy, sought to find the nature of knowledge in a prior and future
state of existence.

The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and
in all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as
well as in the Republic. In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but
in stronger opposition to the philosopher. They are no longer allowed to
have a divine insight, but, though acknowledged to have been clever men
and good speakers, are denounced as ‘blind leaders of the blind.’ The
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is also carried further, being
made the foundation not only of a theory of knowledge, but of a doctrine
of rewards and punishments. In the Republic the relation of knowledge to
virtue is described in a manner more consistent with modern distinctions.
The existence of the virtues without the possession of knowledge in the
higher or philosophical sense is admitted to be possible. Right opinion
is again introduced in the Theaetetus as an account of knowledge, but is
rejected on the ground that it is irrational (as here, because it is not
bound by the tie of the cause), and also because the conception of false
opinion is given up as hopeless. The doctrines of Plato are necessarily
different at different times of his life, as new distinctions are
realized, or new stages of thought attained by him. We are not therefore
justified, in order to take away the appearance of inconsistency, in
attributing to him hidden meanings or remote allusions.

[Sidenote: _Date of the Dialogue._]

There are no external criteria by which we can determine the date of the
Meno. There is no reason to suppose that any of the Dialogues of Plato
were written before the death of Socrates; the Meno, which appears to be
one of the earliest of them, is proved to have been of a later date by
the allusion of Anytus (94 E, 95 A. Cp. also 80 B, 100 B).

We cannot argue that Plato was more likely to have written, as he has
done, of Meno before than after his miserable death; for we have already
seen, in the examples of Charmides and Critias, that the characters in
Plato are very far from resembling the same characters in history. The
repulsive picture which is given of him in the Anabasis of Xenophon (ii.
6), where he also appears as the friend of Aristippus ‘and a fair youth
having lovers,’ has no other trait of likeness to the Meno of Plato.

The place of the Meno in the series is doubtfully indicated by internal
evidence. The main character of the Dialogue is Socrates; but to the
‘general definitions’ of Socrates is added the Platonic doctrine of
reminiscence. The problems of virtue and knowledge have been discussed in
the Lysis, Laches, Charmides, and Protagoras; the puzzle about knowing
and learning has already appeared in the Euthydemus. The doctrines of
immortality and pre-existence are carried further in the Phaedrus and
Phaedo; the distinction between opinion and knowledge is more fully
developed in the Theaetetus. The lessons of Prodicus, whom he facetiously
calls his master, are still running in the mind of Socrates. Unlike
the later Platonic Dialogues, the Meno arrives at no conclusion. Hence
we are led to place the Dialogue at some point of time later than the
Protagoras, and earlier than the Phaedrus and Gorgias. The place which
is assigned to it in this work is due mainly to the desire to bring
together in a single volume all the Dialogues which contain allusions to
the trial and death of Socrates.


_On the Ideas of Plato._

[Sidenote: _The popular notion of the ideas of Plato._]

Plato’s doctrine of ideas has attained an imaginary clearness and
definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings. The popular
account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his
Dialogues interpreted without regard to their poetical environment. It
is due also to the misunderstanding of him by the Aristotelian school;
and the erroneous notion has been further narrowed and has become fixed
by the realism of the schoolmen. This popular view of the Platonic ideas
may be summed up in some such formula as the following: ‘Truth consists
not in particulars, but in universals, which have a place in the mind of
God, or in some far-off heaven. These were revealed to men in a former
state of existence, and are recovered by reminiscence (ἀνάμνησις) or
association from sensible things. The sensible things are not realities,
but shadows only, in relation to the truth.’ These unmeaning propositions
are hardly suspected to be a caricature of a great theory of knowledge,
which Plato in various ways and under many figures of speech is seeking
to unfold. Poetry has been converted into dogma; and it is not remarked
that the Platonic ideas are to be found only in about a third of Plato’s
writings and are not confined to him. The forms which they assume are
numerous, and if taken literally, inconsistent with one another. At one
time we are in the clouds of mythology, at another among the abstractions
of mathematics or metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly from one to the
other. Reason and fancy are mingled in the same passage. The ideas are
sometimes described as many, coextensive with the universals of sense
and also with the first principles of ethics; or again they are absorbed
into the single idea of good, and subordinated to it. They are not more
certain than facts, but they are equally certain (Phaedo 100 A). They
are both personal and impersonal. They are abstract terms: they are also
the causes of things; and they are even transformed into the demons or
spirits by whose help God made the world. And the idea of good (Rep. vi.
505 ff.) may without violence be converted into the Supreme Being, who
‘because He was good’ created all things (Tim. 29 E).

[Sidenote: _Many modes of describing the ideas,_]

It would be a mistake to try and reconcile these differing modes of
thought. They are not to be regarded seriously as having a distinct
meaning. They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations,
aspirations after an unknown world. They derive their origin from a deep
religious and contemplative feeling, and also from an observation of
curious mental phenomena. They gather up the elements of the previous
philosophies, which they put together in a new form. Their great
diversity shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think.
They have not yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them,
though he also criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others
are always talking about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and
that they are not peculiar to himself (Phaedo 100 B; Rep. vi. 505;
Soph. 248 ff.). But in his later writings he seems to have laid aside
the old forms of them. As he proceeds he makes for himself new modes of
expression more akin to the Aristotelian logic.

Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common meaning
or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he treats of
the ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is the spirit
of idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many names and
taken many forms, and has in a measure influenced those who seemed to
be most averse to it. It has often been charged with inconsistency and
fancifulness, and yet has had an elevating effect on human nature, and
has exercised a wonderful charm and interest over a few spirits who have
been lost in the thought of it. It has been banished again and again,
but has always returned. It has attempted to leave the earth and soar
heavenwards, but soon has found that only in experience could any solid
foundation of knowledge be laid. It has degenerated into pantheism,
but has again emerged. No other knowledge has given an equal stimulus
to the mind. It is the science of sciences, which are also ideas, and
under either aspect require to be defined. They can only be thought
of in due proportion when conceived in relation to one another. They
are the glasses through which the kingdoms of science are seen, but at
a distance. All the greatest minds, except when living in an age of
reaction against them, have unconsciously fallen under their power.

[Sidenote: _but a common meaning or spirit in them._]

The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and
clearest, and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first
and then comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere, e.
g. in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the criticism
of them in the Parmenides, the personal form which is attributed to them
in the Timaeus, the logical character which they assume in the Sophist
and Philebus, and the allusion to them in the Laws (xii. 964). In the
Cratylus they dawn upon him with the freshness of a newly-discovered
thought (439).

The Meno (81 ff.) goes back to a former state of existence, in which men
did and suffered good and evil, and received the reward or punishment
of them until their sin was purged away and they were allowed to return
to earth. This is a tradition of the olden time, to which priests and
poets bear witness. The souls of men returning to earth bring back a
latent memory of ideas, which were known to them in a former state. The
recollection is awakened into life and consciousness by the sight of the
things which resemble them on earth. The soul evidently possesses such
innate ideas before she has had time to acquire them. This is proved by
an experiment tried on one of Meno’s slaves, from whom Socrates elicits
truths of arithmetic and geometry, which he had never learned in this
world. He must therefore have brought them with him from another.

The notion of a previous state of existence is found in the verses of
Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus. It was the natural answer
to two questions, ‘Whence came the soul? What is the origin of evil?’ and
prevailed far and wide in the East. It found its way into Hellas probably
though the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and mysteries. It was
easier to think of a former than of a future life, because such a life
has really existed for the race though not for the individual, and all
men come into the world, if not ‘trailing clouds of glory,’ at any rate
able to enter into the inheritance of the past. In the Phaedrus (245
ff.), as well as in the Meno, it is this former rather than a future life
on which Plato is disposed to dwell. There the Gods, and men following
in their train, go forth to contemplate the heavens, and are borne round
in the revolutions of them. There they see the divine forms of justice,
temperance, and the like, in their unchangeable beauty, but not without
an effort more than human. The soul of man is likened to a charioteer
and two steeds, one mortal, the other immortal. The charioteer and the
mortal steed are in fierce conflict; at length the animal principle is
finally overpowered, though not extinguished, by the combined energies of
the passionate and rational elements. This is one of those passages in
Plato which, partaking both of a philosophical and poetical character,
is necessarily indistinct and inconsistent. The magnificent figure under
which the nature of the soul is described has not much to do with the
popular doctrine of the ideas. Yet there is one little trait in the
description which shows that they are present to Plato’s mind, namely,
the remark that the soul, which had seen truths in the form of the
universal (248 C, 249 C), cannot again return to the nature of an animal.

[Sidenote: _The conception of them in Meno, Phaedrus, Phaedo,_]

In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of ideas is sought for in a
previous state of existence. There was no time when they could have been
acquired in this life, and therefore they must have been recovered from
another. The process of recovery is no other than the ordinary law of
association, by which in daily life the sight of one thing or person
recalls another to our minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from any
part of knowledge we may be led on to infer the whole. It is also argued
that ideas, or rather ideals, must be derived from a previous state of
existence because they are more perfect than the sensible forms of them
which are given by experience (74 ff.). But in the Phaedo the doctrine of
ideas is subordinate to the proof of the immortality of the soul. ‘If the
soul existed in a previous state, then it will exist in a future state,
for a law of alternation pervades all things.’ And, ‘If the ideas exist,
then the soul exists; if not, not.’ It is to be observed, both in the
Meno and the Phaedo, that Socrates expresses himself with diffidence.
He speaks in the Phaedo (114 D, 115 D) of the words with which he has
comforted himself and his friends, and will not be too confident that the
description which he has given of the soul and her mansions is exactly
true, but he ‘ventures to think that something of the kind is true.’
And in the Meno, after dwelling upon the immortality of the soul, he
adds, ‘Of some things which I have said I am not altogether confident’
(cp. 86 C, and Apology, pp. 40 ff.; Gorgias 527 B). From this class of
uncertainties he exempts the difference between truth and appearance, of
which he is absolutely convinced (98 B).

[Sidenote: _in the Republic and Timaeus._]

In the Republic the ideas are spoken of in two ways, which though not
contradictory are different. In the tenth book (596 ff.) they are
represented as the genera or general ideas under which individuals having
a common name are contained. For example, there is the bed which the
carpenter makes, the picture of the bed which is drawn by the painter,
the bed existing in nature of which God is the author. Of the latter
all visible beds are only the shadows or reflections. This and similar
illustrations or explanations are put forth, not for their own sake, or
as an exposition of Plato’s theory of ideas, but with a view of showing
that poetry and the mimetic arts are concerned with an inferior part
of the soul and a lower kind of knowledge. On the other hand, in the
6th and 7th books of the Republic we reach the highest and most perfect
conception, which Plato is able to attain, of the nature of knowledge.
The ideas are now finally seen to be one as well as many, causes as well
as ideas, and to have a unity which is the idea of good and the cause
of all the rest. They seem, however, to have lost their first aspect
of universals under which individuals are contained, and to have been
converted into forms of another kind, which are inconsistently regarded
from the one side as images or ideals of justice, temperance, holiness
and the like; from the other as hypotheses, or mathematical truths or
principles.

In the Timaeus, which in the series of Plato’s works immediately follows
the Republic, though probably written some time afterwards, no mention
occurs of the doctrine of ideas. Geometrical forms and arithmetical
ratios furnish the laws according to which the world is created. But
though the conception of the ideas as genera or species is forgotten or
laid aside, the distinction of the visible and intellectual is as firmly
maintained as ever (30, 37). The _idea_ of good likewise disappears and
is superseded by the conception of a personal God, who works according to
a final cause or principle of goodness which he himself is. No doubt is
expressed by Plato, either in the Timaeus or in any other dialogue, of
the truths which he conceives to be the first and highest. It is not the
existence of God or the idea of good which he approaches in a tentative
or hesitating manner, but the investigations of physiology. These he
regards, not seriously, as a part of philosophy, but as an innocent
recreation (Tim. 59 D).

[Sidenote: _The ideas in the Parmenides, Sophist, Philebus, Laws._]

Passing on to the Parmenides (128-136), we find in that dialogue not
an exposition or defence of the doctrine of ideas, but an assault upon
them, which is put into the mouth of the veteran Parmenides, and might be
ascribed to Aristotle himself, or to one of his disciples. The doctrine
which is assailed takes two or three forms, but fails in any of them to
escape the dialectical difficulties which are urged against it. It is
admitted that there are ideas of all things, but the manner in which
individuals partake of them, whether of the whole or of the part, and
in which they become like them, or how ideas can be either within or
without the sphere of human knowledge, or how the human and divine can
have any relation to each other, is held to be incapable of explanation.
And yet, if there are no universal ideas, what becomes of philosophy?
(Parmenides 130-135). In the Sophist the theory of ideas is spoken of as
a doctrine held not by Plato, but by another sect of philosophers, called
‘the Friends of Ideas,’ probably the Megarians, who were very distinct
from him, if not opposed to him (Sophist 242 ff.). Nor in what may be
termed Plato’s abridgement of the history of philosophy (Soph. 241 ff.),
is any mention made such as we find in the first book of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, of the derivation of such a theory or of any part of it from
the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Heracleiteans, or even from Socrates.
In the Philebus, probably one of the latest of the Platonic Dialogues,
the conception of a personal or semi-personal deity expressed under the
figure of mind, the king of all, who is also the cause, is retained. The
one and many of the Phaedrus and Theaetetus is still working in the mind
of Plato, and the correlation of ideas, not of ‘all with all,’ but of
‘some with some,’ is asserted and explained. But they are spoken of in
a different manner, and are not supposed to be recovered from a former
state of existence. The metaphysical conception of truth passes into
a psychological one, which is continued in the Laws, and is the final
form of the Platonic philosophy, so far as can be gathered from his own
writings (see especially Laws v. 727 ff.). In the Laws he harps once more
on the old string, and returns to general notions:—these he acknowledges
to be many, and yet he insists that they are also one. The guardian must
be made to recognize the truth, for which he has contended long ago in
the Protagoras, that the virtues are four, but they are also in some
sense one (Laws xii. pp. 965-966; cp. Protagoras 329).

So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the
statements of Plato respecting the doctrine of ideas. If we attempted to
harmonize or to combine them, we should make out of them, not a system,
but the caricature of a system. They are the ever-varying expression
of Plato’s Idealism. The terms used in them are in their substance
and general meaning the same, although they seem to be different.
They pass from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to
heaven (jenseits), without regard to the gulf which later theology and
philosophy have made between them. They are also intended to supplement
or explain each other. They relate to a subject of which Plato himself
would have said that ‘he was not confident of the precise form of his
own statements, but was strong in the belief that something of the kind
was true.’ It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agree—the
spirit which places the divine above the human, the spiritual above the
material, the one above the many, the mind before the body.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _Ancient and modern philosophy._]

The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times
widens into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear
after many ages in a distant land. It begins to flow again under new
conditions, at first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally
spreading over the continent of Europe. It is and is not the same with
ancient philosophy. There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is
inspired by ancient. There is much in ancient philosophy which was ‘born
out of due time’ and before men were capable of understanding it. To
the fathers of modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new
and original, but they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past,
coming back by recollection from an elder world. Of this the enquirers
of the seventeenth century, who to themselves appeared to be working out
independently the enquiry into all truth, were unconscious. They stood
in a new relation to theology and natural philosophy, and for a time
maintained towards both an attitude of reserve and separation. Yet the
similarities between modern and ancient thought are greater far than the
differences. All philosophy, even that part of it which is said to be
based upon experience, is really ideal; and ideas are not only derived
from facts, but they are also prior to them and extend far beyond them,
just as the mind is prior to the senses.

[Sidenote: _Modern philosophy has a reminiscence of ancient;_]

Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas of Plato, or rather in
the single idea of good. His followers, and perhaps he himself, having
arrived at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from
philosophy to psychology, from ideas to numbers. But what we perceive
to be the real meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin
of knowledge, will always continue to be one of the first problems of
philosophy.

Plato also left behind him a most potent instrument, the forms of
logic—arms ready for use, but not yet taken out of their armoury. They
were the late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only
part of it which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe.
Philosophies come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing
of definitions, the invention of methods still continue to be the main
elements of the reasoning process.

[Sidenote: _begins with simple ideas: Descartes._]

Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions.
It is almost wholly a reflection on self. It might be described
as a quickening into life of old words and notions latent in the
semi-barbarous Latin, and putting a new meaning into them. Unlike ancient
philosophy, it has been unaffected by impressions derived from outward
nature: it arose within the limits of the mind itself. From the time of
Descartes to Hume and Kant it has had little or nothing to do with facts
of science. On the other hand, the ancient and mediaeval logic retained
a continuous influence over it, and a form like that of mathematics was
easily impressed upon it; the principle of ancient philosophy which is
most apparent in it is scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional
or received notion, that we may hold fast one or two. The being of God
in a personal or impersonal form was a mental necessity to the first
thinkers of modern times: from this alone all other ideas could be
deduced. There had been an obscure presentiment of ‘cogito, ergo sum’
more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic notion that being and
thought were the same was revived in a new form by Descartes. But now it
gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection: it awakened the ‘ego’
in human nature. The mind naked and abstract has no other certainty but
the conviction of its own existence. ‘I think, therefore I am;’ and this
thought is God thinking in me, who has also communicated to the reason of
man his own attributes of thought and extension—these are truly imparted
to him because God is true (cp. Rep. ii. 382 ff.). It has been often
remarked that Descartes, having begun by dismissing all presuppositions,
introduces several: he passes almost at once from scepticism to
dogmatism. It is more important for the illustration of Plato to observe
that he, like Plato, insists that God is true and incapable of deception
(Rep. ii. 382)—that he proceeds from general ideas, that many elements
of mathematics may be found in him. A certain influence of mathematics
both on the form and substance of their philosophy is discernible in
both of them. After making the greatest opposition between thought and
extension, Descartes, like Plato, supposes them to be reunited for a
time, not in their own nature but by a special divine act (cp. Phaedrus
246 C), and he also supposes all the parts of the human body to meet
in the pineal gland, that alone affording a principle of unity in the
material frame of man. It is characteristic of the first period of modern
philosophy, that having begun (like the Presocratics) with a few general
notions, Descartes first falls absolutely under their influence, and then
quickly discards them. At the same time he is less able to observe facts,
because they are too much magnified by the glasses through which they
are seen. The common logic says ‘the greater the extension, the less the
comprehension,’ and we may put the same thought in another way and say of
abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them, the
less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete natures.

[Sidenote: _Parallels of ancient and modern philosophy._]

Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy
is his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The
system of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic that than
of Descartes. In this respect the difference between them is like that
between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be
described generally as the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction
and taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is
overpowered and intoxicated with the idea of Being or God. The greatness
of both philosophies consists in the immensity of a thought which
excludes all other thoughts; their weakness is the necessary separation
of this thought from actual existence and from practical life. In neither
of them is there any clear opposition between the inward and outward
world. The substance of Spinoza has two attributes, which alone are
cognizable by man, thought and extension; these are in extreme opposition
to one another, and also in inseparable identity. They may be regarded as
the two aspects or expressions under which God or substance is unfolded
to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the Eleatic philosophy.
The famous theorem of Spinoza, ‘Omnis determinatio est negatio,’ is
already contained in the ‘negation is relation’ of Plato’s Sophist. The
grand description of the philosopher in Republic vi, as the spectator
of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with another famous
expression of Spinoza, ‘Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.’
According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they are conditioned
by what is alien to them, and by one another. Human beings are included
in the number of them. Hence there is no reality in human action and no
place for right and wrong. Individuality is accident. The boasted freedom
of the will is only a consciousness of necessity. Truth, he says, is the
direction of the reason towards the infinite, in which all things repose;
and herein lies the secret of man’s well-being. In the exaltation of the
reason or intellect, in the denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus
86 C, D; Laws, ix. 860), Spinoza approaches nearer to Plato than in
his conception of an infinite substance. As Plato, following Socrates,
said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would have maintained that
knowledge alone is good, and what contributes to knowledge, useful. Both
are equally far from any real experience or observation of nature. And
the same difficulty is found in both when we seek to apply their ideas to
life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between the infinite substance
and finite objects or individuals of Spinoza, just as there is between
the ideas of Plato and the world of sense.

Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the philosopher
Leibnitz, who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between
mind and matter, reunites them by his preconcerted harmony (cp. again
Phaedrus 246 C). To him all the particles of matter are living beings
which reflect on one another, and in the least of them the whole is
contained. Here we catch a reminiscence both of the ὁμοιομερῆ or similar
particles of Anaxagoras, and of the world-animal of the Timaeus.

[Sidenote: _Spinoza, Leibnitz, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume._]

In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of
man is supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by
observation and experience. But we may remark that it is the idea of
experience, rather than experience itself, with which the mind is filled.
It is a symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is vouchsafed
to us. The Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual facts than the
Organon of Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good. Many of the old rags
and ribbons which defaced the garment of philosophy have been stripped
off, but some of them still adhere. A crude conception of the ideas of
Plato survives in the ‘forms’ of Bacon. And on the other hand, there
are many passages of Plato in which the importance of the investigation
of facts is as much insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are almost equally
superior to the illusions of language, and are constantly crying out
against them, as against other idols.

Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author of sensationalism any
more than of idealism. His system is based upon experience, but with
him experience includes reflection as well as sense. His analysis and
construction of ideas has no foundation in fact; it is only the dialectic
of the mind ‘talking to herself.’ The philosophy of Berkeley is but the
use of one word instead of two, which have the same meaning with it. For
objects of sense he would substitute sensations. He imagines himself
to have changed the relation of the human mind towards God and nature;
they remain the same as before, though he has drawn the imaginary line
by which they are divided at a different point. He has annihilated the
outward world, but it instantly reappears governed by the same laws and
described under the same names.

[Sidenote: _Philosophy and the history of philosophy._]

A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central
principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect. He would
deprive men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to lose; but he
seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and does
not in any degree affect the nature of things. Still less did he remark
that he was arguing from the necessary imperfection of language against
the most certain facts. And here, again, we may find a parallel with the
ancients. He goes beyond facts in his scepticism, as they did in their
idealism. Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more important
principles of ethics to custom and probability. But crude and unmeaning
as this philosophy is, it exercised a great influence on his successors,
not unlike that which Locke exercised upon Berkeley and Berkeley upon
Hume himself. All three were both sceptical and ideal in almost equal
degrees. Neither they nor their predecessors had any true conception
of language or of the history of philosophy. Hume’s paradox has been
forgotten by the world, and did not any more than the scepticism of the
ancients require to be seriously refuted. Like some other philosophical
paradoxes, it would have been better left to die out. It certainly could
not be refuted by a philosophy such as Kant’s, in which, no less than
in the previously mentioned systems, the history of the human mind and
the nature of language are almost wholly ignored, and the certainty of
objective knowledge is transferred to the subject; while absolute truth
is reduced to a figment, more abstract and narrow than Plato’s ideas, of
‘thing in itself,’ to which, if we reason strictly, no predicate can be
applied.

[Sidenote: _Possibility of a new method._]

The question which Plato has raised respecting the origin and nature of
ideas belongs to the infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would no
longer be asked. Their origin is only their history, so far as we know
it; there can be no other. We may trace them in language, in philosophy,
in mythology, in poetry, but we cannot argue _à priori_ about them. We
may attempt to shake them off, but they are always returning, and in
every sphere of science and human action are tending to go beyond facts.
They are thought to be innate, because they have been familiar to us
all our lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind. Many of
them express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at
all _in rerum naturâ_ corresponds. We are not such free agents in the
use of them as we sometimes imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most
complete possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to
renounce them, and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least
explained and were incapable of proof. The world has often been led away
by a word to which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstractions
such as ‘authority,’ ‘equality,’ ‘utility,’ ‘liberty,’ ‘pleasure,’
‘experience,’ ‘consciousness,’ chance,’ ‘substance,’ ‘matter,’ ‘atom,’
and a heap of other metaphysical and theological terms, are the source of
quite as much error and illusion and have as little relation to actual
facts as the ‘ideas’ of Plato. Few students of theology or philosophy
have sufficiently reflected how quickly the bloom of a philosophy passes
away; or how hard it is for one age to understand the writings of
another; or how nice a judgment is required of those who are seeking to
express the philosophy of one age in the terms of another. The ‘eternal
truths’ of which metaphysicians speak have hardly ever lasted more than
a generation. In our own day schools or systems of philosophy which have
once been famous have died before the founders of them. We are still, as
in Plato’s age, groping about for a new method more comprehensive than
any of those which now prevail; and also more permanent. And we seem to
see at a distance the promise of such a method, which can hardly be any
other than the method of idealized experience, having roots which strike
far down into the history of philosophy. It is a method which does not
divorce the present from the past, or the part from the whole, or the
abstract from the concrete, or theory from fact, or the divine from the
human, or one science from another, but labours to connect them. Along
such a road we have proceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make
us reflect on the want of method which prevails in our own day. In
another age, all the branches of knowledge, whether relating to God or
man or nature, will become the knowledge of ‘the revelation of a single
science’ (Symp. 210, 211), and all things, like the stars in heaven, will
shed their light upon one another.


MENO.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

MENO. A SLAVE OF MENO. SOCRATES. ANYTUS.

[Sidenote: _Meno._]

    _Meno._ Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired
    by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching
    nor by practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or
    in what other way?

[Sidenote: Meno asks Socrates ‘How virtue can be acquired?’ Before giving
an answer Socrates must enquire ‘What is virtue?’]

    _Socrates._ O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians
    were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches
    and their riding; but now, if I am not mistaken, they are
    equally famous for their wisdom, especially at Larisa, which
    is the native city of your friend Aristippus. And this is
    Gorgias’ doing; for when he came there, the flower of the
    Aleuadae, among them your admirer Aristippus, and the
    other chiefs of the Thessalians, fell in love with his wisdom.
    And he has taught you the habit of answering questions in a
    grand and bold style, which becomes those who know, and
    is the style in which he himself answers all comers; and any
    Hellene who likes may ask him anything. How different is
    our lot! my dear Meno. Here at Athens there is a dearth    =Steph.= 71
    of the commodity, and all wisdom seems to have emigrated
    from us to you. I am certain that if you were to ask any
    Athenian whether virtue was natural or acquired, he would
    laugh in your face, and say: ‘Stranger, you have far too
    good an opinion of me, if you think that I can answer
    your question. For I literally do not know what virtue is,
    and much less whether it is acquired by teaching or not.’
    And I myself, Meno, living as I do in this region of poverty,
    am as poor as the rest of the world; and I confess with
    shame that I know literally nothing about virtue; and
    when I do not know the ‘quid’ of anything how can I
    know the ‘quale’? How, if I knew nothing at all of Meno,
    could I tell if he was fair, or the opposite of fair; rich and
    noble, or the reverse of rich and noble? Do you think that
    I could?

[Sidenote: _The definition of virtue._]

    _Men._ No, indeed. But are you in earnest, Socrates, in
    saying that you do not know what virtue is? And am I
    to carry back this report of you to Thessaly?

[Sidenote: He does not know, and never met with any one who did.]

    _Soc._ Not only that, my dear boy, but you may say further
    that I have never known of any one else who did, in my
    judgment.

    _Men._ Then you have never met Gorgias when he was
    at Athens?

    _Soc._ Yes, I have.

    _Men._ And did you not think that he knew?

    _Soc._ I have not a good memory, Meno, and therefore I
    cannot now tell what I thought of him at the time. And
    I dare say that he did know, and that you know what he
    said: please, therefore, to remind me of what he said; or, if
    you would rather, tell me your own view; for I suspect that
    you and he think much alike.

    _Men._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Then as he is not here, never mind him, and do you
    tell me: By the gods, Meno, be generous, and tell me what
    you say that virtue is; for I shall be truly delighted to find
    that I have been mistaken, and that you and Gorgias do
    really have this knowledge; although I have been just saying
    that I have never found anybody who had.

[Sidenote: Meno describes the different kinds of virtue, but is unable to
give a common notion of them.]

    _Men._ There will be no difficulty, Socrates, in answering
    your question. Let us take first the virtue of a man—he
    should know how to administer the state, and in the administration
    of it to benefit his friends and harm his enemies;
    and he must also be careful not to suffer harm himself.
    A woman’s virtue, if you wish to know about that, may also
    be easily described: her duty is to order her house, and
    keep what is indoors, and obey her husband. Every age,
    every condition of life, young or old, male or female, bond
    or free, has a different virtue: there are virtues numberless,      72
    and no lack of definitions of them; for virtue is relative
    to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do. And
    the same may be said of vice, Socrates[3].

[Sidenote: _The nature of definition._]

[Sidenote: Meno, not without difficulty and by help of many
illustrations, is made to understand the nature of common notions.]

    _Soc._ How fortunate I am, Meno! When I ask you for
    one virtue, you present me with a swarm of them[4], which are
    in your keeping. Suppose that I carry on the figure of the
    swarm, and ask of you, What is the nature of the bee? and
    you answer that there are many kinds of bees, and I reply:
    But do bees differ as bees, because there are many and
    different kinds of them; or are they not rather to be distinguished
    by some other quality, as for example beauty, size,
    or shape? How would you answer me?

    _Men._ I should answer that bees do not differ from one
    another, as bees.

    _Soc._ And if I went on to say: That is what I desire to
    know, Meno; tell me what is the quality in which they
    do not differ, but are all alike;—would you be able to
    answer?

    _Men._ I should.

    _Soc._ And so of the virtues, however many and different
    they may be, they have all a common nature which makes
    them virtues; and on this he who would answer the question,
    ‘What is virtue?’ would do well to have his eye fixed: Do
    you understand?

    _Men._ I am beginning to understand; but I do not as yet
    take hold of the question as I could wish.

    _Soc._ When you say, Meno, that there is one virtue of
    a man, another of a woman, another of a child, and so on,
    does this apply only to virtue, or would you say the same of
    health, and size, and strength? Or is the nature of health
    always the same, whether in man or woman?

    _Men._ I should say that health is the same, both in man and
    woman.

[Sidenote: Health and strength, and virtue and temperance and justice are
the same both in men and women.]

    _Soc._ And is not this true of size and strength? If a
    woman is strong, she will be strong by reason of the same
    form and of the same strength subsisting in her which
    there is in the man. I mean to say that strength, as
    strength, whether of man or woman, is the same. Is there
    any difference?

    _Men._ I think not.

[Sidenote: _The sameness of virtue._]

    _Soc._ And will not virtue, as virtue, be the same, whether         73
    in a child or in a grown-up person, in a woman or in a
    man?

    _Men._ I cannot help feeling, Socrates, that this case is
    different from the others.

    _Soc._ But why? Were you not saying that the virtue of a
    man was to order a state, and the virtue of a woman was to
    order a house?

    _Men._ I did say so.

    _Soc._ And can either house or state or anything be well
    ordered without temperance and without justice?

    _Men._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Then they who order a state or a house temperately
    or justly order them with temperance and justice?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then both men and women, if they are to be good
    men and women, must have the same virtues of temperance
    and justice?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And can either a young man or an elder one be good,
    if they are intemperate and unjust?

    _Men._ They cannot.

    _Soc._ They must be temperate and just?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then all men are good in the same way, and by participation
    in the same virtues?

    _Men._ Such is the inference.

    _Soc._ And they surely would not have been good in the
    same way, unless their virtue had been the same?

    _Men._ They would not.

[Sidenote: Then what is virtue? Gorgias and Meno reply, ‘The power of
governing mankind.’]

    _Soc._ Then now that the sameness of all virtue has been
    proven, try and remember what you and Gorgias say that
    virtue is.

    _Men._ Will you have one definition of them all?

    _Soc._ That is what I am seeking.

    _Men._ If you want to have one definition of them all, I know
    not what to say, but that virtue is the power of governing
    mankind.

[Sidenote: _The nature of definition._]

    _Soc._ And does this definition of virtue include all virtue?
    Is virtue the same in a child and in a slave, Meno? Can
    the child govern his father, or the slave his master; and
    would he who governed be any longer a slave?

[Sidenote: But this cannot apply to all persons.]

    _Men._ I think not, Socrates.

    _Soc._ No, indeed; there would be small reason in that.
    Yet once more, fair friend; according to you, virtue is ‘the
    power of governing;’ but do you not add ‘justly and not
    unjustly’?

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates; I agree there; for justice is virtue.

    _Soc._ Would you say ‘virtue,’ Meno, or ‘a virtue’?

    _Men._ What do you mean?

    _Soc._ I mean as I might say about anything; that a round,
    for example, is ‘a figure’ and not simply ‘figure,’ and I
    should adopt this mode of speaking, because there are other
    figures.

    _Men._ Quite right; and that is just what I am saying about
    virtue—that there are other virtues as well as justice.

    _Soc._ What are they? tell me the names of them, as I would         74
    tell you the names of the other figures if you asked me.

[Sidenote: Meno names the virtues, but is unable to get at the common
notion of them.]

    _Men._ Courage and temperance and wisdom and magnanimity
    are virtues; and there are many others.

    _Soc._ Yes, Meno; and again we are in the same case: in
    searching after one virtue we have found many, though not in
    the same way as before; but we have been unable to find the
    common virtue which runs through them all.

    _Men._ Why, Socrates, even now I am not able to follow
    you in the attempt to get at one common notion of virtue as of
    other things.

    _Soc._ No wonder; but I will try to get nearer if I can, for
    you know that all things have a common notion. Suppose
    now that some one asked you the question which I asked
    before: Meno, he would say, what is figure? And if you
    answered ‘roundness,’ he would reply to you, in my way of
    speaking, by asking whether you would say that roundness is
    ‘figure’ or ‘a figure;’ and you would answer ‘a figure.’

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And for this reason—that there are other figures?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if he proceeded to ask, What other figures are
    there? you would have told him.

[Sidenote: _Illustrations._]

    _Men._ I should.

    _Soc._ And if he similarly asked what colour is, and you answered
    whiteness, and the questioner rejoined, Would you
    say that whiteness is colour or a colour? you would reply, A
    colour, because there are other colours as well.

    _Men._ I should.

    _Soc._ And if he had said, Tell me what they are?—you
    would have told him of other colours which are colours just
    as much as whiteness.

    _Men._ Yes.

[Sidenote: He has a similar difficulty about the nature of Figure.]

    _Soc._ And suppose that he were to pursue the matter in my
    way, he would say: Ever and anon we are landed in particulars,
    but this is not what I want; tell me then, since you call
    them by a common name, and say that they are all figures,
    even when opposed to one another, what is that common
    nature which you designate as figure—which contains straight
    as well as round, and is no more one than the other—that
    would be your mode of speaking?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And in speaking thus, you do not mean to say that the
    round is round any more than straight, or the straight any
    more straight than round?

    _Men._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ You only assert that the round figure is not more
    a figure than the straight, or the straight than the round?

    _Men._ Very true.

    _Soc._ To what then do we give the name of figure? Try
    and answer. Suppose that when a person asked you this
    question either about figure or colour, you were to reply,
    Man, I do not understand what you want, or know what you            75
    are saying; he would look rather astonished and say: Do
    you not understand that I am looking for the ‘simile in
    multis’? And then he might put the question in another
    form: Meno, he might say, what is that ‘simile in multis’
    which you call figure, and which includes not only round and
    straight figures, but all? Could you not answer that question,
    Meno? I wish that you would try; the attempt will be
    good practice with a view to the answer about virtue.

    _Men._ I would rather that you should answer, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Shall I indulge you?

    _Men._ By all means.

[Sidenote: _Definition of colour and figure._]

    _Soc._ And then you will tell me about virtue?

    _Men._ I will.

    _Soc._ Then I must do my best, for there is a prize to be won.

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Figure is defined by Socrates to be that which always follows
colour.]

    _Soc._ Well, I will try and explain to you what figure is.
    What do you say to this answer?—Figure is the only thing
    which always follows colour. Will you be satisfied with it,
    as I am sure that I should be, if you would let me have
    a similar definition of virtue?

    _Men._ But, Socrates, it is such a simple answer.

    _Soc._ Why simple?

    _Men._ Because, according to you, figure is that which
    always follows colour.

    (_Soc._ Granted).

    _Men._ But if a person were to say that he does not know
    what colour is, any more than what figure is—what sort of
    answer would you have given him?

    _Soc._ I should have told him the truth. And if he were
    a philosopher of the eristic and antagonistic sort, I should
    say to him: You have my answer, and if I am wrong, your
    business is to take up the argument and refute me. But if
    we were friends, and were talking as you and I are now,
    I should reply in a milder strain and more in the dialectician’s
    vein; that is to say, I should not only speak the truth, but I
    should make use of premisses which the person interrogated
    would be willing to admit. And this is the way in which
    I shall endeavour to approach you. You will acknowledge,
    will you not, that there is such a thing as an end, or
    termination, or extremity?—all which words I use in the
    same sense, although I am aware that Prodicus might draw
    distinctions about them: but still you, I am sure, would speak
    of a thing as ended or terminated—that is all which I am
    saying—not anything very difficult.

    _Men._ Yes, I should; and I believe that I understand your
    meaning.

    _Soc._ And you would speak of a surface and also of a solid,        76
    as for example in geometry.

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Well then, you are now in a condition to understand
    my definition of figure. I define figure to be that in which
    the solid ends; or, more concisely, the limit of solid.

    _Men._ And now, Socrates, what is colour?

[Sidenote: _The imperiousness of Meno._]

[Sidenote: And now, what is colour?]

    _Soc._ You are outrageous, Meno, in thus plaguing a poor
    old man to give you an answer, when you will not take
    the trouble of remembering what is Gorgias’ definition of
    virtue.

    _Men._ When you have told me what I ask, I will tell you,
    Socrates.

    _Soc._ A man who was blindfolded has only to hear you
    talking, and he would know that you are a fair creature and
    have still many lovers.

    _Men._ Why do you think so?

    _Soc._ Why, because you always speak in imperatives: like
    all beauties when they are in their prime, you are tyrannical;
    and also, as I suspect, you have found out that I have a
    weakness for the fair, and therefore to humour you I must
    answer.

    _Men._ Please do.

    _Soc._ Would you like me to answer you after the manner of
    Gorgias, which is familiar to you?

    _Men._ I should like nothing better.

[Sidenote: Meno, Gorgias, and Empedocles are all agreed that colour is an
effluence of existence, proportioned to certain passages.]

    _Soc._ Do not he and you and Empedocles say that there are
    certain effluences of existence?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And passages into which and through which the effluences
    pass?

    _Men._ Exactly.

    _Soc._ And some of the effluences fit into the passages, and
    some of them are too small or too large?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And there is such a thing as sight?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And now, as Pindar says, ‘read my meaning:’—colour
    is an effluence of form, commensurate with sight, and palpable
    to sense.

    _Men._ That, Socrates, appears to me to be an admirable
    answer.

[Sidenote: _The definition of virtue._]

    _Soc._ Why, yes, because it happens to be one which you
    have been in the habit of hearing: and your wit will have
    discovered, I suspect, that you may explain in the same way
    the nature of sound and smell, and of many other similar
    phenomena.

    _Men._ Quite true.

    _Soc._ The answer, Meno, was in the orthodox solemn vein,
    and therefore was more acceptable to you than the other
    answer about figure.

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And yet, O son of Alexidemus, I cannot help thinking
    that the other was the better; and I am sure that you would
    be of the same opinion, if you would only stay and be
    initiated, and were not compelled, as you said yesterday, to
    go away before the mysteries.

    _Men._ But I will stay, Socrates, if you will give me many
    such answers.                                                       77

[Sidenote: Virtue, according to Meno, is the desire of the honourable and
the good. His definition is analysed by Socrates.]

    _Soc._ Well then, for my own sake as well as for yours, I will
    do my very best; but I am afraid that I shall not be able to
    give you very many as good: and now, in your turn, you are
    to fulfil your promise, and tell me what virtue is in the
    universal; and do not make a singular into a plural, as the
    facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue to
    me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces:
    I have given you the pattern.

    _Men._ Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is when he,
    who desires the honourable, is able to provide it for himself;
    so the poet says, and I say too—

    ‘Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of
    attaining them.’

    _Soc._ And does he who desires the honourable also desire
    the good?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then are there some who desire the evil and others
    who desire the good? Do not all men, my dear sir, desire
    good?

    _Men._ I think not.

    _Soc._ There are some who desire evil?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Do you mean that they think the evils which they
    desire, to be good; or do they know that they are evil and
    yet desire them?

[Sidenote: _The desire of good and evil._]

    _Men._ Both, I think.

    _Soc._ And do you really imagine, Meno, that a man knows
    evils to be evils and desires them notwithstanding?

    _Men._ Certainly I do.

    _Soc._ And desire is of possession?

    _Men._ Yes, of possession.

[Sidenote: Men desire evil, but not what they think to be evil.]

    _Soc._ And does he think that the evils will do good to him
    who possesses them, or does he know that they will do him
    harm?

    _Men._ There are some who think that the evils will do them
    good, and others who know that they will do them harm.

    _Soc._ And, in your opinion, do those who think that they
    will do them good know that they are evils?

    _Men._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Is it not obvious that those who are ignorant of their
    nature do not desire them; but they desire what they suppose
    to be goods although they are really evils; and if they are
    mistaken and suppose the evils to be goods they really desire
    goods?

    _Men._ Yes, in that case.

    _Soc._ Well, and do those who, as you say, desire evils, and
    think that evils are hurtful to the possessor of them, know
    that they will be hurt by them?

    _Men._ They must know it.

    _Soc._ And must they not suppose that those who are hurt            78
    are miserable in proportion to the hurt which is inflicted upon
    them?

    _Men._ How can it be otherwise?

    _Soc._ But are not the miserable ill-fated?

    _Men._ Yes, indeed.

    _Soc._ And does any one desire to be miserable and ill-fated?

    _Men._ I should say not, Socrates.

    _Soc._ But if there is no one who desires to be miserable,
    there is no one, Meno, who desires evil; for what is misery
    but the desire and possession of evil?

    _Men._ That appears to be the truth, Socrates, and I admit
    that nobody desires evil.

    _Soc._ And yet, were you not saying just now that virtue
    is the desire and power of attaining good?

    _Men._ Yes, I did say so.

[Sidenote: _The self-contradiction of Meno._]

[Sidenote: The desire of good is really common to all of them.]

    _Soc._ But if this be affirmed, then the desire of good is common
    to all, and one man is no better than another in that
    respect?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And if one man is not better than another in desiring
    good, he must be better in the power of attaining it?

    _Men._ Exactly.

[Sidenote: Virtue is the power of attaining good with justice.]

    _Soc._ Then, according to your definition, virtue would appear
    to be the power of attaining good?

    _Men._ I entirely approve, Socrates, of the manner in which
    you now view this matter.

    _Soc._ Then let us see whether what you say is true from
    another point of view; for very likely you may be right:—You
    affirm virtue to be the power of attaining goods?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the goods which you mean are such as health and
    wealth and the possession of gold and silver, and having
    office and honour in the state—those are what you would
    call goods?

    _Men._ Yes, I should include all those.

    _Soc._ Then, according to Meno, who is the hereditary
    friend of the great king, virtue is the power of getting silver
    and gold; and would you add that they must be gained
    piously, justly, or do you deem this to be of no consequence?
    And is any mode of acquisition, even if unjust or dishonest,
    equally to be deemed virtue?

    _Men._ Not virtue, Socrates, but vice.

    _Soc._ Then justice or temperance or holiness, or some other
    part of virtue, as would appear, must accompany the acquisition,
    and without them the mere acquisition of good will not
    be virtue.

    _Men._ Why, how can there be virtue without these?

    _Soc._ And the non-acquisition of gold and silver in a dishonest
    manner for oneself or another, or in other words the
    want of them, may be equally virtue?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ Then the acquisition of such goods is no more virtue
    than the non-acquisition and want of them, but whatever is
    accompanied by justice or honesty is virtue, and whatever
    is devoid of justice is vice.                                       79

[Sidenote: _The whole cannot be defined by a part._]

[Sidenote: But this definition repeats the thing defined:—virtue = the
power of attaining good with a part of virtue.]

    _Men._ It cannot be otherwise, in my judgment.

    _Soc._ And were we not saying just now that justice, temperance,
    and the like, were each of them a part of virtue?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And so, Meno, this is the way in which you mock me.

    _Men._ Why do you say that, Socrates?

    _Soc._ Why, because I asked you to deliver virtue into my
    hands whole and unbroken, and I gave you a pattern according
    to which you were to frame your answer; and you have
    forgotten already, and tell me that virtue is the power of
    attaining good justly, or with justice; and justice you acknowledge
    to be a part of virtue.

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then it follows from your own admissions, that virtue
    is doing what you do with a part of virtue; for justice and
    the like are said by you to be parts of virtue.

[Sidenote: But if we do not know the nature of virtue as a whole, how can
we know what a part of virtue is?]

    _Men._ What of that?

    _Soc._ What of that! Why, did not I ask you to tell me the
    nature of virtue as a whole? And you are very far from
    telling me this; but declare every action to be virtue which is
    done with a part of virtue; as though you had told me and I
    must already know the whole of virtue, and this too when
    frittered away into little pieces. And, therefore, my dear
    Meno, I fear that I must begin again and repeat the same
    question: What is virtue? for otherwise, I can only say, that
    every action done with a part of virtue is virtue; what else
    is the meaning of saying that every action done with justice
    is virtue? Ought I not to ask the question over again; for
    can any one who does not know virtue know a part of
    virtue?

    _Men._ No; I do not say that he can.

    _Soc._ Do you remember how, in the example of figure, we
    rejected any answer given in terms which were as yet unexplained
    or unadmitted?

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates; and we were quite right in doing so.

    _Soc._ But then, my friend, do not suppose that we can
    explain to any one the nature of virtue as a whole through
    some unexplained portion of virtue, or anything at all in that
    fashion; we should only have to ask over again the old
    question, What is virtue? Am I not right?

    _Men._ I believe that you are.

    _Soc._ Then begin again, and answer me, What, according to
    you and your friend Gorgias, is the definition of virtue?

[Sidenote: _The torpedo’s shock._]

[Sidenote: Meno compares Socrates to a torpedo whose touch has taken away
his sense and speech.]

    _Men._ O Socrates, I used to be told, before I knew you, that
    you were always doubting yourself and making others doubt;          80
    and now you are casting your spells over me, and I am simply
    getting bewitched and enchanted, and am at my wits’ end.
    And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem
    to me both in your appearance and in your power over others
    to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who
    come near him and touch him, as you have now torpified me,
    I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I
    do not know how to answer you; and though I have been
    delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before
    now, and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as
    I thought—at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is.
    And I think that you are very wise in not voyaging and going
    away from home, for if you did in other places as you do
    in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a magician.

    _Soc._ You are a rogue, Meno, and had all but caught me.

    _Men._ What do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I can tell why you made a simile about me.

    _Men._ Why?

[Sidenote: Socrates is the cause of dulness in others because he is
himself dull.]

    _Soc._ In order that I might make another simile about you.
    For I know that all pretty young gentlemen like to have pretty
    similes made about them—as well they may—but I shall not
    return the compliment. As to my being a torpedo, if the torpedo
    is torpid as well as the cause of torpidity in others, then
    indeed I am a torpedo, but not otherwise; for I perplex
    others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed
    myself. And now I know not what virtue is, and you
    seem to be in the same case, although you did once perhaps
    know before you touched me. However, I have no objection
    to join with you in the enquiry.

    _Men._ And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which
    you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of
    enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever
    know that this is the thing which you did not know?

[Sidenote: _Pindar and the poets._]

[Sidenote: How can you enquire about what you do not know, and if you
know why should you enquire?]

    _Soc._ I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what
    a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that
    a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or
    about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has
    no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not
    know the very subject about which he is to enquire[5].

    _Men._ Well, Socrates, and is not the argument sound?               81

    _Soc._ I think not.

    _Men._ Why not?

    _Soc._ I will tell you why: I have heard from certain wise
    men and women who spoke of things divine that—

    _Men._ What did they say?

    _Soc._ They spoke of a glorious truth, as I conceive.

    _Men._ What was it? and who were they?

[Sidenote: The ancient poets tell us that the soul of man is immortal and
has a recollection of all that she has ever known in former states of
being.]

    _Soc._ Some of them were priests and priestesses, who had
    studied how they might be able to give a reason of their
    profession: there have been poets also, who spoke of these
    things by inspiration, like Pindar, and many others who were
    inspired. And they say—mark, now, and see whether their
    words are true—they say that the soul of man is immortal,
    and at one time has an end, which is termed dying, and
    at another time is born again, but is never destroyed. And
    the moral is, that a man ought to live always in perfect holiness.
    ‘_For in the ninth year Persephone sends the souls of
    those from whom she has received the penalty of ancient crime
    back again from beneath into the light of the sun above, and
    these are they who become noble kings and mighty men and great
    in wisdom and are called saintly heroes in after ages[6]._’ The
    soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again
    many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether
    in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them
    all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to
    remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about
    everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned
    all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say
    learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is
    strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning
    is but recollection. And therefore we ought not to listen
    to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry:
    for it will make us idle, and is sweet only to the
    sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive.
    In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you
    into the nature of virtue.

[Sidenote: _The crucial experiment._]

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates; but what do you mean by saying that
    we do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process
    of recollection? Can you teach me how this is?

    _Soc._ I told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and
    now you ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that
    there is no teaching, but only recollection; and thus you           82
    imagine that you will involve me in a contradiction.

    _Men._ Indeed, Socrates, I protest that I had no such intention.
    I only asked the question from habit; but if you can prove
    to me that what you say is true, I wish that you would.

[Sidenote: A Greek slave is introduced, from whom certain mathematical
conclusions which he has never learned are elicited by Socrates.]

    _Soc._ It will be no easy matter, but I will try to please
    you to the utmost of my power. Suppose that you call
    one of your numerous attendants, that I may demonstrate
    on him.

    _Men._ Certainly. Come hither, boy.

    _Soc._ He is Greek, and speaks Greek, does he not?

    _Men._ Yes, indeed; he was born in the house.

    _Soc._ Attend now to the questions which I ask him, and
    observe whether he learns of me or only remembers.

    _Men._ I will.

    _Soc._ Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this
    is a square?

    _Boy._ I do.

    _Soc._ And you know that a square figure has these four
    lines equal?

    _Boy._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And these lines which I have drawn through the
    middle of the square are also equal?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ A square may be of any size?

    _Boy._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And if one side of the figure be of two feet, and the
    other side be of two feet, how much will the whole be? Let
    me explain: if in one direction the space was of two feet,
    and in the other direction of one foot, the whole would
    be of two feet taken once?

    _Boy._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _Socrates and the boy._]

    _Soc._ But since this side is also of two feet, there are twice
    two feet?

    _Boy._ There are.

    _Soc._ Then the square is of twice two feet?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And how many are twice two feet? count and tell me.

    _Boy._ Four, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And might there not be another square twice as large
    as this, and having like this the lines equal?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And of how many feet will that be?

    _Boy._ Of eight feet.

    _Soc._ And now try and tell me the length of the line which
    forms the side of that double square: this is two feet—what
    will that be?

    _Boy._ Clearly, Socrates, it will be double.

[Sidenote: He is partly guessing.]

    _Soc._ Do you observe, Meno, that I am not teaching the
    boy anything, but only asking him questions; and now
    he fancies that he knows how long a line is necessary in
    order to produce a figure of eight square feet; does he not?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And does he really know?

    _Men._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ He only guesses that because the square is double,
    the line is double.

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ Observe him while he recalls the steps in regular
    order. (_To the Boy._) Tell me, boy, do you assert that a           83
    double space comes from a double line? Remember that
    I am not speaking of an oblong, but of a figure equal every
    way, and twice the size of this—that is to say of eight feet;
    and I want to know whether you still say that a double
    square comes from a double line?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But does not this line become doubled if we add
    another such line here?

    _Boy._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And four such lines will make a space containing
    eight feet?

    _Boy._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _Socrates and the boy._]

    _Soc._ Let us describe such a figure: Would you not say
    that this is the figure of eight feet?

[Illustration]

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And are there not these four divisions in the figure,
    each of which is equal to the figure of four feet?

    _Boy._ True.

    _Soc._ And is not that four times four?

    _Boy._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And four times is not double?

    _Boy._ No, indeed.

    _Soc._ But how much?

    _Boy._ Four times as much.

    _Soc._ Therefore the double line, boy,
    has given a space, not twice, but four times as much.

    _Boy._ True.

    _Soc._ Four times four are sixteen—are they not?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ What line would give you a space of eight feet, as
    this gives one of sixteen feet;—do you see?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the space of four feet is made from this half
    line?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Good; and is not a space of eight feet twice the
    size of this, and half the size of the other?

    _Boy._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Such a space, then, will be made out of a line greater
    than this one, and less than that one?

    _Boy._ Yes; I think so.

    _Soc._ Very good; I like to hear you say what you think.
    And now tell me, is not this a line of two feet and that of
    four?

    _Boy._ Yes.

[Sidenote: He has now learned to realize his own ignorance, and therefore
will endeavour to remedy it.]

    _Soc._ Then the line which forms the side of eight feet
    ought to be more than this line of two feet, and less than
    the other of four feet?

    _Boy._ It ought.

    _Soc._ Try and see if you can tell me how much it will be.

    _Boy._ Three feet.

[Sidenote: _The progress of the boy’s education._]

    _Soc._ Then if we add a half to this line of two, that will be
    the line of three. Here are two and there is one; and on
    the other side, here are two also and there is one: and that
    makes the figure of which you speak?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But if there are three feet this way and three feet
    that way, the whole space will be three times three feet?

    _Boy._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ And how much are three times three feet?

    _Boy._ Nine.

    _Soc._ And how much is the double of four?

    _Boy._ Eight.

    _Soc._ Then the figure of eight is not made out of a line of
    three?

    _Boy._ No.

    _Soc._ But from what line?—tell me exactly; and if you              84
    would rather not reckon, try and show me the line.

    _Boy._ Indeed, Socrates, I do not know.

    _Soc._ Do you see, Meno, what advances he has made in his
    power of recollection? He did not know at first, and he
    does not know now, what is the side of a figure of eight feet:
    but then he thought that he knew, and answered confidently
    as if he knew, and had no difficulty; now he has a difficulty,
    and neither knows nor fancies that he knows.

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ Is he not better off in knowing his ignorance?

    _Men._ I think that he is.

    _Soc._ If we have made him doubt, and given him the ‘torpedo’s
    shock,’ have we done him any harm?

    _Men._ I think not.

    _Soc._ We have certainly, as would seem, assisted him in
    some degree to the discovery of the truth; and now he will
    wish to remedy his ignorance, but then he would have been
    ready to tell all the world again and again that the double
    space should have a double side.

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ But do you suppose that he would ever have enquired
    into or learned what he fancied that he knew, though he
    was really ignorant of it, until he had fallen into perplexity
    under the idea that he did not know, and had desired to
    know?

    _Men._ I think not, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Then he was the better for the torpedo’s touch?

    _Men._ I think so.

[Sidenote: _Construction of the figure of eight feet square._]

[Sidenote: The boy arrives at another true conclusion: which is, that the
square of the diagonal is double the square of the side.]

    _Soc._ Mark now the farther development. I shall only ask
    him, and not teach him, and he shall share the enquiry with
    me: and do you watch and see if you find me telling or
    explaining anything to him, instead of eliciting his opinion.
    Tell me, boy, is not this a square of four feet which I have
    drawn?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And now I add another square equal to the former
    one?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And a third, which is equal to either of them?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Suppose that we fill up the vacant corner?

    _Boy._ Very good.

    _Soc._ Here, then, there are four equal spaces?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And how many times larger is this space than this
    other?

    _Boy._ Four times.

    _Soc._ But it ought to have been twice only, as you will
    remember.

    _Boy._ True.

    _Soc._ And does not this line, reaching from corner to corner,
    bisect each of these spaces?                                        85

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And are there not here four equal lines which contain
    this space?

    _Boy._ There are.

    _Soc._ Look and see how much this space is.

    _Boy._ I do not understand.

    _Soc._ Has not each interior line cut off half of the four
    spaces?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And how many such spaces are there in this section?

    _Boy._ Four.

    _Soc._ And how many in this?

    _Boy._ Two.

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of reminiscence._]

    _Soc._ And four is how many times two?

    _Boy._ Twice.

    _Soc._ And this space is of how many feet?

    _Boy._ Of eight feet.

    _Soc._ And from what line do you get this figure?

    _Boy._ From this.

    _Soc._ That is, from the line which extends from corner to
    corner of the figure of four feet?

    _Boy._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And that is the line which the learned call the diagonal.
    And if this is the proper name, then you, Meno’s
    slave, are prepared to affirm that the double space is the
    square of the diagonal?

    _Boy._ Certainly, Socrates.

    _Soc._ What do you say of him, Meno? Were not all these
    answers given out of his own head?

    _Men._ Yes, they were all his own.

    _Soc._ And yet, as we were just now saying, he did not
    know?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ But still he had in him those notions of his—had he
    not?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then he who does not know may still have true
    notions of that which he does not know?

    _Men._ He has.

[Sidenote: At present he is in a dream; he will soon grow clearer.]

    _Soc._ And at present these notions have just been stirred up
    in him, as in a dream; but if he were frequently asked the
    same questions, in different forms, he would know as well as
    any one at last?

    _Men._ I dare say.

    _Soc._ Without any one teaching him he will recover his
    knowledge for himself, if he is only asked questions?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge in him is
    recollection?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And this knowledge which he now has must he not
    either have acquired or always possessed?

    _Men._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _Socrates is more confident of some things than of others._]

[Sidenote: Either this knowledge was acquired by him in a former state of
existence, or was always known to him.]

    _Soc._ But if he always possessed this knowledge he would
    always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he
    could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been
    taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with
    all geometry and every other branch of knowledge. Now,
    has any one ever taught him all this? You must know about
    him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.

    _Men._ And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.

    _Soc._ And yet he has the knowledge?

    _Men._ The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.

    _Soc._ But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life,
    then he must have had and learned it at some other time?            86

    _Men._ Clearly he must.

    _Soc._ Which must have been the time when he was not a
    man?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if there have been always true thoughts in him,
    both at the time when he was and was not a man, which only
    need to be awakened into knowledge by putting questions to
    him, his soul must have always possessed this knowledge, for
    he always either was or was not a man?

    _Men._ Obviously.

    _Soc._ And if the truth of all things always existed in the
    soul, then the soul is immortal. Wherefore be of good
    cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather
    what you do not remember.

    _Men._ I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.

[Sidenote: Better to enquire than to fancy that there is no such thing as
enquiry and no use in it.]

    _Soc._ And I, Meno, like what I am saying. Some things I
    have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that
    we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think
    that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we
    indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no
    use in seeking to know what we do not know;—that is a
    theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to
    the utmost of my power.

    _Men._ There again, Socrates, your words seem to me
    excellent.

    _Soc._ Then, as we are agreed that a man should enquire
    about that which he does not know, shall you and I make an
    effort to enquire together into the nature of virtue?

[Sidenote: _The nature of hypothesis._]

    _Men._ By all means, Socrates. And yet I would much
    rather return to my original question, Whether in seeking to
    acquire virtue we should regard it as a thing to be taught, or
    as a gift of nature, or as coming to men in some other way?

[Sidenote: Socrates cannot enquire whether virtue can be taught until he
knows what virtue is, except upon an hypothesis, such as geometricians
sometimes employ: e. g. can a triangle of given area be inscribed in a
given circle, if when the side of it is produced this or that consequence
follows? [The hypothesis appears to be rather trivial and to have no
mathematical value.]]

[Sidenote: Upon the hypothesis ‘that virtue is knowledge,’ can it be
taught?]

    _Soc._ Had I the command of you as well as of myself,
    Meno, I would not have enquired whether virtue is given by
    instruction or not, until we had first ascertained ‘what it is.’
    But as you think only of controlling me who am your slave,
    and never of controlling yourself,—such being your notion of
    freedom, I must yield to you, for you are irresistible. And
    therefore I have now to enquire into the qualities of a thing of
    which I do not as yet know the nature. At any rate, will you
    condescend a little, and allow the question ‘Whether virtue is
    given by instruction, or in any other way,’ to be argued upon
    hypothesis? As the geometrician, when he is asked [7]whether        87
    a certain triangle is capable of being inscribed in a certain
    circle[7], will reply: ‘I cannot tell you as yet; but I will offer
    a hypothesis which may assist us in forming a conclusion: If
    the figure be such that [8]when you have produced a given side
    of it[8], the given area of the triangle falls short by an area
    [9]corresponding to the part produced[9], then one consequence
    follows, and if this is impossible then some other; and therefore
    I wish to assume a hypothesis before I tell you whether
    this triangle is capable of being inscribed in the circle:’—that
    is a geometrical hypothesis. And we too, as we know not
    the nature and qualities of virtue, must ask, whether virtue is
    or is not taught, under a hypothesis: as thus, if virtue is of
    such a class of mental goods, will it be taught or not? Let
    the first hypothesis be that virtue is or is not knowledge,—in
    that case will it be taught or not? or, as we were just now
    saying, ‘remembered’? For there is no use in disputing
    about the name. But is virtue taught or not? or rather,
    does not every one see that knowledge alone is taught?

    _Men._ I agree.

    _Soc._ Then if virtue is knowledge, virtue will be taught?

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _Virtue and knowledge._]

    _Soc._ Then now we have made a quick end of this question:
    if virtue is of such a nature, it will be taught; and if not, not?

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: ‘Of course.’]

    _Soc._ The next question is, whether virtue is knowledge or
    of another species?

    _Men._ Yes, that appears to be the question which comes
    next in order.

[Sidenote: But is virtue knowledge?]

    _Soc._ Do we not say that virtue is a good?—This is a
    hypothesis which is not set aside.

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Virtue is a good, and profitable: and all profitable things
are either profitable or the reverse according as they are or are not
under the guidance of knowledge.]

    _Soc._ Now, if there be any sort of good which is distinct
    from knowledge, virtue may be that good; but if knowledge
    embraces all good, then we shall be right in thinking that
    virtue is knowledge?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And virtue makes us good?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if we are good, then we are profitable; for all
    good things are profitable?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then virtue is profitable?

    _Men._ That is the only inference.

    _Soc._ Then now let us see what are the things which
    severally profit us. Health and strength, and beauty and
    wealth—these, and the like of these, we call profitable?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And yet these things may also sometimes do us                88
    harm: would you not think so?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And what is the guiding principle which makes them
    profitable or the reverse? Are they not profitable when they
    are rightly used, and hurtful when they are not rightly used?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Next, let us consider the goods of the soul: they
    are temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension,
    memory, magnanimity, and the like?

    _Men._ Surely.

    _Soc._ And such of these as are not knowledge, but of
    another sort, are sometimes profitable and sometimes hurtful;
    as, for example, courage wanting prudence, which is only
    a sort of confidence? When a man has no sense he is
    harmed by courage, but when he has sense he is profited?

[Sidenote: _Virtue is knowledge._]

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And the same may be said of temperance and quickness
    of apprehension; whatever things are learned or done
    with sense are profitable, but when done without sense they
    are hurtful?

    _Men._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And in general, all that the soul attempts or endures,
    when under the guidance of wisdom, ends in happiness;
    but when she is under the guidance of folly, in the
    opposite?

    _Men._ That appears to be true.

[Sidenote: And so all virtue must be a sort of wisdom or knowledge.]

    _Soc._ If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is admitted
    to be profitable, it must be wisdom or prudence, since none
    of the things of the soul are either profitable or hurtful in
    themselves, but they are all made profitable or hurtful by
    the addition of wisdom or of folly; and therefore if virtue is
    profitable, virtue must be a sort of wisdom or prudence?

    _Men._ I quite agree.

    _Soc._ And the other goods, such as wealth and the like, of
    which we were just now saying that they are sometimes good
    and sometimes evil, do not they also become profitable or
    hurtful, accordingly as the soul guides and uses them rightly
    or wrongly; just as the things of the soul herself are benefited
    when under the guidance of wisdom and harmed by folly?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And the wise soul guides them rightly, and the foolish
    soul wrongly?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And is not this universally true of human nature?
    All other things hang upon the soul, and the things of the
    soul herself hang upon wisdom, if they are to be good; and          89
    so wisdom is inferred to be that which profits—and virtue, as
    we say, is profitable?

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Virtue is either wholly or partly wisdom.]

    _Soc._ And thus we arrive at the conclusion that virtue is
    either wholly or partly wisdom?

    _Men._ I think that what you are saying, Socrates, is very
    true.

[Sidenote: _Can virtue be taught?_]

    _Soc._ But if this is true, then the good are not by nature
    good?

    _Men._ I think not.

[Sidenote: If this is true, virtue must be taught; but then where are the
teachers?]

    _Soc._ If they had been, there would assuredly have been
    discerners of characters among us who would have known
    our future great men; and on their showing we should have
    adopted them, and when we had got them, we should have
    kept them in the citadel out of the way of harm, and set
    a stamp upon them far rather than upon a piece of gold, in
    order that no one might tamper with them; and when they
    grew up they would have been useful to the state?

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates, that would have been the right way.

    _Soc._ But if the good are not by nature good, are they
    made good by instruction?

    _Men._ There appears to be no other alternative, Socrates.
    On the supposition that virtue is knowledge, there can be no
    doubt that virtue is taught.

    _Soc._ Yes, indeed; but what if the supposition is erroneous?

    _Men._ I certainly thought just now that we were right.

    _Soc._ Yes, Meno; but a principle which has any soundness
    should stand firm not only just now, but always.

    _Men._ Well; and why are you so slow of heart to believe
    that knowledge is virtue?

    _Soc._ I will try and tell you why, Meno. I do not retract
    the assertion that if virtue is knowledge it may be taught;
    but I fear that I have some reason in doubting whether virtue
    is knowledge: for consider now and say whether virtue,
    and not only virtue but anything that is taught, must not have
    teachers and disciples?

    _Men._ Surely.

    _Soc._ And conversely, may not the art of which neither
    teachers nor disciples exist be assumed to be incapable of
    being taught?

    _Men._ True; but do you think that there are no teachers of
    virtue?

[Sidenote: _The appeal to Anytus._]

[Sidenote: Can Anytus tell us who they are?]

    _Soc._ I have certainly often enquired whether there were any,
    and taken great pains to find them, and have never succeeded;
    and many have assisted me in the search, and they were
    the persons whom I thought the most likely to know.
    Here at the moment when he is wanted we fortunately                 90
    have sitting by us Anytus, the very person of whom we
    should make enquiry; to him then let us repair. In the
    first place, he is the son of a wealthy and wise father,
    Anthemion, who acquired his wealth, not by accident or gift,
    like Ismenias the Theban (who has recently made himself as
    rich as Polycrates), but by his own skill and industry, and
    who is a well-conditioned, modest man, not insolent, or overbearing,
    or annoying; moreover, this son of his has received
    a good education, as the Athenian people certainly
    appear to think, for they choose him to fill the highest offices.
    And these are the sort of men from whom you are likely to
    learn whether there are any teachers of virtue, and who they
    are. Please, Anytus, to help me and your friend Meno in
    answering our question, Who are the teachers? Consider
    the matter thus: If we wanted Meno to be a good physician,
    to whom should we send him? Should we not send him to
    the physicians?

    _Any._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Or if we wanted him to be a good cobbler, should we
    not send him to the cobblers?

    _Any._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And so forth?

    _Any._ Yes.

[Sidenote: The arts are taught by the professors of them. And have we not
heard of those who profess to teach virtue at a fixed price?]

    _Soc._ Let me trouble you with one more question. When
    we say that we should be right in sending him to the physicians
    if we wanted him to be a physician, do we mean that
    we should be right in sending him to those who profess the
    art, rather than to those who do not, and to those who
    demand payment for teaching the art, and profess to teach it
    to any one who will come and learn? And if these were our
    reasons, should we not be right in sending him?

    _Any._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And might not the same be said of flute-playing, and
    of the other arts? Would a man who wanted to make
    another a flute-player refuse to send him to those who profess
    to teach the art for money, and be plaguing other persons to
    give him instruction, who are not professed teachers and who
    never had a single disciple in that branch of knowledge which
    he wishes him to acquire—would not such conduct be the
    height of folly?

[Sidenote: _Anytus attacks, Socrates defends, the Sophists._]

    _Any._ Yes, by Zeus, and of ignorance too.

    _Soc._ Very good. And now you are in a position to advise           91
    with me about my friend Meno. He has been telling me,
    Anytus, that he desires to attain that kind of wisdom and virtue
    by which men order the state or the house, and honour their
    parents, and know when to receive and when to send away
    citizens and strangers, as a good man should. Now, to whom
    should he go in order that he may learn this virtue? Does
    not the previous argument imply clearly that we should send
    him to those who profess and avouch that they are the common
    teachers of all Hellas, and are ready to impart instruction
    to any one who likes, at a fixed price?

    _Any._ Whom do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ You surely know, do you not, Anytus, that these are
    the people whom mankind call Sophists?

[Sidenote: Anytus inveighs against the corrupting influence of the
Sophists.]

    _Any._ By Heracles, Socrates, forbear! I only hope that
    no friend or kinsman or acquaintance of mine, whether citizen
    or stranger, will ever be so mad as to allow himself to be corrupted
    by them; for they are a manifest pest and corrupting
    influence to those who have to do with them.

[Sidenote: Why surely they cannot really be corrupters? See what fortunes
they make, and what an excellent reputation many of them bear!]

    _Soc._ What, Anytus? Of all the people who profess that
    they know how to do men good, do you mean to say that
    these are the only ones who not only do them no good, but
    positively corrupt those who are entrusted to them, and in
    return for this disservice have the face to demand money?
    Indeed, I cannot believe you; for I know of a single man,
    Protagoras, who made more out of his craft than the illustrious
    Pheidias, who created such noble works, or any ten other
    statuaries. How could that be? A mender of old shoes, or
    patcher up of clothes, who made the shoes or clothes worse
    than he received them, could not have remained thirty days
    undetected, and would very soon have starved; whereas
    during more than forty years, Protagoras was corrupting all
    Hellas, and sending his disciples from him worse than he
    received them, and he was never found out. For, if I am not
    mistaken, he was about seventy years old at his death, forty
    of which were spent in the practice of his profession; and
    during all that time he had a good reputation, which to this
    day he retains: and not only Protagoras, but many others are
    well spoken of; some who lived before him, and others who
    are still living. Now, when you say that they deceived and          92
    corrupted the youth, are they to be supposed to have corrupted
    them consciously or unconsciously? Can those who
    were deemed by many to be the wisest men of Hellas have
    been out of their minds?

[Sidenote: _The rage of Anytus at the Sophists._]

[Sidenote: The wisest men in Hellas could not have been out of their
minds? No:—the people who gave their money to them were out of their
minds.]

    _Any._ Out of their minds! No, Socrates; the young men
    who gave their money to them were out of their minds, and
    their relations and guardians who entrusted their youth to the
    care of these men were still more out of their minds, and
    most of all, the cities who allowed them to come in, and did
    not drive them out, citizen and stranger alike.

    _Soc._ Has any of the Sophists wronged you, Anytus?
    What makes you so angry with them?

    _Any._ No, indeed, neither I nor any of my belongings has
    ever had, nor would I suffer them to have, anything to do
    with them.

    _Soc._ Then you are entirely unacquainted with them?

    _Any._ And I have no wish to be acquainted.

[Sidenote: How can Anytus know that they are bad, if he does not know
them at all?]

    _Soc._ Then, my dear friend, how can you know whether a
    thing is good or bad of which you are wholly ignorant?

    _Any._ Quite well; I am sure that I know what manner of
    men these are, whether I am acquainted with them or not.

[Sidenote: Then who will teach Meno virtue?]

    _Soc._ You must be a diviner, Anytus, for I really cannot
    make out, judging from your own words, how, if you are not
    acquainted with them, you know about them. But I am not
    enquiring of you who are the teachers who will corrupt Meno
    (let them be, if you please, the Sophists); I only ask you to
    tell him who there is in this great city who will teach him how
    to become eminent in the virtues which I was just now describing.
    He is the friend of your family, and you will oblige
    him.

    _Any._ Why do you not tell him yourself?

    _Soc._ I have told him whom I supposed to be the teachers
    of these things; but I learn from you that I am utterly at
    fault, and I dare say that you are right. And now I wish
    that you, on your part, would tell me to whom among the
    Athenians he should go. Whom would you name?

[Sidenote: _The lesson taught by the example of Themistocles._]

[Sidenote: Any Athenian gentleman who has learned of a previous
generation of gentlemen.]

    _Any._ Why single out individuals? Any Athenian gentleman,
    taken at random, if he will mind him, will do far more
    good to him than the Sophists.

    _Soc._ And did those gentlemen grow of themselves; and
    without having been taught by any one, were they nevertheless
    able to teach others that which they had never learned              93
    themselves?

    _Any._ I imagine that they learned of the previous generation
    of gentlemen. Have there not been many good men in this city?

    _Soc._ Yes, certainly, Anytus; and many good statesmen also
    there always have been and there are still, in the city of
    Athens. But the question is whether they were also good
    teachers of their own virtue;—not whether there are, or have
    been, good men in this part of the world, but whether virtue
    can be taught, is the question which we have been discussing.
    Now, do we mean to say that the good men of our own and of
    other times knew how to impart to others that virtue which
    they had themselves; or is virtue a thing incapable of being
    communicated or imparted by one man to another? That is
    the question which I and Meno have been arguing. Look at
    the matter in your own way: Would you not admit that
    Themistocles was a good man?

    _Any._ Certainly; no man better.

[Sidenote: Good men may not have been good teachers. There never was a
better man than Themistocles: but he did not make much of his own son.]

    _Soc._ And must not he then have been a good teacher, if
    any man ever was a good teacher, of his own virtue?

    _Any._ Yes, certainly,—if he wanted to be so.

    _Soc._ But would he not have wanted? He would, at any
    rate, have desired to make his own son a good man and a
    gentleman; he could not have been jealous of him, or have
    intentionally abstained from imparting to him his own virtue.
    Did you never hear that he made his son Cleophantus a
    famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on
    horseback and hurl a javelin, and to do many other marvellous
    things; and in anything which could be learned from a master
    he was well trained? Have you not heard from our elders
    of him?

    _Any._ I have.

    _Soc._ Then no one could say that his son showed any want
    of capacity?

    _Any._ Very likely not.

    _Soc._ But did any one, old or young, ever say in your hearing
    that Cleophantus, son of Themistocles, was a wise or good
    man, as his father was?

[Sidenote: _Aristides, Pericles, Thucydides the son of Melesias._]

[Sidenote: He had him taught accomplishments because there was no one to
teach virtue.]

    _Any._ I have certainly never heard any one say so.

    _Soc._ And if virtue could have been taught, would his father
    Themistocles have sought to train him in these minor accomplishments,
    and allowed him who, as you must remember, was
    his own son, to be no better than his neighbours in those
    qualities in which he himself excelled?

    _Any._ Indeed, indeed, I think not.

    _Soc._ Here was a teacher of virtue whom you admit to be
    among the best men of the past. Let us take another,—Aristides,     94
    the son of Lysimachus: would you not acknowledge
    that he was a good man?

    _Any._ To be sure I should.

[Sidenote: Aristides was also a good man, and Pericles and
Thucydides:—they made their sons good horsemen, and wrestlers, and the
like, but they did not have them taught to be good, because virtue cannot
be taught.]

    _Soc._ And did not he train his son Lysimachus better than
    any other Athenian in all that could be done for him by the
    help of masters? But what has been the result? Is he a bit
    better than any other mortal? He is an acquaintance of
    yours, and you see what he is like. There is Pericles, again,
    magnificent in his wisdom; and he, as you are aware, had
    two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus.

    _Any._ I know.

    _Soc._ And you know, also, that he taught them to be unrivalled
    horsemen, and had them trained in music and gymnastics
    and all sorts of arts—in these respects they were on a
    level with the best—and had he no wish to make good men of
    them? Nay, he must have wished it. But virtue, as I suspect,
    could not be taught. And that you may not suppose the
    incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians
    and few in number, remember again that Thucydides had two
    sons, Melesias and Stephanus, whom, besides giving them a
    good education in other things, he trained in wrestling, and
    they were the best wrestlers in Athens: one of them he committed
    to the care of Xanthias, and the other of Eudorus, who
    had the reputation of being the most celebrated wrestlers of
    that day. Do you remember them?

    _Any._ I have heard of them.

    _Soc._ Now, can there be a doubt that Thucydides, whose
    children were taught things for which he had to spend money,
    would have taught them to be good men, which would have
    cost him nothing, if virtue could have been taught? Will
    you reply that he was a mean man, and had not many friends
    among the Athenians and allies? Nay, but he was of a great
    family, and a man of influence at Athens and in all Hellas,
    and, if virtue could have been taught, he would have found
    out some Athenian or foreigner who would have made good
    men of his sons, if he could not himself spare the time from
    cares of state. Once more, I suspect, friend Anytus, that
    virtue is not a thing which can be taught?

[Sidenote: _The sophists again._]

    _Any._ Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak
    evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend
    you to be careful. Perhaps there is no city in which
    it is not easier to do men harm than to do them good, and
    this is certainly the case at Athens, as I believe that you         95
    know.

[Sidenote: Anytus gives an angry warning to Socrates.]

    _Soc._ O Meno, I think that Anytus is in a rage. And he
    may well be in a rage, for he thinks, in the first place, that I
    am defaming these gentlemen; and in the second place, he is
    of opinion that he is one of them himself. But some day
    he will know what is the meaning of defamation, and if he
    ever does, he will forgive me. Meanwhile I will return to
    you, Meno; for I suppose that there are gentlemen in your
    region too?

    _Men._ Certainly there are.

    _Soc._ And are they willing to teach the young? and do
    they profess to be teachers? and do they agree that virtue is
    taught?

[Sidenote: The Thessalian gentry are not agreed about the possibility of
teaching virtue.]

    _Men._ No indeed, Socrates, they are anything but agreed;
    you may hear them saying at one time that virtue can be
    taught, and then again the reverse.

    _Soc._ Can we call those teachers who do not acknowledge
    the possibility of their own vocation?

    _Men._ I think not, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And what do you think of these Sophists, who are the
    only professors? Do they seem to you to be teachers of
    virtue?

[Sidenote: _The Sophists no teachers of virtue._]

[Sidenote: Gorgias professes to teach rhetoric, but laughs at those who
pretend to teach virtue.]

    _Men._ I often wonder, Socrates, that Gorgias is never heard
    promising to teach virtue: and when he hears others promising
    he only laughs at them; but he thinks that men should be
    taught to speak.

    _Soc._ Then do you not think that the Sophists are teachers?

    _Men._ I cannot tell you, Socrates; like the rest of the world,
    I am in doubt, and sometimes I think that they are teachers
    and sometimes not.

    _Soc._ And are you aware that not you only and other politicians
    have doubts whether virtue can be taught or not, but
    that Theognis the poet says the very same thing?

    _Men._ Where does he say so?

[Sidenote: Theognis implies in one passage that virtue can, and in
another that it cannot, be taught.]

    _Soc._ In these elegiac verses[10]:—

      ‘Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself
      agreeable to them; for from the good you will learn what
      is good, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the
      intelligence which you already have.’

    Do you observe that here he seems to imply that virtue can
    be taught?

    _Men._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ But in some other verses he shifts about and
    says[11]:—

      ‘If understanding could be created and put into a man, then
      they’ [who were able to perform this feat] ‘would have
      obtained great rewards.’

    And again:—

      ‘Never would a bad son have sprung from a good sire, for          96
      he would have heard the voice of instruction; but not by
      teaching will you ever make a bad man into a good one.’

    And this, as you may remark, is a contradiction of the other.

    _Men._ Clearly.

[Sidenote: How can they be teachers who are so inconsistent with
themselves?]

    _Soc._ And is there anything else of which the professors are
    affirmed not only not to be teachers of others, but to be ignorant
    themselves, and bad at the knowledge of that which they
    are professing to teach? or is there anything about which even
    the acknowledged ‘gentlemen’ are sometimes saying that
    ‘this thing can be taught,’ and sometimes the opposite? Can
    you say that they are teachers in any true sense whose ideas
    are in such confusion?

    _Men._ I should say, certainly not.

    _Soc._ But if neither the Sophists nor the gentlemen are
    teachers, clearly there can be no other teachers?

    _Men._ No.

    _Soc._ And if there are no teachers, neither are there disciples?

    _Men._ Agreed.

[Sidenote: _Knowledge and Opinion._]

    _Soc._ And we have admitted that a thing cannot be taught of
    which there are neither teachers nor disciples?

    _Men._ We have.

[Sidenote: If there are no teachers and no scholars, virtue cannot be
taught.]

    _Soc._ And there are no teachers of virtue to be found anywhere?

    _Men._ There are not.

    _Soc._ And if there are no teachers, neither are there scholars?

    _Men._ That, I think, is true.

    _Soc._ Then virtue cannot be taught?

    _Men._ Not if we are right in our view. But I cannot believe,
    Socrates, that there are no good men: And if there are, how
    did they come into existence?

[Sidenote: But were we not mistaken in our view? There may be another
guide to good action as well as knowledge.]

    _Soc._ I am afraid, Meno, that you and I are not good for
    much, and that Gorgias has been as poor an educator of you
    as Prodicus has been of me. Certainly we shall have to
    look to ourselves, and try to find some one who will help
    in some way or other to improve us. This I say, because
    I observe that in the previous discussion none of us remarked
    that right and good action is possible to man under other
    guidance than that of knowledge (ἐπιστήμη);—and indeed if
    this be denied, there is no seeing how there can be any good
    men at all.

    _Men._ How do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I mean that good men are necessarily useful or
    profitable. Were we not right in admitting this? It must            97
    be so.

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And in supposing that they will be useful only if they
    are true guides to us of action—there we were also right?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But when we said that a man cannot be a good guide
    unless he have knowledge (φρόνησις), in this we were wrong.

    _Men._ What do you mean by the word ‘right’?

    _Soc._ I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or
    anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither,
    would he not be a right and good guide?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And a person who had a right opinion about the way,
    but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide
    also, might he not?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And while he has true opinion about that which the
    other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the
    truth, as he who knows the truth?

    _Men._ Exactly.

[Sidenote: _The images of Daedalus._]

[Sidenote: Right opinion is as good a guide to action as knowledge.]

    _Soc._ Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action
    as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in
    our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that
    knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is
    also right opinion.

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ Then right opinion is not less useful than knowledge?

    _Men._ The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has
    knowledge will always be right; but he who has right
    opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.

    _Soc._ What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has
    right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?

    _Men._ I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore,
    Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to
    right opinion—or why they should ever differ.

    _Soc._ And shall I explain this wonder to you?

    _Men._ Do tell me.

    _Soc._ You would not wonder if you had ever observed the
    images of Daedalus[12]; but perhaps you have not got them in
    your country?

    _Men._ What have they to do with the question?

    _Soc._ Because they require to be fastened in order to keep
    them, and if they are not fastened they will play truant and
    run away.

    _Men._ Well, what of that?

[Sidenote: _Recapitulation of the argument._]

[Sidenote: But right opinions are apt to walk away, like the images of
Daedalus.]

    _Soc._ I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions
    if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like
    runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value,
    for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an
    illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide       98
    with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out
    of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore
    they are not of much value until they are fastened by the
    tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno,
    is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But
    when they are bound, in the first place, they have the
    nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are
    abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable
    and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain.

    _Men._ What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very
    like the truth.

    _Soc._ I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture.
    And yet that knowledge differs from true opinion is no
    matter of conjecture with me. There are not many things
    which I profess to know, but this is most certainly one
    of them.

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.

    _Soc._ And am I not also right in saying that true opinion
    leading the way perfects action quite as well as knowledge?

    _Men._ There again, Socrates, I think that you are right.

    _Soc._ Then right opinion is not a whit inferior to knowledge,
    or less useful in action; nor is the man who has right opinion
    inferior to him who has knowledge?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ And surely the good man has been acknowledged by
    us to be useful?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Seeing then that men become good and useful to
    states, not only because they have knowledge, but because
    they have right opinion, and that neither knowledge nor
    right opinion is given to man by nature or acquired by
    him—(do you imagine either of them to be given by nature?

    _Men._ Not I.)

    _Soc._ Then if they are not given by nature, neither are the
    good by nature good?

    _Men._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And nature being excluded, then came the question
    whether virtue is acquired by teaching?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ If virtue was wisdom [or knowledge], then, as we
    thought, it was taught?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if it was taught it was wisdom?

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _Diviners and divine men._]

    _Soc._ And if there were teachers, it might be taught; and
    if there were no teachers, not?

    _Men._ True.

    _Soc._ But surely we acknowledged that there were no
    teachers of virtue?

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then we acknowledged that it was not taught, and
    was not wisdom?

    _Men._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And yet we admitted that it was a good?                      99

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the right guide is useful and good?

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: If virtue and knowledge cannot be taught, the only right
guides of men are true opinions.]

    _Soc._ And the only right guides are knowledge and true
    opinion—these are the guides of man; for things which
    happen by chance are not under the guidance of man: but
    the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge.

    _Men._ I think so too.

    _Soc._ But if virtue is not taught, neither is virtue knowledge.

    _Men._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ Then of two good and useful things, one, which is
    knowledge, has been set aside, and cannot be supposed to
    be our guide in political life.

    _Men._ I think not.

    _Soc._ And therefore not by any wisdom, and not because
    they were wise, did Themistocles and those others of whom
    Anytus spoke govern states. This was the reason why they
    were unable to make others like themselves—because their
    virtue was not grounded on knowledge.

    _Men._ That is probably true, Socrates.

[Sidenote: Right opinion is in politics what divination is in religion;
diviners, prophets, poets, statesmen, may all be truly called ‘divine
men.’]

    _Soc._ But if not by knowledge, the only alternative which
    remains is that statesmen must have guided states by right
    opinion, which is in politics what divination is in religion;
    for diviners and also prophets say many things truly, but
    they know not what they say.

    _Men._ So I believe.

    _Soc._ And may we not, Meno, truly call those men ‘divine’
    who, having no understanding, yet succeed in many a grand
    deed and word?

    _Men._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _The conclusion._]

    _Soc._ Then we shall also be right in calling divine those
    whom we were just now speaking of as diviners and prophets,
    including the whole tribe of poets. Yes, and statesmen
    above all may be said to be divine and illumined, being
    inspired and possessed of God, in which condition they say
    many grand things, not knowing what they say.

    _Men._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the women too, Meno, call good men divine—do
    they not? and the Spartans, when they praise a good
    man, say ‘that he is a divine man.’

    _Men._ And I think, Socrates, that they are right; although
    very likely our friend Anytus may take offence at the word.

    _Soc._ I do not care; as for Anytus, there will be another
    opportunity of talking with him. To sum up our enquiry—the
    result seems to be, if we are at all right in our view, that
    virtue is neither natural nor acquired, but an instinct given
    by God to the virtuous. Nor is the instinct accompanied            100
    by reason, unless there may be supposed to be among statesmen
    some one who is capable of educating statesmen. And
    if there be such an one, he may be said to be among the
    living what Homer says that Tiresias was among the dead,
    ‘he alone has understanding; but the rest are flitting shades;’
    and he and his virtue in like manner will be a reality among
    shadows.

    _Men._ That is excellent, Socrates.

[Sidenote: Virtue comes by the gift of God.]

    _Soc._ Then, Meno, the conclusion is that virtue comes to
    the virtuous by the gift of God. But we shall never know
    the certain truth until, before asking how virtue is given,
    we enquire into the actual nature of virtue. I fear that
    I must go away, but do you, now that you are persuaded
    yourself, persuade our friend Anytus. And do not let him be
    so exasperated; if you can conciliate him, you will have done
    good service to the Athenian people.


FOOTNOTES

[1] Butler’s Analogy.

[2] Cp. _infra_ p. 12, _ad fin._

[3] Cp. Arist. Pol. i. 13, § 10.

[4] Cp. Theaet. 146 D.

[5] Cp. Aristot. Post. Anal. I. i. 6.

[6] Pindar, Frag. 98 (Boeckh).

[7] Or, whether a certain area is capable of being inscribed as a
triangle in a certain circle.

[8] Or, when you apply it to the given line, i. e. the diameter of the
circle (αὐτοῦ).

[9] Or, similar to the area so applied.

[10] Theog. 33 ff.

[11] Theog. 435 ff.

[12] Cp. Euthyphro 11 B.




EUTHYPHRO.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

In the Meno, Anytus had parted from Socrates with the significant
words: ‘That in any city, and particularly in the city of Athens, it is
easier to do men harm than to do them good’ (94 E); and Socrates was
anticipating another opportunity of talking with him (99 E). In the
Euthyphro, Socrates is awaiting his trial for impiety. But before the
trial begins, Plato would like to put the world on their trial, and
convince them of ignorance in that very matter touching which Socrates is
accused. An incident which may perhaps really have occurred in the family
of Euthyphro, a learned Athenian diviner and soothsayer, furnishes the
occasion of the discussion.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

    This Euthyphro and Socrates are represented as meeting in the
    porch of the King Archon. (Cp. Theaet. sub fin.) Both have  =Steph.= 2
    legal business in hand. Socrates is defendant in a suit for impiety
    which Meletus has brought against him (it is remarked by the         3
    way that he is not a likely man himself to have brought a suit
    against another); and Euthyphro too is plaintiff in an action for
    murder, which he has brought against his own father. The latter      4
    has originated in the following manner:—A poor dependant of
    the family had slain one of their domestic slaves in Naxos. The
    guilty person was bound and thrown into a ditch by the command
    of Euthyphro’s father, who sent to the interpreters of religion
    at Athens to ask what should be done with him. Before the
    messenger came back the criminal had died from hunger and
    exposure.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 5-9._]

    This is the origin of the charge of murder which Euthyphro
    brings against his father. Socrates is confident that before he
    could have undertaken the responsibility of such a prosecution,
    he must have been perfectly informed of the nature of piety and      5
    impiety; and as he is going to be tried for impiety himself, he
    thinks that he cannot do better than learn of Euthyphro (who will
    be admitted by everybody, including the judges, to be an unimpeachable
    authority) what piety is, and what is impiety. What
    then is piety?

    Euthyphro, who, in the abundance of his knowledge, is very
    willing to undertake all the responsibility, replies: That piety is
    doing as I do, prosecuting your father (if he is guilty) on a charge
    of murder; doing as the gods do—as Zeus did to Cronos, and
    Cronos to Uranus.

    Socrates has a dislike to these tales of mythology, and he fancies   6
    that this dislike of his may be the reason why he is charged with
    impiety. ‘Are they really true?’ ‘Yes, they are;’ and Euthyphro
    will gladly tell Socrates some more of them. But Socrates
    would like first of all to have a more satisfactory answer to the
    question, ‘What is piety?’ ‘Doing as I do, charging a father with
    murder,’ may be a single instance of piety, but can hardly be
    regarded as a general definition.

    Euthyphro replies, that ‘Piety is what is dear to the gods,          7
    and impiety is what is not dear to them.’ But may there not
    be differences of opinion, as among men, so also among the
    gods? Especially, about good and evil, which have no fixed
    rule; and these are precisely the sort of differences which
    give rise to quarrels. And therefore what may be dear to one         8
    god may not be dear to another, and the same action may
    be both pious and impious; e. g. your chastisement of your
    father, Euthyphro, may be dear or pleasing to Zeus (who inflicted
    a similar chastisement on his own father), but not
    equally pleasing to Cronos or Uranus (who suffered at the
    hands of their sons).

    Euthyphro answers that there is no difference of opinion, either
    among gods or men, as to the propriety of punishing a murderer.
    Yes, rejoins Socrates, when they know him to be a murderer; but
    you are assuming the point at issue. If all the circumstances of
    the case are considered, are you able to show that your father       9
    was guilty of murder, or that all the gods are agreed in approving
    of our prosecution of him? And must you not allow that what
    is hated by one god may be liked by another? Waiving this last,
    however, Socrates proposes to amend the definition, and say that
    ‘what all the gods love is pious, and what they all hate is impious.’
    To this Euthyphro agrees.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 9-15._]

    Socrates proceeds to analyze the new form of the definition.        10
    He shows that in other cases the act precedes the state; e. g.
    the act of being carried, loved, &c. precedes the state of being
    carried, loved, &c., and therefore that which is dear to the gods is
    dear to the gods because it is first loved of them, not loved of
    them because it is dear to them. But the pious or holy is loved
    by the gods because it is pious or holy, which is equivalent to
    saying, that it is loved by them because it is dear to them. Here
    then appears to be a contradiction,—Euthyphro has been giving an    11
    attribute or accident of piety only, and not the essence. Euthyphro
    acknowledges himself that his explanations seem to walk away
    or go round in a circle, like the moving figures of Daedalus,
    the ancestor of Socrates, who has communicated his art to his
    descendants.

    Socrates, who is desirous of stimulating the indolent intelligence  12
    of Euthyphro, raises the question in another manner: ‘Is all the
    pious just?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is all the just pious?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what
    part of justice is piety?’ Euthyphro replies that piety is that
    part of justice which ‘attends’ to the gods, as there is another
    part of justice which ‘attends’ to men. But what is the meaning     13
    of ‘attending’ to the gods? The word ‘attending,’ when applied
    to dogs, horses, and men, implies that in some way they are made
    better. But how do pious or holy acts make the gods any better?
    Euthyphro explains that he means by pious acts, acts of service
    or ministration. Yes; but the ministrations of the husbandman,
    the physician, and the builder have an end. To what end do
    we serve the gods, and what do we help them to accomplish?          14
    Euthyphro replies, that all these difficult questions cannot be
    resolved in a short time; and he would rather say simply that
    piety is knowing how to please the gods in word and deed, by
    prayers and sacrifices. In other words, says Socrates, piety is ‘a
    science of asking and giving’—asking what we want and giving        15
    what they want; in short, a mode of doing business between gods
    and men. But although they are the givers of all good, how can
    we give them any good in return? ‘Nay, but we give them
    honour.’ Then we give them not what is beneficial, but what is
    pleasing or dear to them; and this is the point which has been
    already disproved.

[Sidenote: _Religion of the letter and of the spirit._]

    Socrates, although weary of the subterfuges and evasions of
    Euthyphro, remains unshaken in his conviction that he must know
    the nature of piety, or he would never have prosecuted his old
    father. He is still hoping that he will condescend to instruct him.
    But Euthyphro is in a hurry and cannot stay. And Socrates’ last     16
    hope of knowing the nature of piety before he is prosecuted for
    impiety has disappeared. As in the Euthydemus the irony is
    carried on to the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

The Euthyphro is manifestly designed to contrast the real nature of piety
and impiety with the popular conceptions of them. But when the popular
conceptions of them have been overthrown, Socrates does not offer any
definition of his own: as in the Laches and Lysis, he prepares the way
for an answer to the question which he has raised; but true to his own
character, refuses to answer himself.

Euthyphro is a religionist, and is elsewhere spoken of, if he be the
same person, as the author of a philosophy of names, by whose ‘prancing
steeds’ Socrates in the Cratylus is carried away (p. 396). He has the
conceit and self-confidence of a Sophist; no doubt that he is right in
prosecuting his father has ever entered into his mind. Like a Sophist
too, he is incapable either of framing a general definition or of
following the course of an argument. His wrong-headedness, one-sidedness,
narrowness, positiveness, are characteristic of his priestly office. His
failure to apprehend an argument may be compared to a similar defect
which is observable in the rhapsode Ion. But he is not a bad man, and he
is friendly to Socrates, whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest.
Though unable to follow him he is very willing to be led by him, and
eagerly catches at any suggestion which saves him from the trouble of
thinking. Moreover he is the enemy of Meletus, who, as he says, is
availing himself of the popular dislike to innovations in religion in
order to injure Socrates; at the same time he is amusingly confident
that he has weapons in his own armoury which would be more than a match
for him. He is quite sincere in his prosecution of his father, who has
accidentally been guilty of homicide, and is not wholly free from blame.
To purge away the crime appears to him in the light of a duty, whoever
may be the criminal.

[Sidenote: _The three definitions of piety._]

Thus begins the contrast between the religion of the letter, or of the
narrow and unenlightened conscience, and the higher notion of religion
which Socrates vainly endeavours to elicit from him. ‘Piety is doing as
I do’ is the idea of religion which first occurs to him, and to many
others who do not say what they think with equal frankness. For men are
not easily persuaded that any other religion is better than their own;
or that other nations, e. g. the Greeks in the time of Socrates, were
equally serious in their religious beliefs and difficulties. The chief
difference between us and them is, that they were slowly learning what
we are in process of forgetting. Greek mythology hardly admitted of the
distinction between accidental homicide and murder: that the pollution
of blood was the same in both cases is also the feeling of the Athenian
diviner. He had not as yet learned the lesson, which philosophy was
teaching, that Homer and Hesiod, if not banished from the state, or
whipped out of the assembly, as Heracleitus more rudely proposed, at any
rate were not to be appealed to as authorities in religion; and he is
ready to defend his conduct by the examples of the gods. These are the
very tales which Socrates cannot abide; and his dislike of them, as he
suspects, has branded him with the reputation of impiety. Here is one
answer to the question, ‘Why Socrates was put to death,’ suggested by the
way. Another is conveyed in the words, ‘The Athenians do not care about
any man being thought wise until he begins to make other men wise; and
then for some reason or other they are angry:’ which may be said to be
the rule of popular toleration in most other countries, and not at Athens
only. In the course of the argument (7 A, B) Socrates remarks that the
controversial nature of morals and religion arises out of the difficulty
of verifying them. There is no measure or standard to which they can be
referred.

The next definition, ‘Piety is that which is loved of the gods,’ is
shipwrecked on a refined distinction between the state and the act,
corresponding respectively to the adjective (φίλον) and the participle
(φιλούμενον), or rather perhaps to the participle and the verb
(φιλούμενον and φιλεῖται). The act is prior to the state (as in Aristotle
the ἐνέργεια precedes the δύναμις); and the state of being loved is
preceded by the act of being loved. But piety or holiness is preceded
by the act of being pious, not by the act of being loved; and therefore
piety and the state of being loved are different. Through such subtleties
of dialectic Socrates is working his way into a deeper region of thought
and feeling. He means to say that the words ‘loved of the gods’ express
an attribute only, and not the essence of piety.

[Sidenote: _Genuineness of the Dialogue._]

Then follows the third and last definition, ‘Piety is a part of
justice.’ Thus far Socrates has proceeded in placing religion on a
moral foundation. He is seeking to realize the harmony of religion and
morality, which the great poets Æschylus, Sophocles, and Pindar had
unconsciously anticipated, and which is the universal want of all men.
To this the soothsayer adds the ceremonial element, ‘attending upon the
gods.’ When further interrogated by Socrates as to the nature of this
‘attention to the gods,’ he replies, that piety is an affair of business,
a science of giving and asking, and the like. Socrates points out the
anthropomorphism of these notions. (Cp. Symp. 202 E; Rep. ii. 365 E;
Statesman 290 C, D.) But when we expect him to go on and show that the
true service of the gods is the service of the spirit and the cooperation
with them in all things true and good, he stops short; this was a lesson
which the soothsayer could not have been made to understand, and which
every one must learn for himself.

There seem to be altogether three aims or interests in this little
Dialogue: (1) the dialectical development of the idea of piety; (2) the
antithesis of true and false religion, which is carried to a certain
extent only; (3) the defence of Socrates.

[Sidenote: _Date of the Dialogue._]

The subtle connection with the Apology and the Crito; the holding back of
the conclusion, as in the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, and other
Dialogues; and deep insight into the religious world; the dramatic power
and play of the two characters; the inimitable irony, are reasons for
believing that the Euthyphro is a genuine Platonic writing. The spirit
in which the popular representations of mythology are denounced recalls
Republic II (378 ff.) The virtue of piety has been already mentioned
as one of five in the Protagoras, but is not reckoned among the four
cardinal virtues of Republic IV (428 ff.). The figure of Daedalus (15 C)
has occurred in the Meno (97 D); that of Proteus (15 D) in the Euthydemus
(288 B) and Io (541 E). The kingly science has already appeared in the
Euthydemus, and will reappear in the Republic and Statesman. But neither
from these nor any other indications of similarity or difference, and
still less from arguments respecting the suitableness of this little work
to aid Socrates at the time of his trial or the reverse, can any evidence
of the date be obtained.


EUTHYPHRO.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

SOCRATES. EUTHYPHRO.

SCENE:—The Porch of the King Archon.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro._]

[Sidenote: Euthyphro and Socrates meet at the Porch of the King Archon.
Both have legal business on hand.]

    _Euthyphro._ Why have you left the Lyceum, Socrates?
    and what are you doing in the Porch of the King Archon?     =Steph.= 2
    Surely you cannot be concerned in a suit before the King,
    like myself?

    _Socrates._ Not in a suit, Euthyphro; impeachment is the
    word which the Athenians use.

    _Euth._ What! I suppose that some one has been prosecuting
    you, for I cannot believe that you are the prosecutor
    of another.

    _Soc._ Certainly not.

    _Euth._ Then some one else has been prosecuting you?

    _Soc._ Yes.

    _Euth._ And who is he?

    _Soc._ A young man who is little known, Euthyphro; and I
    hardly know him: his name is Meletus, and he is of the deme
    of Pitthis. Perhaps you may remember his appearance; he
    has a beak, and long straight hair, and a beard which is ill
    grown.

    _Euth._ No, I do not remember him, Socrates. But what is
    the charge which he brings against you?

[Sidenote: _The ways of the Athenian people._]

[Sidenote: Meletus has brought a charge against Socrates.]

    _Soc._ What is the charge? Well, a very serious charge,
    which shows a good deal of character in the young man, and
    for which he is certainly not to be despised. He says he
    knows how the youth are corrupted and who are their corruptors.
    I fancy that he must be a wise man, and seeing
    that I am the reverse of a wise man, he has found me out,
    and is going to accuse me of corrupting his young friends.
    And of this our mother the state is to be the judge. Of all
    our political men he is the only one who seems to me to
    begin in the right way, with the cultivation of virtue in youth;
    like a good husbandman, he makes the young shoots his first          3
    care, and clears away us who are the destroyers of them.
    This is only the first step; he will afterwards attend to the
    elder branches; and if he goes on as he has begun, he will be
    a very great public benefactor.

    _Euth._ I hope that he may; but I rather fear, Socrates, that
    the opposite will turn out to be the truth. My opinion is that
    in attacking you he is simply aiming a blow at the foundation
    of the state. But in what way does he say that you corrupt
    the young?

[Sidenote: The nature of the charge against Socrates.]

    _Soc._ He brings a wonderful accusation against me, which
    at first hearing excites surprise: he says that I am a poet or
    maker of gods, and that I invent new gods and deny the
    existence of old ones; this is the ground of his indictment.

    _Euth._ I understand, Socrates; he means to attack you
    about the familiar sign which occasionally, as you say, comes
    to you. He thinks that you are a neologian, and he is going
    to have you up before the court for this. He knows that
    such a charge is readily received by the world, as I myself
    know too well; for when I speak in the assembly about
    divine things, and foretell the future to them, they laugh at
    me and think me a madman. Yet every word that I say is
    true. But they are jealous of us all; and we must be brave
    and go at them.

    _Soc._ Their laughter, friend Euthyphro, is not a matter of
    much consequence. For a man may be thought wise; but
    the Athenians, I suspect, do not much trouble themselves
    about him until he begins to impart his wisdom to others;
    and then for some reason or other, perhaps, as you say, from
    jealousy, they are angry.

    _Euth._ I am never likely to try their temper in this way.

    _Soc._ I dare say not, for you are reserved in your behaviour,
    and seldom impart your wisdom. But I have a benevolent
    habit of pouring out myself to everybody, and would even
    pay for a listener, and I am afraid that the Athenians may
    think me too talkative. Now if, as I was saying, they would
    only laugh at me, as you say that they laugh at you, the time
    might pass gaily enough in the court; but perhaps they may
    be in earnest, and then what the end will be you soothsayers
    only can predict.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro charges his father with murder._]

    _Euth._ I dare say that the affair will end in nothing,
    Socrates, and that you will win your cause; and I think
    that I shall win my own.

    _Soc._ And what is your suit, Euthyphro? are you the
    pursuer or the defendant?

    _Euth._ I am the pursuer.

    _Soc._ Of whom?

    _Euth._ You will think me mad when I tell you.                       4

    _Soc._ Why, has the fugitive wings?

    _Euth._ Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life.

    _Soc._ Who is he?

    _Euth._ My father.

    _Soc._ Your father! my good man?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And of what is he accused?

    _Euth._ Of murder, Socrates.

[Sidenote: The irony of Socrates.]

    _Soc._ By the powers, Euthyphro! how little does the common
    herd know of the nature of right and truth. A man
    must be an extraordinary man, and have made great strides
    in wisdom, before he could have seen his way to bring such
    an action.

    _Euth._ Indeed, Socrates, he must.

[Sidenote: _The murderer murdered._]

[Sidenote: Euthyphro is under a sacred obligation to prosecute a
homicide, even if he be his own father.]

    _Soc._ I suppose that the man whom your father murdered
    was one of your relatives—clearly he was; for if he had been
    a stranger you would never have thought of prosecuting him.

    _Euth._ I am amused, Socrates, at your making a distinction
    between one who is a relation and one who is not a relation;
    for surely the pollution is the same in either case, if you
    knowingly associate with the murderer when you ought to
    clear yourself and him by proceeding against him. The real
    question is whether the murdered man has been justly slain.
    If justly, then your duty is to let the matter alone; but if
    unjustly, then even if the murderer lives under the same roof
    with you and eats at the same table, proceed against him.
    Now the man who is dead was a poor dependant of mine who
    worked for us as a field labourer on our farm in Naxos, and
    one day in a fit of drunken passion he got into a quarrel with
    one of our domestic servants and slew him. My father bound
    him hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent
    to Athens to ask of a diviner what he should do with him.
    Meanwhile he never attended to him and took no care about
    him, for he regarded him as a murderer; and thought that no
    great harm would be done even if he did die. Now this was
    just what happened. For such was the effect of cold and
    hunger and chains upon him, that before the messenger
    returned from the diviner, he was dead. And my father and
    family are angry with me for taking the part of the murderer
    and prosecuting my father. They say that he did not kill
    him, and that if he did, the dead man was but a murderer,
    and I ought not to take any notice, for that a son is impious
    who prosecutes a father. Which shows, Socrates, how little
    they know what the gods think about piety and impiety.

    _Soc._ Good heavens, Euthyphro! and is your knowledge of
    religion and of things pious and impious so very exact, that,
    supposing the circumstances to be as you state them, you are
    not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in
    bringing an action against your father?

    _Euth._ The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes
    him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all         5
    such matters. What should I be good for without it?

[Sidenote: Socrates, who is accused of false theology, thinks that he
cannot do better than become the disciple of so great a theologian as
Euthyphro.]

    _Soc._ Rare friend! I think that I cannot do better than be
    your disciple. Then before the trial with Meletus comes on
    I shall challenge him, and say that I have always had a
    great interest in religious questions, and now, as he charges
    me with rash imaginations and innovations in religion, I have
    become your disciple. You, Meletus, as I shall say to him,
    acknowledge Euthyphro to be a great theologian, and sound
    in his opinions; and if you approve of him you ought to
    approve of me, and not have me into court; but if you disapprove,
    you should begin by indicting him who is my teacher,
    and who will be the ruin, not of the young, but of the old;
    that is to say, of myself whom he instructs, and of his old
    father whom he admonishes and chastises. And if Meletus
    refuses to listen to me, but will go on, and will not shift the
    indictment from me to you, I cannot do better than repeat
    this challenge in the court.

    _Euth._ Yes, indeed, Socrates; and if he attempts to indict
    me I am mistaken if I do not find a flaw in him; the court
    shall have a great deal more to say to him than to me.

[Sidenote: _Socrates becomes the disciple of Euthyphro._]

[Sidenote: He asks, ‘What is piety?’]

    _Soc._ And I, my dear friend, knowing this, am desirous of
    becoming your disciple. For I observe that no one appears
    to notice you—not even this Meletus; but his sharp eyes
    have found me out at once, and he has indicted me for
    impiety. And therefore, I adjure you to tell me the nature
    of piety and impiety, which you said that you knew so well,
    and of murder, and of other offences against the gods.
    What are they? Is not piety in every action always the
    same? and impiety, again—is it not always the opposite
    of piety, and also the same with itself, having, as impiety,
    one notion which includes whatever is impious?

[Sidenote: Piety is doing as I am doing;—like Zeus, I am proceeding
against my father.]

    _Euth._ To be sure, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And what is piety, and what is impiety?

    _Euth._ Piety is doing as I am doing; that is to say, prosecuting
    any one who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any
    similar crime—whether he be your father or mother, or
    whoever he may be—that makes no difference; and not to
    prosecute them is impiety. And please to consider, Socrates,
    what a notable proof I will give you of the truth of my
    words, a proof which I have already given to others:—of
    the principle, I mean, that the impious, whoever he may
    be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not men regard
    Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods?—and                 6
    yet they admit that he bound his father (Cronos) because
    he wickedly devoured his sons, and that he too had punished
    his own father (Uranus) for a similar reason, in a nameless
    manner. And yet when I proceed against my father, they
    are angry with me. So inconsistent are they in their way
    of talking when the gods are concerned, and when I am
    concerned.

[Sidenote: Does Euthyphro believe these amazing stories about the gods?]

    _Soc._ May not this be the reason, Euthyphro, why I am
    charged with impiety—that I cannot away with these stories
    about the gods? and therefore I suppose that people think
    me wrong. But, as you who are well informed about
    them approve of them, I cannot do better than assent to
    your superior wisdom. What else can I say, confessing
    as I do, that I know nothing about them? Tell me, for
    the love of Zeus, whether you really believe that they are
    true.

[Sidenote: _What is piety?_]

    _Euth._ Yes, Socrates; and things more wonderful still, of
    which the world is in ignorance.

    _Soc._ And do you really believe that the gods fought with
    one another, and had dire quarrels, battles, and the like,
    as the poets say, and as you may see represented in the
    works of great artists? The temples are full of them;
    and notably the robe of Athene, which is carried up to
    the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea, is embroidered
    with them. Are all these tales of the gods true, Euthyphro?

[Sidenote: Yes, and things more amazing still.]

    _Euth._ Yes, Socrates; and, as I was saying, I can tell you,
    if you would like to hear them, many other things about the
    gods which would quite amaze you.

    _Soc._ I dare say; and you shall tell me them at some other
    time when I have leisure. But just at present I would rather
    hear from you a more precise answer, which you have not as
    yet given, my friend, to the question, What is ‘piety’?
    When asked, you only replied, Doing as you do, charging
    your father with murder.

    _Euth._ And what I said was true, Socrates.

    _Soc._ No doubt, Euthyphro; but you would admit that there
    are many other pious acts?

    _Euth._ There are.

    _Soc._ Remember that I did not ask you to give me two
    or three examples of piety, but to explain the general idea
    which makes all pious things to be pious. Do you not
    recollect that there was one idea which made the impious
    impious, and the pious pious?

    _Euth._ I remember.

    _Soc._ Tell me what is the nature of this idea, and then
    I shall have a standard to which I may look, and by which
    I may measure actions, whether yours or those of any one
    else, and then I shall be able to say that such and such an
    action is pious, such another impious.

    _Euth._ I will tell you, if you like.

[Sidenote: A more correct definition:—Piety is that which is dear to the
gods.]

    _Soc._ I should very much like.

    _Euth._ Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and
    impiety is that which is not dear to them.

    _Soc._ Very good, Euthyphro; you have now given me the               7
    sort of answer which I wanted. But whether what you say
    is true or not I cannot as yet tell, although I make no doubt
    that you will prove the truth of your words.

[Sidenote: _The quarrels of the gods._]

    _Euth._ Of course.

    _Soc._ Come, then, and let us examine what we are saying.
    That thing or person which is dear to the gods is pious, and
    that thing or person which is hateful to the gods is impious,
    these two being the extreme opposites of one another. Was
    not that said?

    _Euth._ It was.

    _Soc._ And well said?

    _Euth._ Yes, Socrates, I thought so; it was certainly said.

    _Soc._ And further, Euthyphro, the gods were admitted to
    have enmities and hatreds and differences?

    _Euth._ Yes, that was also said.

[Sidenote: Differences about numbers and figures create no ill-will
because they can be settled by a sum or by a weighing machine, but
enmities about the just and unjust are the occasions of quarrels, both
among gods and men.]

    _Soc._ And what sort of difference creates enmity and anger?
    Suppose, for example, that you and I, my good friend, differ
    about a number; do differences of this sort make us enemies
    and set us at variance with one another? Do we not go at
    once to arithmetic, and put an end to them by a sum?

    _Euth._ True.

    _Soc._ Or suppose that we differ about magnitudes, do we
    not quickly end the difference by measuring?

    _Euth._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And we end a controversy about heavy and light by
    resorting to a weighing machine?

    _Euth._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ But what differences are there which cannot be thus
    decided, and which therefore make us angry and set us
    at enmity with one another? I dare say the answer does
    not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest
    that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are
    the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable.
    Are not these the points about which men
    differ, and about which when we are unable satisfactorily
    to decide our differences, you and I and all of us quarrel,
    when we do quarrel[13]?

    _Euth._ Yes, Socrates, the nature of the differences about
    which we quarrel is such as you describe.

[Sidenote: _Would all the gods approve of Euthyphro’s conduct?_]

    _Soc._ And the quarrels of the gods, noble Euthyphro, when
    they occur, are of a like nature?

    _Euth._ Certainly they are.

    _Soc._ They have differences of opinion, as you say, about
    good and evil, just and unjust, honourable and dishonourable:
    there would have been no quarrels among them, if there had
    been no such differences—would there now?

    _Euth._ You are quite right.

[Sidenote: Men and gods alike love the things which they deem noble and
just, but they are not agreed what these are.]

    _Soc._ Does not every man love that which he deems noble
    and just and good, and hate the opposite of them?

    _Euth._ Very true.

    _Soc._ But, as you say, people regard the same things, some
    as just and others as unjust,—about these they dispute; and
    so there arise wars and fightings among them.                        8

    _Euth._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Then the same things are hated by the gods
    and loved by the gods, and are both hateful and dear to
    them?

    _Euth._ True.

    _Soc._ And upon this view the same things, Euthyphro, will
    be pious and also impious?

    _Euth._ So I should suppose.

    _Soc._ Then, my friend, I remark with surprise that you
    have not answered the question which I asked. For I
    certainly did not ask you to tell me what action is both pious
    and impious: but now it would seem that what is loved
    by the gods is also hated by them. And therefore, Euthyphro,
    in thus chastising your father you may very likely
    be doing what is agreeable to Zeus but disagreeable to
    Cronos or Uranus, and what is acceptable to Hephaestus but
    unacceptable to Herè, and there may be other gods who
    have similar differences of opinion.

    _Euth._ But I believe, Socrates, that all the gods would be
    agreed as to the propriety of punishing a murderer: there
    would be no difference of opinion about that.

    _Soc._ Well, but speaking of men, Euthyphro, did you ever
    hear any one arguing that a murderer or any sort of evil-doer
    ought to be let off?

[Sidenote: _Or condemn his father’s?_]

    _Euth._ I should rather say that these are the questions
    which they are always arguing, especially in courts of law:
    they commit all sorts of crimes, and there is nothing which
    they will not do or say in their own defence.

    _Soc._ But do they admit their guilt, Euthyphro, and yet say
    that they ought not to be punished?

    _Euth._ No; they do not.

    _Soc._ Then there are some things which they do not venture
    to say and do: for they do not venture to argue that the guilty
    are to be unpunished, but they deny their guilt, do they not?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then they do not argue that the evil-doer should not
    be punished, but they argue about the fact of who the evil-doer
    is, and what he did and when?

    _Euth._ True.

[Sidenote: Neither God nor man will say that the doer of evil is not to
be punished, but they are doubtful about particular acts. What proof is
there that all the gods approve of the prosecution of your father?]

    _Soc._ And the gods are in the same case, if as you assert
    they quarrel about just and unjust, and some of them say
    while others deny that injustice is done among them. For
    surely neither God nor man will ever venture to say that the
    doer of injustice is not to be punished?

    _Euth._ That is true, Socrates, in the main.

    _Soc._ But they join issue about the particulars—gods and
    men alike; and, if they dispute at all, they dispute about some
    act which is called in question, and which by some is affirmed
    to be just, by others to be unjust. Is not that true?

    _Euth._ Quite true.

    _Soc._ Well then, my dear friend Euthyphro, do tell me, for          9
    my better instruction and information, what proof have you
    that in the opinion of all the gods a servant who is guilty of
    murder, and is put in chains by the master of the dead man,
    and dies because he is put in chains before he who bound him
    can learn from the interpreters of the gods what he ought to
    do with him, dies unjustly; and that on behalf of such an one
    a son ought to proceed against his father and accuse him of
    murder. How would you show that all the gods absolutely
    agree in approving of his act? Prove to me that they do, and
    I will applaud your wisdom as long as I live.

    _Euth._ It will be a difficult task; but I could make the matter
    very clear indeed to you.

    _Soc._ I understand; you mean to say that I am not so quick
    of apprehension as the judges: for to them you will be sure to
    prove that the act is unjust, and hateful to the gods.

[Sidenote: _The priority of the act to the state._]

    _Euth._ Yes indeed, Socrates; at least if they will listen to me.

[Sidenote: Let us say then that what all the gods approve is pious and
holy.]

    _Soc._ But they will be sure to listen if they find that you are
    a good speaker. There was a notion that came into my mind
    while you were speaking; I said to myself: ‘Well, and what
    if Euthyphro does prove to me that all the gods regarded the
    death of the serf as unjust, how do I know anything more of
    the nature of piety and impiety? for granting that this action
    may be hateful to the gods, still piety and impiety are not
    adequately defined by these distinctions, for that which is
    hateful to the gods has been shown to be also pleasing and
    dear to them.’ And therefore, Euthyphro, I do not ask you
    to prove this; I will suppose, if you like, that all the gods
    condemn and abominate such an action. But I will amend
    the definition so far as to say that what all the gods hate is
    impious, and what they love pious or holy; and what some of
    them love and others hate is both or neither. Shall this be
    our definition of piety and impiety?

    _Euth._ Why not, Socrates?

    _Soc._ Why not! certainly, as far as I am concerned,
    Euthyphro, there is no reason why not. But whether this
    admission will greatly assist you in the task of instructing me
    as you promised, is a matter for you to consider.

    _Euth._ Yes, I should say that what all the gods love is
    pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious.

    _Soc._ Ought we to enquire into the truth of this, Euthyphro,
    or simply to accept the mere statement on our own authority
    and that of others? What do you say?

    _Euth._ We should enquire; and I believe that the statement
    will stand the test of enquiry.

[Sidenote: But does the state follow the act, or the act the state?]

    _Soc._ We shall know better, my good friend, in a little
    while. The point which I should first wish to understand is
    whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it         10
    is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

    _Euth._ I do not understand your meaning, Socrates.

    _Soc._ I will endeavour to explain: we speak of carrying and
    we speak of being carried, of leading and being led, seeing
    and being seen. You know that in all such cases there is a
    difference, and you know also in what the difference lies?

    _Euth._ I think that I understand.

[Sidenote: _The priority of the act to the state._]

    _Soc._ And is not that which is beloved distinct from that
    which loves?

    _Euth._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Well; and now tell me, is that which is carried in this
    state of carrying because it is carried, or for some other
    reason?

    _Euth._ No; that is the reason.

    _Soc._ And the same is true of what is led and of what is
    seen?

    _Euth._ True.

    _Soc._ And a thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely,
    visible because it is seen; nor is a thing led because
    it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the
    state of being carried, but the converse of this. And now I
    think, Euthyphro, that my meaning will be intelligible; and
    my meaning is, that any state of action or passion implies
    previous action or passion. It does not become because it is
    becoming, but it is in a state of becoming because it becomes;
    neither does it suffer because it is in a state of suffering, but
    it is in a state of suffering because it suffers. Do you not
    agree?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Is not that which is loved in some state either of
    becoming or suffering?

    _Euth._ Yes.

[Sidenote: The latter is the truer account, and therefore we can only say
that what is loved by all the gods is in a state to be loved by them; but
holiness has a wider meaning than this.]

    _Soc._ And the same holds as in the previous instances; the
    state of being loved follows the act of being loved, and not the
    act the state.

    _Euth._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And what do you say of piety, Euthyphro: is not
    piety, according to your definition, loved by all the gods?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Because it is pious or holy, or for some other reason?

    _Euth._ No, that is the reason.

    _Soc._ It is loved because it is holy, not holy because it is
    loved?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And that which is dear to the gods is loved by them,
    and is in a state to be loved of them because it is loved of
    them?

[Sidenote: _The essence and the attribute._]

    _Euth._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then that which is dear to the gods, Euthyphro, is
    not holy, nor is that which is holy loved of God, as you
    affirm; but they are two different things.

    _Euth._ How do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I mean to say that the holy has been acknowledged
    by us to be loved of God because it is holy, not to be holy
    because it is loved.

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But that which is dear to the gods is dear to them
    because it is loved by them, not loved by them because it is
    dear to them.

    _Euth._ True.

[Sidenote: What is the essential meaning of holiness or piety?]

    _Soc._ But, friend Euthyphro, if that which is holy is the
    same with that which is dear to God, and is loved because it
    is holy, then that which is dear to God would have been             11
    loved as being dear to God; but if that which is dear to God
    is dear to him because loved by him, then that which is holy
    would have been holy because loved by him. But now you
    see that the reverse is the case, and that they are quite
    different from one another. For one (θεοφιλὲς) is of a kind to
    be loved because it is loved, and the other (ὅσιον) is loved
    because it is of a kind to be loved. Thus you appear to me,
    Euthyphro, when I ask you what is the essence of holiness,
    to offer an attribute only, and not the essence—the attribute
    of being loved by all the gods. But you still refuse to
    explain to me the nature of holiness. And therefore, if you
    please, I will ask you not to hide your treasure, but to tell
    me once more what holiness or piety really is, whether dear
    to the gods or not (for that is a matter about which we will
    not quarrel); and what is impiety?

    _Euth._ I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what
    I mean. For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever
    ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away
    from us.

[Sidenote: _Socrates ‘a greater than Daedalus.’_]

    _Soc._ Your words, Euthyphro, are like the handiwork of my
    ancestor Daedalus; and if I were the sayer or propounder of
    them, you might say that my arguments walk away and will
    not remain fixed where they are placed because I am a
    descendant of his. But now, since these notions are your
    own, you must find some other gibe, for they certainly, as
    you yourself allow, show an inclination to be on the move.

    _Euth._ Nay, Socrates, I shall still say that you are the
    Daedalus who sets arguments in motion; not I, certainly,
    but you make them move or go round, for they would never
    have stirred, as far as I am concerned.

    _Soc._ Then I must be a greater than Daedalus: for whereas
    he only made his own inventions to move, I move those of
    other people as well. And the beauty of it is, that I would
    rather not. For I would give the wisdom of Daedalus, and
    the wealth of Tantalus, to be able to detain them and keep
    them fixed. But enough of this. As I perceive that you are
    lazy, I will myself endeavour to show you how you might
    instruct me in the nature of piety; and I hope that you will
    not grudge your labour. Tell me, then,—Is not that which is
    pious necessarily just?

    _Euth._ Yes.

[Sidenote: All which is pious is just:—is therefore all which is just
pious?]

    _Soc._ And is, then, all which is just pious? or, is that which is
    pious all just, but that which is just, only in part and not all,   12
    pious?

    _Euth._ I do not understand you, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And yet I know that you are as much wiser than I am,
    as you are younger. But, as I was saying, revered friend,
    the abundance of your wisdom makes you lazy. Please to
    exert yourself, for there is no real difficulty in understanding
    me. What I mean I may explain by an illustration of what
    I do not mean. The poet (Stasinus) sings—

    ‘Of Zeus, the author and creator of all these things,
    You will not tell: for where there is fear there is also reverence.’

    Now I disagree with this poet. Shall I tell you in what
    respect?

    _Euth._ By all means.

[Sidenote: We may say, e. g., that wherever there is reverence there will
be fear, but not that wherever there is fear there will be reverence.]

    _Soc._ I should not say that where there is fear there is also
    reverence; for I am sure that many persons fear poverty and
    disease, and the like evils, but I do not perceive that they
    reverence the objects of their fear.

    _Euth._ Very true.

    _Soc._ But where reverence is, there is fear; for he who has
    a feeling of reverence and shame about the commission of any
    action, fears and is afraid of an ill reputation.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro in the hands of Socrates._]

    _Euth._ No doubt.

    _Soc._ Then we are wrong in saying that where there is fear
    there is also reverence; and we should say, where there is
    reverence there is also fear. But there is not always reverence
    where there is fear; for fear is a more extended notion,
    and reverence is a part of fear, just as the odd is a part of
    number, and number is a more extended notion than the odd.
    I suppose that you follow me now?

    _Euth._ Quite well.

    _Soc._ That was the sort of question which I meant to raise
    when I asked whether the just is always the pious, or the
    pious always the just; and whether there may not be justice
    where there is not piety; for justice is the more extended
    notion of which piety is only a part. Do you dissent?

    _Euth._ No, I think that you are quite right.

    _Soc._ Then, if piety is a part of justice, I suppose that we
    should enquire what part? If you had pursued the enquiry
    in the previous cases; for instance, if you had asked me what
    is an even number, and what part of number the even is, I
    should have had no difficulty in replying, a number which
    represents a figure having two equal sides. Do you not
    agree?

    _Euth._ Yes, I quite agree.

[Sidenote: Piety or holiness is that part of justice which attends upon
the gods.]

    _Soc._ In like manner, I want you to tell me what part of
    justice is piety or holiness, that I may be able to tell Meletus
    not to do me injustice, or indict me for impiety, as I am now
    adequately instructed by you in the nature of piety or holiness,
    and their opposites.

    _Euth._ Piety or holiness, Socrates, appears to me to be that
    part of justice which attends to the gods, as there is the other
    part of justice which attends to men.

    _Soc._ That is good, Euthyphro; yet still there is a little         13
    point about which I should like to have further information,
    What is the meaning of ‘attention’? For attention can
    hardly be used in the same sense when applied to the gods as
    when applied to other things. For instance, horses are said
    to require attention, and not every person is able to attend
    to them, but only a person skilled in horsemanship. Is it
    not so?

    _Euth._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _What is the meaning of attention?_]

    _Soc._ I should suppose that the art of horsemanship is the
    art of attending to horses?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Nor is every one qualified to attend to dogs, but only
    the huntsman?

    _Euth._ True.

    _Soc._ And I should also conceive that the art of the huntsman
    is the art of attending to dogs?

    _Euth._ Yes.

    _Soc._ As the art of the oxherd is the art of attending to
    oxen?

    _Euth._ Very true.

    _Soc._ In like manner holiness or piety is the art of attending
    to the gods?—that would be your meaning, Euthyphro?

    _Euth._ Yes.

[Sidenote: Attention to others is designed to benefit and improve them.
But how are the gods benefited or improved by the holy acts of men?]

    _Soc._ And is not attention always designed for the good or
    benefit of that to which the attention is given? As in the
    case of horses, you may observe that when attended to by the
    horseman’s art they are benefited and improved, are they not?

    _Euth._ True.

    _Soc._ As the dogs are benefited by the huntsman’s art, and
    the oxen by the art of the oxherd, and all other things are
    tended or attended for their good and not for their hurt?

    _Euth._ Certainly, not for their hurt.

    _Soc._ But for their good?

    _Euth._ Of course.

    _Soc._ And does piety or holiness, which has been defined to
    be the art of attending to the gods, benefit or improve them?
    Would you say that when you do a holy act you make any of
    the gods better?

    _Euth._ No, no; that was certainly not what I meant.

    _Soc._ And I, Euthyphro, never supposed that you did. I
    asked you the question about the nature of the attention,
    because I thought that you did not.

    _Euth._ You do me justice, Socrates; that is not the sort of
    attention which I mean.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro grows impatient of the argument._]

[Sidenote: The attention to the gods called piety is such as servants
show their masters.]

    _Soc._ Good: but I must still ask what is this attention to the
    gods which is called piety?

    _Euth._ It is such, Socrates, as servants show to their
    masters.

    _Soc._ I understand—a sort of ministration to the gods.

    _Euth._ Exactly.

    _Soc._ Medicine is also a sort of ministration or service,
    having in view the attainment of some object—would you
    not say of health?

    _Euth._ I should.

    _Soc._ Again, there is an art which ministers to the ship-builder
    with a view to the attainment of some result?

    _Euth._ Yes, Socrates, with a view to the building of a ship.

    _Soc._ As there is an art which ministers to the house-builder
    with a view to the building of a house?

    _Euth._ Yes.

[Sidenote: But in what way do men help the work of God?]

    _Soc._ And now tell me, my good friend, about the art which
    ministers to the gods: what work does that help to accomplish?
    For you must surely know if, as you say, you are of
    all men living the one who is best instructed in religion.

    _Euth._ And I speak the truth, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Tell me then, oh tell me—what is that fair work which
    the gods do by the help of our ministrations?

    _Euth._ Many and fair, Socrates, are the works which they do.

    _Soc._ Why, my friend, and so are those of a general. But           14
    the chief of them is easily told. Would you not say that
    victory in war is the chief of them?

    _Euth._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Many and fair, too, are the works of the husbandman,
    if I am not mistaken; but his chief work is the production of
    food from the earth?

    _Euth._ Exactly.

    _Soc._ And of the many and fair things done by the gods,
    which is the chief or principal one?

    _Euth._ I have told you already, Socrates, that to learn all
    these things accurately will be very tiresome. Let me simply
    say that piety or holiness is learning how to please the
    gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. Such
    piety is the salvation of families and states, just as the
    impious, which is unpleasing to the gods, is their ruin and
    destruction.

[Sidenote: _Piety a science of asking and giving._]

    _Soc._ I think that you could have answered in much fewer
    words the chief question which I asked, Euthyphro, if you
    had chosen. But I see plainly that you are not disposed to
    instruct me—clearly not: else why, when we reached the
    point, did you turn aside? Had you only answered me I
    should have truly learned of you by this time the nature
    of piety. Now, as the asker of a question is necessarily
    dependent on the answerer, whither he leads I must follow;
    and can only ask again, what is the pious, and what is piety?
    Do you mean that they are a sort of science of praying and
    sacrificing?

    _Euth._ Yes, I do.

    _Soc._ And sacrificing is giving to the gods, and prayer is
    asking of the gods?

    _Euth._ Yes, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Upon this view, then, piety is a science of asking and
    giving?

    _Euth._ You understand me capitally, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Yes, my friend; the reason is that I am a votary
    of your science, and give my mind to it, and therefore
    nothing which you say will be thrown away upon me. Please
    then to tell me, what is the nature of this service to the
    gods? Do you mean that we prefer requests and give gifts
    to them?

    _Euth._ Yes, I do.

    _Soc._ Is not the right way of asking to ask of them what we
    want?

    _Euth._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Men give to the gods, and the gods give to men; they do
business with one another.]

    _Soc._ And the right way of giving is to give to them in
    return what they want of us. There would be no meaning
    in an art which gives to any one that which he does not
    want.

    _Euth._ Very true, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Then piety, Euthyphro, is an art which gods and men
    have of doing business with one another?

    _Euth._ That is an expression which you may use, if you
    like.

    _Soc._ But I have no particular liking for anything but the
    truth. I wish, however, that you would tell me what benefit
    accrues to the gods from our gifts. There is no doubt about
    what they give to us; for there is no good thing which they         15
    do not give; but how we can give any good thing to them in
    return is far from being equally clear. If they give everything
    and we give nothing, that must be an affair of business
    in which we have very greatly the advantage of them.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro is fairly puzzled._]

    _Euth._ And do you imagine, Socrates, that any benefit
    accrues to the gods from our gifts?

    _Soc._ But if not, Euthyphro, what is the meaning of gifts
    which are conferred by us upon the gods?

    _Euth._ What else, but tributes of honour; and, as I was
    just now saying, what pleases them?

    _Soc._ Piety, then, is pleasing to the gods, but not beneficial
    or dear to them?

    _Euth._ I should say that nothing could be dearer.

    _Soc._ Then once more the assertion is repeated that piety is
    dear to the gods?

    _Euth._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Again, the argument walks away.]

    _Soc._ And when you say this, can you wonder at your
    words not standing firm, but walking away? Will you accuse
    me of being the Daedalus who makes them walk away, not
    perceiving that there is another and far greater artist than
    Daedalus who makes them go round in a circle, and he is
    yourself; for the argument, as you will perceive, comes
    round to the same point. Were we not saying that the holy
    or pious was not the same with that which is loved of the
    gods? Have you forgotten?

    _Euth._ I quite remember.

    _Soc._ And are you not saying that what is loved of the gods
    is holy; and is not this the same as what is dear to them—do
    you see?

    _Euth._ True.

    _Soc._ Then either we were wrong in our former assertion;
    or, if we were right then, we are wrong now.

    _Euth._ One of the two must be true.

[Sidenote: Nevertheless, Socrates is confident that Euthyphro knows the
truth, but will not tell him.]

    _Soc._ Then we must begin again and ask, What is piety?
    That is an enquiry which I shall never be weary of pursuing
    as far as in me lies; and I entreat you not to scorn me, but
    to apply your mind to the utmost, and tell me the truth.
    For, if any man knows, you are he; and therefore I must
    detain you, like Proteus, until you tell. If you had not
    certainly known the nature of piety and impiety, I am confident
    that you would never, on behalf of a serf, have charged
    your aged father with murder. You would not have run
    such a risk of doing wrong in the sight of the gods, and you
    would have had too much respect for the opinions of men.
    I am sure, therefore, that you know the nature of piety and
    impiety. Speak out then, my dear Euthyphro, and do not
    hide your knowledge.

[Sidenote: _Euthyphro departs._]

[Sidenote: Euthyphro is in a hurry to depart, and finally leaves Socrates
to his fate.]

    _Euth._ Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry, and
    must go now.

    _Soc._ Alas! my companion, and will you leave me in
    despair? I was hoping that you would instruct me in the
    nature of piety and impiety; and then I might have cleared
    myself of Meletus and his indictment. I would have told
    him that I had been enlightened by Euthyphro, and had               16
    given up rash innovations and speculations, in which I
    indulged only through ignorance, and that now I am about
    to lead a better life.


FOOTNOTES

[13] Cp. 1 Alcib. 111 foll.




APOLOGY.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Apology._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

In what relation the Apology of Plato stands to the real defence of
Socrates, there are no means of determining. It certainly agrees in
tone and character with the description of Xenophon, who says in the
Memorabilia (iv. 4, 4) that Socrates might have been acquitted ‘if in any
moderate degree he would have conciliated the favour of the dicasts;’
and who informs us in another passage (iv. 8, 4), on the testimony of
Hermogenes, the friend of Socrates, that he had no wish to live; and
that the divine sign refused to allow him to prepare a defence, and also
that Socrates himself declared this to be unnecessary, on the ground
that all his life long he had been preparing against that hour. For the
speech breathes throughout a spirit of defiance, ‘ut non supplex aut reus
sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judicum’ (Cic. de Orat. i. 54);
and the loose and desultory style is an imitation of the ‘accustomed
manner’ in which Socrates spoke in ‘the agora and among the tables of
the money-changers.’ The allusion in the Crito (45 B) may, perhaps, be
adduced as a further evidence of the literal accuracy of some parts (37
C, D). But in the main it must be regarded as the ideal of Socrates,
according to Plato’s conception of him, appearing in the greatest and
most public scene of his life, and in the height of his triumph, when
he is weakest, and yet his mastery over mankind is greatest, and his
habitual irony acquires a new meaning and a sort of tragic pathos in the
face of death. The facts of his life are summed up, and the features of
his character are brought out as if by accident in the course of the
defence. The conversational manner, the seeming want of arrangement, the
ironical simplicity, are found to result in a perfect work of art, which
is the portrait of Socrates.

[Sidenote: _The Platonic defence of Socrates._]

Yet some of the topics may have been actually used by Socrates; and the
recollection of his very words may have rung in the ears of his disciple.
The Apology of Plato may be compared generally with those speeches of
Thucydides in which he has embodied his conception of the lofty character
and policy of the great Pericles, and which at the same time furnish a
commentary on the situation of affairs from the point of view of the
historian. So in the Apology there is an ideal rather than a literal
truth; much is said which was not said, and is only Plato’s view of the
situation. Plato was not, like Xenophon, a chronicler of facts; he does
not appear in any of his writings to have aimed at literal accuracy. He
is not therefore to be supplemented from the Memorabilia and Symposium
of Xenophon, who belongs to an entirely different class of writers.
The Apology of Plato is not the report of what Socrates said, but an
elaborate composition, quite as much so in fact as one of the Dialogues.
And we may perhaps even indulge in the fancy that the actual defence of
Socrates was as much greater than the Platonic defence as the master was
greater than the disciple. But in any case, some of the words used by
him must have been remembered, and some of the facts recorded must have
actually occurred. It is significant that Plato is said to have been
present at the defence (Apol. 38 B), as he is also said to have been
absent at the last scene in the Phaedo (59 B). Is it fanciful to suppose
that he meant to give the stamp of authenticity to the one and not to
the other?—especially when we consider that these two passages are the
only ones in which Plato makes mention of himself. The circumstance that
Plato was to be one of his sureties for the payment of the fine which he
proposed has the appearance of truth. More suspicious is the statement
that Socrates received the first impulse to his favourite calling of
cross-examining the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already
have been famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell,
i. p. xvi), and the story is of a kind which is very likely to have been
invented. On the whole we arrive at the conclusion that the Apology is
true to the character of Socrates, but we cannot show that any single
sentence in it was actually spoken by him. It breathes the spirit of
Socrates, but has been cast anew in the mould of Plato.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 17-19._]

There is not much in the other Dialogues which can be compared with the
Apology. The same recollection of his master may have been present to the
mind of Plato when depicting the sufferings of the Just in the Republic
(ii. 361 foll., vi. 500 A). The Crito may also be regarded as a sort of
appendage to the Apology, in which Socrates, who has defied the judges,
is nevertheless represented as scrupulously obedient to the laws. The
idealization of the sufferer is carried still further in the Gorgias (476
foll.), in which the thesis is maintained, that ‘to suffer is better
than to do evil;’ and the art of rhetoric is described as only useful
for the purpose of self-accusation. The parallelisms which occur in the
so-called Apology of Xenophon are not worth noticing, because the writing
in which they are contained is manifestly spurious. The statements of
the Memorabilia (i. 2; iv. 8) respecting the trial and death of Socrates
agree generally with Plato; but they have lost the flavour of Socratic
irony in the narrative of Xenophon.

The Apology or Platonic defence of Socrates is divided into three
parts: 1st. The defence properly so called; 2nd. The shorter address in
mitigation of the penalty; 3rd. The last words of prophetic rebuke and
exhortation.

       *       *       *       *       *

    The first part commences with an apology for his colloquial style;
    he is, as he has always been, the enemy of rhetoric, and   =Steph.= 17
    knows of no rhetoric but truth; he will not falsify his character
    by making a speech. Then he proceeds to divide his accusers into    18
    two classes; first, there is the nameless accuser—public opinion.
    All the world from their earliest years had heard that he was
    a corrupter of youth, and had seen him caricatured in the Clouds
    of Aristophanes. Secondly, there are the professed accusers, who
    are but the mouth-piece of the others. The accusations of both
    might be summed up in a formula. The first say, ‘Socrates is an
    evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under the
    earth and above the heaven; and making the worse appear the
    better cause, and teaching all this to others.’ The second,
    ‘Socrates is an evil-doer and corrupter of the youth, who does
    not receive the gods whom the state receives, but introduces other
    new divinities.’ These last words appear to have been the actual
    indictment (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 1); and the previous formula, which
    is a summary of public opinion, assumes the same legal style.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 19-23._]

    The answer begins by clearing up a confusion. In the representations
    of the Comic poets, and in the opinion of the multitude,            19
    he had been identified with the teachers of physical science and
    with the Sophists. But this was an error. For both of them
    he professes a respect in the open court, which contrasts with his
    manner of speaking about them in other places. (Cp. for Anaxagoras,
    Phaedo 98 B, Laws xii. 967; for the Sophists, Meno 95 D,
    Rep. vi. 492, Tim. 19 E, Theaet. 154 E, Soph. 265 foll., etc.) But
    at the same time he shows that he is not one of them. Of natural
    philosophy he knows nothing; not that he despises such pursuits,
    but the fact is that he is ignorant of them, and never says a word
    about them. Nor is he paid for giving instruction—that is another
    mistaken notion:—he has nothing to teach. But he commends           20
    Evenus for teaching virtue at such a ‘moderate’ rate as five
    minae. Something of the ‘accustomed irony,’ which may perhaps
    be expected to sleep in the ear of the multitude, is lurking
    here.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 23-30._]

    He then goes on to explain the reason why he is in such an evil
    name. That had arisen out of a peculiar mission which he had
    taken upon himself. The enthusiastic Chaerephon (probably in        21
    anticipation of the answer which he received) had gone to
    Delphi and asked the oracle if there was any man wiser than
    Socrates; and the answer was, that there was no man wiser.
    What could be the meaning of this—that he who knew nothing,
    and knew that he knew nothing, should be declared by the oracle
    to be the wisest of men? Reflecting upon the answer, he determined
    to refute it by finding ‘a wiser;’ and first he went to the
    politicians, and then to the poets, and then to the craftsmen, but  22
    always with the same result—he found that they knew nothing, or
    hardly anything more than himself; and that the little advantage
    which in some cases they possessed was more than counter-balanced
    by their conceit of knowledge. He knew nothing, and
    knew that he knew nothing: they knew little or nothing, and
    imagined that they knew all things. Thus he had passed his          23
    life as a sort of missionary in detecting the pretended wisdom
    of mankind; and this occupation had quite absorbed him and
    taken him away both from public and private affairs. Young
    men of the richer sort had made a pastime of the same pursuit,
    ‘which was not unamusing.’ And hence bitter enmities had
    arisen; the professors of knowledge had revenged themselves
    by calling him a villainous corrupter of youth, and by repeating
    the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and sophistry,
    which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when       24
    there is nothing else to be said of them.

    The second accusation he meets by interrogating Meletus, who
    is present and can be interrogated. ‘If he is the corrupter, who
    is the improver of the citizens?’ (Cp. Meno 91 C.) ‘All men
    everywhere.’ But how absurd, how contrary to analogy is this!       25
    How inconceivable too, that he should make the citizens worse
    when he has to live with them. This surely cannot be intentional;
    and if unintentional, he ought to have been instructed by Meletus,  26
    and not accused in the court.

    But there is another part of the indictment which says that he
    teaches men not to receive the gods whom the city receives, and
    has other new gods. ‘Is that the way in which he is supposed to
    corrupt the youth?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘Has he only new gods, or none
    at all? ‘None at all.’ ‘What, not even the sun and moon?’

    ‘No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.’
    That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about Anaxagoras;
    the Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the
    influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the
    drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes
    to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding    27
    a riddle in this part of the indictment: ‘There are no gods, but
    Socrates believes in the existence of the sons of gods, which is
    absurd.’

    Leaving Meletus, who has had enough words spent upon him,           28
    he returns to the original accusation. The question may be
    asked, Why will he persist in following a profession which leads
    him to death? Why?—because he must remain at his post where
    the god has placed him, as he remained at Potidaea, and Amphipolis,
    and Delium, where the generals placed him. Besides, he is           29
    not so overwise as to imagine that he knows whether death is
    a good or an evil; and he is certain that desertion of his duty
    is an evil. Anytus is quite right in saying that they should never  30
    have indicted him if they meant to let him go. For he will certainly
    obey God rather than man; and will continue to preach to
    all men of all ages the necessity of virtue and improvement; and
    if they refuse to listen to him he will still persevere and reprove
    them. This is his way of corrupting the youth, which he will not
    cease to follow in obedience to the god, even if a thousand deaths
    await him.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 30-35._]

    He is desirous that they should let him live—not for his own
    sake, but for theirs; because he is their heaven-sent friend (and   31
    they will never have such another), or, as he may be ludicrously
    described, he is the gadfly who stirs the generous steed into
    motion. Why then has he never taken part in public affairs?
    Because the familiar divine voice has hindered him; if he had
    been a public man, and had fought for the right, as he would
    certainly have fought against the many, he would not have lived,
    and could therefore have done no good. Twice in public matters      32
    he has risked his life for the sake of justice—once at the trial
    of the generals; and again in resistance to the tyrannical commands
    of the Thirty.

    But, though not a public man, he has passed his days in instructing
    the citizens without fee or reward—this was his mission.
    Whether his disciples have turned out well or ill, he cannot justly
    be charged with the result, for he never promised to teach them     33
    anything. They might come if they liked, and they might stay
    away if they liked: and they did come, because they found an
    amusement in hearing the pretenders to wisdom detected. If
    they have been corrupted, their elder relatives (if not themselves)
    might surely come into court and witness against him, and there
    is an opportunity still for them to appear. But their fathers       34
    and brothers all appear in court (including ‘this’ Plato), to
    witness on his behalf; and if their relatives are corrupted,
    at least they are uncorrupted; ‘and they are my witnesses.
    For they know that I am speaking the truth, and that Meletus
    is lying.’

    This is about all that he has to say. He will not entreat the
    judges to spare his life; neither will he present a spectacle of
    weeping children, although he, too, is not made of ‘rock or oak.’   35
    Some of the judges themselves may have complied with this
    practice on similar occasions, and he trusts that they will not be
    angry with him for not following their example. But he feels
    that such conduct brings discredit on the name of Athens: he
    feels, too, that the judge has sworn not to give away justice; and
    he cannot be guilty of the impiety of asking the judge to break his
    oath, when he is himself being tried for impiety.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 36-41._]

    As he expected, and probably intended, he is convicted. And         36
    now the tone of the speech, instead of being more conciliatory,
    becomes more lofty and commanding. Anytus proposes death
    as the penalty: and what counter-proposition shall he make?
    He, the benefactor of the Athenian people, whose whole life has
    been spent in doing them good, should at least have the Olympic
    victor’s reward of maintenance in the Prytaneum. Or why             37
    should he propose any counter-penalty when he does not know
    whether death, which Anytus proposes, is a good or an evil?
    and he is certain that imprisonment is an evil, exile is an evil.
    Loss of money might be no evil, but then he has none to give;
    perhaps he can make up a mina. Let that be the penalty, or,         38
    if his friends wish, thirty minae; for which they will be excellent
    securities.

[_He is condemned to death._]

    He is an old man already, and the Athenians will gain nothing
    but disgrace by depriving him of a few years of life. Perhaps he
    could have escaped, if he had chosen to throw down his arms and
    entreat for his life. But he does not at all repent of the manner
    of his defence; he would rather die in his own fashion than live
    in theirs. For the penalty of unrighteousness is swifter than       39
    death; that penalty has already overtaken his accusers as death
    will soon overtake him.

    And now, as one who is about to die, he will prophesy to them.
    They have put him to death in order to escape the necessity of
    giving an account of their lives. But his death ‘will be the seed’
    of many disciples who will convince them of their evil ways, and
    will come forth to reprove them in harsher terms, because they
    are younger and more inconsiderate.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 41-42._]

    He would like to say a few words, while there is time, to those     40
    who would have acquitted him. He wishes them to know that
    the divine sign never interrupted him in the course of his defence;
    the reason of which, as he conjectures, is that the death to
    which he is going is a good and not an evil. For either death is
    a long sleep, the best of sleeps, or a journey to another world in
    which the souls of the dead are gathered together, and in which
    there may be a hope of seeing the heroes of old—in which, too,      41
    there are just judges; and as all are immortal, there can be no
    fear of any one suffering death for his opinions.

    Nothing evil can happen to the good man either in life or death,
    and his own death has been permitted by the gods, because it was
    better for him to depart; and therefore he forgives his judges
    because they have done him no harm, although they never meant
    to do him any good.

    He has a last request to make to them—that they will trouble        42
    his sons as he has troubled them, if they appear to prefer riches
    to virtue, or to think themselves something when they are
    nothing.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

‘Few persons will be found to wish that Socrates should have defended
himself otherwise,’—if, as we must add, his defence was that with which
Plato has provided him. But leaving this question, which does not admit
of a precise solution, we may go on to ask what was the impression which
Plato in the Apology intended to give of the character and conduct of
his master in the last great scene? Did he intend to represent him (1)
as employing sophistries; (2) as designedly irritating the judges? Or
are these sophistries to be regarded as belonging to the age in which he
lived and to his personal character, and this apparent haughtiness as
flowing from the natural elevation of his position?

For example, when he says that it is absurd to suppose that one man
is the corrupter and all the rest of the world the improvers of the
youth; or, when he argues that he never could have corrupted the men
with whom he had to live; or, when he proves his belief in the gods
because he believes in the sons of gods, is he serious or jesting? It
may be observed that these sophisms all occur in his cross-examination
of Meletus, who is easily foiled and mastered in the hands of the great
dialectician. Perhaps he regarded these answers as good enough for his
accuser, of whom he makes very light. Also there is a touch of irony in
them, which takes them out of the category of sophistry. (Cp. Euthyph. 2.)

That the manner in which he defends himself about the lives of his
disciples is not satisfactory, can hardly be denied. Fresh in the memory
of the Athenians, and detestable as they deserved to be to the newly
restored democracy, were the names of Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides. It
is obviously not a sufficient answer that Socrates had never professed
to teach them anything, and is therefore not justly chargeable with
their crimes. Yet the defence, when taken out of this ironical form, is
doubtless sound: that his teaching had nothing to do with their evil
lives. Here, then, the sophistry is rather in form than in substance,
though we might desire that to such a serious charge Socrates had given a
more serious answer.

[Sidenote: _Character of the defence._]

Truly characteristic of Socrates is another point in his answer, which
may also be regarded as sophistical. He says that ‘if he has corrupted
the youth, he must have corrupted them involuntarily.’ But if, as
Socrates argues, all evil is involuntary, then all criminals ought to be
admonished and not punished. In these words the Socratic doctrine of the
involuntariness of evil is clearly intended to be conveyed. Here again,
as in the former instance, the defence of Socrates is untrue practically,
but may be true in some ideal or transcendental sense. The commonplace
reply, that if he had been guilty of corrupting the youth their relations
would surely have witnessed against him, with which he concludes this
part of his defence, is more satisfactory.

Again, when Socrates argues that he must believe in the gods because he
believes in the sons of gods, we must remember that this is a refutation
not of the original indictment, which is consistent enough—‘Socrates
does not receive the gods whom the city receives, and has other new
divinities’—but of the interpretation put upon the words by Meletus, who
has affirmed that he is a downright atheist. To this Socrates fairly
answers, in accordance with the ideas of the time, that a downright
atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine things. The
notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons of gods is not
to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. He is arguing ‘_ad hominem_’
according to the notions of mythology current in his age. Yet he abstains
from saying that he believed in the gods whom the State approved. He
does not defend himself, as Xenophon has defended him, by appealing
to his practice of religion. Probably he neither wholly believed, nor
disbelieved, in the existence of the popular gods; he had no means of
knowing about them. According to Plato (cp. Phaedo 118 B; Symp. 220 D),
as well as Xenophon (Mem. i. 1, 30), he was punctual in the performance
of the least religious duties; and he must have believed in his own
oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an internal witness. But the
existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the State approves,
would have appeared to him both uncertain and unimportant in comparison
of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of truth and
right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion. (Cp. Phaedr. 230;
Euthyph. 6, 7; Rep. ii. 373 ff.)

[Sidenote: _Did Socrates intend to irritate his judges?_]

The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as braving
or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the negative. His
irony, his superiority, his audacity, ‘regarding not the person of man,’
necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation. He is not acting
a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has been all his life
long, ‘a king of men.’ He would rather not appear insolent, if he could
avoid it (οὐχ ὡς αὐθαδιζόμενος τοῦτο λέγω). Neither is he desirous of
hastening his own end, for life and death are simply indifferent to
him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to his judges and might
procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to make. He will not say
or do anything that might pervert the course of justice; he cannot have
his tongue bound even ‘in the throat of death.’ With his accusers he
will only fence and play, as he had fenced with other ‘improvers of
youth,’ answering the Sophist according to his sophistry all his life
long. He is serious when he is speaking of his own mission, which seems
to distinguish him from all other reformers of mankind, and originates
in an accident. The dedication of himself to the improvement of his
fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as the ironical spirit in which he
goes about doing good only in vindication of the credit of the oracle,
and in the vain hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet this
singular and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with the
divine sign which, according to our notions, is equally accidental and
irrational, and is nevertheless accepted by him as the guiding principle
of his life. Socrates is nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or
sceptic. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he speculates
on the possibility of seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan
war in another world. On the other hand, his hope of immortality is
uncertain;—he also conceives of death as a long sleep (in this respect
differing from the Phaedo), and at last falls back on resignation to the
divine will, and the certainty that no evil can happen to the good man
either in life or death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him
from asserting positively more than this; and he makes no attempt to
veil his ignorance in mythology and figures of speech. The gentleness
of the first part of the speech contrasts with the aggravated, almost
threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically remarks
that he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not
make a regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have
composed for him, or, according to some accounts, did compose for him.
But he first procures himself a hearing by conciliatory words. He does
not attack the Sophists; for they were open to the same charges as
himself; they were equally ridiculed by the Comic poets, and almost
equally hateful to Anytus and Meletus. Yet incidentally the antagonism
between Socrates and the Sophists is allowed to appear. He is poor and
they are rich; his profession that he teaches nothing is opposed to
their readiness to teach all things; his talking in the market-place to
their private instructions; his tarry-at-home life to their wandering
from city to city. The tone which he assumes towards them is one of
real friendliness, but also of concealed irony. Towards Anaxagoras, who
had disappointed him in his hopes of learning about mind and nature, he
shows a less kindly feeling, which is also the feeling of Plato in other
passages (Laws xii. 967 B). But Anaxagoras had been dead thirty years,
and was beyond the reach of persecution.

[Sidenote: _Socrates and the Sophists._]

It has been remarked that the prophecy of a new generation of teachers
who would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more
violent terms was, as far as we know, never fulfilled. No inference
can be drawn from this circumstance as to the probability of the words
attributed to him having been actually uttered. They express the
aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind
him many followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they
would be fiercer and more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated
from his control.

[Sidenote: _Is the Apology the real speech of Socrates?_]

The above remarks must be understood as applying with any degree of
certainty to the Platonic Socrates only. For, although these or similar
words may have been spoken by Socrates himself, we cannot exclude the
possibility, that like so much else, _e. g._ the wisdom of Critias, the
poem of Solon, the virtues of Charmides, they may have been due only to
the imagination of Plato. The arguments of those who maintain that the
Apology was composed during the process, resting on no evidence, do not
require a serious refutation. Nor are the reasonings of Schleiermacher,
who argues that the Platonic defence is an exact or nearly exact
reproduction of the words of Socrates, partly because Plato would not
have been guilty of the impiety of altering them, and also because many
points of the defence might have been improved and strengthened, at all
more conclusive. (See English Translation, p. 137.) What effect the death
of Socrates produced on the mind of Plato, we cannot certainly determine;
nor can we say how he would or must have written under the circumstances.
We observe that the enmity of Aristophanes to Socrates does not prevent
Plato from introducing them together in the Symposium engaged in friendly
intercourse. Nor is there any trace in the Dialogues of an attempt to
make Anytus or Meletus personally odious in the eyes of the Athenian
public.


APOLOGY.

[Sidenote: _Apology._]

[Sidenote: Socrates begs to be allowed to speak in his accustomed manner.]

    How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers,   =Steph.= 17
    I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget
    who I was—so persuasively did they speak; and yet they
    have hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many falsehoods
    told by them, there was one which quite amazed me;—I
    mean when they said that you should be upon your guard
    and not allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of my
    eloquence. To say this, when they were certain to be detected
    as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to be anything
    but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me most shameless—unless
    by the force of eloquence they mean the force of
    truth; for if such is their meaning, I admit that I am eloquent.
    But in how different a way from theirs! Well, as I was
    saying, they have scarcely spoken the truth at all; but from me
    you shall hear the whole truth: not, however, delivered after
    their manner in a set oration duly ornamented with words and
    phrases. No, by heaven! but I shall use the words and arguments
    which occur to me at the moment; for I am confident
    in the justice of my cause[14]: at my time of life I ought not to
    be appearing before you, O men of Athens, in the character
    of a juvenile orator—let no one expect it of me. And I must
    beg of you to grant me a favour:—If I defend myself in my
    accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which
    I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of
    the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to
    be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For
    I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for
    the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the
    language of the place; and therefore I would have you regard
    me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if         18
    he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his
    country:—Am I making an unfair request of you? Never
    mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think
    only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the
    speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

[Sidenote: _Socrates and his accusers._]

[Sidenote: The judges must excuse Socrates if he defends himself in his
own fashion.]

[Sidenote: He has to meet two sorts of accusers.]

    And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my
    first accusers, and then I will go on to the later ones. For of
    old I have had many accusers, who have accused me falsely
    to you during many years; and I am more afraid of them than
    of Anytus and his associates, who are dangerous, too, in their
    own way. But far more dangerous are the others, who began
    when you were children, and took possession of your minds
    with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who
    speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the
    earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause.
    The disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread;
    for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do not
    believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many, and
    their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were
    made by them in the days when you were more impressible
    than you are now—in childhood, or it may have been in youth—and
    the cause when heard went by default, for there was
    none to answer. And hardest of all, I do not know and
    cannot tell the names of my accusers; unless in the chance
    case of a Comic poet. All who from envy and malice have
    persuaded you—some of them having first convinced themselves—all
    this class of men are most difficult to deal with;
    for I cannot have them up here, and cross-examine them, and
    therefore I must simply fight with shadows in my own defence,
    and argue when there is no one who answers. I will ask you
    then to assume with me, as I was saying, that my opponents
    are of two kinds; one recent, the other ancient: and I hope
    that you will see the propriety of my answering the latter first,
    for these accusations you heard long before the others, and
    much oftener.

    Well, then, I must make my defence, and endeavour to clear          19
    away in a short time, a slander which has lasted a long time.
    May I succeed, if to succeed be for my good and yours, or
    likely to avail me in my cause! The task is not an easy one;
    I quite understand the nature of it. And so leaving the event
    with God, in obedience to the law I will now make my defence.

[Sidenote: _The Clouds of Aristophanes._]

[Sidenote: There is the accusation of the theatres: which declares that
he is a student of natural philosophy.]

    I will begin at the beginning, and ask what is the accusation
    which has given rise to the slander of me, and in fact has
    encouraged Meletus to prefer this charge against me. Well,
    what do the slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors,
    and I will sum up their words in an affidavit: ‘Socrates is an
    evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things
    under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse
    appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines
    to others.’ Such is the nature of the accusation: it is
    just what you have yourselves seen in the comedy of Aristophanes[15],
    who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates,
    going about and saying that he walks in air, and talking a
    deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend
    to know either much or little—not that I mean to speak
    disparagingly of any one who is a student of natural philosophy.
    I should be very sorry if Meletus could bring so grave
    a charge against me. But the simple truth is, O Athenians,
    that I have nothing to do with physical speculations. Very
    many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of this,
    and to them I appeal. Speak, then, you who have heard me,
    and tell your neighbours whether any of you have ever known
    me hold forth in few words or in many upon such matters....
    You hear their answer. And from what they say of
    this part of the charge you will be able to judge of the truth
    of the rest.

[Sidenote: There is the report that he is a Sophist who receives money.]

[Sidenote: _Evenus the Parian._]

[Sidenote: The ironical question which Socrates put to Callias.]

    As little foundation is there for the report that I am a
    teacher, and take money; this accusation has no more truth
    in it than the other. Although, if a man were really able to
    instruct mankind, to receive money for giving instruction
    would, in my opinion, be an honour to him. There is
    Gorgias of Leontium, and Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias
    of Elis, who go the round of the cities, and are able to
    persuade the young men to leave their own citizens by whom
    they might be taught for nothing, and come to them whom             20
    they not only pay, but are thankful if they may be allowed to
    pay them. There is at this time a Parian philosopher
    residing in Athens, of whom I have heard; and I came to
    hear of him in this way:—I came across a man who has
    spent a world of money on the Sophists, Callias, the son of
    Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons, I asked him:
    ‘Callias,’ I said, ‘if your two sons were foals or calves,
    there would be no difficulty in finding some one to put over
    them; we should hire a trainer of horses, or a farmer probably,
    who would improve and perfect them in their own
    proper virtue and excellence; but as they are human beings,
    whom are you thinking of placing over them? Is there any
    one who understands human and political virtue? You must
    have thought about the matter, for you have sons; is there
    any one?’ ‘There is,’ he said. ‘Who is he?’ said I; ‘and
    of what country? and what does he charge?’ ‘Evenus the
    Parian,’ he replied; ‘he is the man, and his charge is five
    minae.’ Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if he really has
    this wisdom, and teaches at such a moderate charge. Had I
    the same, I should have been very proud and conceited; but
    the truth is that I have no knowledge of the kind.

[Sidenote: _The God of Delphi._]

[Sidenote: The accusations against me have arisen out of a sort of wisdom
which I practise.]

[Sidenote: My practice of it arose out of a declaration of the Delphian
Oracle that I was the wisest of men.]

    I dare say, Athenians, that some one among you will reply,
    ‘Yes, Socrates, but what is the origin of these accusations
    which are brought against you; there must have been something
    strange which you have been doing? All these rumours
    and this talk about you would never have arisen if you had
    been like other men: tell us, then, what is the cause of them,
    for we should be sorry to judge hastily of you.’ Now I regard
    this as a fair challenge, and I will endeavour to explain to you
    the reason why I am called wise and have such an evil fame.
    Please to attend then. And although some of you may think
    that I am joking, I declare that I will tell you the entire truth.
    Men of Athens, this reputation of mine has come of a certain
    sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of
    wisdom, I reply, wisdom such as may perhaps be attained by
    man, for to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am
    wise; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have
    a superhuman wisdom, which I may fail to describe, because
    I have it not myself; and he who says that I have, speaks
    falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men
    of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem
    to say something extravagant. For the word which I will
    speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is
    worthy of credit; that witness shall be the God of Delphi—he
    will tell you about my wisdom, if I have any, and of what
    sort it is. You must have known Chaerephon; he was early
    a friend of mine, and also a friend of yours, for he shared in      21
    the recent exile of the people, and returned with you. Well,
    Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous in all his
    doings, and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to
    tell him whether—as I was saying, I must beg you not to
    interrupt—he asked the oracle to tell him whether any one
    was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered,
    that there was no man wiser. Chaerephon is dead himself;
    but his brother, who is in court, will confirm the truth of what
    I am saying.

[Sidenote: I went about searching after a man who was wiser than myself:
at first among the politicians; then among the philosophers; and found
that I had an advantage over them, because I had no conceit of knowledge.]

    Why do I mention this? Because I am going to explain
    to you why I have such an evil name. When I heard the
    answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what
    is the interpretation of his riddle? for I know that I have
    no wisdom, small or great. What then can he mean when
    he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a
    god, and cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After
    long consideration, I thought of a method of trying the
    question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser
    than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in
    my hand. I should say to him, ‘Here is a man who is wiser
    than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.’ Accordingly
    I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed
    him—his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom
    I selected for examination—and the result was as follows:
    When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking
    that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by
    many, and still wiser by himself; and thereupon I tried to
    explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not
    really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and
    his enmity was shared by several who were present and
    heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away:
    Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows
    anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,—for
    he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither
    know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then,
    I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went
    to another who had still higher pretensions to wisdom, and
    my conclusion was exactly the same. Whereupon I made
    another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.

[Sidenote: _Socrates goes on his way asking questions._]

[Sidenote: I found that the poets were the worst possible interpreters of
their own writings.]

    Then I went to one man after another, being not unconscious
    of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and
    feared this: but necessity was laid upon me,—the word of
    God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to
    myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out
    the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians,           22
    by the dog I swear!—for I must tell you the truth—the result
    of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in
    repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less
    esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the
    tale of my wanderings and of the ‘Herculean’ labours, as I
    may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle
    irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic,
    dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you
    will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are
    more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some
    of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and
    asked what was the meaning of them—thinking that they would
    teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost
    ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say that there is
    hardly a person present who would not have talked better
    about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew
    that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of
    genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers
    who also say many fine things, but do not understand the
    meaning of them. The poets appeared to me to be much in
    the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of
    their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men
    in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed,
    conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason
    that I was superior to the politicians.

[Sidenote: _Why he was so greatly disliked:_]

[Sidenote: The artisans had some real knowledge, but they had also a
conceit that they knew things which were beyond them.]

    At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I
    knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they
    knew many fine things; and here I was not mistaken, for
    they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in
    this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed
    that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the
    poets;—because they were good workmen they thought that
    they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in
    them overshadowed their wisdom; and therefore I asked
    myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as
    I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or
    like them in both; and I made answer to myself and to the
    oracle that I was better off as I was.

[Sidenote: The oracle was intended to apply, not to Socrates, but to all
men who know that their wisdom is worth nothing.]

    This inquisition has led to my having many enemies of
    the worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion           23
    also to many calumnies. And I am called wise, for my
    hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom
    which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men
    of Athens, that God only is wise; and by his answer he
    intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or
    nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using
    my name by way of illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is
    the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is
    in truth worth nothing. And so I go about the world,
    obedient to the god, and search and make enquiry into the
    wisdom of any one, whether citizen or stranger, who appears
    to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of
    the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and my occupation
    quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either
    to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my
    own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to
    the god.

[Sidenote: _Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon._]

[Sidenote: There are my imitators who go about detecting pretenders, and
the enmity which they arouse falls upon me.]

    There is another thing:—young men of the richer classes,
    who have not much to do, come about me of their own
    accord; they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they
    often imitate me, and proceed to examine others; there are
    plenty of persons, as they quickly discover, who think that
    they know something, but really know little or nothing; and
    then those who are examined by them instead of being
    angry with themselves are angry with me: This confounded
    Socrates, they say; this villainous misleader of youth!—and
    then if somebody asks them, Why, what evil does he
    practise or teach? they do not know, and cannot tell;
    but in order that they may not appear to be at a loss, they
    repeat the ready-made charges which are used against all
    philosophers about teaching things up in the clouds and
    under the earth, and having no gods, and making the worse
    appear the better cause; for they do not like to confess that
    their pretence of knowledge has been detected—which is
    the truth; and as they are numerous and ambitious and
    energetic, and are drawn up in battle array and have persuasive
    tongues, they have filled your ears with their loud
    and inveterate calumnies. And this is the reason why my
    three accusers, Meletus and Anytus and Lycon, have set
    upon me; Meletus, who has a quarrel with me on behalf
    of the poets; Anytus, on behalf of the craftsmen and politicians;
    Lycon, on behalf of the rhetoricians: and as I said                 24
    at the beginning, I cannot expect to get rid of such a mass
    of calumny all in a moment. And this, O men of Athens, is
    the truth and the whole truth; I have concealed nothing,
    I have dissembled nothing. And yet, I know that my
    plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their
    hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?—Hence
    has arisen the prejudice against me; and this is the reason
    of it, as you will find out either in this or in any future
    enquiry.

[Sidenote: The second class of accusers.]

    I have said enough in my defence against the first class of
    my accusers; I turn to the second class. They are headed
    by Meletus, that good man and true lover of his country,
    as he calls himself. Against these, too, I must try to make
    a defence:—Let their affidavit be read: it contains something
    of this kind: It says that Socrates is a doer of evil, who
    corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of
    the state, but has other new divinities of his own. Such is
    the charge; and now let us examine the particular counts.
    He says that I am a doer of evil, and corrupt the youth; but
    I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus is a doer of evil, in
    that he pretends to be in earnest when he is only in jest,
    and is so eager to bring men to trial from a pretended zeal
    and interest about matters in which he really never had the
    smallest interest. And the truth of this I will endeavour to
    prove to you.

    Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question of you.
    You think a great deal about the improvement of youth?

[Sidenote: _Meletus is cross-examined by Socrates._]

[Sidenote: All men are discovered to be improvers of youth with the
single exception of Socrates.]

    Yes, I do.

    Tell the judges, then, who is their improver; for you must
    know, as you have taken the pains to discover their corrupter,
    and are citing and accusing me before them. Speak, then,
    and tell the judges who their improver is.—Observe, Meletus,
    that you are silent, and have nothing to say. But is not this
    rather disgraceful, and a very considerable proof of what
    I was saying, that you have no interest in the matter? Speak
    up, friend, and tell us who their improver is.

    The laws.

    But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want to
    know who the person is, who, in the first place, knows
    the laws.

    The judges, Socrates, who are present in court.

    What, do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are able
    to instruct and improve youth?

    Certainly they are.

    What, all of them, or some only and not others?

    All of them.

    By the goddess Herè, that is good news! There are
    plenty of improvers, then. And what do you say of the
    audience,—do they improve them?                                     25

    Yes, they do.

    And the senators?

    Yes, the senators improve them.

    But perhaps the members of the assembly corrupt them?—or
    do they too improve them?

    They improve them.

    Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all
    with the exception of myself; and I alone am their corrupter?
    Is that what you affirm?

    That is what I stoutly affirm.

[Sidenote: But this rather unfortunate fact does not accord with the
analogy of the animals.]

    I am very unfortunate if you are right. But suppose I ask
    you a question: How about horses? Does one man do
    them harm and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite
    the truth? One man is able to do them good, or at least
    not many;—the trainer of horses, that is to say, does them
    good, and others who have to do with them rather injure
    them? Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or of any other
    animals? Most assuredly it is; whether you and Anytus
    say yes or no. Happy indeed would be the condition of
    youth if they had one corrupter only, and all the rest of
    the world were their improvers. But you, Meletus, have
    sufficiently shown that you never had a thought about the
    young: your carelessness is seen in your not caring about
    the very things which you bring against me.

[Sidenote: _Meletus is checkmated by Socrates._]

    And now, Meletus, I will ask you another question—by
    Zeus I will: Which is better, to live among bad citizens, or
    among good ones? Answer, friend, I say; the question
    is one which may be easily answered. Do not the good
    do their neighbours good, and the bad do them evil?

    Certainly.

    And is there any one who would rather be injured than
    benefited by those who live with him? Answer, my good
    friend, the law requires you to answer—does any one like to
    be injured?

    Certainly not.

[Sidenote: When I do harm to my neighbour I must do harm to myself: and
therefore I cannot be supposed to injure them intentionally.]

    And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating
    the youth, do you allege that I corrupt them intentionally or
    unintentionally?

    Intentionally, I say.

    But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbours
    good, and the evil do them evil. Now, is that a truth
    which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life,
    and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not
    to know that if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted
    by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him; and yet I
    corrupt him, and intentionally, too—so you say, although
    neither I nor any other human being is ever likely to be
    convinced by you. But either I do not corrupt them, or              26
    I corrupt them unintentionally; and on either view of the
    case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the law has no
    cognizance of unintentional offences: you ought to have
    taken me privately, and warned and admonished me; for
    if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what
    I only did unintentionally—no doubt I should; but you
    would have nothing to say to me and refused to teach me.
    And now you bring me up in this court, which is a place not
    of instruction, but of punishment.

[Sidenote: _He neither knows nor cares about the interests of youth._]

    It will be very clear to you, Athenians, as I was saying,
    that Meletus has no care at all, great or small, about the
    matter. But still I should like to know, Meletus, in what
    I am affirmed to corrupt the young. I suppose you mean,
    as I infer from your indictment, that I teach them not to
    acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but
    some other new divinities or spiritual agencies in their
    stead. These are the lessons by which I corrupt the youth,
    as you say.

    Yes, that I say emphatically.

[Sidenote: Socrates is declared by Meletus to be an atheist and to
corrupt the religion of the young.]

    Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell
    me and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean!
    for I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach
    other men to acknowledge some gods, and therefore that I do
    believe in gods, and am not an entire atheist—this you do not
    lay to my charge,—but only you say that they are not the
    same gods which the city recognizes—the charge is that they
    are different gods. Or, do you mean that I am an atheist
    simply, and a teacher of atheism?

    I mean the latter—that you are a complete atheist.

    What an extraordinary statement! Why do you think so,
    Meletus? Do you mean that I do not believe in the god-head
    of the sun or moon, like other men?

    I assure you, judges, that he does not: for he says that
    the sun is stone, and the moon earth.

[Sidenote: Meletus has confounded Socrates with Anaxagoras; and he has
contradicted himself in the indictment.]

    Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras:
    and you have but a bad opinion of the judges, if you
    fancy them illiterate to such a degree as not to know that
    these doctrines are found in the books of Anaxagoras the
    Clazomenian, which are full of them. And so, forsooth, the
    youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when there
    are not unfrequently exhibitions of them at the theatre[16]
    (price of admission one drachma at the most); and they
    might pay their money, and laugh at Socrates if he pretends
    to father these extraordinary views. And so, Meletus, you
    really think that I do not believe in any god?

[Sidenote: _Meletus is again checkmated by Socrates._]

    I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all.

    Nobody will believe you, Meletus, and I am pretty sure
    that you do not believe yourself. I cannot help thinking,
    men of Athens, that Meletus is reckless and impudent, and
    that he has written this indictment in a spirit of mere wantonness
    and youthful bravado. Has he not compounded a                       27
    riddle, thinking to try me? He said to himself:—I shall
    see whether the wise Socrates will discover my facetious
    contradiction, or whether I shall be able to deceive him and
    the rest of them. For he certainly does appear to me to
    contradict himself in the indictment as much as if he said
    that Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods, and yet
    of believing in them—but this is not like a person who is in
    earnest.

    I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me in examining
    what I conceive to be his inconsistency; and do
    you, Meletus, answer. And I must remind the audience
    of my request that they would not make a disturbance if
    I speak in my accustomed manner:

[Sidenote: How can Socrates believe in divine agencies and not believe in
gods?]

    Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence of human
    things, and not of human beings?... I wish, men of Athens,
    that he would answer, and not be always trying to get up an
    interruption. Did ever any man believe in horsemanship,
    and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in flute-players?
    No, my friend; I will answer to you and to the
    court, as you refuse to answer for yourself. There is no
    man who ever did. But now please to answer the next
    question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies,
    and not in spirits or demigods?

    He cannot.

    How lucky I am to have extracted that answer, by the
    assistance of the court! But then you swear in the indictment
    that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual
    agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate, I
    believe in spiritual agencies,—so you say and swear in the
    affidavit; and yet if I believe in divine beings, how can I help
    believing in spirits or demigods;—must I not? To be sure
    I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives
    consent. Now what are spirits or demigods? are they not
    either gods or the sons of gods?

    Certainly they are.

[Sidenote: _The example of Achilles._]

    But this is what I call the facetious riddle invented by
    you: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that
    I do not believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in
    gods; that is, if I believe in demigods. For if the demigods
    are the illegitimate sons of gods, whether by the nymphs
    or by any other mothers, of whom they are said to be the
    sons—what human being will ever believe that there are
    no gods if they are the sons of gods? You might as well
    affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and
    asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended
    by you to make trial of me. You have put this into
    the indictment because you had nothing real of which to
    accuse me. But no one who has a particle of understanding
    will ever be convinced by you that the same men can believe
    in divine and superhuman things, and yet not believe that
    there are gods and demigods and heroes.                             28

    I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus:
    any elaborate defence is unnecessary; but I know only too
    well how many are the enmities which I have incurred, and
    this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed;—not
    Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the
    world, which has been the death of many good men, and will
    probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of
    my being the last of them.

[Sidenote: Let no man fear death or fear anything but disgrace.]

    Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of
    a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely
    end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken:
    a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the
    chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether
    in doing anything he is doing right or wrong—acting the part
    of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, upon your view, the
    heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son
    of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison
    with disgrace; and when he was so eager to slay
    Hector, his goddess mother said to him, that if he avenged
    his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die
    himself—‘Fate,’ she said, in these or the like words, ‘waits
    for you next after Hector;’ he, receiving this warning,
    utterly despised danger and death, and instead of fearing
    them, feared rather to live in dishonour, and not to avenge
    his friend. ‘Let me die forthwith,’ he replies, ‘and be
    avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked
    ships, a laughing-stock and a burden of the earth.’ Had
    Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever
    a man’s place is, whether the place which he has chosen or
    that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he
    ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think
    of death or of anything but of disgrace. And this, O men of
    Athens, is a true saying.

[Sidenote: _The motives of Socrates explained by himself._]

[Sidenote: Socrates, who has often faced death in battle, will not make
any condition in order to save his own life; for he does not know whether
death is a good or an evil.]

[Sidenote: He must always be a preacher of philosophy.]

[Sidenote: ‘Necessity is laid upon me:’ ‘I must obey God rather than
man.’]

    Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens,
    if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you
    chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and
    Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man,
    facing death—if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God
    orders me to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into
    myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear         29
    of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange,
    and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the
    existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was
    afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was not
    wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of
    wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing
    the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men
    in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be
    the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful
    sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows
    what he does not know? And in this respect only I believe
    myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim
    to be wiser than they are:—that whereas I know but little of
    the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do
    know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether
    God or man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will never fear
    or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And
    therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by
    Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must be
    put to death; (or if not that I ought never to have been
    prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your sons will
    all be utterly ruined by listening to my words—if you say to
    me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and you
    shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to
    enquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you
    are caught doing so again you shall die;—if this was the
    condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of
    Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather
    than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never
    cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting
    any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner:
    You, my friend,—a citizen of the great and mighty and wise
    city of Athens,—are you not ashamed of heaping up the
    greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and
    caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest
    improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at
    all? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says:
    Yes, but I do care; then I do not leave him or let him go at
    once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine
    him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but
    only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the
    greater, and overvaluing the less. And I shall repeat the           30
    same words to every one whom I meet, young and old,
    citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as
    they are my brethren. For know that this is the command
    of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever
    happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do
    nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike,
    not to take thought for your persons or your properties,
    but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement
    of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money,
    but that from virtue comes money and every other good
    of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching,
    and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am
    a mischievous person. But if any one says that this is not
    my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men
    of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus
    bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do,
    understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I
    have to die many times.

[Sidenote: _The disinterestedness of Socrates._]

[Sidenote: Neither you nor Meletus can ever injure me.]

    Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was
    an understanding between us that you should hear me to the
    end: I have something more to say, at which you may be
    inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be
    good for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry out.
    I would have you know, that if you kill such an one as I am,
    you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me.
    Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus—they
    cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than
    himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill him,
    or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and
    he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is inflicting
    a great injury upon him: but there I do not agree. For the
    evil of doing as he is doing—the evil of unjustly taking away
    the life of another—is greater far.

[Sidenote: I am the gadfly of the Athenian people, given to them by God,
and they will never have another, if they kill me.]

    And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own
    sake, as you may think, but for yours, that you may not sin
    against the God by condemning me, who am his gift to you.
    For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me,
    who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a
    sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is
    a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to
    his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that
    gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long        31
    and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and
    persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find
    another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare
    me. I dare say that you may feel out of temper (like a
    person who is suddenly awakened from sleep), and you think
    that you might easily strike me dead as Anytus advises, and
    then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless
    God in his care of you sent you another gadfly. When
    I say that I am given to you by God, the proof of my mission
    is this:—if I had been like other men, I should not have
    neglected all my own concerns or patiently seen the neglect
    of them during all these years, and have been doing yours,
    coming to you individually like a father or elder brother,
    exhorting you to regard virtue; such conduct, I say, would
    be unlike human nature. If I had gained anything, or if my
    exhortations had been paid, there would have been some
    sense in my doing so; but now, as you will perceive, not
    even the impudence of my accusers dares to say that I have
    ever exacted or sought pay of any one; of that they have no
    witness. And I have a sufficient witness to the truth of what
    I say—my poverty.

[Sidenote: _His fearlessness in the performance of public duties._]

[Sidenote: The internal sign always forbade him to engage in politics;
and if he had done so, he would have perished long ago.]

    Some one may wonder why I go about in private giving
    advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but
    do not venture to come forward in public and advise the
    state. I will tell you why. You have heard me speak at
    sundry times and in divers places of an oracle or sign which
    comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in
    the indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first
    began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids
    but never commands me to do anything which I am going to
    do. This is what deters me from being a politician. And
    rightly, as I think. For I am certain, O men of Athens, that
    if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago,
    and done no good either to you or to myself. And do not
    be offended at my telling you the truth: for the truth is, that
    no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude,
    honestly striving against the many lawless and unrighteous
    deeds which are done in a state, will save his life; he who         32
    will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space,
    must have a private station and not a public one.

[Sidenote: He had shown that he would sooner die than commit injustice at
the trial of the generals and under the tyranny of the Thirty.]

    I can give you convincing evidence of what I say, not
    words only, but what you value far more—actions. Let me
    relate to you a passage of my own life which will prove to you
    that I should never have yielded to injustice from any fear of
    death, and that ‘as I should have refused to yield’ I must have
    died at once. I will tell you a tale of the courts, not very
    interesting perhaps, but nevertheless true. The only office
    of state which I ever held, O men of Athens, was that of
    senator: the tribe Antiochis, which is my tribe, had the presidency
    at the trial of the generals who had not taken up the
    bodies of the slain after the battle of Arginusae; and you
    proposed to try them in a body, contrary to law, as you all
    thought afterwards; but at the time I was the only one of the
    Prytanes who was opposed to the illegality, and I gave my
    vote against you; and when the orators threatened to impeach
    and arrest me, and you called and shouted, I made up
    my mind that I would run the risk, having law and justice
    with me, rather than take part in your injustice because I
    feared imprisonment and death. This happened in the days
    of the democracy. But when the oligarchy of the Thirty was
    in power, they sent for me and four others into the rotunda,
    and bade us bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, as they
    wanted to put him to death. This was a specimen of the sort
    of commands which they were always giving with the view of
    implicating as many as possible in their crimes; and then I
    showed, not in word only but in deed, that, if I may be
    allowed to use such an expression, I cared not a straw for
    death, and that my great and only care was lest I should do
    an unrighteous or unholy thing. For the strong arm of that
    oppressive power did not frighten me into doing wrong; and
    when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to
    Salamis and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For
    which I might have lost my life, had not the power of the
    Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end. And many will
    witness to my words.

[Sidenote: _The reason why people delight in talking to him._]

[Sidenote: He is always talking to the citizens, but he teaches nothing;
he takes no pay and has no secrets.]

[Sidenote: The parents and kinsmen of those whom he is supposed to have
corrupted do not come forward and testify against him.]

    Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all
    these years, if I had led a public life, supposing that like a
    good man I had always maintained the right and had made
    justice, as I ought, the first thing? No indeed, men of
    Athens, neither I nor any other man. But I have been                33
    always the same in all my actions, public as well as private,
    and never have I yielded any base compliance to those who
    are slanderously termed my disciples, or to any other. Not
    that I have any regular disciples. But if any one likes to
    come and hear me while I am pursuing my mission, whether
    he be young or old, he is not excluded. Nor do I converse
    only with those who pay; but any one, whether he be rich or
    poor, may ask and answer me and listen to my words; and
    whether he turns out to be a bad man or a good one, neither
    result can be justly imputed to me; for I never taught or professed
    to teach him anything. And if any one says that he
    has ever learned or heard anything from me in private which
    all the world has not heard, let me tell you that he is lying.

[Sidenote: _Who are his accusers?_]

    But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually
    conversing with you? I have told you already, Athenians,
    the whole truth about this matter: they like to hear the
    cross-examination of the pretenders to wisdom; there is amusement
    in it. Now this duty of cross-examining other men has been
    imposed upon me by God; and has been signified to me by
    oracles, visions, and in every way in which the will of divine
    power was ever intimated to any one. This is true, O
    Athenians; or, if not true, would be soon refuted. If I am or
    have been corrupting the youth, those of them who are now
    grown up and have become sensible that I gave them bad
    advice in the days of their youth should come forward as
    accusers, and take their revenge; or if they do not like to
    come themselves, some of their relatives, fathers, brothers, or
    other kinsmen, should say what evil their families have
    suffered at my hands. Now is their time. Many of them I
    see in the court. There is Crito, who is of the same age and
    of the same deme with myself, and there is Critobulus his son,
    whom I also see. Then again there is Lysanias of Sphettus,
    who is the father of Aeschines—he is present; and also there
    is Antiphon of Cephisus, who is the father of Epigenes; and
    there are the brothers of several who have associated with me.
    There is Nicostratus the son of Theosdotides, and the brother
    of Theodotus (now Theodotus himself is dead, and therefore
    he, at any rate, will not seek to stop him); and there is
    Paralus the son of Demodocus, who had a brother Theages;
    and Adeimantus the son of Ariston, whose brother Plato is           34
    present; and Aeantodorus, who is the brother of Apollodorus,
    whom I also see. I might mention a great many others, some
    of whom Meletus should have produced as witnesses in the
    course of his speech; and let him still produce them, if he has
    forgotten—I will make way for him. And let him say, if he
    has any testimony of the sort which he can produce. Nay,
    Athenians, the very opposite is the truth. For all these are
    ready to witness on behalf of the corrupter, of the injurer of
    their kindred, as Meletus and Anytus call me; not the corrupted
    youth only—there might have been a motive for that—but
    their uncorrupted elder relatives. Why should they too
    support me with their testimony? Why, indeed, except for
    the sake of truth and justice, and because they know that I
    am speaking the truth, and that Meletus is a liar.

[Sidenote: _He will not demean himself by entreaties._]

[Sidenote: He is flesh and blood, but he will not appeal to the pity of
his judges: or make a scene in the court such as he has often witnessed.]

    Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is all the defence
    which I have to offer. Yet a word more. Perhaps there
    may be some one who is offended at me, when he calls to
    mind how he himself on a similar, or even a less serious
    occasion, prayed and entreated the judges with many tears,
    and how he produced his children in court, which was a
    moving spectacle, together with a host of relations and
    friends; whereas I, who am probably in danger of my life,
    will do none of these things. The contrast may occur to his
    mind, and he may be set against me, and vote in anger
    because he is displeased at me on this account. Now if there
    be such a person among you,—mind, I do not say that there
    is,—to him I may fairly reply: My friend, I am a man, and
    like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not ‘of
    wood or stone,’ as Homer says; and I have a family, yes,
    and sons, O Athenians, three in number, one almost a man,
    and two others who are still young; and yet I will not bring
    any of them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal.
    And why not? Not from any self-assertion or want of respect
    for you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is
    another question, of which I will not now speak. But, having
    regard to public opinion, I feel that such conduct would be
    discreditable to myself, and to you, and to the whole state.
    One who has reached my years, and who has a name for wisdom,
    ought not to demean himself. Whether this opinion of
    me be deserved or not, at any rate the world has decided that
    Socrates is in some way superior to other men. And if those         35
    among you who are said to be superior in wisdom and
    courage, and any other virtue, demean themselves in this
    way, how shameful is their conduct! I have seen men of
    reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in the
    strangest manner: they seemed to fancy that they were going
    to suffer something dreadful if they died, and that they could
    be immortal if you only allowed them to live; and I think
    that such are a dishonour to the state, and that any stranger
    coming in would have said of them that the most eminent men
    of Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honour
    and command, are no better than women. And I say that
    these things ought not to be done by those of us who have a
    reputation; and if they are done, you ought not to permit
    them; you ought rather to show that you are far more disposed
    to condemn the man who gets up a doleful scene and makes
    the city ridiculous, than him who holds his peace.

[Sidenote: The judge should not be influenced by his feelings, but
convinced by reason.]

[Sidenote: _The reward which Socrates truly merits._]

    But, setting aside the question of public opinion, there
    seems to be something wrong in asking a favour of a judge,
    and thus procuring an acquittal, instead of informing and convincing
    him. For his duty is, not to make a present of justice,
    but to give judgment; and he has sworn that he will judge
    according to the laws, and not according to his own good
    pleasure; and we ought not to encourage you, nor should
    you allow yourselves to be encouraged, in this habit of perjury—there
    can be no piety in that. Do not then require me to
    do what I consider dishonourable and impious and wrong,
    especially now, when I am being tried for impiety on the
    indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of Athens, by force of
    persuasion and entreaty I could overpower your oaths, then
    I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods,
    and in defending should simply convict myself of the charge
    of not believing in them. But that is not so—far otherwise.
    For I do believe that there are gods, and in a sense higher
    than that in which any of my accusers believe in them. And
    to you and to God I commit my cause, to be determined by
    you as is best for you and me.

       *       *       *       *       *

    There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of
    Athens, at the vote of condemnation. I expected it, and am          36
    only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal; for I had
    thought that the majority against me would have been far
    larger; but now, had thirty votes gone over to the other side,
    I should have been acquitted. And I may say, I think, that
    I have escaped Meletus. I may say more; for without the
    assistance of Anytus and Lycon, any one may see that he
    would not have had a fifth part of the votes, as the law
    requires, in which case he would have incurred a fine of a
    thousand drachmae.

[Sidenote: _Socrates accepts his fate._]

[Sidenote: Socrates all his life long has been seeking to do the greatest
good to the Athenians.]

[Sidenote: Should he not be rewarded with maintenance in the Prytaneum?]

    And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall
    I propose on my part, O men of Athens? Clearly that
    which is my due. And what is my due? What return shall be
    made to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during
    his whole life; but has been careless of what the many care
    for—wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and
    speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and
    parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to
    be a politician and live, I did not go where I could do no
    good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest
    good privately to every one of you, thither I went, and sought
    to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself,
    and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private
    interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests
    of the state; and that this should be the order which he
    observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such an
    one? Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he
    has his reward; and the good should be of a kind suitable to
    him. What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who
    is your benefactor, and who desires leisure that he may
    instruct you? There can be no reward so fitting as maintenance
    in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which
    he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize
    at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots
    were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want,
    and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of
    happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate
    the penalty fairly, I should say that maintenance in the Prytaneum  37
    is the just return.

[Sidenote: The consciousness of innocence gives him confidence.]

[Sidenote: He has not deserved imprisonment.]

[Sidenote: And if he is exiled, how wretched will be his fate!]

[Sidenote: _The penalty—death._]

[Sidenote: He cannot be silent, and he will be driven from city to city.]

    Perhaps you think that I am braving you in what I am
    saying now, as in what I said before about the tears and
    prayers. But this is not so. I speak rather because I am
    convinced that I never intentionally wronged any one,
    although I cannot convince you—the time has been too
    short; if there were a law at Athens, as there is in other
    cities, that a capital cause should not be decided in one
    day, then I believe that I should have convinced you. But
    I cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and, as I am
    convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly not
    wrong myself. I will not say of myself that I deserve any
    evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I? Because I
    am afraid of the penalty of death which Meletus proposes?
    When I do not know whether death is a good or an evil, why
    should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil?
    Shall I say imprisonment? And why should I live in prison,
    and be the slave of the magistrates of the year—of the Eleven?
    Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine
    is paid? There is the same objection. I should have to lie
    in prison, for money I have none, and cannot pay. And if I
    say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you will
    affix), I must indeed be blinded by the love of life, if I am so
    irrational as to expect that when you, who are my own
    citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and have
    found them so grievous and odious that you will have no
    more of them, others are likely to endure me. No indeed,
    men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what a life
    should I lead, at my age, wandering from city to city, ever
    changing my place of exile, and always being driven out!
    For I am quite sure that wherever I go, there, as here, the
    young men will flock to me; and if I drive them away, their
    elders will drive me out at their request; and if I let them
    come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for their
    sakes.

[Sidenote: Money he has none, or he would propose a fine. His friends bid
him offer 30 minae on their security.]

    Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold
    your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no
    one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in
    making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you
    that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God,
    and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not
    believe that I am serious; and if I say again that daily to         38
    discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which
    you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest
    good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth
    living, you are still less likely to believe me. Yet I say what
    is true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to persuade
    you. Also, I have never been accustomed to think that
    I deserve to suffer any harm. Had I money I might have
    estimated the offence at what I was able to pay, and not have
    been much the worse. But I have none, and therefore I
    must ask you to proportion the fine to my means. Well,
    perhaps I could afford a mina, and therefore I propose that
    penalty: Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my
    friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the
    sureties. Let thirty minae be the penalty; for which sum
    they will be ample security to you.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: They will be accused of killing a wise man.]

[Sidenote: _The prophecy of Socrates._]

[Sidenote: Why could they not wait a few years?]

    Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for
    the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the
    city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for
    they will call me wise, even although I am not wise, when
    they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while,
    your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature.
    For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and
    not far from death. I am speaking now not to all of you, but
    only to those who have condemned me to death. And I have
    another thing to say to them: You think that I was convicted
    because I had no words of the sort which would have procured
    my acquittal—I mean, if I had thought fit to leave
    nothing undone or unsaid. Not so; the deficiency which
    led to my conviction was not of words—certainly not. But I
    had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address
    you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing
    and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you
    have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I
    maintain, are unworthy of me. I thought at the time that I
    ought not to do anything common or mean when in danger:
    nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would
    rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in
    your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law
    ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death.              39
    Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will throw
    away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers,
    he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other
    ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything.
    The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but
    to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I
    am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken
    me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster
    runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And
    now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty
    of death,—they too go their ways condemned by the truth
    to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide
    by my award—let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these
    things may be regarded as fated,—and I think that they are
    well.

[Sidenote: _The silence of his familiar spirit._]

[Sidenote: They are about to slay Socrates because he has been their
accuser; other accusers will rise up and denounce them more vehemently.]

    And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain
    prophesy to you; for I am about to die, and in the hour of
    death men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy
    to you who are my murderers, that immediately after my
    departure punishment far heavier than you have inflicted on
    me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you
    wanted to escape the accuser, and not to give an account of
    your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far otherwise.
    For I say that there will be more accusers of you than
    there are now; accusers whom hitherto I have restrained:
    and as they are younger they will be more inconsiderate with
    you, and you will be more offended at them. If you think
    that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring
    your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape
    which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the
    noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving
    yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my
    departure to the judges who have condemned me.

[Sidenote: He believes that what is happening to him will be good,
because the internal oracle gives no sign of opposition.]

    Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also
    to talk with you about the thing which has come to pass, while
    the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at
    which I must die. Stay then a little, for we may as well talk
    with one another while there is time. You are my friends,           40
    and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which
    has happened to me. O my judges—for you I may truly call
    judges—I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance.
    Hitherto the divine faculty of which the internal oracle is the
    source has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even
    about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error in any
    matter; and now as you see there has come upon me that
    which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last
    and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition,
    either when I was leaving my house in the morning, or when
    I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking, at anything
    which I was going to say; and yet I have often been
    stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either
    said or did touching the matter in hand has the oracle opposed
    me. What do I take to be the explanation of this silence?
    I will tell you. It is an intimation that what has happened
    to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is
    an evil are in error. For the customary sign would surely
    have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.

[Sidenote: Death either a good or nothing: = a profound sleep.]

[Sidenote: _The Homeric heroes._]

[Sidenote: How blessed to have a just judgment passed on us; to converse
with Homer and Hesiod; to see the heroes of Troy, and to continue the
search after knowledge in another world!]

    Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there
    is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two
    things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter
    unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and
    migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if
    you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like
    the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death
    will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select
    the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams,
    and were to compare with this the other days and nights
    of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and
    nights he had passed in the course of his life better and
    more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I
    will not say a private man, but even the great king will
    not find many such days or nights, when compared with
    the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to
    die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if
    death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say,
    all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges,
    can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim
    arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors     41
    of justice in this world, and finds the true judges
    who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus
    and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of
    God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage
    will be worth making. What would not a man give if he
    might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod
    and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and
    again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in
    there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax
    the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has
    suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will
    be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own
    sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to
    continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this
    world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise,
    and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not
    a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of
    the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or
    numberless others, men and women too! What infinite
    delight would there be in conversing with them and asking
    them questions! In another world they do not put a man
    to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides
    being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is
    said is true.

[Sidenote: _The last word._]

    Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and
    know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man,
    either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected
    by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened
    by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived
    when it was better for me to die and be released from
    trouble; wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which
    reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with
    my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they
    did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently
    blame them.

[Sidenote: Do to my sons as I have done to you.]

    Still I have a favour to ask of them. When my sons are
    grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them;
    and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you,
    if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than
    about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they
    are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved
    you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care,
    and thinking that they are something when they are really
    nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have           42
    received justice at your hands.

    The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I
    to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.


FOOTNOTES

[14] Or, I am certain that I am right in taking this course.

[15] Aristoph., Clouds, 225 ff.

[16] Probably in allusion to Aristophanes who caricatured, and to
Euripides who borrowed the notions of Anaxagoras, as well as to other
dramatic poets.




CRITO.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Crito._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

The Crito seems intended to exhibit the character of Socrates in one
light only, not as the philosopher, fulfilling a divine mission and
trusting in the will of heaven, but simply as the good citizen, who
having been unjustly condemned is willing to give up his life in
obedience to the laws of the state....

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

    The days of Socrates are drawing to a close; the fatal     =Steph.= 43
    ship has been seen off Sunium, as he is informed by his aged
    friend and contemporary Crito, who visits him before the dawn has
    broken; he himself has been warned in a dream that on the
    third day he must depart. Time is precious, and Crito has come      44
    early in order to gain his consent to a plan of escape. This
    can be easily accomplished by his friends, who will incur no
    danger in making the attempt to save him, but will be disgraced     45
    for ever if they allow him to perish. He should think of his
    duty to his children, and not play into the hands of his enemies.
    Money is already provided by Crito as well as by Simmias and
    others, and he will have no difficulty in finding friends in        46
    Thessaly and other places.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 47-54._]

    Socrates is afraid that Crito is but pressing upon him the
    opinions of the many: whereas, all his life long he has followed
    the dictates of reason only and the opinion of the one wise or
    skilled man. There was a time when Crito himself had allowed
    the propriety of this. And although some one will say ‘the many
    can kill us,’ that makes no difference; but a good life, in other
    words, a just and honourable life, is alone to be valued. All
    considerations of loss of reputation or injury to his children
    should be dismissed: the only question is whether he would be
    right in attempting to escape. Crito, who is a disinterested        47
    person not having the fear of death before his eyes, shall answer
    this for him. Before he was condemned they had often held discussions,
    in which they agreed that no man should either do evil,             48
    or return evil for evil, or betray the right. Are these principles
    to be altered because the circumstances of Socrates are altered?

    Crito admits that they remain the same. Then is his escape          49
    consistent with the maintenance of them? To this Crito is unable
    or unwilling to reply.

    Socrates proceeds:—Suppose the Laws of Athens to come               50
    and remonstrate with him: they will ask ‘Why does he seek
    to overturn them?’ and if he replies, ‘they have injured him,’
    will not the Laws answer, ‘Yes, but was that the agreement?
    Has he any objection to make to them which would justify him in     51
    overturning them? Was he not brought into the world and educated
    by their help, and are they not his parents? He might               52
    have left Athens and gone where he pleased, but he has lived
    there for seventy years more constantly than any other citizen.’
    Thus he has clearly shown that he acknowledged the agreement,
    which he cannot now break without dishonour to himself and
    danger to his friends. Even in the course of the trial he might
    have proposed exile as the penalty, but then he declared that he
    preferred death to exile. And whither will he direct his footsteps?
    In any well-ordered state the Laws will consider him as             53
    an enemy. Possibly in a land of misrule like Thessaly he may be
    welcomed at first, and the unseemly narrative of his escape will
    be regarded by the inhabitants as an amusing tale. But if he
    offends them he will have to learn another sort of lesson. Will
    he continue to give lectures in virtue? That would hardly be
    decent. And how will his children be the gainers if he takes
    them into Thessaly, and deprives them of Athenian citizenship?      54
    Or if he leaves them behind, does he expect that they will be
    better taken care of by his friends because he is in Thessaly?
    Will not true friends care for them equally whether he is alive
    or dead?

[Sidenote: _Did Socrates do well to die?_]

    Finally, they exhort him to think of justice first, and of life
    and children afterwards. He may now depart in peace and
    innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil. But if he breaks
    agreements, and returns evil for evil, they will be angry with him
    while he lives; and their brethren the Laws of the world below
    will receive him as an enemy. Such is the mystic voice which
    is always murmuring in his ears.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

That Socrates was not a good citizen was a charge made against him during
his lifetime, which has been often repeated in later ages. The crimes of
Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides, who had been his pupils, were still
recent in the memory of the now restored democracy. The fact that he had
been neutral in the death-struggle of Athens was not likely to conciliate
popular good-will. Plato, writing probably in the next generation,
undertakes the defence of his friend and master in this particular, not
to the Athenians of his day, but to posterity and the world at large.

Whether such an incident ever really occurred as the visit of Crito and
the proposal of escape is uncertain: Plato could easily have invented
far more than that (Phaedr. 275 B); and in the selection of Crito, the
aged friend, as the fittest person to make the proposal to Socrates, we
seem to recognize the hand of the artist. Whether any one who has been
subjected by the laws of his country to an unjust judgment is right in
attempting to escape, is a thesis about which casuists might disagree.
Shelley (Prose Works, p. 78) is of opinion that Socrates ‘did well to
die,’ but not for the ‘sophistical’ reasons which Plato has put into his
mouth. And there would be no difficulty in arguing that Socrates should
have lived and preferred to a glorious death the good which he might
still be able to perform. ‘A rhetorician would have had much to say upon
that point’ (50 B). It may be observed however that Plato never intended
to answer the question of casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of
patient virtue which refuses to do the least evil in order to avoid the
greatest, and to show his master maintaining in death the opinions which
he had professed in his life. Not ‘the world,’ but the ‘one wise man,’
is still the paradox of Socrates in his last hours. He must be guided
by reason, although her conclusions may be fatal to him. The remarkable
sentiment that the many can do neither good nor evil is true, if taken in
the sense, which he means, of moral evil; in his own words, they cannot
make a man wise or foolish.’

[Sidenote: _The personification of the Laws._]

This little dialogue is a perfect piece of dialectic, in which granting
the ‘common principle’ (49 D), there is no escaping from the conclusion.
It is anticipated at the beginning by the dream of Socrates and the
parody of Homer. The personification of the Laws, and of their brethren
the Laws in the world below, is one of the noblest and boldest figures of
speech which occur in Plato.


CRITO.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

SOCRATES. CRITO.

SCENE:—The Prison of Socrates.

[Sidenote: _Crito._]

[Sidenote: Crito appears at break of dawn in the prison of Socrates, whom
he finds asleep.]

    _Socrates._ Why have you come at this hour, Crito? it must
    be quite early?                                            =Steph.= 43

    _Crito._ Yes, certainly.

    _Soc._ What is the exact time?

    _Cr._ The dawn is breaking.

    _Soc._ I wonder that the keeper of the prison would let
    you in.

    _Cr._ He knows me, because I often come, Socrates; moreover,
    I have done him a kindness.

    _Soc._ And are you only just arrived?

    _Cr._ No, I came some time ago.

    _Soc._ Then why did you sit and say nothing, instead of at
    once awakening me?

    _Cr._ I should not have liked myself, Socrates, to be in such
    great trouble and unrest as you are—indeed I should not: I
    have been watching with amazement your peaceful slumbers;
    and for that reason I did not awake you, because I wished to
    minimize the pain. I have always thought you to be of a
    happy disposition; but never did I see anything like the easy,
    tranquil manner in which you bear this calamity.

    _Soc._ Why, Crito, when a man has reached my age he ought
    not to be repining at the approach of death.

    _Cr._ And yet other old men find themselves in similar misfortunes,
    and age does not prevent them from repining.

[Sidenote: _The vision of Socrates._]

    _Soc._ That is true. But you have not told me why you
    come at this early hour.

    _Cr._ I come to bring you a message which is sad and painful;
    not, as I believe, to yourself, but to all of us who are
    your friends, and saddest of all to me.

[Sidenote: The ship from Delos is expected.]

    _Soc._ What? Has the ship come from Delos, on the arrival
    of which I am to die?

    _Cr._ No, the ship has not actually arrived, but she will probably
    be here to-day, as persons who have come from Sunium
    tell me that they left her there; and therefore to-morrow, Socrates,
    will be the last day of your life.

    _Soc._ Very well, Crito; if such is the will of God, I am
    willing; but my belief is that there will be a delay of a day.

    _Cr._ Why do you think so?                                          44

    _Soc._ I will tell you. I am to die on the day after the arrival
    of the ship.

    _Cr._ Yes; that is what the authorities say.

[Sidenote: A vision of a fair woman who prophesies in the language of
Homer that Socrates will die on the third day.]

    _Soc._ But I do not think that the ship will be here until to-morrow;
    this I infer from a vision which I had last night, or
    rather only just now, when you fortunately allowed me to
    sleep.

    _Cr._ And what was the nature of the vision?

    _Soc._ There appeared to me the likeness of a woman, fair
    and comely, clothed in bright raiment, who called to me and
    said: O Socrates,

      ‘The third day hence to fertile Phthia shalt thou go[17].’

    _Cr._ What a singular dream, Socrates!

    _Soc._ There can be no doubt about the meaning, Crito, I
    think.

[Sidenote: _The devotion of his friends._]

    _Cr._ Yes; the meaning is only too clear. But, oh! my beloved
    Socrates, let me entreat you once more to take my
    advice and escape. For if you die I shall not only lose a
    friend who can never be replaced, but there is another evil:
    people who do not know you and me will believe that I might
    have saved you if I had been willing to give money, but that
    I did not care. Now, can there be a worse disgrace than
    this—that I should be thought to value money more than the
    life of a friend? For the many will not be persuaded that I
    wanted you to escape, and that you refused.

    _Soc._ But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the
    opinion of the many? Good men, and they are the only
    persons who are worth considering, will think of these things
    truly as they occurred.

[Sidenote: Crito by a variety of arguments tries to induce Socrates to
make his escape. The means will be easily provided and without danger to
any one.]

    _Cr._ But you see, Socrates, that the opinion of the many
    must be regarded, for what is now happening shows that they
    can do the greatest evil to any one who has lost their good
    opinion.

    _Soc._ I only wish it were so, Crito; and that the many
    could do the greatest evil; for then they would also be able
    to do the greatest good—and what a fine thing this would be!
    But in reality they can do neither; for they cannot make a
    man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is the result
    of chance.

    _Cr._ Well, I will not dispute with you; but please to tell me,
    Socrates, whether you are not acting out of regard to me and
    your other friends: are you not afraid that if you escape from
    prison we may get into trouble with the informers for having
    stolen you away, and lose either the whole or a great part of
    our property; or that even a worse evil may happen to us?           45
    Now, if you fear on our account, be at ease; for in order to
    save you, we ought surely to run this, or even a greater
    risk; be persuaded, then, and do as I say.

    _Soc._ Yes, Crito, that is one fear which you mention, but by
    no means the only one.

[Sidenote: _The arguments of Crito._]

    _Cr._ Fear not—there are persons who are willing to get
    you out of prison at no great cost; and as for the informers,
    they are far from being exorbitant in their demands—a little
    money will satisfy them. My means, which are certainly
    ample, are at your service, and if you have a scruple about
    spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you the
    use of theirs; and one of them, Simmias the Theban, has
    brought a large sum of money for this very purpose; and
    Cebes and many others are prepared to spend their money in
    helping you to escape. I say, therefore, do not hesitate on
    our account, and do not say, as you did in the court[18], that you
    will have a difficulty in knowing what to do with yourself anywhere
    else. For men will love you in other places to which
    you may go, and not in Athens only; there are friends of
    mine in Thessaly, if you like to go to them, who will value and
    protect you, and no Thessalian will give you any trouble.

[Sidenote: He is not justified in throwing away his life; he will be
deserting his children, and will bring the reproach of cowardice on his
friends.]

    Nor can I think that you are at all justified, Socrates, in
    betraying your own life when you might be saved; in acting
    thus you are playing into the hands of your enemies, who
    are hurrying on your destruction. And further I should say
    that you are deserting your own children; for you might
    bring them up and educate them; instead of which you go
    away and leave them, and they will have to take their chance;
    and if they do not meet with the usual fate of orphans, there
    will be small thanks to you. No man should bring children
    into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in
    their nurture and education. But you appear to be choosing
    the easier part, not the better and manlier, which would have
    been more becoming in one who professes to care for virtue
    in all his actions, like yourself. And indeed, I am ashamed
    not only of you, but of us who are your friends, when I reflect
    that the whole business will be attributed entirely to our want
    of courage. The trial need never have come on, or might
    have been managed differently; and this last act, or crowning
    folly, will seem to have occurred through our negligence and
    cowardice, who might have saved you, if we had been good for        46
    anything; and you might have saved yourself, for there was
    no difficulty at all. See now, Socrates, how sad and discreditable
    are the consequences, both to us and you. Make up
    your mind then, or rather have your mind already made up,
    for the time of deliberation is over, and there is only one
    thing to be done, which must be done this very night, and if
    we delay at all will be no longer practicable or possible; I
    beseech you therefore, Socrates, be persuaded by me, and do
    as I say.

[Sidenote: Socrates is one of those who must be guided by reason.]

[Sidenote: _The answer of Socrates._]

[Sidenote: Ought he to follow the opinion of the many or of the few, of
the wise or of the unwise?]

    _Soc._ Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but
    if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger; and
    therefore we ought to consider whether I shall or shall not do
    as you say. For I am and always have been one of those
    natures who must be guided by reason, whatever the reason
    may be which upon reflection appears to me to be the best;
    and now that this chance has befallen me, I cannot repudiate
    my own words: the principles which I have hitherto honoured
    and revered I still honour, and unless we can at once find
    other and better principles, I am certain not to agree with you;
    no, not even if the power of the multitude could inflict many
    more imprisonments, confiscations, deaths, frightening us like
    children with hobgoblin terrors[19]. What will be the fairest
    way of considering the question? Shall I return to your
    old argument about the opinions of men?—we were saying
    that some of them are to be regarded, and others not.
    Now were we right in maintaining this before I was condemned?
    And has the argument which was once good
    now proved to be talk for the sake of talking—mere childish
    nonsense? That is what I want to consider with your help,
    Crito:—whether, under my present circumstances, the argument
    appears to be in any way different or not; and is to be
    allowed by me or disallowed. That argument, which, as I
    believe, is maintained by many persons of authority, was to
    the effect, as I was saying, that the opinions of some men are
    to be regarded, and of other men not to be regarded. Now
    you, Crito, are not going to die to-morrow—at least, there is no    47
    human probability of this—and therefore you are disinterested
    and not liable to be deceived by the circumstances in which
    you are placed. Tell me then, whether I am right in saying
    that some opinions, and the opinions of some men only, are to
    be valued, and that other opinions, and the opinions of other
    men, are not to be valued. I ask you whether I was right in
    maintaining this?

    _Cr._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ The good are to be regarded, and not the bad?

    _Cr._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the opinions of the wise are good, and the
    opinions of the unwise are evil?

    _Cr._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And what was said about another matter? Is the
    pupil who devotes himself to the practice of gymnastics
    supposed to attend to the praise and blame and opinion of
    every man, or of one man only—his physician or trainer,
    whoever he may be?

[Sidenote: _First principles._]

    _Cr._ Of one man only.

    _Soc._ And he ought to fear the censure and welcome the
    praise of that one only, and not of the many?

    _Cr._ Clearly so.

    _Soc._ And he ought to act and train, and eat and drink in
    the way which seems good to his single master who has
    understanding, rather than according to the opinion of all
    other men put together?

    _Cr._ True.

    _Soc._ And if he disobeys and disregards the opinion and
    approval of the one, and regards the opinion of the many
    who have no understanding, will he not suffer evil?

    _Cr._ Certainly he will.

    _Soc._ And what will the evil be, whither tending and what
    affecting, in the disobedient person?

    _Cr._ Clearly, affecting the body; that is what is destroyed
    by the evil.

[Sidenote: The opinion of the one wise man is to be followed.]

    _Soc._ Very good; and is not this true, Crito, of other
    things which we need not separately enumerate? In
    questions of just and unjust, fair and foul, good and evil,
    which are the subjects of our present consultation, ought we
    to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the
    opinion of the one man who has understanding? ought we
    not to fear and reverence him more than all the rest of the
    world: and if we desert him shall we not destroy and injure
    that principle in us which may be assumed to be improved
    by justice and deteriorated by injustice;—there is such a
    principle?

    _Cr._ Certainly there is, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Take a parallel instance:—if, acting under the advice
    of those who have no understanding, we destroy that which
    is improved by health and is deteriorated by disease, would
    life be worth having? And that which has been destroyed
    is—the body?

    _Cr._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?

    _Cr._ Certainly not.

[Sidenote: _The application of them to the present case._]

    _Soc._ And will life be worth having, if that higher part of
    man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved
    by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it
    may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to       48
    be inferior to the body?

    _Cr._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ More honourable than the body?

    _Cr._ Far more.

[Sidenote: No matter what the many say of us.]

    _Soc._ Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many
    say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding
    of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say.
    And therefore you begin in error when you advise that we
    should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust,
    good and evil, honourable and dishonourable.—‘Well,’
    some one will say, ‘but the many can kill us.’

    _Cr._ Yes, Socrates; that will clearly be the answer.

[Sidenote: Not life, but a good life, to be chiefly valued.]

    _Soc._ And it is true: but still I find with surprise that the
    old argument is unshaken as ever. And I should like to
    know whether I may say the same of another proposition—that
    not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued?

    _Cr._ Yes, that also remains unshaken.

    _Soc._ And a good life is equivalent to a just and honourable
    one—that holds also?

    _Cr._ Yes, it does.

[Sidenote: Admitting these principles, ought I to try and escape or not?]

    _Soc._ From these premisses I proceed to argue the question
    whether I ought or ought not to try and escape without the
    consent of the Athenians: and if I am clearly right in
    escaping, then I will make the attempt; but if not, I will
    abstain. The other considerations which you mention, of
    money and loss of character and the duty of educating one’s
    children, are, I fear, only the doctrines of the multitude, who
    would be as ready to restore people to life, if they were able,
    as they are to put them to death—and with as little reason.
    But now, since the argument has thus far prevailed, the only
    question which remains to be considered is, whether we
    shall do rightly either in escaping or in suffering others to
    aid in our escape and paying them in money and thanks,
    or whether in reality we shall not do rightly; and if the
    latter, then death or any other calamity which may ensue
    on my remaining here must not be allowed to enter into the
    calculation.

    _Cr._ I think that you are right, Socrates; how then shall
    we proceed?

[Sidenote: _First principles._]

    _Soc._ Let us consider the matter together, and do you
    either refute me if you can, and I will be convinced; or else
    cease, my dear friend, from repeating to me that I ought to
    escape against the wishes of the Athenians: for I highly
    value your attempts to persuade me to do so, but I may not
    be persuaded against my own better judgment. And now
    please to consider my first position, and try how you can           49
    best answer me.

    _Cr._ I will.

[Sidenote: May we sometimes do evil that good may come?]

    _Soc._ Are we to say that we are never intentionally to do
    wrong, or that in one way we ought and in another way we
    ought not to do wrong, or is doing wrong always evil and
    dishonourable, as I was just now saying, and as has been
    already acknowledged by us? Are all our former admissions
    which were made within a few days to be thrown
    away? And have we, at our age, been earnestly discoursing
    with one another all our life long only to discover that we
    are no better than children? Or, in spite of the opinion of
    the many, and in spite of consequences whether better or
    worse, shall we insist on the truth of what was then said,
    that injustice is always an evil and dishonour to him who
    acts unjustly? Shall we say so or not?

    _Cr._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then we must do no wrong?

    _Cr._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Nor when injured injure in return, as the many
    imagine; for we must injure no one at all[20]?

    _Cr._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ Again, Crito, may we do evil?

    _Cr._ Surely not, Socrates.

[Sidenote: May we render evil for evil?]

    _Soc._ And what of doing evil in return for evil, which is the
    morality of the many—is that just or not?

    _Cr._ Not just.

    _Soc._ For doing evil to another is the same as injuring
    him?

    _Cr._ Very true.

[Sidenote: _The address of the Laws._]

[Sidenote: Or is evil always to be deemed evil? Are you of the same mind
as formerly about all this?]

    _Soc._ Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil
    to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him.
    But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you really
    mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never been
    held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of
    persons; and those who are agreed and those who are not
    agreed upon this point have no common ground, and can
    only despise one another when they see how widely they
    differ. Tell me, then, whether you agree with and assent to
    my first principle, that neither injury nor retaliation nor
    warding off evil by evil is ever right. And shall that be the
    premiss of our argument? Or do you decline and dissent
    from this? For so I have ever thought, and continue to
    think; but, if you are of another opinion, let me hear what
    you have to say. If, however, you remain of the same mind
    as formerly, I will proceed to the next step.

[Sidenote: Crito assents.]

    _Cr._ You may proceed, for I have not changed my mind.

[Sidenote: Then ought Socrates to desert or not?]

    _Soc._ Then I will go on to the next point, which may be
    put in the form of a question:—Ought a man to do what he
    admits to be right, or ought he to betray the right?

    _Cr._ He ought to do what he thinks right.

    _Soc._ But if this is true, what is the application? In
    leaving the prison against the will of the Athenians, do I          50
    wrong any? or rather do I not wrong those whom I ought
    least to wrong? Do I not desert the principles which were
    acknowledged by us to be just—what do you say?

    _Cr._ I cannot tell, Socrates; for I do not know.

[Sidenote: The Laws come and argue with him.—Can a State exist in which
law is set aside?]

    _Soc._ Then consider the matter in this way:—Imagine that
    I am about to play truant (you may call the proceeding by
    any name which you like), and the laws and the government
    come and interrogate me: ‘Tell us, Socrates,’ they say;
    ‘what are you about? are you not going by an act of yours
    to overturn us—the laws, and the whole state, as far as in
    you lies? Do you imagine that a state can subsist and not
    be overthrown, in which the decisions of law have no power,
    but are set aside and trampled upon by individuals?’ What
    will be our answer, Crito, to these and the like words?
    Any one, and especially a rhetorician, will have a good deal
    to say on behalf of the law which requires a sentence to be
    carried out. He will argue that this law should not be set
    aside; and shall we reply, ‘Yes; but the state has injured us
    and given an unjust sentence.’ Suppose I say that?

[Sidenote: _The address of the Laws._]

    _Cr._ Very good, Socrates.

[Sidenote: Has he any fault to find with them?]

[Sidenote: No man has any right to strike a blow at his country any more
than at his father or mother.]

    _Soc._ ‘And was that our agreement with you?’ the law
    would answer; ‘or were you to abide by the sentence of the
    state?’ And if I were to express my astonishment at their
    words, the law would probably add: ‘Answer, Socrates,
    instead of opening your eyes—you are in the habit of asking
    and answering questions. Tell us,—What complaint have
    you to make against us which justifies you in attempting to
    destroy us and the state? In the first place did we not
    bring you into existence? Your father married your mother
    by our aid and begat you. Say whether you have any objection
    to urge against those of us who regulate marriage?’
    None, I should reply. ‘Or against those of us who after
    birth regulate the nurture and education of children, in
    which you also were trained? Were not the laws, which
    have the charge of education, right in commanding your
    father to train you in music and gymnastic?’ Right, I
    should reply. Well then, since you were brought into the
    world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the
    first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers
    were before you? And, if this is true you are not on equal
    terms with us; nor can you think that you have a right to do
    to us what we are doing to you. Would you have any right
    to strike or revile or do any other evil to your father or your
    master, if you had one, because you have been struck or
    reviled by him, or received some other evil at his hands?—you
    would not say this? And because we think right to                   51
    destroy you, do you think that you have any right to destroy
    us in return, and your country as far as in you lies? Will
    you, O professor of true virtue, pretend that you are justified
    in this? Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that
    our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far
    than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded
    in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?
    also to be soothed, and gently and reverently entreated when
    angry, even more than a father, and either to be persuaded,
    or if not persuaded, to be obeyed? And when we are
    punished by her, whether with imprisonment or stripes, the
    punishment is to be endured in silence; and if she lead us
    to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right;
    neither may any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, but
    whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any other place,
    he must do what his city and his country order him; or he
    must change their view of what is just: and if he may do no
    violence to his father or mother, much less may he do
    violence to his country.’ What answer shall we make to
    this, Crito? Do the laws speak truly, or do they not?

    _Cr._ I think that they do.

[Sidenote: _‘Listen to us, Socrates.’_]

[Sidenote: The Laws argue that he has made an implied agreement with them
which he is not at liberty to break at his pleasure.]

    _Soc._ Then the laws will say: ‘Consider, Socrates, if we
    are speaking truly that in your present attempt you are
    going to do us an injury. For, having brought you into
    the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you
    and every other citizen a share in every good which we had
    to give, we further proclaim to any Athenian by the liberty
    which we allow him, that if he does not like us when he has
    become of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made
    our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his
    goods with him. None of us laws will forbid him or interfere
    with him. Any one who does not like us and the city, and
    who wants to emigrate to a colony or to any other city, may
    go where he likes, retaining his property. But he who has
    experience of the manner in which we order justice and
    administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an
    implied contract that he will do as we command him. And
    he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong; first,
    because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents;
    secondly, because we are the authors of his education;
    thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he
    will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them              52
    nor convinces us that our commands are unjust; and we do
    not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of
    obeying or convincing us;—that is what we offer, and he
    does neither.

[Sidenote: _The address of the Laws._]

    ‘These are the sort of accusations to which, as we were
    saying, you, Socrates, will be exposed if you accomplish
    your intentions; you, above all other Athenians.’ Suppose
    now I ask, why I rather than anybody else? they will
    justly retort upon me that I above all other men have
    acknowledged the agreement. ‘There is clear proof,’
    they will say, ‘Socrates, that we and the city were not displeasing
    to you. Of all Athenians you have been the most
    constant resident in the city, which, as you never leave, you
    may be supposed to love[21]. For you never went out of the
    city either to see the games, except once when you went to
    the Isthmus, or to any other place unless when you were on
    military service; nor did you travel as other men do. Nor
    had you any curiosity to know other states or their laws:
    your affections did not go beyond us and our state; we were
    your special favourites, and you acquiesced in our government
    of you; and here in this city you begat your children,
    which is a proof of your satisfaction. Moreover, you might
    in the course of the trial, if you had liked, have fixed the
    penalty at banishment; the state which refuses to let you go
    now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you
    preferred death to exile[22], and that you were not unwilling to
    die. And now you have forgotten these fine sentiments,
    and pay no respect to us the laws, of whom you are the
    destroyer; and are doing what only a miserable slave would
    do, running away and turning your back upon the compacts
    and agreements which you made as a citizen. And first of
    all answer this very question: Are we right in saying that
    you agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and
    not in word only? Is that true or not?’ How shall we
    answer, Crito? Must we not assent?

    _Cr._ We cannot help it, Socrates.

[Sidenote: This agreement he is now going to break.]

    _Soc._ Then will they not say: ‘You, Socrates, are breaking
    the covenants and agreements which you made with us at
    your leisure, not in any haste or under any compulsion or
    deception, but after you have had seventy years to think
    of them, during which time you were at liberty to leave
    the city, if we were not to your mind, or if our covenants
    appeared to you to be unfair. You had your choice, and
    might have gone either to Lacedaemon or Crete, both which
    states are often praised by you for their good government,
    or to some other Hellenic or foreign state. Whereas you,            53
    above all other Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the state,
    or, in other words, of us her laws (and who would care about
    a state which has no laws?), that you never stirred out of her;
    the halt, the blind, the maimed were not more stationary
    in her than you were. And now you run away and forsake
    your agreements. Not so, Socrates, if you will take our
    advice; do not make yourself ridiculous by escaping out of
    the city.

[Sidenote: _‘Listen to us, Socrates.’_]

[Sidenote: If he does he will injure his friends and will disgrace
himself.]

    ‘For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of
    way, what good will you do either to yourself or to your
    friends? That your friends will be driven into exile and
    deprived of citizenship, or will lose their property, is
    tolerably certain; and you yourself, if you fly to one of the
    neighbouring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara,
    both of which are well governed, will come to them as an
    enemy, Socrates, and their government will be against you,
    and all patriotic citizens will cast an evil eye upon you as
    a subverter of the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of
    the judges the justice of their own condemnation of you.
    For he who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to
    be a corrupter of the young and foolish portion of mankind.
    Will you then flee from well-ordered cities and virtuous
    men? and is existence worth having on these terms? Or
    will you go to them without shame, and talk to them,
    Socrates? And what will you say to them? What you
    say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws
    being the best things among men? Would that be decent
    of you? Surely not. But if you go away from well-governed
    states to Crito’s friends in Thessaly, where there
    is great disorder and licence, they will be charmed to hear
    the tale of your escape from prison, set off with ludicrous
    particulars of the manner in which you were wrapped in a
    goatskin or some other disguise, and metamorphosed as the
    manner is of runaways; but will there be no one to remind
    you that in your old age you were not ashamed to violate
    the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a little more
    life? Perhaps not, if you keep them in a good temper; but
    if they are out of temper you will hear many degrading
    things; you will live, but how?—as the flatterer of all men,
    and the servant of all men; and doing what?—eating and
    drinking in Thessaly, having gone abroad in order that you
    may get a dinner. And where will be your fine sentiments
    about justice and virtue? Say that you wish to live for the         54
    sake of your children—you want to bring them up and
    educate them—will you take them into Thessaly and deprive
    them of Athenian citizenship? Is this the benefit which
    you will confer upon them? Or are you under the impression
    that they will be better cared for and educated
    here if you are still alive, although absent from them; for
    your friends will take care of them? Do you fancy that if
    you are an inhabitant of Thessaly they will take care of them,
    and if you are an inhabitant of the other world that they
    will not take care of them? Nay; but if they who call
    themselves friends are good for anything, they will—to be
    sure they will.

[Sidenote: _There is no answer._]

[Sidenote: Let him think of justice first, and of life and children
afterwards.]

    ‘Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up.
    Think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards,
    but of justice first, that you may be justified before the
    princes of the world below. For neither will you nor any
    that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this life,
    or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you
    depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a
    victim, not of the laws but of men. But if you go forth,
    returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the
    covenants and agreements which you have made with us,
    and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong,
    that is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and us,
    we shall be angry with you while you live, and our brethren,
    the laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy;
    for they will know that you have done your best to destroy
    us. Listen, then, to us and not to Crito.’

[Sidenote: The mystic voice.]

    This, dear Crito, is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring
    in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of
    the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and
    prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that
    anything more which you may say will be vain. Yet speak,
    if you have anything to say.

    _Cr._ I have nothing to say, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Leave me then, Crito, to fulfil the will of God, and to
    follow whither he leads.


FOOTNOTES

[17] Homer, Il. ix. 363.

[18] Cp. Apol. 37 C, D.

[19] Cp. Apol. 30 C.

[20] e. g. cp. Rep. i. 335 E.

[21] Cp. Phaedr. 230 C.

[22] Cp. Apol. 37 D.




PHAEDO.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Phaedo._]

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

    After an interval of some months or years, and at Phlius,  =Steph.= 57
    a town of Peloponnesus, the tale of the last hours of Socrates
    is narrated to Echecrates and other Phliasians by Phaedo the
    ‘beloved disciple.’ The Dialogue necessarily takes the form of a
    narrative, because Socrates has to be described acting as well as   58
    speaking. The minutest particulars of the event are interesting
    to distant friends, and the narrator has an equal interest in them.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 60-64._]

    During the voyage of the sacred ship to and from Delos, which
    has occupied thirty days, the execution of Socrates has been
    deferred. (Cp. Xen. Mem. iv. 8. 2.) The time has been passed by
    him in conversation with a select company of disciples. But now     59
    the holy season is over, and the disciples meet earlier than usual
    in order that they may converse with Socrates for the last time.
    Those who were present, and those who might have been
    expected to be present, are mentioned by name. There are
    Simmias and Cebes (Crito 45 B), two disciples of Philolaus whom
    Socrates ‘by his enchantments has attracted from Thebes’ (Mem.
    iii. 11. 17), Crito the aged friend, the attendant of the prison, who
    is as good as a friend—these take part in the conversation.
    There are present also, Hermogenes, from whom Xenophon
    derived his information about the trial of Socrates (Mem. iv. 8. 4),
    the ‘madman’ Apollodorus (Symp. 173 D), Euclid and Terpsion
    from Megara (cp. Theaet. sub init.), Ctesippus, Antisthenes,
    Menexenus, and some other less-known members of the Socratic
    circle, all of whom are silent auditors. Aristippus, Cleombrotus,
    and Plato are noted as absent. Almost as soon as the friends of     60
    Socrates enter the prison Xanthippè and her children are sent
    home in the care of one of Crito’s servants. Socrates himself has
    just been released from chains, and is led by this circumstance to
    make the natural remark that ‘pleasure follows pain.’ (Observe
    that Plato is preparing the way for his doctrine of the alternation
    of opposites.) ‘Aesop would have represented them in a fable as
    a creature with two bodies and a single head.’ The mention of Aesop
    reminds Cebes of a question which had been asked by Evenus
    the poet (cp. Apol. 20 A): ‘Why Socrates, who was not a
    poet, while in prison had been putting Aesop into verse?’—‘Because
    several times in his life he had been warned in dreams that         61
    he should practise music; and as he was about to die and was not
    certain of what was meant, he wished to fulfil the admonition in
    the letter as well as in the spirit, by writing verses as well as by
    cultivating philosophy. Tell this to Evenus; and say that I would
    have him follow me in death.’ ‘He is not at all the sort of man to
    comply with your request, Socrates.’ ‘Why, is he not a philosopher?’
    ‘Yes.’ ‘Then he will be willing to die, although he
    will not take his own life, for that is held to be unlawful.’

    Cebes asks why suicide is thought not to be right, if death is to   62
    be accounted a good? Well, (1) according to one explanation,
    because man is a prisoner, who must not open the door of his
    prison and run away—this is the truth in a ‘mystery.’ Or (2)
    rather, because he is not his own property, but a possession of
    the gods, and has no right to make away with that which does
    not belong to him. But why, asks Cebes, if he is a possession of
    the gods, should he wish to die and leave them? for he is under
    their protection; and surely he cannot take better care of himself
    than they take of him. Simmias explains that Cebes is really        63
    referring to Socrates, whom they think too unmoved at the
    prospect of leaving the gods and his friends. Socrates answers
    that he is going to other gods who are wise and good, and
    perhaps to better friends; and he professes that he is ready to
    defend himself against the charge of Cebes. The company shall
    be his judges, and he hopes that he will be more successful in
    convincing them than he had been in convincing the court.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 64-73._]

    The philosopher desires death—which the wicked world will           64
    insinuate that he also deserves: and perhaps he does, but not in
    any sense which they are capable of understanding. Enough of
    them: the real question is, What is the nature of that death
    which he desires? Death is the separation of soul and body—and
    the philosopher desires such a separation. He would like to
    be freed from the dominion of bodily pleasures and of the senses,
    which are always perturbing his mental vision. He wants to get      65
    rid of eyes and ears, and with the light of the mind only to
    behold the light of truth. All the evils and impurities and
    necessities of men come from the body. And death separates him from 66
    these corruptions, which in life he cannot wholly lay aside. Why
    then should he repine when the hour of separation arrives?          67
    Why, if he is dead while he lives, should he fear that other death,
    through which alone he can behold wisdom in her purity?             68

    Besides, the philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike
    those of other men. For they are courageous because they are
    afraid of greater dangers, and temperate because they desire        69
    greater pleasures. But he disdains this balancing of pleasures
    and pains, which is the exchange of commerce and not of virtue.
    All the virtues, including wisdom, are regarded by him only as
    purifications of the soul. And this was the meaning of the
    founders of the mysteries when they said, ‘Many are the wand-bearers
    but few are the mystics.’ (Cp. Matt. xxii. 14: ‘Many are
    called, but few are chosen.’) And in the hope that he is one of
    these mystics, Socrates is now departing. This is his answer to
    any one who charges him with indifference at the prospect of
    leaving the gods and his friends.

    Still, a fear is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body      70
    may vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals
    first of all to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead
    are in the world below, and that the living come from them.
    This he attempts to found on a philosophical assumption that
    all opposites—e. g. less, greater; weaker, stronger; sleeping,      71
    waking; life, death—are generated out of each other. Nor can
    the process of generation be only a passage from living to dying,
    for then all would end in death. The perpetual sleeper (Endymion)   72
    would be no longer distinguished from the rest of
    mankind. The circle of nature is not complete unless the living
    come from the dead as well as pass to them.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 73-80._]

    The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence is then adduced as a
    confirmation of the pre-existence of the soul. Some proofs of
    this doctrine are demanded. One proof given is the same as that     73
    of the Meno (82 foll.), and is derived from the latent knowledge of
    mathematics, which may be elicited from an unlearned person
    when a diagram is presented to him. Again, there is a power of
    association, which from seeing Simmias may remember Cebes, or
    from seeing a picture of Simmias may remember Simmias. The          74
    lyre may recall the player of the lyre, and equal pieces of wood
    or stone may be associated with the higher notion of absolute
    equality. But here observe that material equalities fall short of
    the conception of absolute equality with which they are compared,
    and which is the measure of them. And the measure or
    standard must be prior to that which is measured, the idea of       75
    equality prior to the visible equals. And if prior to them, then
    prior also to the perceptions of the senses which recall them, and
    therefore either given before birth or at birth. But all men have   76
    not this knowledge, nor have any without a process of reminiscence;
    which is a proof that it is not innate or given at birth,
    unless indeed it was given and taken away at the same instant.
    But if not given to men in birth, it must have been given before
    birth—this is the only alternative which remains. And if we had
    ideas in a former state, then our souls must have existed and
    must have had intelligence in a former state. The pre-existence     77
    of the soul stands or falls with the doctrine of ideas.

    It is objected by Simmias and Cebes that these arguments only
    prove a former and not a future existence. Socrates answers this
    objection by recalling the previous argument, in which he had
    shown that the living come from the dead. But the fear that the
    soul at departing may vanish into air (especially if there is a wind
    blowing at the time) has not yet been charmed away. He proceeds:    78
    When we fear that the soul will vanish away, let us ask
    ourselves what is that which we suppose to be liable to dissolution?
    Is it the simple or the compound, the unchanging or
    the changing, the invisible idea or the visible object of sense?
    Clearly the latter and not the former; and therefore not the soul,  79
    which in her own pure thought is unchangeable, and only when
    using the senses descends into the region of change. Again, the
    soul commands, the body serves: in this respect too the soul is     80
    akin to the divine, and the body to the mortal. And in every
    point of view the soul is the image of divinity and immortality,
    and the body of the human and mortal. And whereas the body is
    liable to speedy dissolution, the soul is almost if not quite
    indissoluble. (Cp. Tim. 41 A.) Yet even the body may be preserved
    for ages by the embalmer’s art: how unlikely, then, that the soul
    will perish and be dissipated into air while on her way to the
    good and wise God! She has been gathered into herself; holding
    aloof from the body, and practising death all her life long, and she 81
    is now finally released from the errors and follies and passions of
    men, and for ever dwells in the company of the gods.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 80-85._]

    But the soul which is polluted and engrossed by the corporeal,
    and has no eye except that of the senses, and is weighed down
    by the bodily appetites, cannot attain to this abstraction. In her
    fear of the world below she lingers about the sepulchre, loath to
    leave the body which she loved, a ghostly apparition, saturated
    with sense, and therefore visible. At length entering into some
    animal of a nature congenial to her former life of sensuality or    82
    violence, she takes the form of an ass, a wolf or a kite. And of
    these earthly souls the happiest are those who have practised
    virtue without philosophy; they are allowed to pass into gentle
    and social natures, such as bees and ants. (Cp. Rep. x. 619 C,
    Meno 100 A.) But only the philosopher who departs pure is
    permitted to enter the company of the gods. (Cp. Phaedrus 249.)
    This is the reason why he abstains from fleshly lusts, and not
    because he fears loss or disgrace, which is the motive of other
    men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his        83
    own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has
    heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought him
    out of the ‘miry clay,’ and purged away the mists of passion and
    the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped
    from the influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails
    fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will not        84
    return; and therefore she abstains from bodily pleasures—not
    from a desire of having more or greater ones, but because she
    knows that only when calm and free from the dominion of the
    body can she behold the light of truth.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 85-93._]

    Simmias and Cebes remain in doubt; but they are unwilling
    to raise objections at such a time. Socrates wonders at their
    reluctance. Let them regard him rather as the swan, who,
    having sung the praises of Apollo all his life long, sings at his   85
    death more lustily than ever. (Cp. 60 D.) Simmias acknowledges
    that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the bottom.
    ‘And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let a man
    take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him
    sail through life.’ He proceeds to state his difficulty: It has     86
    been argued that the soul is invisible and incorporeal, and
    therefore immortal, and prior to the body. But is not the soul
    acknowledged to be a harmony, and has she not the same
    relation to the body, as the harmony—which like her is invisible—has
    to the lyre? And yet the harmony does not survive the
    lyre. Cebes has also an objection, which like Simmias he expresses
    in a figure. He is willing to admit that the soul is more
    lasting than the body. But the more lasting nature of the soul      87
    does not prove her immortality; for after having worn out many
    bodies in a single life, and many more in successive births and
    deaths, she may at last perish, or, as Socrates afterwards restates
    the objection, the very act of birth may be the beginning of her
    death, and her last body may survive her, just as the coat of an
    old weaver is left behind him after he is dead, although a man is   88
    more lasting than his coat. And he who would prove the immortality
    of the soul, must prove not only that the soul outlives
    one or many bodies, but that she outlives them all.

    The audience, like the chorus in a play, for a moment interpret
    the feelings of the actors; there is a temporary depression, and    89
    then the enquiry is resumed. It is a melancholy reflection that
    arguments, like men, are apt to be deceivers; and those who
    have been often deceived become distrustful both of arguments
    and of friends. But this unfortunate experience should not make
    us either haters of men or haters of arguments. The want of         90
    health and truth is not in the argument, but in ourselves.
    Socrates, who is about to die, is sensible of his own weakness;     91
    he desires to be impartial, but he cannot help feeling that he has
    too great an interest in the truth of the argument. And therefore
    he would have his friends examine and refute him, if they think
    that he is in error.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 93-98._]

    At his request Simmias and Cebes repeat their objections.
    They do not go to the length of denying the pre-existence of        92
    ideas. Simmias is of opinion that the soul is a harmony of the
    body. But the admission of the pre-existence of ideas, and
    therefore of the soul, is at variance with this. (Cp. a parallel
    difficulty in Theaet. 203, 204.) For a harmony is an effect,        93
    whereas the soul is not an effect, but a cause; a harmony follows,
    but the soul leads; a harmony admits of degrees, and the soul
    has no degrees. Again, upon the supposition that the soul is
    a harmony, why is one soul better than another? Are they more
    or less harmonized, or is there one harmony within another?
    But the soul does not admit of degrees, and cannot therefore be     94
    more or less harmonized. Further, the soul is often engaged in
    resisting the affections of the body, as Homer describes Odysseus
    rebuking his heart.’ Could he have written this under the idea      95
    that the soul is a harmony of the body? Nay rather, are we not
    contradicting Homer and ourselves in affirming anything of the
    sort?

    The goddess Harmonia, as Socrates playfully terms the argument
    of Simmias, has been happily disposed of; and now an
    answer has to be given to the Theban Cadmus. Socrates recapitulates
    the argument of Cebes, which, as he remarks, involves               96
    the whole question of natural growth or causation; about this he
    proposes to narrate his own mental experience. When he was
    young he had puzzled himself with physics: he had enquired
    into the growth and decay of animals, and the origin of thought,
    until at last he began to doubt the self-evident fact that growth
    is the result of eating and drinking; and so he arrived at the
    conclusion that he was not meant for such enquiries. Nor was
    he less perplexed with notions of comparison and number. At
    first he had imagined himself to understand differences of greater
    and less, and to know that ten is two more than eight, and the
    like. But now those very notions appeared to him to contain a
    contradiction. For how can one be divided into two? or two be       97
    compounded into one? These are difficulties which Socrates
    cannot answer. Of generation and destruction he knows nothing.
    But he has a confused notion of another method in which matters
    of this sort are to be investigated. (Cp. Rep. iv. 435 D; vii.
    533 A; Charm. 170 foll.)

[Sidenote: _Analysis 98-102._]

    Then he heard some one reading out of a book of Anaxagoras,
    that mind is the cause of all things. And he said to himself: If
    mind is the cause of all things, surely mind must dispose them all
    for the best. The new teacher will show me this ‘order of the       98
    best’ in man and nature. How great had been his hopes and how
    great his disappointment! For he found that his new friend was
    anything but consistent in his use of mind as a cause, and that he
    soon introduced winds, waters, and other eccentric notions. (Cp.
    Arist. Metaph. i. 4, 5.) It was as if a person had said that Socrates
    is sitting here because he is made up of bones and muscles,         99
    instead of telling the true reason—that he is here because the
    Athenians have thought good to sentence him to death, and he has
    thought good to await his sentence. Had his bones and muscles
    been left by him to their own ideas of right, they would long ago
    have taken themselves off. But surely there is a great confusion
    of the cause and condition in all this. And this confusion also
    leads people into all sorts of erroneous theories about the position
    and motions of the earth. None of them know how much stronger
    than any Atlas is the power of the best. But this ‘best’ is still
    undiscovered; and in enquiring after the cause, we can only hope
    to attain the second best.

    Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things,
    as there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse,      100
    unless the precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected
    in the water, or in a glass. (Cp. Laws x. 897 D; Rep. vii. 516 foll.)
    ‘I was afraid,’ says Socrates, ‘that I might injure the eye of the
    soul. I thought that I had better return to the old and safe method
    of ideas. Though I do not mean to say that he who contemplates
    existence through the medium of ideas sees only through a glass
    darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual effects.’

    If the existence of ideas is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion
    that he will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of
    the soul. He will only ask for a further admission:—that beauty
    is the cause of the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great,
    smallness of the small, and so on of other things. This is a safe  101
    and simple answer, which escapes the contradictions of greater
    and less (greater by reason of that which is smaller!), of addition
    and subtraction, and the other difficulties of relation. These
    subtleties he is for leaving to wiser heads than his own; he prefers
    to test ideas by the consistency of their consequences, and, if
    asked to give an account of them, goes back to some higher idea or
    hypothesis which appears to him to be the best, until at last he
    arrives at a resting-place. (Rep. vi. 510 foll.; Phil. 16 foll.)

[Sidenote: _Analysis 102-107._]

    The doctrine of ideas, which has long ago received the assent of   102
    the Socratic circle, is now affirmed by the Phliasian auditor to
    command the assent of any man of sense. The narrative is continued;
    Socrates is desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may
    appear to co-exist but do not really co-exist in the same thing or
    person. For example, Simmias may be said to have greatness
    and also smallness, because he is greater than Socrates and less
    than Phaedo. And yet Simmias is not really great and also small,
    but only when compared to Phaedo and Socrates. I use the
    illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show you not only
    that ideal opposites exclude one another, but also the opposites in
    us. I, for example, having the attribute of smallness remain small,
    and cannot become great: the smallness which is in me drives out
    greatness.                                                         103

    One of the company here remarked that this was inconsistent
    with the old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But
    that, replies Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in
    us or in nature, but of opposition in the concrete—not of life and
    death, but of individuals living and dying. When this objection
    has been removed, Socrates proceeds: This doctrine of the mutual
    exclusion of opposites is not only true of the opposites themselves,
    but of things which are inseparable from them. For example,
    cold and heat are opposed; and fire, which is inseparable from
    heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow, which is inseparable
    from cold, with heat. Again, the number three excludes the
    number four, because three is an odd number and four is an even
    number, and the odd is opposed to the even. Thus we are able to    104
    proceed a step beyond ‘the safe and simple answer.’ We may
    say, not only that the odd excludes the even, but that the number
    three, which participates in oddness, excludes the even. And in    105
    like manner, not only does life exclude death, but the soul, of
    which life is the inseparable attribute, also excludes death. And
    that of which life is the inseparable attribute is by the force of the
    terms imperishable. If the odd principle were imperishable, then   106
    the number three would not perish but remove, on the approach
    of the even principle. But the immortal is imperishable; and
    therefore the soul on the approach of death does not perish but
    removes.

    Thus all objections appear to be finally silenced. And now the     107
    application has to be made: If the soul is immortal, ‘what manner
    of persons ought we to be?’ having regard not only to time but to
    eternity. For death is not the end of all, and the wicked is not
    released from his evil by death; but every one carries with him
    into the world below that which he is or has become, and that
    only.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 107-112._]

    For after death the soul is carried away to judgment, and when
    she has received her punishment returns to earth in the course of
    ages. The wise soul is conscious of her situation, and follows the 108
    attendant angel who guides her through the windings of the world
    below; but the impure soul wanders hither and thither without
    companion or guide, and is carried at last to her own place, as the
    pure soul is also carried away to hers. ‘In order that you may
    understand this, I must first describe to you the nature and
    conformation of the earth.’

    Now the whole earth is a globe placed in the centre of the
    heavens, and is maintained there by the perfection of balance.     109
    That which we call the earth is only one of many small hollows,
    wherein collect the mists and waters and the thick lower air; but
    the true earth is above, and is in a finer and subtler element.
    And if, like birds, we could fly to the surface of the air, in the
    same manner that fishes come to the top of the sea, then we should
    behold the true earth and the true heaven and the true stars. Our  110
    earth is everywhere corrupted and corroded; and even the land,
    which is fairer than the sea, for that is a mere chaos or waste of
    water and mud and sand, has nothing to show in comparison of
    the other world. But the heavenly earth is of divers colours,
    sparkling with jewels brighter than gold and whiter than any snow,
    having flowers and fruits innumerable. And the inhabitants         111
    dwell some on the shore of the sea of air, others in ‘islets of the
    blest,’ and they hold converse with the gods, and behold the sun,
    moon and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is of
    a piece with this.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 112-116._]

    The hollows on the surface of the globe vary in size and shape
    from that which we inhabit: but all are connected by passages
    and perforations in the interior of the earth. And there is one
    huge chasm or opening called Tartarus, into which streams of fire
    and water and liquid mud are ever flowing; of these small portions
    find their way to the surface and form seas and rivers and         112
    volcanoes. There is a perpetual inhalation and exhalation of the
    air rising and falling as the waters pass into the depths of the
    earth and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers,
    but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either
    side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice.
    These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal
    ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus
    is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite
    direction, and after flowing under the earth through desert places,
    at last reaches the Acherusian lake,—this is the river at which the 113
    souls of the dead await their return to earth. Pyriphlegethon is a
    stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the
    depths of Tartarus. The fourth river, Cocytus, is that which is
    called by the poets the Stygian river, and passes into and forms the
    lake Styx, from the waters of which it gains new and strange
    powers. This river, too, falls into Tartarus.

    The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and
    those who are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they
    never come out. Those who have only committed venial sins are
    first purified of them, and then rewarded for the good which they
    have done. Those who have committed crimes, great indeed, but      114
    not unpardonable, are thrust into Tartarus, but are cast forth at
    the end of a year by way of Pyriphlegethon or Cocytus, and these
    carry them as far as the Acherusian lake, where they call upon
    their victims to let them come out of the rivers into the lake. And
    if they prevail, then they are let out and their sufferings cease: if
    not, they are borne unceasingly into Tartarus and back again,
    until they at last obtain mercy. The pure souls also receive their
    reward, and have their abode in the upper earth, and a select few
    in still fairer ‘mansions.’

    Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this
    description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true.
    He who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected
    the pleasures of the body, has reason to be of good hope at the
    approach of death; whose voice is already speaking to him, and
    who will one day be heard calling all men.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 117-118._]

    The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not       115
    much remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a
    question which he refuses to entertain, for they are burying, not
    him, but his dead body. His friends had once been sureties that    116
    he would remain, and they shall now be sureties that he has run
    away. Yet he would not die without the customary ceremonies of
    washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison? In     117
    the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in
    the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages. With
    a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is     118
    still unfulfilled, just as above (60 E) he desires before he
    departs to compose a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about
    a dream—unless, indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now
    restored to health, and made the customary offering to Asclepius
    in token of his recovery.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into the
heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any examination
of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like to acknowledge
that this, as well as the other ‘eternal ideas’ of man, has a history
in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or philosophy, and also in
the Hebrew Scriptures. They convert feeling into reasoning, and throw a
network of dialectics over that which is really a deeply-rooted instinct.
In the same temper which Socrates reproves in himself (91 B) they are
disposed to think that even fallacies will do no harm, for they will
die with them, and while they live they will gain by the delusion. And
when they consider the numberless bad arguments which have been pressed
into the service of theology, they say, like the companions of Socrates,
‘What argument can we ever trust again?’ But there is a better and higher
spirit to be gathered from the Phaedo, as well as from the other writings
of Plato, which says that first principles should be most constantly
reviewed (Phaedo 107 B, and Crat. 436), and that the highest subjects
demand of us the greatest accuracy (Rep. vi. 504 E); also that we must
not become misologists because arguments are apt to be deceivers.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

2. In former ages there was a customary rather than a reasoned belief in
the immortality of the soul. It was based on the authority of the Church,
on the necessity of such a belief to morality and the order of society,
on the evidence of an historical fact, and also on analogies and figures
of speech which filled up the void or gave an expression in words to a
cherished instinct. The mass of mankind went on their way busy with the
affairs of this life, hardly stopping to think about another. But in our
own day the question has been reopened, and it is doubtful whether the
belief which in the first ages of Christianity was the strongest motive
of action can survive the conflict with a scientific age in which the
rules of evidence are stricter and the mind has become more sensitive
to criticism. It has faded into the distance by a natural process as it
was removed further and further from the historical fact on which it has
been supposed to rest. Arguments derived from material things such as the
seed and the ear of corn or transitions in the life of animals from one
state of being to another (the chrysalis and the butterfly) are not ‘in
pari materia’ with arguments from the visible to the invisible, and are
therefore felt to be no longer applicable. The evidence to the historical
fact seems to be weaker than was once supposed: it is not consistent with
itself, and is based upon documents which are of unknown origin. The
immortality of man must be proved by other arguments than these if it
is again to become a living belief. We must ask ourselves afresh why we
still maintain it, and seek to discover a foundation for it in the nature
of God and in the first principles of morality.

3. At the outset of the discussion we may clear away a confusion. We
certainly do not mean by the immortality of the soul the immortality of
fame, which whether worth having or not can only be ascribed to a very
select class of the whole race of mankind, and even the interest in these
few is comparatively short-lived. To have been a benefactor to the world,
whether in a higher or a lower sphere of life and thought, is a great
thing: to have the reputation of being one, when men have passed out of
the sphere of earthly praise or blame, is hardly worthy of consideration.
The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal, is really limited
to his own generation:—so long as his friends or his disciples are alive,
so long as his books continue to be read, so long as his political or
military successes fill a page in the history of his country. The praises
which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly last longer than the
flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the ‘immortelles’ which are
laid upon his tomb. Literature makes the most of its heroes, but the true
man is well aware that far from enjoying an immortality of fame, in a
generation or two, or even in a much shorter time, he will be forgotten
and the world will get on without him.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

4. Modern philosophy is perplexed at this whole question, which is
sometimes fairly given up and handed over to the realm of faith. The
perplexity should not be forgotten by us when we attempt to submit the
Phaedo of Plato to the requirements of logic. For what idea can we form
of the soul when separated from the body? Or how can the soul be united
with the body and still be independent? Is the soul related to the body
as the ideal to the real, or as the whole to the parts, or as the subject
to the object, or as the cause to the effect, or as the end to the means?
Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy or form of
an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life of her own?
Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the monad, the truer
expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to the eye, or as
the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim. ii. 1, 11, 12.) And in another
state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into infinity,
hardly possessing an existence which she can call her own, as in the
pantheistic system of Spinoza? or as an individual informing another
body and entering into new relations, but retaining her own character?
(Cp. Gorgias, 524 B, C.) Or is the opposition of soul and body a mere
illusion, and the true self neither soul nor body, but the union of the
two in the ‘I’ which is above them? And is death the assertion of this
individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into nothingness
of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to pass the boundaries of human
thought? The body and the soul seem to be inseparable, not only in fact,
but in our conceptions of them; and any philosophy which too closely
unites them, or too widely separates them, either in this life or in
another, disturbs the balance of human nature. No thinker has perfectly
adjusted them, or been entirely consistent with himself in describing
their relation to one another. Nor can we wonder that Plato in the
infancy of human thought should have confused mythology and philosophy,
or have mistaken verbal arguments for real ones.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

5. Again, believing in the immortality of the soul, we must still ask the
question of Socrates, ‘What is that which we suppose to be immortal?’
Is it the personal and individual element in us, or the spiritual and
universal? Is it the principle of knowledge or of goodness, or the union
of the two? Is it the mere force of life which is determined to be, or
the consciousness of self which cannot be got rid of, or the fire of
genius which refuses to be extinguished? Or is there a hidden being
which is allied to the Author of all existence, who is because he is
perfect, and to whom our ideas of perfection give us a title to belong?
Whatever answer is given by us to these questions, there still remains
the necessity of allowing the permanence of evil, if not for ever, at
any rate for a time, in order that the wicked ‘may not have too good a
bargain.’ For the annihilation of evil at death, or the eternal duration
of it, seem to involve equal difficulties in the moral government of
the universe. Sometimes we are led by our feelings, rather than by our
reason, to think of the good and wise only as existing in another life.
Why should the mean, the weak, the idiot, the infant, the herd of men
who have never in any proper sense the use of reason, reappear with
blinking eyes in the light of another world? But our second thought is
that the hope of humanity is a common one, and that all or none will be
partakers of immortality. Reason does not allow us to suppose that we
have any greater claims than others, and experience may often reveal
to us unexpected flashes of the higher nature in those whom we had
despised. Why should the wicked suffer any more than ourselves? had we
been placed in their circumstances should we have been any better than
they? The worst of men are objects of pity rather than of anger to the
philanthropist; must they not be equally such to divine benevolence?
Even more than the good they have need of another life; not that they
may be punished, but that they may be educated. These are a few of the
reflections which arise in our minds when we attempt to assign any form
to our conceptions of a future state.

There are some other questions which are disturbing to us because we
have no answer to them. What is to become of the animals in a future
state? Have we not seen dogs more faithful and intelligent than men,
and men who are more stupid and brutal than any animals? Does their
life cease at death, or is there some ‘better thing reserved’ also for
them? They may be said to have a shadow or imitation of morality, and
imperfect moral claims upon the benevolence of man and upon the justice
of God. We cannot think of the least or lowest of them, the insect, the
bird, the inhabitants of the sea or the desert, as having any place
in a future world, and if not all, why should those who are specially
attached to man be deemed worthy of any exceptional privilege? When we
reason about such a subject, almost at once we degenerate into nonsense.
It is a passing thought which has no real hold on the mind. We may argue
for the existence of animals in a future state from the attributes of
God, or from texts of Scripture (‘Are not two sparrows sold for one
farthing?’ &c.), but the truth is that we are only filling up the void
of another world with our own fancies. Again, we often talk about the
origin of evil, that great bugbear of theologians, by which they frighten
us into believing any superstition. What answer can be made to the old
commonplace, ‘Is not God the author of evil, if he knowingly permitted,
but could have prevented it?’ Even if we assume that the inequalities of
this life are rectified by some transposition of human beings in another,
still the existence of the very least evil if it could have been avoided,
seems to be at variance with the love and justice of God. And so we
arrive at the conclusion that we are carrying logic too far, and that
the attempt to frame the world according to a rule of divine perfection
is opposed to experience and had better be given up. The case of the
animals is our own. We must admit that the Divine Being, although perfect
himself, has placed us in a state of life in which we may work together
with him for good, but we are very far from having attained to it.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

6. Again, ideas must be given through something; and we are always
prone to argue about the soul from analogies of outward things which
may serve to embody our thoughts, but are also partly delusive. For we
cannot reason from the natural to the spiritual, or from the outward
to the inward. The progress of physiological science, without bringing
us nearer to the great secret, has tended to remove some erroneous
notions respecting the relations of body and mind, and in this we have
the advantage of the ancients. But no one imagines that any seed of
immortality is to be discerned in our mortal frames. Most people have
been content to rest their belief in another life on the agreement of
the more enlightened part of mankind, and on the inseparable connection
of such a doctrine with the existence of a God—also in a less degree on
the impossibility of doubting about the continued existence of those whom
we love and reverence in this world. And after all has been said, the
figure, the analogy, the argument, are felt to be only approximations in
different forms to an expression of the common sentiment of the human
heart. That we shall live again is far more certain than that we shall
take any particular form of life.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further
what we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living
being in countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three
years’ old child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try to
see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and space
really exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted; at any
rate the thought of them when unlimited is so overwhelming to us as to
lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms of the
human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite time,
or an existence out of time, which are the only possible explanations
of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let us substitute
for them a hundred or a thousand years after death, and ask not what
will be our employment in eternity, but what will happen to us in that
definite portion of time; or what is now happening to those who passed
out of life a hundred or a thousand years ago. Do we imagine that the
wicked are suffering torments, or that the good are singing the praises
of God, during a period longer than that of a whole life, or of ten
lives of men? Is the suffering physical or mental? And does the worship
of God consist only of praise, or of many forms of service? Who are the
wicked, and who are the good, whom we venture to divide by a hard and
fast line; and in which of the two classes should we place ourselves
and our friends? May we not suspect that we are making differences of
kind, because we are unable to imagine differences of degree?—putting
the whole human race into heaven or hell for the greater convenience of
logical division? Are we not at the same time describing them both in
superlatives, only that we may satisfy the demands of rhetoric? What
is that pain which does not become deadened after a thousand years? or
what is the nature of that pleasure or happiness which never wearies by
monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains are short in proportion as they
are keen; of any others which are both intense and lasting we have no
experience, and can form no idea. The words or figures of speech which we
use are not consistent with themselves. For are we not imagining Heaven
under the similitude of a church, and Hell as a prison, or perhaps a
madhouse or chamber of horrors? And yet to beings constituted as we are,
the monotony of singing psalms would be as great an infliction as the
pains of hell, and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where
are the actions worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred
on the greatest benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which
according to Plato’s merciful reckoning,—more merciful, at any rate,
than the eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,—for every
ten years in this life deserve a hundred of punishment in the life to
come? We should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the
sufferings which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed
to the damned. Yet these joys and terrors seem hardly to exercise an
appreciable influence over the lives of men. The wicked man when old, is
not, as Plato supposes (Rep. i. 330 D, E), more agitated by the terrors
of another world when he is nearer to them, nor the good in an ecstasy at
the joys of which he is soon to be the partaker. Age numbs the sense of
both worlds; and the habit of life is strongest in death. Even the dying
mother is dreaming of her lost children as they were forty or fifty years
before, ‘pattering over the boards,’ not of reunion with them in another
state of being. Most persons when the last hour comes are resigned to the
order of nature and the will of God. They are not thinking of Dante’s
Inferno or Paradiso, or of the Pilgrim’s Progress. Heaven and hell are
not realities to them, but words or ideas; the outward symbols of some
great mystery, they hardly know what. Many noble poems and pictures have
been suggested by the traditional representations of them, which have
been fixed in forms of art and can no longer be altered. Many sermons
have been filled with descriptions of celestial or infernal mansions. But
hardly even in childhood did the thought of heaven and hell supply the
motives of our actions, or at any time seriously affect the substance of
our belief.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

8. Another life must be described, if at all, in forms of thought and not
of sense. To draw pictures of heaven and hell, whether in the language
of Scripture or any other, adds nothing to our real knowledge, but may
perhaps disguise our ignorance. The truest conception which we can form
of a future life is a state of progress or education—a progress from evil
to good, from ignorance to knowledge. To this we are led by the analogy
of the present life, in which we see different races and nations of
men, and different men and women of the same nation, in various states
or stages of cultivation; some more and some less developed, and all of
them capable of improvement under favourable circumstances. There are
punishments too of children when they are growing up inflicted by their
parents, of elder offenders which are imposed by the law of the land, of
all men at all times of life, which are attached by the laws of nature
to the performance of certain actions. All these punishments are really
educational; that is to say, they are not intended to retaliate on the
offender, but to teach him a lesson. Also there is an element of chance
in them, which is another name for our ignorance of the laws of nature.
There is evil too inseparable from good (cp. Lysis 220 E); not always
punished here, as good is not always rewarded. It is capable of being
indefinitely diminished; and as knowledge increases, the element of
chance may more and more disappear.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this
world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we
are tending. The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet
are due to our increasing knowledge of history and of nature. They have
been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured nations,
in a comparatively short period of time. May we be allowed to imagine
the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages for the
completion of our knowledge? May not the science of physiology transform
the world? Again, the majority of mankind have really experienced some
moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has tendencies to good,
and is capable of becoming better. And these germs of good are often
found to be developed by new circumstances, like stunted trees when
transplanted to a better soil. The differences between the savage and the
civilized man, or between the civilized man in old and new countries, may
be indefinitely increased. The first difference is the effect of a few
thousand, the second of a few hundred years. We congratulate ourselves
that slavery has become industry; that law and constitutional government
have superseded despotism and violence; that an ethical religion has
taken the place of Fetichism. There may yet come a time when the many may
be as well off as the few; when no one will be weighed down by excessive
toil; when the necessity of providing for the body will not interfere
with mental improvement; when the physical frame may be strengthened and
developed; and the religion of all men may become a reasonable service.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

Nothing therefore, either in the present state of man or in the
tendencies of the future, as far as we can entertain conjecture of
them, would lead us to suppose that God governs us vindictively in this
world, and therefore we have no reason to infer that he will govern us
vindictively in another. The true argument from analogy is not, ‘This
life is a mixed state of justice and injustice, of great waste, of
sudden casualties, of disproportionate punishments, and therefore the
like inconsistencies, irregularities, injustices are to be expected
in another;’ but ‘This life is subject to law, and is in a state of
progress, and therefore law and progress may be believed to be the
governing principles of another.’ All the analogies of this world would
be against unmeaning punishments inflicted a hundred or a thousand
years after an offence had been committed. Suffering there might be as
a part of education, but not hopeless or protracted; as there might be
a retrogression of individuals or of bodies of men, yet not such as to
interfere with a plan for the improvement of the whole (cp. Laws, x. 903).

9. But some one will say: That we cannot reason from the seen to the
unseen, and that we are creating another world after the image of this,
just as men in former ages have created gods in their own likeness. And
we, like the companions of Socrates, may feel discouraged at hearing
our favourite ‘argument from analogy’ thus summarily disposed of. Like
himself, too, we may adduce other arguments in which he seems to have
anticipated us, though he expresses them in different language. For we
feel that the soul partakes of the ideal and invisible; and can never
fall into the error of confusing the external circumstances of man with
his higher self; or his origin with his nature. It is as repugnant to us
as it was to him to imagine that our moral ideas are to be attributed
only to cerebral forces. The value of a human soul, like the value of a
man’s life to himself, is inestimable, and cannot be reckoned in earthly
or material things. The human being alone has the consciousness of truth
and justice and love, which is the consciousness of God. And the soul
becoming more conscious of these, becomes more conscious of her own
immortality.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

10. The last ground of our belief in immortality, and the strongest,
is the perfection of the divine nature. The mere fact of the existence
of God does not tend to show the continued existence of man. An evil
God or an indifferent God might have had the power, but not the will,
to preserve us. He might have regarded us as fitted to minister to
his service by a succession of existences,—like the animals, without
attributing to each soul an incomparable value. But if he is perfect,
he must will that all rational beings should partake of that perfection
which he himself is. In the words of the Timaeus, he is good, and
therefore he desires that all other things should be as like himself as
possible. And the manner in which he accomplishes this is by permitting
evil, or rather degrees of good, which are otherwise called evil. For all
progress is good relatively to the past, and yet may be comparatively
evil when regarded in the light of the future. Good and evil are relative
terms, and degrees of evil are merely the negative aspect of degrees
of good. Of the absolute goodness of any finite nature we can form no
conception; we are all of us in process of transition from one degree
of good or evil to another. The difficulties which are urged about the
origin or existence of evil are mere dialectical puzzles, standing in
the same relation to Christian philosophy as the puzzles of the Cynics
and Megarians to the philosophy of Plato. They arise out of the tendency
of the human mind to regard good and evil both as relative and absolute;
just as the riddles about motion are to be explained by the double
conception of space or matter, which the human mind has the power of
regarding either as continuous or discrete.

In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and
true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and
not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is
love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were
speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the
human soul or in the order of nature, there is God. We might still see
him everywhere, if we had not been mistakenly seeking for him apart from
us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in them.
And we become united to him not by mystical absorption, but by partaking,
whether consciously or unconsciously, of that truth and justice and love
which he himself is.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

Thus the belief in the immortality of the soul rests at last on the
belief in God. If there is a good and wise God, then there is a progress
of mankind towards perfection; and if there is no progress of men towards
perfection, then there is no good and wise God. We cannot suppose that
the moral government of God of which we see the beginnings in the world
and in ourselves will cease when we pass out of life.

11. Considering the ‘feebleness of the human faculties and the
uncertainty of the subject,’ we are inclined to believe that the fewer
our words the better. At the approach of death there is not much said;
good men are too honest to go out of the world professing more than they
know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, at any time,
even religious people speak so little to one another. In the fulness of
life the thought of death is mostly awakened by the sight or recollection
of the death of others rather than by the prospect of our own. We must
also acknowledge that there are degrees of the belief in immortality, and
many forms in which it presents itself to the mind. Some persons will say
no more than that they trust in God, and that they leave all to Him. It
is a great part of true religion not to pretend to know more than we do.
Others when they quit this world are comforted with the hope ‘That they
will see and know their friends in heaven.’ But it is better to leave
them in the hands of God and to be assured that ‘no evil shall touch
them.’ There are others again to whom the belief in a divine personality
has ceased to have any longer a meaning; yet they are satisfied that the
end of all is not here, but that something still remains to us, ‘and
some better thing for the good than for the evil.’ They are persuaded,
in spite of their theological nihilism, that the ideas of justice and
truth and holiness and love are realities. They cherish an enthusiastic
devotion to the first principles of morality. Through these they see, or
seem to see, darkly, and in a figure, that the soul is immortal.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

But besides differences of theological opinion which must ever prevail
about things unseen, the hope of immortality is weaker or stronger in men
at one time of life than at another; it even varies from day to day. It
comes and goes; the mind, like the sky, is apt to be overclouded. Other
generations of men may have sometimes lived under an ‘eclipse of faith,’
to us the total disappearance of it might be compared to the ‘sun falling
from heaven.’ And we may sometimes have to begin again and acquire the
belief for ourselves; or to win it back again when it is lost. It is
really weakest in the hour of death. For Nature, like a kind mother or
nurse, lays us to sleep without frightening us; physicians, who are the
witnesses of such scenes, say that under ordinary circumstances there is
no fear of the future. Often, as Plato tells us, death is accompanied
‘with pleasure.’ (Tim. 81 D.) When the end is still uncertain, the cry
of many a one has been, ‘Pray, that I may be taken.’ The last thoughts
even of the best men depend chiefly on the accidents of their bodily
state. Pain soon overpowers the desire of life; old age, like the child,
is laid to sleep almost in a moment. The long experience of life will
often destroy the interest which mankind have in it. So various are the
feelings with which different persons draw near to death; and still more
various the forms in which imagination clothes it. For this alternation
of feeling cp. the Old Testament,—Psalm vi. 5, xvi. 10, xc.; Isaiah
xxxviii. 18; Eccles. viii. 8 ff., iii. 19, iv. 2.

12. When we think of God and of man in his relation to God; of the
imperfection of our present state and yet of the progress which is
observable in the history of the world and of the human mind; of the
depth and power of our moral ideas which seem to partake of the very
nature of God Himself; when we consider the contrast between the physical
laws to which we are subject and the higher law which raises us above
them and is yet a part of them; when we reflect on our capacity of
becoming the ‘spectators of all time and all existence,’ and of framing
in our own minds the ideal of a perfect Being; when we see how the human
mind in all the higher religions of the world, including Buddhism,
notwithstanding some aberrations, has tended towards such a belief—we
have reason to think that our destiny is different from that of animals;
and though we cannot altogether shut out the childish fear that the soul
upon leaving the body may ‘vanish into thin air,’ we have still, so far
as the nature of the subject admits, a hope of immortality with which we
comfort ourselves on sufficient grounds. The denial of the belief takes
the heart out of human life; it lowers men to the level of the material.
As Goethe also says, ‘He is dead even in this world who has no belief in
another.’

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of
thought under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented
to us. It is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be
described, as in a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird,
half-human, nor in any other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as
in Milton, singing the Almighty’s praises, are a noble image, and may
furnish a theme for the poet or the painter, but they are no longer an
adequate expression of the kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is
there any mansion, in this world or another, in which the departed can
be imagined to dwell and carry on their occupations. When this earthly
tabernacle is dissolved, no other habitation or building can take them
in: it is in the language of ideas only that we speak of them.

First of all there is the thought of rest and freedom from pain;
they have gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this
world touch them no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were
at their best and brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of
duties—selfless, childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was
single and the whole body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was
clear and saw into the purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them
as possessed by a great love of God and man, working out His will at a
further stage in the heavenly pilgrimage. And yet we acknowledge that
these are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard and therefore
it hath not entered into the heart of man in any sensible manner to
conceive them. Fourthly, there may have been some moments in our own
lives when we have risen above ourselves, or been conscious of our truer
selves, in which the will of God has superseded our wills, and we have
entered into communion with Him, and been partakers for a brief season
of the Divine truth and love, in which like Christ we have been inspired
to utter the prayer, ‘I in them, and thou in me, that we may be all made
perfect in one.’ These precious moments, if we have ever known them, are
the nearest approach which we can make to the idea of immortality.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

14. Returning now to the earlier stage of human thought which is
represented by the writings of Plato, we find that many of the same
questions have already arisen: there is the same tendency to materialism;
the same inconsistency in the application of the idea of mind; the same
doubt whether the soul is to be regarded as a cause or as an effect;
the same falling back on moral convictions. In the Phaedo the soul is
conscious of her divine nature, and the separation from the body which
has been commenced in this life is perfected in another. Beginning in
mystery, Socrates, in the intermediate part of the Dialogue, attempts to
bring the doctrine of a future life into connection with his theory of
knowledge. In proportion as he succeeds in this, the individual seems
to disappear in a more general notion of the soul; the contemplation
of ideas ‘under the form of eternity’ takes the place of past and
future states of existence. His language may be compared to that of
some modern philosophers, who speak of eternity, not in the sense of
perpetual duration of time, but as an ever-present quality of the soul.
Yet at the conclusion of the Dialogue, having ‘arrived at the end of the
intellectual world’ (Rep. vii. 532 B), he replaces the veil of mythology,
and describes the soul and her attendant genius in the language of the
mysteries or of a disciple of Zoroaster. Nor can we fairly demand of
Plato a consistency which is wanting among ourselves, who acknowledge
that another world is beyond the range of human thought, and yet are
always seeking to represent the mansions of heaven or hell in the colours
of the painter, or in the descriptions of the poet or rhetorician.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

15. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not new to the Greeks
in the age of Socrates, but, like the unity of God, had a foundation in
the popular belief. The old Homeric notion of a gibbering ghost flitting
away to Hades; or of a few illustrious heroes enjoying the isles of the
blest; or of an existence divided between the two; or the Hesiodic, of
righteous spirits, who become guardian angels,—had given place in the
mysteries and the Orphic poets to representations, partly fanciful, of a
future state of rewards and punishments. (Laws ix. 870.) The reticence
of the Greeks on public occasions and in some part of their literature
respecting this ‘underground’ religion, is not to be taken as a measure
of the diffusion of such beliefs. If Pericles in the funeral oration
is silent on the consolations of immortality, the poet Pindar and the
tragedians on the other hand constantly assume the continued existence of
the dead in an upper or under world. Darius and Laius are still alive;
Antigone will be dear to her brethren after death; the way to the palace
of Cronos is found by those who ‘have thrice departed from evil.’ The
tragedy of the Greeks is not ‘rounded’ by this life, but is deeply set
in decrees of fate and mysterious workings of powers beneath the earth.
In the caricature of Aristophanes there is also a witness to the common
sentiment. The Ionian and Pythagorean philosophies arose, and some new
elements were added to the popular belief. The individual must find an
expression as well as the world. Either the soul was supposed to exist in
the form of a magnet, or of a particle of fire, or of light, or air, or
water; or of a number or of a harmony of number; or to be or have, like
the stars, a principle of motion (Arist. de Anim. i. 1, 2, 3). At length
Anaxagoras, hardly distinguishing between life and mind, or between mind
human and divine, attained the pure abstraction; and this, like the other
abstractions of Greek philosophy, sank deep into the human intelligence.
The opposition of the intelligible and the sensible, and of God to the
world, supplied an analogy which assisted in the separation of soul and
body. If ideas were separable from phenomena, mind was also separable
from matter; if the ideas were eternal, the mind that conceived them was
eternal too. As the unity of God was more distinctly acknowledged, the
conception of the human soul became more developed. The succession, or
alternation of life and death, had occurred to Heracleitus. The Eleatic
Parmenides had stumbled upon the modern thesis, that ‘thought and being
are the same.’ The Eastern belief in transmigration defined the sense of
individuality; and some, like Empedocles, fancied that the blood which
they had shed in another state of being was crying against them, and
that for thirty thousand years they were to be ‘fugitives and vagabonds
upon the earth.’ The desire of recognizing a lost mother or love or
friend in the world below (Phaedo 68) was a natural feeling which, in
that age as well as in every other, has given distinctness to the hope
of immortality. Nor were ethical considerations wanting, partly derived
from the necessity of punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no
avenging power of this world could reach. The voice of conscience, too,
was heard reminding the good man that he was not altogether innocent.
(Rep. i. 330.) To these indistinct longings and fears an expression was
given in the mysteries and Orphic poets: a ‘heap of books’ (Rep. ii. 364
E), passing under the names of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato’s time, were
filled with notions of an under-world.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

16. Yet after all the belief in the individuality of the soul after
death had but a feeble hold on the Greek mind. Like the personality of
God, the personality of man in a future state was not inseparably bound
up with the reality of his existence. For the distinction between the
personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was
far less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily
passes from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes almost
imperceptibly to himself and his reader from the future life of the
individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has
been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern
times than is found in early Greek philosophy, and hence the comparative
silence on the whole subject which is often remarked in ancient writers,
and particularly in Aristotle. For Plato and Aristotle are not further
removed in their teaching about the immortality of the soul than they are
in their theory of knowledge.

17. Living in an age when logic was beginning to mould human thought,
Plato naturally cast his belief in immortality into a logical form. And
when we consider how much the doctrine of ideas was also one of words,
it is not surprising that he should have fallen into verbal fallacies:
early logic is always mistaking the truth of the form for the truth
of the matter. It is easy to see that the alternation of opposites is
not the same as the generation of them out of each other; and that the
generation of them out of each other, which is the first argument in
the Phaedo, is at variance with their mutual exclusion of each other,
whether in themselves or in us, which is the last. For even if we admit
the distinction which he draws at p. 103, between the opposites and the
things which have the opposites, still individuals fall under the latter
class; and we have to pass out of the region of human hopes and fears to
a conception of an abstract soul which is the impersonation of the ideas.
Such a conception, which in Plato himself is but half expressed, is
unmeaning to us, and relative only to a particular stage in the history
of thought. The doctrine of reminiscence is also a fragment of a former
world, which has no place in the philosophy of modern times. But Plato
had the wonders of psychology just opening to him, and he had not the
explanation of them which is supplied by the analysis of language and
the history of the human mind. The question, ‘Whence come our abstract
ideas?’ he could only answer by an imaginary hypothesis. Nor is it
difficult to see that his crowning argument is purely verbal, and is but
the expression of an instinctive confidence put into a logical form:—‘The
soul is immortal because it contains a principle of imperishableness.’
Nor does he himself seem at all to be aware that nothing is added to
human knowledge by his ‘safe and simple answer,’ that beauty is the cause
of the beautiful; and that he is merely reasserting the Eleatic being
‘divided by the Pythagorean numbers,’ against the Heracleitean doctrine
of perpetual generation. The answer to the ‘very serious question’ of
generation and destruction is really the denial of them. For this he
would substitute, as in the Republic, a system of ideas, tested, not
by experience, but by their consequences, and not explained by actual
causes, but by a higher, that is, a more general notion. Consistency with
themselves is the only test which is to be applied to them. (Rep. vi. 510
foll., and Phaedo 101 foll.)

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

18. To deal fairly with such arguments, they should be translated as
far as possible into their modern equivalents. ‘If the ideas of men are
eternal, their souls are eternal, and if not the ideas, then not the
souls.’ Such an argument stands nearly in the same relation to Plato and
his age, as the argument from the existence of God to immortality among
ourselves. ‘If God exists, then the soul exists after death; and if there
is no God, there is no existence of the soul after death.’ For the ideas
are to his mind the reality, the truth, the principle of permanence, as
well as of intelligence and order in the world. When Simmias and Cebes
say that they are more strongly persuaded of the existence of ideas than
they are of the immortality of the soul, they represent fairly enough
the order of thought in Greek philosophy. And we might say in the same
way that we are more certain of the existence of God than we are of the
immortality of the soul, and are led by the belief in the one to a belief
in the other. The parallel, as Socrates would say, is not perfect, but
agrees in as far as the mind in either case is regarded as dependent on
something above and beyond herself. The analogy may even be pressed a
step further: ‘We are more certain of our ideas of truth and right than
we are of the existence of God, and are led on in the order of thought
from one to the other.’ Or more correctly: ‘The existence of right and
truth is the existence of God, and can never for a moment be separated
from Him.’

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

19. The main argument of the Phaedo is derived from the existence of
eternal ideas of which the soul is a partaker; the other argument of the
alternation of opposites is replaced by this. And there have not been
wanting philosophers of the idealist school who have imagined that the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a theory of knowledge, and
that in what has preceded Plato is accommodating himself to the popular
belief. Such a view can only be elicited from the Phaedo by what may be
termed the transcendental method of interpretation, and is obviously
inconsistent with the Gorgias and the Republic. Those who maintain it are
immediately compelled to renounce the shadow which they have grasped,
as a play of words only. But the truth is, that Plato in his argument
for the immortality of the soul has collected many elements of proof
or persuasion, ethical and mythological as well as dialectical, which
are not easily to be reconciled with one another; and he is as much in
earnest about his doctrine of retribution, which is repeated in all his
more ethical writings, as about his theory of knowledge. And while we
may fairly translate the dialectical into the language of Hegel, and the
religious and mythological into the language of Dante or Bunyan, the
ethical speaks to us still in the same voice, and appeals to a common
feeling.

20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The
first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state
of being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the philosopher is
seeking to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the
things of the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in
these aspirations the foretaste of immortality; as Butler and Addison in
modern times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind,
the other from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using
this argument Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the
body, with the soul of the good and wise. (Cp. Rep. x. 611 C.) Such a
confusion was natural, and arose partly out of the antithesis of soul
and body. The soul in her own essence, and the soul ‘clothed upon’ with
virtues and graces, were easily interchanged with one another, because on
a subject which passes expression the distinctions of language can hardly
be maintained.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

21. The other ethical proof of the immortality of the soul is derived
from the necessity of retribution. The wicked would be too well off
if their evil deeds came to an end. It is not to be supposed that an
Ardiaeus, an Archelaus, an Ismenias could ever have suffered the penalty
of their crimes in this world. The manner in which this retribution is
accomplished Plato represents under the figures of mythology. Doubtless
he felt that it was easier to improve than to invent, and that in
religion especially the traditional form was required in order to give
verisimilitude to the myth. The myth too is far more probable to that age
than to ours, and may fairly be regarded as ‘one guess among many’ about
the nature of the earth, which he cleverly supports by the indications of
geology. Not that he insists on the absolute truth of his own particular
notions: ‘no man of sense will be confident in such matters; but he will
be confident that something of the kind is true’ (114 D). As in other
passages (Gorg. 527 A, Tim. 29 D; cp. Crito, 107 B), he wins belief for
his fictions by the moderation of his statements; he does not, like Dante
or Swedenborg, allow himself to be deceived by his own creations.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dialogue must be read in the light of the situation. And first of
all we are struck by the calmness of the scene. Like the spectators at
the time, we cannot pity Socrates; his mien and his language are so
noble and fearless. He is the same that he ever was, but milder and
gentler, and he has in no degree lost his interest in dialectics; he will
not forego the delight of an argument in compliance with the jailer’s
intimation that he should not heat himself with talking. At such a time
he naturally expresses the hope of his life, that he has been a true
mystic and not a mere routineer or wand-bearer: and he refers to passages
of his personal history. To his old enemies the Comic poets, and to the
proceedings on the trial, he alludes playfully; but he vividly remembers
the disappointment which he felt in reading the books of Anaxagoras.
The return of Xanthippè and his children indicates that the philosopher
is not ‘made of oak or rock.’ Some other traits of his character may be
noted; for example, the courteous manner in which he inclines his head to
the last objector, or the ironical touch, ‘Me already, as the tragic poet
would say, the voice of fate calls;’ or the depreciation of the arguments
with which ‘he comforted himself and them;’ or his fear of ‘misology;’ or
his references to Homer; or the playful smile with which he ‘talks like
a book’ about greater and less; or the allusion to the possibility of
finding another teacher among barbarous races (cp. Polit. 262 D); or the
mysterious reference to another science (mathematics?) of generation and
destruction for which he is vainly feeling. There is no change in him;
only now he is invested with a sort of sacred character, as the prophet
or priest of Apollo the God of the festival, in whose honour he first of
all composes a hymn, and then like the swan pours forth his dying lay.
Perhaps the extreme elevation of Socrates above his own situation, and
the ordinary interests of life (compare his _jeu d’esprit_ about his
burial, in which for a moment he puts on the ‘Silenus mask’), create in
the mind of the reader an impression stronger than could be derived from
arguments that such a one has in him ‘a principle which does not admit of
death.’

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _Socrates and his friends._]

The other persons of the Dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1)
private friends; (2) the respondents in the argument.

First there is Crito, who has been already introduced to us in the
Euthydemus and the Crito; he is the equal in years of Socrates, and
stands in quite a different relation to him from his younger disciples.
He is a man of the world who is rich and prosperous (cp. the jest in the
Euthydemus, 304 C), the best friend of Socrates, who wants to know his
commands, in whose presence he talks to his family, and who performs
the last duty of closing his eyes. It is observable too that, as in the
Euthydemus, Crito shows no aptitude for philosophical discussions. Nor
among the friends of Socrates must the jailer be forgotten, who seems
to have been introduced by Plato in order to show the impression made
by the extraordinary man on the common. The gentle nature of the man
is indicated by his weeping at the announcement of his errand and then
turning away, and also by the words of Socrates to his disciples: ‘How
charming the man is! since I have been in prison he has been always
coming to me, and is as good as could be to me.’ We are reminded too that
he has retained this gentle nature amid scenes of death and violence by
the contrasts which he draws between the behaviour of Socrates and of
others when about to die.

[Sidenote: _Phaedo: Simmias: Cebes._]

Another person who takes no part in the philosophical discussion is the
excitable Apollodorus, the same who, in the Symposium, of which he is the
narrator, is called ‘the madman,’ and who testifies his grief by the most
violent emotions. Phaedo is also present, the ‘beloved disciple’ as he
may be termed, who is described, if not ‘leaning on his bosom,’ as seated
next to Socrates, who is playing with his hair. He too, like Apollodorus,
takes no part in the discussion, but he loves above all things to hear
and speak of Socrates after his death. The calmness of his behaviour,
veiling his face when he can no longer restrain his tears, contrasts
with the passionate outcries of the other. At a particular point the
argument is described as falling before the attack of Simmias. A sort of
despair is introduced in the minds of the company. The effect of this is
heightened by the description of Phaedo, who has been the eye-witness
of the scene, and by the sympathy of his Phliasian auditors who are
beginning to think ‘that they too can never trust an argument again.’ And
the intense interest of the company is communicated not only to the first
auditors, but to us who in a distant country read the narrative of their
emotions after more than two thousand years have passed away.

The two principal interlocutors are Simmias and Cebes, the disciples of
Philolaus the Pythagorean philosopher of Thebes. Simmias is described
in the Phaedrus (242 B) as fonder of an argument than any man living;
and Cebes, although finally persuaded by Socrates, is said to be the
most incredulous of human beings. It is Cebes who at the commencement
of the Dialogue asks why ‘suicide is held to be unlawful,’ and who
first supplies the doctrine of recollection in confirmation of the
pre-existence of the soul. It is Cebes who urges that the pre-existence
does not necessarily involve the future existence of the soul, as is
shown by the illustration of the weaver and his coat. Simmias, on the
other hand, raises the question about harmony and the lyre, which is
naturally put into the mouth of a Pythagorean disciple. It is Simmias,
too, who first remarks on the uncertainty of human knowledge, and only at
last concedes to the argument such a qualified approval as is consistent
with the feebleness of the human faculties. Cebes is the deeper and more
consecutive thinker, Simmias more superficial and rhetorical; they are
distinguished in much the same manner as Adeimantus and Glaucon in the
Republic.

[Sidenote: _Place of the Dialogue in the series._]

Other persons, Menexenus, Ctesippus, Lysis, are old friends; Evenus
has been already satirized in the Apology; Aeschines and Epigenes
were present at the trial; Euclid and Terpsion will reappear in the
Introduction to the Theaetetus, Hermogenes has already appeared in
the Cratylus. No inference can fairly be drawn from the absence of
Aristippus, nor from the omission of Xenophon, who at the time of
Socrates’ death was in Asia. The mention of Plato’s own absence seems
like an expression of sorrow, and may, perhaps, be an indication that the
report of the conversation is not to be taken literally.

The place of the Dialogue in the series is doubtful. The doctrine of
ideas is certainly carried beyond the Socratic point of view; in no other
of the writings of Plato is the theory of them so completely developed.
Whether the belief in immortality can be attributed to Socrates or not is
uncertain; the silence of the Memorabilia, and of the earlier Dialogues
of Plato, is an argument to the contrary. Yet in the Cyropaedia Xenophon
(viii. 7, 19 foll.) has put language into the mouth of the dying Cyrus
which recalls the Phaedo, and may have been derived from the teaching of
Socrates. It may be fairly urged that the greatest religious interest of
mankind could not have been wholly ignored by one who passed his life in
fulfilling the commands of an oracle, and who recognized a Divine plan in
man and nature. (Xen. Mem. I, 4.) And the language of the Apology and of
the Crito confirms this view.

[Sidenote: _Contents of the Dialogue._]

The Phaedo is not one of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato; nor, on the
other hand, can it be assigned to that later stage of the Platonic
writings at which the doctrine of ideas appears to be forgotten. It
belongs rather to the intermediate period of the Platonic philosophy,
which roughly corresponds to the Phaedrus, Gorgias, Republic, Theaetetus.
Without pretending to determine the real time of their composition, the
Symposium, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo may be conveniently read by
us in this order as illustrative of the life of Socrates. Another chain
may be formed of the Meno, Phaedrus, Phaedo, in which the immortality
of the soul is connected with the doctrine of ideas. In the Meno the
theory of ideas is based an the ancient belief in transmigration, which
reappears again in the Phaedrus as well as in the Republic and Timaeus,
and in all of them is connected with a doctrine of retribution. In
the Phaedrus the immortality of the soul is supposed to rest on the
conception of the soul as a principle of motion, whereas in the Republic
the argument turns on the natural continuance of the soul, which, if not
destroyed by her own proper evil, can hardly be destroyed by any other.
The soul of man in the Timaeus (42 foll.) is derived from the Supreme
Creator, and either returns after death to her kindred star, or descends
into the lower life of an animal. The Apology expresses the same view
as the Phaedo, but with less confidence; there the probability of death
being a long sleep is not excluded. The Theaetetus also describes, in a
digression, the desire of the soul to fly away and be with God—‘and to
fly to him is to be like him’ (176 B). The Symposium may be observed to
resemble as well as to differ from the Phaedo. While the first notion of
immortality is only in the way of natural procreation or of posthumous
fame and glory, the higher revelation of beauty, like the good in the
Republic, is the vision of the eternal idea. So deeply rooted in Plato’s
mind is the belief in immortality; so various are the forms of expression
which he employs.

[Sidenote: _The Dialogue a Drama._]

As in several other Dialogues, there is more of system in the Phaedo
than appears at first sight. The succession of arguments is based on
previous philosophies; beginning with the mysteries and the Heracleitean
alternation of opposites, and proceeding to the Pythagorean harmony and
transmigration; making a step by the aid of Platonic reminiscence, and
a further step by the help of the νοῦς of Anaxagoras; until at last we
rest in the conviction that the soul is inseparable from the ideas,
and belongs to the world of the invisible and unknown. Then, as in
the Gorgias or Republic, the curtain falls, and the veil of mythology
descends upon the argument. After the confession of Socrates that he
is an interested party, and the acknowledgment that no man of sense
will think the details of his narrative true, but that something of the
kind is true, we return from speculation to practice. He is himself
more confident of immortality than he is of his own arguments; and
the confidence which he expresses is less strong than that which his
cheerfulness and composure in death inspire in us.

Difficulties of two kinds occur in the Phaedo—one kind to be explained
out of contemporary philosophy, the other not admitting of an entire
solution. (1) The difficulty which Socrates says that he experienced
in explaining generation and corruption; the assumption of hypotheses
which proceed from the less general to the more general, and are tested
by their consequences; the puzzle about greater and less; the resort to
the method of ideas, which to us appear only abstract terms,—these are
to be explained out of the position of Socrates and Plato in the history
of philosophy. They were living in a twilight between the sensible and
the intellectual world, and saw no way of connecting them. They could
neither explain the relation of ideas to phenomena, nor their correlation
to one another. The very idea of relation or comparison was embarrassing
to them. Yet in this intellectual uncertainty they had a conception of a
proof from results, and of a moral truth, which remained unshaken amid
the questionings of philosophy. (2) The other is a difficulty which is
touched upon in the Republic as well as in the Phaedo, and is common to
modern and ancient philosophy. Plato is not altogether satisfied with his
safe and simple method of ideas. He wants to have proved to him by facts
that all things are for the best, and that there is one mind or design
which pervades them all. But this ‘power of the best’ he is unable to
explain; and therefore takes refuge in universal ideas. And are not we
at this day seeking to discover that which Socrates in a glass darkly
foresaw?

[Sidenote: _Artistic beauty of the Dialogue._]

Some resemblances to the Greek drama may be noted in all the Dialogues
of Plato. The Phaedo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the protagonist
and Simmias and Cebes the secondary performers, standing to them in the
same relation as to Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic. No Dialogue
has a greater unity of subject and feeling. Plato has certainly fulfilled
the condition of Greek, or rather of all art, which requires that scenes
of death and suffering should be clothed in beauty. The gathering of
the friends at the commencement of the Dialogue, the dismissal of
Xanthippè, whose presence would have been out of place at a philosophical
discussion, but who returns again with her children to take a final
farewell, the dejection of the audience at the temporary overthrow of
the argument, the picture of Socrates playing with the hair of Phaedo,
the final scene in which Socrates alone retains his composure—are
masterpieces of art. And the chorus at the end might have interpreted the
feeling of the play: ‘There can no evil happen to a good man in life or
death.’

‘The art of concealing art’ is nowhere more perfect than in those
writings of Plato which describe the trial and death of Socrates. Their
charm is their simplicity, which gives them verisimilitude; and yet
they touch, as if incidentally, and because they were suitable to the
occasion, on some of the deepest truths of philosophy. There is nothing
in any tragedy, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history (with
one exception), like the last hours of Socrates in Plato. The master
could not be more fitly occupied at such a time than in discoursing of
immortality; nor the disciples more divinely consoled. The arguments,
taken in the spirit and not in the letter, are our arguments; and
Socrates by anticipation may be even thought to refute some ‘eccentric
notions’ current in our own age. For there are philosophers among
ourselves who do not seem to understand how much stronger is the power of
intelligence, or of the best, than of Atlas, or mechanical force. How far
the words attributed to Socrates were actually uttered by him we forbear
to ask; for no answer can be given to this question. And it is better to
resign ourselves to the feeling of a great work, than to linger among
critical uncertainties.


PHAEDO.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

PHAEDO, _who is the narrator of the Dialogue to Echecrates of Phlius_.
SOCRATES. ATTENDANT OF THE PRISON. APOLLODORUS. SIMMIAS. CEBES. CRITO.

SCENE:—The Prison of Socrates.

PLACE OF THE NARRATION:—Phlius.

[Sidenote: _Phaedo._]

    _Echecrates._ Were you yourself, Phaedo, in the prison     =Steph.= 57
    with Socrates on the day when he drank the poison?

    _Phaedo._ Yes, Echecrates, I was.

    _Ech._ I should so like to hear about his death. What did
    he say in his last hours? We were informed that he died
    by taking poison, but no one knew anything more; for no
    Phliasian ever goes to Athens now, and it is a long time
    since any stranger from Athens has found his way hither;
    so that we had no clear account.

    _Phaed._ Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial?          58

    _Ech._ Yes; some one told us about the trial, and we could
    not understand why, having been condemned, he should
    have been put to death, not at the time, but long afterwards.
    What was the reason of this?

[Sidenote: The death of Socrates was deferred by the holy season of the
mission to Delos.]

    _Phaed._ An accident, Echecrates: the stern of the ship
    which the Athenians send to Delos happened to have been
    crowned on the day before he was tried.

    _Ech._ What is this ship?

[Sidenote: _The narrative of Phaedo._]

    _Phaed._ It is the ship in which, according to Athenian
    tradition, Theseus went to Crete when he took with him the
    fourteen youths, and was the saviour of them and of himself.
    And they are said to have vowed to Apollo at the time, that
    if they were saved they would send a yearly mission to
    Delos. Now this custom still continues, and the whole
    period of the voyage to and from Delos, beginning when the
    priest of Apollo crowns the stern of the ship, is a holy
    season, during which the city is not allowed to be polluted
    by public executions; and when the vessel is detained by
    contrary winds, the time spent in going and returning is
    very considerable. As I was saying, the ship was crowned
    on the day before the trial, and this was the reason why
    Socrates lay in prison and was not put to death until long
    after he was condemned.

    _Ech._ What was the manner of his death, Phaedo? What
    was said or done? And which of his friends were with
    him? Or did the authorities forbid them to be present—so
    that he had no friends near him when he died?

    _Phaed._ No; there were several of them with him.

[Sidenote: Phaedo is requested by Echecrates to give an account of the
death of Socrates.]

    _Ech._ If you have nothing to do, I wish that you would
    tell me what passed, as exactly as you can.

    _Phaed._ I have nothing at all to do, and will try to gratify
    your wish. To be reminded of Socrates is always the
    greatest delight to me, whether I speak myself or hear
    another speak of him.

    _Ech._ You will have listeners who are of the same mind
    with you, and I hope that you will be as exact as you
    can.

[Sidenote: He describes his noble and fearless demeanour.]

    _Phaed._ I had a singular feeling at being in his company.
    For I could hardly believe that I was present at the death of
    a friend, and therefore I did not pity him, Echecrates; he
    died so fearlessly, and his words and bearing were so noble
    and gracious, that to me he appeared blessed. I thought
    that in going to the other world he could not be without
    a divine call, and that he would be happy, if any man ever          59
    was, when he arrived there; and therefore I did not pity
    him as might have seemed natural at such an hour. But I
    had not the pleasure which I usually feel in philosophical
    discourse (for philosophy was the theme of which we spoke).
    I was pleased, but in the pleasure there was also a strange
    admixture of pain; for I reflected that he was soon to die, and
    this double feeling was shared by us all; we were laughing
    and weeping by turns, especially the excitable Apollodorus—you
    know the sort of man?

[Sidenote: _The last morning: Xanthippè._]

    _Ech._ Yes.

    _Phaed._ He was quite beside himself; and I and all of us
    were greatly moved.

    _Ech._ Who were present?

[Sidenote: The Socratic circle:—the absence of Plato is noted.]

    _Phaed._ Of native Athenians there were, besides Apollodorus,
    Critobulus and his father Crito, Hermogenes, Epigenes,
    Aeschines, Antisthenes; likewise Ctesippus of the
    deme of Paeania, Menexenus, and some others; Plato, if I
    am not mistaken, was ill.

    _Ech._ Were there any strangers?

    _Phaed._ Yes, there were; Simmias the Theban, and Cebes,
    and Phaedondes; Euclid and Terpsion, who came from
    Megara.

    _Ech._ And was Aristippus there, and Cleombrotus?

    _Phaed._ No, they were said to be in Aegina.

    _Ech._ Any one else?

    _Phaed._ I think that these were nearly all.

    _Ech._ Well, and what did you talk about?

[Sidenote: The meeting at the prison.]

[Sidenote: The friends are denied admission while the Eleven are with
Socrates.]

    _Phaed._ I will begin at the beginning, and endeavour to
    repeat the entire conversation. On the previous days we
    had been in the habit of assembling early in the morning at
    the court in which the trial took place, and which is not far
    from the prison. There we used to wait talking with one
    another until the opening of the doors (for they were not
    opened very early); then we went in and generally passed
    the day with Socrates. On the last morning we assembled
    sooner than usual, having heard on the day before when
    we quitted the prison in the evening that the sacred ship
    had come from Delos; and so we arranged to meet very
    early at the accustomed place. On our arrival the jailer who
    answered the door, instead of admitting us, came out and
    told us to stay until he called us. ‘For the Eleven,’ he said,
    ‘are now with Socrates; they are taking off his chains, and
    giving orders that he is to die to-day.’ He soon returned
    and said that we might come in. On entering we found                60
    Socrates just released from chains, and Xanthippè, whom
    you know, sitting by him, and holding his child in her arms.
    When she saw us she uttered a cry and said, as women will:
    ‘O Socrates, this is the last time that either you will converse
    with your friends, or they with you.’ Socrates turned
    to Crito and said: ‘Crito, let some one take her home.’

[Sidenote: Socrates, whose chains have now been taken off, is led by the
feeling of relief to remark on the curious manner in which pleasure and
pain are always conjoined.]

    Some of Crito’s people accordingly led her away, crying out
    and beating herself. And when she was gone, Socrates,
    sitting up on the couch, bent and rubbed his leg, saying, as
    he was rubbing: How singular is the thing called pleasure,
    and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought
    to be the opposite of it; for they are never present to a man
    at the same instant, and yet he who pursues either is generally
    compelled to take the other; their bodies are two, but they
    are joined by a single head. And I cannot help thinking
    that if Aesop had remembered them, he would have made a
    fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and how,
    when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and
    this is the reason why when one comes the other follows:
    as I know by my own experience now, when after the pain
    in my leg which was caused by the chain pleasure appears to
    succeed.

[Sidenote: _Evenus the poet._]

    Upon this Cebes said: I am glad, Socrates, that you have
    mentioned the name of Aesop. For it reminds me of a
    question which has been asked by many, and was asked of
    me only the day before yesterday by Evenus the poet—he
    will be sure to ask it again, and therefore if you would like
    me to have an answer ready for him, you may as well tell me
    what I should say to him:—he wanted to know why you, who
    never before wrote a line of poetry, now that you are in
    prison are turning Aesop’s fables into verse, and also composing
    that hymn in honour of Apollo.

[Sidenote: Having been told in a dream that he should compose music, in
order to satisfy a scruple about the meaning of the dream he has been
writing verses while he was in prison.]

[Sidenote: _Philolaus of Thebes._]

[Sidenote: Evenus the poet had been curious to know why he had done so,
and Socrates gives him the explanation, bidding him be of good cheer, and
come after him. ‘But he will not come.’]

    Tell him, Cebes, he replied, what is the truth—that I had
    no idea of rivalling him or his poems; to do so, as I knew,
    would be no easy task. But I wanted to see whether I could
    purge away a scruple which I felt about the meaning of
    certain dreams. In the course of my life I have often had
    intimations in dreams ‘that I should compose music.’ The
    same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes
    in another, but always saying the same or nearly the
    same words: ‘Cultivate and make music,’ said the dream.
    And hitherto I had imagined that this was only intended to
    exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which
    has been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best        61
    of music. The dream was bidding me do what I was already
    doing, in the same way that the competitor in a race is
    bidden by the spectators to run when he is already running.
    But I was not certain of this; for the dream might have
    meant music in the popular sense of the word, and being
    under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite,
    I thought that it would be safer for me to satisfy the scruple,
    and, in obedience to the dream, to compose a few verses before
    I departed. And first I made a hymn in honour of the god
    of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is
    really to be a poet, should not only put together words, but
    should invent stories, and that I have no invention, I took
    some fables of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and which
    I knew—they were the first I came upon and turned them
    into verse. Tell this to Evenus, Cebes, and bid him be of
    good cheer; say that I would have him come after me if he
    be a wise man, and not tarry; and that to-day I am likely
    to be going, for the Athenians say that I must.

    Simmias said: What a message for such a man! having
    been a frequent companion of his I should say that, as far as
    I know him, he will never take your advice unless he is
    obliged.

    Why, said Socrates,—is not Evenus a philosopher?

    I think that he is, said Simmias.

    Then he, or any man who has the spirit of philosophy,
    will be willing to die; but he will not take his own life, for
    that is held to be unlawful.

    Here he changed his position, and put his legs off the
    couch on to the ground, and during the rest of the conversation
    he remained sitting.

    Why do you say, enquired Cebes, that a man ought not to
    take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to
    follow the dying?

[Sidenote: Socrates replies that a philosopher like Evenus should be
ready to die, though he must not take his own life.]

    Socrates replied: And have you, Cebes and Simmias, who
    are the disciples of Philolaus, never heard him speak of this?

[Sidenote: _Cebes speaking in his native dialect._]

    Yes, but his language was obscure, Socrates.

    My words, too, are only an echo; but there is no reason
    why I should not repeat what I have heard: and indeed, as
    I am going to another place, it is very meet for me to be
    thinking and talking of the nature of the pilgrimage which I
    am about to make. What can I do better in the interval
    between this and the setting of the sun?

    Then tell me, Socrates, why is suicide held to be unlawful?
    as I have certainly heard Philolaus, about whom you
    were just now asking, affirm when he was staying with us at
    Thebes; and there are others who say the same, although I
    have never understood what was meant by any of them.

[Sidenote: This incidental remark leads to a discussion on suicide.]

    Do not lose heart, replied Socrates, and the day may come           62
    when you will understand. I suppose that you wonder why,
    when other things which are evil may be good at certain
    times and to certain persons, death is to be the only exception,
    and why, when a man is better dead, he is not
    permitted to be his own benefactor, but must wait for the
    hand of another.

    Fery true, said Cebes, laughing gently and speaking in
    his native Boeotian.

[Sidenote: Man is a prisoner who has no right to run away; and he is also
a possession of the gods and must not rob his masters.]

    I admit the appearance of inconsistency in what I am
    saying; but there may not be any real inconsistency after all.
    There is a doctrine whispered in secret that man is a
    prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away;
    this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand.
    Yet I too believe that the gods are our guardians, and that
    we men are a possession of theirs. Do you not agree?

    Yes, I quite agree, said Cebes.

    And if one of your own possessions, an ox or an ass, for
    example, took the liberty of putting himself out of the way
    when you had given no intimation of your wish that he
    should die, would you not be angry with him, and would you
    not punish him if you could?

    Certainly, replied Cebes.

    Then, if we look at the matter thus, there may be reason in
    saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until
    God summons him, as he is now summoning me.

[Sidenote: And why should he wish to leave the best of services?]

    Yes, Socrates, said Cebes, there seems to be truth in what
    you say. And yet how can you reconcile this seemingly true
    belief that God is our guardian and we his possessions, with
    the willingness to die which you were just now attributing to
    the philosopher? That the wisest of men should be willing
    to leave a service in which they are ruled by the gods who
    are the best of rulers, is not reasonable; for surely no wise
    man thinks that when set at liberty he can take better care of
    himself than the gods take of him. A fool may perhaps
    think so—he may argue that he had better run away from
    his master, not considering that his duty is to remain to the
    end, and not to run away from the good, and that there
    would be no sense in his running away. The wise man will
    want to be ever with him who is better than himself. Now
    this, Socrates, is the reverse of what was just now said; for
    upon this view the wise man should sorrow and the fool
    rejoice at passing out of life.

    The earnestness of Cebes seemed to please Socrates.                 63
    Here, said he, turning to us, is a man who is always enquiring,
    and is not so easily convinced by the first thing which
    he hears.

[Sidenote: _Simmias and Cebes._]

[Sidenote: You yourself, Socrates, are too ready to run away.]

    And certainly, added Simmias, the objection which he is
    now making does appear to me to have some force. For
    what can be the meaning of a truly wise man wanting to fly
    away and lightly leave a master who is better than himself?
    And I rather imagine that Cebes is referring to you; he
    thinks that you are too ready to leave us, and too ready to
    leave the gods whom you acknowledge to be our good
    masters.

    Yes, replied Socrates; there is reason in what you say.
    And so you think that I ought to answer your indictment as
    if I were in a court?

    We should like you to do so, said Simmias.

[Sidenote: Socrates replies that he is going to other gods who are wise
and good.]

    Then I must try to make a more successful defence before
    you than I did before the judges. For I am quite ready to
    admit, Simmias and Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at
    death, if I were not persuaded in the first place that I am
    going to other gods who are wise and good (of which I am
    as certain as I can be of any such matters), and secondly
    (though I am not so sure of this last) to men departed, better
    than those whom I leave behind; and therefore I do not
    grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there
    is yet something remaining for the dead, and as has been
    said of old, some far better thing for the good than for the
    evil.

[Sidenote: _The gaoler’s importunity._]

    But do you mean to take away your thoughts with you,
    Socrates? said Simmias. Will you not impart them to us?—for
    they are a benefit in which we too are entitled to share.
    Moreover, if you succeed in convincing us, that will be an
    answer to the charge against yourself.

    I will do my best, replied Socrates. But you must first let
    me hear what Crito wants; he has long been wishing to say
    something to me.

    Only this, Socrates, replied Crito:—the attendant who is
    to give you the poison has been telling me, and he wants me
    to tell you, that you are not to talk much; talking, he says,
    increases heat, and this is apt to interfere with the action
    of the poison; persons who excite themselves are sometimes
    obliged to take a second or even a third dose.

    Then, said Socrates, let him mind his business and be prepared
    to give the poison twice or even thrice if necessary;
    that is all.

    I knew quite well what you would say, replied Crito; but I
    was obliged to satisfy him.

    Never mind him, he said.

[Sidenote: The true philosopher is always dying:—why then should he avoid
the death which he desires?]

    And now, O my judges, I desire to prove to you that the
    real philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is
    about to die, and that after death he may hope to obtain the        64
    greatest good in the other world. And how this may be,
    Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavour to explain. For I
    deem that the true votary of philosophy is likely to be
    misunderstood by other men; they do not perceive that he
    is always pursuing death and dying; and if this be so, and
    he has had the desire of death all his life long, why when
    his time comes should he repine at that which he has been
    always pursuing and desiring?

[Sidenote: ‘How the world will laugh when they hear this!’]

    Simmias said laughingly: Though not in a laughing
    humour, you have made me laugh, Socrates; for I cannot
    help thinking that the many when they hear your words will
    say how truly you have described philosophers, and our
    people at home will likewise say that the life which philosophers
    desire is in reality death, and that they have found
    them out to be deserving of the death which they desire.

[Sidenote: _Simmias and Socrates._]

[Sidenote: Yes, they do not understand the nature of death, or why the
philosopher desires or deserves it.]

    And they are right, Simmias, in thinking so, with the
    exception of the words ‘they have found them out;’ for they
    have not found out either what is the nature of that death
    which the true philosopher deserves, or how he deserves or
    desires death. But enough of them:—let us discuss the
    matter among ourselves. Do we believe that there is such a
    thing as death?

    To be sure, replied Simmias.

    Is it not the separation of soul and body? And to be
    dead is the completion of this; when the soul exists in
    herself, and is released from the body and the body is
    released from the soul, what is this but death?

    Just so, he replied.

[Sidenote: Life is best when the soul is most freed from the concerns of
the body, and is alone and by herself.]

    There is another question, which will probably throw light
    on our present enquiry if you and I can agree about it:—Ought
    the philosopher to care about the pleasures—if they
    are to be called pleasures—of eating and drinking?

    Certainly not, answered Simmias.

    And what about the pleasures of love—should he care for
    them?

    By no means.

    And will he think much of the other ways of indulging the
    body, for example, the acquisition of costly raiment, or
    sandals, or other adornments of the body? Instead of
    caring about them, does he not rather despise anything more
    than nature needs? What do you say?

    I should say that the true philosopher would despise them.

    Would you not say that he is entirely concerned with the
    soul and not with the body? He would like, as far as he
    can, to get away from the body and to turn to the soul.

    Quite true.

    In matters of this sort philosophers, above all other men,
    may be observed in every sort of way to dissever the soul           65
    from the communion of the body.

    Very true.

    Whereas, Simmias, the rest of the world are of opinion
    that to him who has no sense of pleasure and no part in
    bodily pleasure, life is not worth having; and that he who is
    indifferent about them is as good as dead.

    That is also true.

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of ideas._]

[Sidenote: The senses are untrustworthy guides: they mislead the soul in
the search for truth.]

    What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of
    knowledge?—is the body, if invited to share in the enquiry,
    a hinderer or a helper? I mean to say, have sight and
    hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the poets are
    always telling us, inaccurate witnesses? and yet, if even they
    are inaccurate and indistinct, what is to be said of the other
    senses?—for you will allow that they are the best of them?

    Certainly, he replied.

    Then when does the soul attain truth?—for in attempting
    to consider anything in company with the body she is
    obviously deceived.

    True.

    Then must not true existence be revealed to her in thought,
    if at all?

    Yes.

    And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself
    and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds nor
    sights nor pain nor any pleasure,—when she takes leave of
    the body, and has as little as possible to do with it, when she
    has no bodily sense or desire, but is aspiring after true
    being?

    Certainly.

[Sidenote: And therefore the philosopher runs away from the body.]

    And in this the philosopher dishonours the body; his soul
    runs away from his body and desires to be alone and by
    herself?

    That is true.

[Sidenote: Another argument. The absolute truth of justice, beauty,
and other ideas is not perceived by the senses, which only introduce a
disturbing element.]

    Well, but there is another thing, Simmias: Is there or is
    there not an absolute justice?

    Assuredly there is.

    And an absolute beauty and absolute good?

    Of course.

    But did you ever behold any of them with your eyes?

    Certainly not.

    Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense?—and
    I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness,
    and health, and strength, and of the essence or true nature of
    everything. Has the reality of them ever been perceived by
    you through the bodily organs? or rather, is not the nearest
    approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by
    him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most
    exact conception of the essence of each thing which he
    considers?

[Sidenote: _The bodily nature._]

    Certainly.

    And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes
    to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in
    the act of thought sight or any other sense together with
    reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness    66
    searches into the very truth of each; he who has got
    rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the
    whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements
    which when they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring
    truth and knowledge—who, if not he, is likely to attain to the
    knowledge of true being?

    What you say has a wonderful truth in it, Socrates, replied
    Simmias.

[Sidenote: The soul in herself must perceive things in themselves.]

    And when real philosophers consider all these things, will
    they not be led to make a reflection which they will express
    in words something like the following? ‘Have we not found,’
    they will say, ‘a path of thought which seems to bring us and
    our argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the
    body, and while the soul is infected with the evils of the body,
    our desire will not be satisfied? and our desire is of the truth.
    For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of
    the mere requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases
    which overtake and impede us in the search after true being:
    it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all
    kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes
    away from us the power of thinking at all. Whence come
    wars, and fightings, and factions? whence but from the body
    and the lusts of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love
    of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in
    the service of the body; and by reason of all these impediments
    we have no time to give to philosophy; and, last and
    worst of all, even if we are at leisure and betake ourselves to
    some speculation, the body is always breaking in upon us,
    causing turmoil and confusion in our enquiries, and so
    amazing us that we are prevented from seeing the truth.
    It has been proved to us by experience that if we would have
    pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body—the
    soul in herself must behold things in themselves: and
    then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of
    which we say that we are lovers; not while we live, but after
    death; for if while in company with the body, the soul
    cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows—either
    knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after
    death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be parted         67
    from the body and exist in herself alone. In this present
    life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge
    when we have the least possible intercourse or communion
    with the body, and are not surfeited with the bodily
    nature, but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God
    himself is pleased to release us. And thus having got rid of
    the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and hold converse
    with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light
    everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth.’ For
    the impure are not permitted to approach the pure. These
    are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true lovers of
    knowledge cannot help saying to one another, and thinking.
    You would agree; would you not?

[Sidenote: _The hope of the departing soul._]

    Undoubtedly, Socrates.

    But, O my friend, if this be true, there is great reason to
    hope that, going whither I go, when I have come to the end
    of my journey, I shall attain that which has been the pursuit
    of my life. And therefore I go on my way rejoicing, and not
    I only, but every other man who believes that his mind has
    been made ready and that he is in a manner purified.

    Certainly, replied Simmias.

[Sidenote: Purification is the separation of the soul from the body.]

    And what is purification but the separation of the soul
    from the body, as I was saying before; the habit of the soul
    gathering and collecting herself into herself from all sides
    out of the body; the dwelling in her own place alone, as in
    another life, so also in this, as far as she can;—the release
    of the soul from the chains of the body?

    Very true, he said.

    And this separation and release of the soul from the body
    is termed death?

    To be sure, he said.

    And the true philosophers, and they only, are ever seeking
    to release the soul. Is not the separation and release of the
    soul from the body their especial study?

    That is true.

[Sidenote: _The true philosopher._]

    And, as I was saying at first, there would be a ridiculous
    contradiction in men studying to live as nearly as they can in
    a state of death, and yet repining when it comes upon them.

    Clearly.

[Sidenote: And therefore the true philosopher who has been always trying
to disengage himself from the body will rejoice in death.]

    And the true philosophers, Simmias, are always occupied
    in the practice of dying, wherefore also to them least of all
    men is death terrible. Look at the matter thus:—if they
    have been in every way the enemies of the body, and are
    wanting to be alone with the soul, when this desire of theirs
    is granted, how inconsistent would they be if they trembled
    and repined, instead of rejoicing at their departure to that
    place where, when they arrive, they hope to gain that which
    in life they desired—and this was wisdom—and at the same            68
    time to be rid of the company of their enemy. Many a man
    has been willing to go to the world below animated by the
    hope of seeing there an earthly love, or wife, or son, and
    conversing with them. And will he who is a true lover of
    wisdom, and is strongly persuaded in like manner that only
    in the world below he can worthily enjoy her, still repine at
    death? Will he not depart with joy? Surely he will, O my
    friend, if he be a true philosopher. For he will have a firm
    conviction that there, and there only, he can find wisdom in
    her purity. And if this be true, he would be very absurd, as
    I was saying, if he were afraid of death.

    He would indeed, replied Simmias.

    And when you see a man who is repining at the approach
    of death, is not his reluctance a sufficient proof that he is not
    a lover of wisdom, but a lover of the body, and probably
    at the same time a lover of either money or power, or both?

    Quite so, he replied.

    And is not courage, Simmias, a quality which is specially
    characteristic of the philosopher?

    Certainly.

[Sidenote: He alone possesses the true secret of virtue, which in
ordinary men is merely based on a calculation of lesser and greater
evils.]

    There is temperance again, which even by the vulgar is
    supposed to consist in the control and regulation of the
    passions, and in the sense of superiority to them—is not
    temperance a virtue belonging to those only who despise the
    body, and who pass their lives in philosophy?

    Most assuredly.

    For the courage and temperance of other men, if you will
    consider them, are really a contradiction.

[Sidenote: _The exchange of virtue._]

    How so?

    Well, he said, you are aware that death is regarded by
    men in general as a great evil.

    Very true, he said.

    And do not courageous men face death because they are
    afraid of yet greater evils?

    That is quite true.

[Sidenote: Ordinary men are courageous only from cowardice; temperate
from intemperance.]

    Then all but the philosophers are courageous only from
    fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should
    be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is
    surely a strange thing.

    Very true.

    And are not the temperate exactly in the same case?
    They are temperate because they are intemperate—which
    might seem to be a contradiction, but is nevertheless the sort
    of thing which happens with this foolish temperance. For
    there are pleasures which they are afraid of losing; and in
    their desire to keep them, they abstain from some pleasures,
    because they are overcome by others and although to be
    conquered by pleasure is called by men intemperance, to             69
    them the conquest of pleasure consists in being conquered
    by pleasure. And that is what I mean by saying that, in a
    sense, they are made temperate through intemperance.

    Such appears to be the case.

[Sidenote: True virtue is inseparable from wisdom.]

[Sidenote: _The incredulity of Cebes._]

[Sidenote: The thyrsus-bearers and the mystics.]

    Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for
    another fear or pleasure or pain, and of the greater for the
    less, as if they were coins, is not the exchange of virtue. O
    my blessed Simmias, is there not one true coin for which all
    things ought to be exchanged?—and that is wisdom; and
    only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything
    truly bought or sold, whether courage or temperance
    or justice. And is not all true virtue the companion of
    wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar
    goods or evils may or may not attend her? But the virtue
    which is made up of these goods, when they are severed
    from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow
    of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in
    her; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all
    these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and
    wisdom herself are the purgation of them. The founders of
    the mysteries would appear to have had a real meaning, and
    were not talking nonsense when they intimated in a figure
    long ago that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into
    the world below will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives
    there after initiation and purification will dwell with the
    gods. For ‘many,’ as they say in the mysteries, ‘are the
    thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics,’—meaning, as I
    interpret the words, ‘the true philosophers.’ In the number
    of whom, during my whole life, I have been seeking, according
    to my ability, to find a place;—whether I have sought in
    a right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I
    shall truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself
    arrive in the other world—such is my belief. And therefore
    I maintain that I am right, Simmias and Cebes, in not
    grieving or repining at parting from you and my masters
    in this world, for I believe that I shall equally find good
    masters and friends in another world. But most men do
    not believe this saying; if then I succeed in convincing you
    by my defence better than I did the Athenian judges, it will
    be well.

[Sidenote: Fears are entertained lest the soul when she dies should be
scattered to the winds.]

    Cebes answered: I agree, Socrates, in the greater part of
    what you say. But in what concerns the soul, men are apt            70
    to be incredulous; they fear that when she has left the body
    her place may be nowhere, and that on the very day of death
    she may perish and come to an end—immediately on her release
    from the body, issuing forth dispersed like smoke or
    air and in her flight vanishing away into nothingness. If
    she could only be collected into herself after she has obtained
    release from the evils of which you were speaking, there
    would be good reason to hope, Socrates, that what you say
    is true. But surely it requires a great deal of argument and
    many proofs to show that when the man is dead his soul
    yet exists, and has any force or intelligence.

    True, Cebes, said Socrates; and shall I suggest that we
    converse a little of the probabilities of these things?

    I am sure, said Cebes, that I should greatly like to know
    your opinion about them.

[Sidenote: The discussion suited to the occasion.]

    I reckon, said Socrates, that no one who heard me now,
    not even if he were one of my old enemies, the Comic poets,
    could accuse me of idle talking about matters in which I
    have no concern:—If you please, then, we will proceed with
    the enquiry.

[Sidenote: _The alternation of all existence._]

    Suppose we consider the question whether the souls of men
    after death are or are not in the world below. There comes
    into my mind an ancient doctrine which affirms that they
    go from hence into the other world, and returning hither, are
    born again from the dead. Now if it be true that the living
    come from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other
    world, for if not, how could they have been born again?
    And this would be conclusive, if there were any real evidence
    that the living are only born from the dead; but if this is not
    so, then other arguments will have to be adduced.

    Very true, replied Cebes.

[Sidenote: All things which have opposites are generated out of
opposites.]

    Then let us consider the whole question, not in relation to
    man only, but in relation to animals generally, and to plants,
    and to everything of which there is generation, and the proof
    will be easier. Are not all things which have opposites
    generated out of their opposites? I mean such things as
    good and evil, just and unjust—and there are innumerable
    other opposites which are generated out of opposites. And I
    want to show that in all opposites there is of necessity a
    similar alternation; I mean to say, for example, that anything
    which becomes greater must become greater after being
    less.

    True.

    And that which becomes less must have been once greater
    and then have become less.                                          71

    Yes.

    And the weaker is generated from the stronger, and the
    swifter from the slower.

    Very true.

    And the worse is from the better, and the more just is from
    the more unjust.

    Of course.

    And is this true of all opposites? and are we convinced
    that all of them are generated out of opposites?

    Yes.

[Sidenote: _Life and death like waking and sleeping._]

[Sidenote: And there are intermediate processes or passages into and
out of one another, such as increase and diminution, division and
composition, and the like.]

    And in this universal opposition of all things, are there not
    also two intermediate processes which are ever going on, from
    one to the other opposite, and back again; where there is a
    greater and a less there is also an intermediate process of
    increase and diminution, and that which grows is said to
    wax, and that which decays to wane?

    Yes, he said.

    And there are many other processes, such as division and
    composition, cooling and heating, which equally involve a
    passage into and out of one another. And this necessarily
    holds of all opposites, even though not always expressed in
    words—they are really generated out of one another, and
    there is a passing or process from one to the other of them?

    Very true, he replied.

    Well, and is there not an opposite of life, as sleep is the
    opposite of waking?

    True, he said.

    And what is it?

    Death, he answered.

    And these, if they are opposites, are generated the one
    from the other, and have their two intermediate processes
    also?

    Of course.

    Now, said Socrates, I will analyze one of the two pairs of
    opposites which I have mentioned to you, and also its intermediate
    processes, and you shall analyze the other to me.
    One of them I term sleep, the other waking. The state of
    sleep is opposed to the state of waking, and out of sleeping
    waking is generated, and out of waking, sleeping; and the
    process of generation is in the one case falling asleep, and in
    the other waking up. Do you agree?

    I entirely agree.

[Sidenote: Life is opposed to death, as waking is to sleeping, and in
like manner they are generated from one another.]

    Then, suppose that you analyze life and death to me in the
    same manner. Is not death opposed to life?

    Yes.

    And they are generated one from the other?

    Yes.

    What is generated from the living?

    The dead.

    And what from the dead?

    I can only say in answer—the living.

    Then the living, whether things or persons, Cebes, are
    generated from the dead?

[Sidenote: _The circle of nature._]

    That is clear, he replied.

    Then the inference is that our souls exist in the world
    below?

    That is true.

    And one of the two processes or generations is visible—for
    surely the act of dying is visible?

    Surely, he said.

    What then is to be the result? Shall we exclude the
    opposite process? and shall we suppose nature to walk on
    one leg only? Must we not rather assign to death some
    corresponding process of generation?

    Certainly, he replied.

    And what is that process?

    Return to life.

    And return to life, if there be such a thing, is the birth
    of the dead into the world of the living?                           72

    Quite true.

    Then here is a new way by which we arrive at the conclusion
    that the living come from the dead, just as the dead
    come from the living; and this, if true, affords a most certain
    proof that the souls of the dead exist in some place out of
    which they come again.

    Yes, Socrates, he said; the conclusion seems to flow
    necessarily out of our previous admissions.

[Sidenote: If there were no compensation or return in nature, all things
would pass into the state of death.]

    And that these admissions were not unfair, Cebes, he said,
    may be shown, I think, as follows: If generation were in a
    straight line only, and there were no compensation or circle
    in nature, no turn or return of elements into their opposites,
    then you know that all things would at last have the same
    form and pass into the same state, and there would be no
    more generation of them.

    What do you mean? he said.

[Sidenote: _The doctrine of recollection._]

[Sidenote: The sleeping Endymion would be unmeaning in a world of
sleepers.]

    A simple thing enough, which I will illustrate by the case
    of sleep, he replied. You know that if there were no alternation
    of sleeping and waking, the tale of the sleeping
    Endymion would in the end have no meaning, because all
    other things would be asleep too, and he would not be distinguishable
    from the rest. Or if there were composition
    only, and no division of substances, then the chaos of
    Anaxagoras would come again. And in like manner, my
    dear Cebes, if all things which partook of life were to die,
    and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and
    did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing
    would be alive—what other result could there be? For if the
    living spring from any other things, and they too die, must
    not all things at last be swallowed up in death?[23]

    There is no escape, Socrates, said Cebes; and to me your
    argument seems to be absolutely true.

    Yes, he said, Cebes, it is and must be so, in my opinion;
    and we have not been deluded in making these admissions;
    but I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living
    again, and that the living spring from the dead, and that the
    souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls
    have a better portion than the evil.

[Sidenote: The doctrine of recollection implies a previous existence.]

    Cebes added: Your favourite doctrine, Socrates, that
    knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily
    implies a previous time in which we have learned that which
    we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless our
    soul had been in some place before existing in the form of          73
    man; here then is another proof of the soul’s immortality.

    But tell me, Cebes, said Simmias, interposing, what arguments
    are urged in favour of this doctrine of recollection. I
    am not very sure at the moment that I remember them.

[Sidenote: You put a question to a person, and he answers out of his own
mind.]

    One excellent proof, said Cebes, is afforded by questions.
    If you put a question to a person in a right way, he will give
    a true answer of himself, but how could he do this unless
    there were knowledge and right reason already in him?
    And this is most clearly shown when he is taken to a diagram
    or to anything of that sort[24].

    But if, said Socrates, you are still incredulous, Simmias, I
    would ask you whether you may not agree with me when you
    look at the matter in another way;—I mean, if you are still
    incredulous as to whether knowledge is recollection?

    Incredulous I am not, said Simmias; but I want to have
    this doctrine of recollection brought to my own recollection,
    and, from what Cebes has said, I am beginning to recollect
    and be convinced: but I should still like to hear what you
    were going to say.

    This is what I would say, he replied:—We should agree,
    if I am not mistaken, that what a man recollects he must
    have known at some previous time.

    Very true.

[Sidenote: _The association of ideas._]

[Sidenote: A person may recollect what he has never seen together with
what he has seen. How is this?]

    And what is the nature of this knowledge or recollection?
    I mean to ask, Whether a person who, having seen or heard
    or in any way perceived anything, knows not only that, but
    has a conception of something else which is the subject, not
    of the same but of some other kind of knowledge, may not be
    fairly said to recollect that of which he has the conception?

    What do you mean?

    I mean what I may illustrate by the following instance:—The
    knowledge of a lyre is not the same as the knowledge of
    a man?

    True.

[Sidenote: Recollection is the knowledge of some person or thing derived
from some other person or thing which may be either like or unlike them.]

    And yet what is the feeling of lovers when they recognize
    a lyre, or a garment, or anything else which the beloved has
    been in the habit of using? Do not they, from knowing the
    lyre, form in the mind’s eye an image of the youth to whom
    the lyre belongs? And this is recollection. In like manner
    any one who sees Simmias may remember Cebes; and there
    are endless examples of the same thing.

    Endless, indeed, replied Simmias.

    And recollection is most commonly a process of recovering
    that which has been already forgotten through time and
    inattention.

    Very true, he said.

    Well; and may you not also from seeing the picture of a
    horse or a lyre remember a man? and from the picture of
    Simmias, you may be led to remember Cebes.

    True.

    Or you may also be led to the recollection of Simmias
    himself?

    Quite so.                                                           74

    And in all these cases, the recollection may be derived
    from things either like or unlike?

    It may be.

    And when the recollection is derived from like things, then
    another consideration is sure to arise, which is—whether the
    likeness in any degree falls short or not of that which is
    recollected?

[Sidenote: _The ideal equality and the material equals._]

    Very true, he said.

    And shall we proceed a step further, and affirm that there
    is such a thing as equality, not of one piece of wood or stone
    with another, but that, over and above this, there is absolute
    equality? Shall we say so?

    Say so, yes, replied Simmias, and swear to it, with all the
    confidence in life.

    And do we know the nature of this absolute essence?

    To be sure, he said.

[Sidenote: The imperfect equality of pieces of wood or stone suggests the
perfect idea of equality.]

    And whence did we obtain our knowledge? Did we not
    see equalities of material things, such as pieces of wood and
    stones, and gather from them the idea of an equality which is
    different from them? For you will acknowledge that there
    is a difference. Or look at the matter in another way:—Do
    not the same pieces of wood or stone appear at one time
    equal, and at another time unequal?

    That is certain.

    But are real equals ever unequal? or is the idea of equality
    the same as of inequality?

    Impossible, Socrates.

    Then these (so-called) equals are not the same with the idea
    of equality?

    I should say, clearly not, Socrates.

    And yet from these equals, although differing from the idea
    of equality, you conceived and attained that idea?

    Very true, he said.

    Which might be like, or might be unlike them?

    Yes.

    But that makes no difference: whenever from seeing one
    thing you conceived another, whether like or unlike, there
    must surely have been an act of recollection?

    Very true.

    But what would you say of equal portions of wood and
    stone, or other material equals? and what is the impression
    produced by them? Are they equals in the same sense in
    which absolute equality is equal? or do they fall short of
    this perfect equality in a measure?

    Yes, he said, in a very great measure too.

[Sidenote: But if the material equals when compared to the ideal equality
fall short of it, the ideal equality with which they are compared must be
prior to them, though only known through the medium of them.]

    And must we not allow, that when I or any one, looking at
    any object, observes that the thing which he sees aims at
    being some other thing, but falls short of, and cannot be, that
    other thing, but is inferior, he who makes this observation
    must have had a previous knowledge of that to which the
    other, although similar, was inferior?

[Sidenote: _The ideal equality._]

    Certainly.

    And has not this been our own case in the matter of equals
    and of absolute equality?

    Precisely.

    Then we must have known equality previously to the time
    when we first saw the material equals, and reflected that all       75
    these apparent equals strive to attain absolute equality, but
    fall short of it?

    Very true.

    And we recognize also that this absolute equality has only
    been known, and can only be known, through the medium of
    sight or touch, or of some other of the senses, which are all
    alike in this respect?

    Yes, Socrates, as far as the argument is concerned, one of
    them is the same as the other.

    From the senses then is derived the knowledge that all
    sensible things aim at an absolute equality of which they fall
    short?

    Yes.

    Then before we began to see or hear or perceive in any
    way, we must have had a knowledge of absolute equality, or
    we could not have referred to that standard the equals which
    are derived from the senses?—for to that they all aspire, and
    of that they fall short.

    No other inference can be drawn from the previous statements.

    And did we not see and hear and have the use of our other
    senses as soon as we were born?

    Certainly.

[Sidenote: That higher sense of equality must have been known to us
before we were born, was forgotten at birth, and was recovered by the use
of the senses.]

    Then we must have acquired the knowledge of equality at
    some previous time?

    Yes.

    That is to say, before we were born, I suppose?

    True.

[Sidenote: _The two alternatives._]

    And if we acquired this knowledge before we were born,
    and were born having the use of it, then we also knew before
    we were born and at the instant of birth not only the equal or
    the greater or the less, but all other ideas; for we are not
    speaking only of equality, but of beauty, goodness, justice,
    holiness, and of all which we stamp with the name of essence
    in the dialectical process, both when we ask and when we
    answer questions. Of all this we may certainly affirm that
    we acquired the knowledge before birth?

    We may.

    But if, after having acquired, we have not forgotten what
    in each case we acquired, then we must always have come
    into life having knowledge, and shall always continue to know
    as long as life lasts—for knowing is the acquiring and retaining
    knowledge and not forgetting. Is not forgetting, Simmias,
    just the losing of knowledge?

    Quite true, Socrates.

[Sidenote: What is called learning therefore is only a recollection of
ideas which we possessed in a previous state.]

    But if the knowledge which we acquired before birth was
    lost by us at birth, and if afterwards by the use of the senses
    we recovered what we previously knew, will not the process
    which we call learning be a recovering of the knowledge
    which is natural to us, and may not this be rightly termed
    recollection?

    Very true.

    So much is clear—that when we perceive something, either            76
    by the help of sight, or hearing, or some other sense, from
    that perception we are able to obtain a notion of some other
    thing like or unlike which is associated with it but has been
    forgotten. Whence, as I was saying, one of two alternatives
    follows:—either we had this knowledge at birth, and continued
    to know through life; or, after birth, those who are
    said to learn only remember, and learning is simply recollection.

    Yes, that is quite true, Socrates.

    And which alternative, Simmias, do you prefer? Had we
    the knowledge at our birth, or did we recollect the things
    which we knew previously to our birth?

    I cannot decide at the moment.

    At any rate you can decide whether he who has knowledge
    will or will not be able to render an account of his knowledge?
    What do you say?

    Certainly, he will.

[Sidenote: _The pre-existence of the soul._]

    But do you think that every man is able to give an account
    of these very matters about which we are speaking?

    Would that they could, Socrates, but I rather fear that
    to-morrow, at this time, there will no longer be any one
    alive who is able to give an account of them such as ought
    to be given.

    Then you are not of opinion, Simmias, that all men know
    these things?

    Certainly not.

    They are in process of recollecting that which they learned
    before?

    Certainly.

    But when did our souls acquire this knowledge?—not since
    we were born as men?

    Certainly not.

    And therefore, previously?

    Yes.

[Sidenote: But if so, our souls must have existed before they were in the
form of man; or if not the souls, then not the ideas.]

    Then, Simmias, our souls must also have existed without
    bodies before they were in the form of man, and must have
    had intelligence.

    Unless indeed you suppose, Socrates, that these notions are
    given us at the very moment of birth; for this is the only
    time which remains.

    Yes, my friend, but if so, when do we lose them? for they
    are not in us when we are born—that is admitted. Do we
    lose them at the moment of receiving them, or if not at what
    other time?

    No, Socrates, I perceive that I was unconsciously talking
    nonsense.

    Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always
    repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and
    an absolute essence of all things; and if to this, which is now
    discovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all
    our sensations, and with this compare them, finding these ideas
    to be pre-existent and our inborn possession—then our souls
    must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no
    force in the argument? There is the same proof that these
    ideas must have existed before we were born, as that our
    souls existed before we were born; and if not the ideas, then
    not the souls.

[Sidenote: _Simmias and Cebes are not quite satisfied._]

    Yes, Socrates; I am convinced that there is precisely the
    same necessity for the one as for the other; and the argument
    retreats successfully to the position that the existence            77
    of the soul before birth cannot be separated from the existence
    of the essence of which you speak. For there is
    nothing which to my mind is so patent as that beauty, goodness,
    and the other notions of which you were just now speaking,
    have a most real and absolute existence; and I am
    satisfied with the proof.

    Well, but is Cebes equally satisfied? for I must convince
    him too.

[Sidenote: Simmias and Cebes are agreed in thinking that the previous
existence of the soul is sufficiently proved, but not the future
existence.]

    I think, said Simmias, that Cebes is satisfied: although he
    is the most incredulous of mortals, yet I believe that he is
    sufficiently convinced of the existence of the soul before
    birth. But that after death the soul will continue to exist is
    not yet proven even to my own satisfaction. I cannot get
    rid of the feeling of the many to which Cebes was referring—the
    feeling that when the man dies the soul will be dispersed,
    and that this may be the extinction of her. For
    admitting that she may have been born elsewhere, and
    framed out of other elements, and was in existence before
    entering the human body, why after having entered in and
    gone out again may she not herself be destroyed and come
    to an end?

    Very true, Simmias, said Cebes; about half of what was
    required has been proven; to wit, that our souls existed
    before we were born:—that the soul will exist after death as
    well as before birth is the other half of which the proof is
    still wanting, and has to be supplied; when that is given
    the demonstration will be complete.

[Sidenote: But if the soul passes from death to birth, she must exist
after death as well as before birth.]

    But that proof, Simmias and Cebes, has been already
    given, said Socrates, if you put the two arguments together—I
    mean this and the former one, in which we admitted
    that everything living is born of the dead. For if the soul
    exists before birth, and in coming to life and being born can
    be born only from death and dying, must she not after death
    continue to exist, since she has to be born again?—Surely
    the proof which you desire has been already furnished.
    Still I suspect that you and Simmias would be glad to probe
    the argument further. Like children, you are haunted with
    a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may
    really blow her away and scatter her; especially if a man
    should happen to die in a great storm and not when the sky
    is calm.

[Sidenote: _‘The child within us.’_]

    Cebes answered with a smile: Then, Socrates, you must
    argue us out of our fears—and yet, strictly speaking, they
    are not our fears, but there is a child within us to whom
    death is a sort of hobgoblin: him too we must persuade not
    to be afraid when he is alone in the dark.

[Sidenote: The fear that the soul will vanish into air must be charmed
away.]

    Socrates said: Let the voice of the charmer be applied
    daily until you have charmed away the fear.

    And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears,                78
    Socrates, when you are gone?

    Hellas, he replied, is a large place, Cebes, and has
    many good men, and there are barbarous races not a few:
    seek for him among them all, far and wide, sparing
    neither pains nor money; for there is no better way of
    spending your money. And you must seek among yourselves
    too; for you will not find others better able to make
    the search.

    The search, replied Cebes, shall certainly be made. And
    now, if you please, let us return to the point of the argument
    at which we digressed.

    By all means, replied Socrates; what else should I
    please?

    Very good.

[Sidenote: What is the element which is liable to be scattered?—Not the
simple and unchangeable, but the composite and changing.]

    Must we not, said Socrates, ask ourselves what that is
    which, as we imagine, is liable to be scattered, and about
    which we fear? and what again is that about which we have
    no fear? And then we may proceed further to enquire
    whether that which suffers dispersion is or is not of the
    nature of soul—our hopes and fears as to our own souls will
    turn upon the answers to these questions.

    Very true, he said.

    Now the compound or composite may be supposed to be
    naturally capable, as of being compounded, so also of being
    dissolved; but that which is uncompounded, and that only,
    must be, if anything is, indissoluble.

    Yes; I should imagine so, said Cebes.

[Sidenote: _The seen and the unseen._]

    And the uncompounded may be assumed to be the same
    and unchanging, whereas the compound is always changing
    and never the same.

    I agree, he said.

[Sidenote: The soul and the ideas belong to the class of the unchanging,
which is also the unseen.]

    Then now let us return to the previous discussion. Is
    that idea or essence, which in the dialectical process we
    define as essence or true existence—whether essence of
    equality, beauty, or anything else—are these essences, I say,
    liable at times to some degree of change? or are they each
    of them always what they are, having the same simple self-existent
    and unchanging forms, not admitting of variation at
    all, or in any way, or at any time?

    They must be always the same, Socrates, replied Cebes.

    And what would you say of the many beautiful—whether
    men or horses or garments or any other things which are
    named by the same names and may be called equal or
    beautiful,—are they all unchanging and the same always, or
    quite the reverse? May they not rather be described as
    almost always changing and hardly ever the same, either
    with themselves or with one another?

    The latter, replied Cebes; they are always in a state of
    change.

    And these you can touch and see and perceive with the               79
    senses, but the unchanging things you can only perceive
    with the mind—they are invisible and are not seen?

    That is very true, he said.

    Well then, added Socrates, let us suppose that there are
    two sorts of existences—one seen, the other unseen.

    Let us suppose them.

    The seen is the changing, and the unseen is the unchanging?

    That may be also supposed.

    And, further, is not one part of us body, another part
    soul?

    To be sure.

    And to which class is the body more alike and akin?

    Clearly to the seen—no one can doubt that.

    And is the soul seen or not seen?

    Not by man, Socrates.

    And what we mean by ‘seen’ and ‘not seen’ is that which
    is or is not visible to the eye of man?

[Sidenote: _The nature of the soul._]

    Yes, to the eye of man.

    And is the soul seen or not seen?

    Not seen.

    Unseen then?

    Yes.

    Then the soul is more like to the unseen, and the body to
    the seen?

    That follows necessarily, Socrates.

[Sidenote: The soul which is unseen, when she makes use of the bodily
senses, is dragged down into the region of the changeable, and must
return into herself before she can attain to true wisdom.]

    And were we not saying long ago that the soul when using
    the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when
    using the sense of sight or hearing or some other sense (for
    the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving
    through the senses)—were we not saying that the soul too is
    then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable,
    and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her,
    and she is like a drunkard, when she touches change?

    Very true.

    But when returning into herself she reflects, then she
    passes into the other world, the region of purity, and
    eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness, which are
    her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is
    by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases
    from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging
    is unchanging. And this state of the soul is
    called wisdom?

    That is well and truly said, Socrates, he replied.

    And to which class is the soul more nearly alike and akin,
    as far as may be inferred from this argument, as well as
    from the preceding one?

[Sidenote: The soul is of the nature of the unchangeable, the body of the
changing; the soul rules, the body serves; the soul is in the likeness of
the divine, the body of the mortal.]

    I think, Socrates, that, in the opinion of every one who
    follows the argument, the soul will be infinitely more like
    the unchangeable—even the most stupid person will not
    deny that.

    And the body is more like the changing?

    Yes.

[Sidenote: _The passing of the soul._]

    Yet once more consider the matter in another light:
    When the soul and the body are united, then nature orders           80
    the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve.
    Now which of these two functions is akin to the divine?
    and which to the mortal? Does not the divine appear to
    you to be that which naturally orders and rules, and the
    mortal to be that which is subject and servant?

    True.

    And which does the soul resemble?

    The soul resembles the divine, and the body the mortal—there
    can be no doubt of that, Socrates.

    Then reflect, Cebes: of all which has been said is not this
    the conclusion?—that the soul is in the very likeness of the
    divine, and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and
    indissoluble, and unchangeable; and that the body is in the
    very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintellectual,
    and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable. Can this,
    my dear Cebes, be denied?

    It cannot.

    But if it be true, then is not the body liable to speedy
    dissolution? and is not the soul almost or altogether indissoluble?

    Certainly.

[Sidenote: Even from the body something may be learned about the soul;
for the corpse of a man lasts for some time, and when embalmed, in a
manner for ever.]

    And do you further observe, that after a man is dead, the
    body, or visible part of him, which is lying in the visible
    world, and is called a corpse, and would naturally be dissolved
    and decomposed and dissipated, is not dissolved or
    decomposed at once, but may remain for some time, nay
    even for a long time, if the constitution be sound at the
    time of death, and the season of the year favourable? For
    the body when shrunk and embalmed, as the manner is in
    Egypt, may remain almost entire through infinite ages; and
    even in decay, there are still some portions, such as the
    bones and ligaments, which are practically indestructible:—Do
    you agree?

    Yes.

[Sidenote: How unlikely then that the soul should at once pass away!]

    And is it likely that the soul, which is invisible, in passing
    to the place of the true Hades, which like her is invisible,
    and pure, and noble, and on her way to the good and wise
    God, whither, if God will, my soul is also soon to go,—that
    the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature and origin, will be
    blown away and destroyed immediately on quitting the
    body, as the many say? That can never be, my dear
    Simmias and Cebes. The truth rather is, that the soul
    which is pure at departing and draws after her no bodily
    taint, having never voluntarily during life had connection with
    the body, which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into
    herself;—and making such abstraction her perpetual study—which
    means that she has been a true disciple of philosophy;              81
    and therefore has in fact been always engaged in
    the practice of dying? For is not philosophy the study of
    death?—

    Certainly—

[Sidenote: Rather when free from bodily impurity she departs to the seats
of the blessed.]

    That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible
    world—to the divine and immortal and rational: thither
    arriving, she is secure of bliss and is released from the error
    and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all
    other human ills, and for ever dwells, as they say of the
    initiated, in company with the gods[25]. Is not this true,
    Cebes?

    Yes, said Cebes, beyond a doubt.

[Sidenote: _The impure soul made corporeal._]

    But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the
    time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of
    the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the
    body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she
    is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form,
    which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the
    purposes of his lusts,—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate
    and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the
    bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by
    philosophy;—do you suppose that such a soul will depart
    pure and unalloyed?

    Impossible, he replied.

    She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual
    association and constant care of the body have wrought into
    her nature.

    Very true.

[Sidenote: But the souls of the wicked are dragged down by the corporeal
element.]

    And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and
    weighty and earthy, and is that element of sight by which
    a soul is depressed and dragged down again into the visible
    world, because she is afraid of the invisible and of the world
    below—prowling about tombs and sepulchres, near which,
    as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls
    which have not departed pure, but are cloyed with sight and
    therefore visible[26].

[Sidenote: _Transmigration of men into animals._]

    That is very likely, Socrates.

    Yes, that is very likely, Cebes; and these must be the
    souls, not of the good, but of the evil, which are compelled
    to wander about such places in payment of the penalty of
    their former evil way of life; and they continue to wander
    until through the craving after the corporeal which never
    leaves them, they are imprisoned finally in another body.
    And they may be supposed to find their prisons in the same
    natures which they have had in their former lives.

    What natures do you mean, Socrates?

[Sidenote: They wander into the bodies of the animals or of birds which
are of a like nature with themselves.]

    What I mean is that men who have followed after gluttony,
    and wantonness, and drunkenness, and have had no thought
    of avoiding them, would pass into asses and animals of that
    sort. What do you think?                                            82

    I think such an opinion to be exceedingly probable.

    And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and
    tyranny, and violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks
    and kites;—whither else can we suppose them to go?

    Yes, said Cebes; with such natures, beyond question.

    And there is no difficulty, he said, in assigning to all of
    them places answering to their several natures and propensities?

    There is not, he said.

    Some are happier than others; and the happiest both in
    themselves and in the place to which they go are those who
    have practised the civil and social virtues which are called
    temperance and justice, and are acquired by habit and attention
    without philosophy and mind[27].

[Sidenote: _The deliverance of the soul by philosophy._]

    Why are they the happiest?

    Because they may be expected to pass into some gentle
    and social kind which is like their own, such as bees or wasps
    or ants, or back again into the form of man, and just and
    moderate men may be supposed to spring from them.

    Very likely.

    No one who has not studied philosophy and who is not
    entirely pure at the time of his departure is allowed to enter
    the company of the Gods, but the lover of knowledge only.
    And this is the reason, Simmias and Cebes, why the true
    votaries of philosophy abstain from all fleshly lusts, and hold
    out against them and refuse to give themselves up to them,—not
    because they fear poverty or the ruin of their families,
    like the lovers of money, and the world in general; nor like
    the lovers of power and honour, because they dread the dishonour
    or disgrace of evil deeds.

    No, Socrates, that would not become them, said Cebes.

    No indeed, he replied; and therefore they who have any
    care of their own souls, and do not merely live moulding and
    fashioning the body, say farewell to all this; they will not
    walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers
    them purification and release from evil, they feel that they
    ought not to resist her influence, and whither she leads they
    turn and follow.

    What do you mean, Socrates?

[Sidenote: _Why the philosopher is temperate._]

[Sidenote: The new consciousness which is awakened by philosophy.]

[Sidenote: The philosopher considers not only the consequences of
pleasures and pains, but, what is far worse, the false lights in which
they show objects.]

    I will tell you, he said. The lovers of knowledge are conscious
    that the soul was simply fastened and glued to the
    body—until philosophy received her, she could only view real
    existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through
    herself; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of
    ignorance, and by reason of lust had become the principal
    accomplice in her own captivity. This was her original              83
    state; and then, as I was saying, and as the lovers of
    knowledge are well aware, philosophy, seeing how terrible
    was her confinement, of which she was to herself the cause,
    received and gently comforted her and sought to release her,
    pointing out that the eye and the ear and the other senses
    are full of deception, and persuading her to retire from them,
    and abstain from all but the necessary use of them, and be
    gathered up and collected into herself, bidding her trust in
    herself and her own pure apprehension of pure existence, and
    mistrust whatever comes to her through other channels
    and is subject to variation; for such things are visible and
    tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is intelligible
    and invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks
    that she ought not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains
    from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far
    as she is able; reflecting that when a man has great joys or
    sorrows or fears or desires, he suffers from them, not merely
    the sort of evil which might be anticipated—as for example,
    the loss of his health or property which he has sacrificed to
    his lusts—but an evil greater far, which is the greatest and
    worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.

    What is it, Socrates? said Cebes.

    The evil is that when the feeling of pleasure or pain is
    most intense, every soul of man imagines the objects of this
    intense feeling to be then plainest and truest: but this is not
    so, they are really the things of sight.

    Very true.

    And is not this the state in which the soul is most enthralled
    by the body?

    How so?

    Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail
    which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes
    like the body, and believes that to be true which the
    body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body
    and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same
    habits and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at her
    departure to the world below, but is always infected by the
    body; and so she sinks into another body and there germinates
    and grows, and has therefore no part in the communion
    of the divine and pure and simple.

    Most true, Socrates, answered Cebes.

    And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of
    knowledge are temperate and brave; and not for the reason
    which the world gives.

    Certainly not.                                                      84

[Sidenote: _The first great argument concluded._]

[Sidenote: The soul which has been emancipated from pleasures and pains
will not be blown away at death.]

    Certainly not! The soul of a philosopher will reason in
    quite another way; she will not ask philosophy to release
    her in order that then released she may deliver herself up
    again to the thraldom of pleasures and pains, doing a work
    only to be undone again, weaving instead of unweaving her
    Penelope’s web. But she will calm passion, and follow
    reason, and dwell in the contemplation of her, beholding the
    true and divine (which is not matter of opinion), and thence
    deriving nourishment. Thus she seeks to live while she
    lives, and after death she hopes to go to her own kindred
    and to that which is like her, and to be freed from human
    ills. Never fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which has
    been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her
    departure from the body be scattered and blown away by the
    winds and be nowhere and nothing.

[Sidenote: Simmias and Cebes have their doubts, but think that this is
not the time to express them.]

    When Socrates had done speaking, for a considerable time
    there was silence; he himself appeared to be meditating, as
    most of us were, on what had been said; only Cebes and
    Simmias spoke a few words to one another. And Socrates
    observing them asked what they thought of the argument,
    and whether there was anything wanting? For, said he,
    there are many points still open to suspicion and attack, if
    any one were disposed to sift the matter thoroughly. Should
    you be considering some other matter I say no more, but if
    you are still in doubt do not hesitate to say exactly what you
    think, and let us have anything better which you can suggest;
    and if you think that I can be of any use, allow me to
    help you.

    Simmias said: I must confess, Socrates, that doubts did
    arise in our minds, and each of us was urging and inciting
    the other to put the question which we wanted to have
    answered but which neither of us liked to ask, fearing that
    our importunity might be troublesome at such a time.

[Sidenote: Socrates rebukes their want of confidence in him.]

[Sidenote: What is the meaning of the swans’ singing?]

[Sidenote: _Simmias and Cebes have still their difficulties._]

[Sidenote: They do not lament, as men suppose, at their approaching
death; but they rejoice because they are going to the God, whose servants
they are.]

[Sidenote: Socrates, who is their fellow-servant, will not leave the
world less cheerily.]

    Socrates replied with a smile: O Simmias, what are you
    saying? I am not very likely to persuade other men that
    I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I
    cannot even persuade you that I am no worse off now than at
    any other time in my life. Will you not allow that I have as
    much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For
    they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all
    their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing
    in the thought that they are about to go away to the god            85
    whose ministers they are. But men, because they are themselves
    afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that
    they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird
    sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale,
    nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said
    indeed to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this
    to be true of them any more than of the swans. But because
    they are sacred to Apollo, they have the gift of prophecy,
    and anticipate the good things of another world; wherefore
    they sing and rejoice in that day more than ever they did
    before. And I too, believing myself to be the consecrated
    servant of the same God, and the fellow-servant of the
    swans, and thinking that I have received from my master
    gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not
    go out of life less merrily than the swans. Never mind
    then, if this be your only objection, but speak and ask anything
    which you like, while the eleven magistrates of Athens
    allow.

[Sidenote: Simmias insists that they must probe truth to the bottom.]

    Very good, Socrates, said Simmias; then I will tell you my
    difficulty, and Cebes will tell you his. I feel myself (and I
    daresay that you have the same feeling), how hard or rather
    impossible is the attainment of any certainty about questions
    such as these in the present life. And yet I should deem
    him a coward who did not prove what is said about them to
    the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined
    them on every side. For he should persevere until
    he has achieved one of two things: either he should discover,
    or be taught the truth about them; or, if this be
    impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable
    of human theories, and let this be the raft upon
    which he sails through life—not without risk, as I admit, if
    he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and
    safely carry him. And now, as you bid me, I will venture to
    question you, and then I shall not have to reproach myself
    hereafter with not having said at the time what I think. For
    when I consider the matter, either alone or with Cebes, the
    argument does certainly appear to me, Socrates, to be not
    sufficient.

[Sidenote: _The doubt of Simmias._]

    Socrates answered: I dare say, my friend, that you may
    be right, but I should like to know in what respect the argument
    is insufficient.

[Sidenote: The harmony does not survive the lyre; how then can the soul,
which is also a harmony, survive the body?]

    In this respect, replied Simmias:—Suppose a person to
    use the same argument about harmony and the lyre—might
    he not say that harmony is a thing invisible, incorporeal,
    perfect, divine, existing in the lyre which is harmonized, but      86
    that the lyre and the strings are matter and material, composite,
    earthy, and akin to mortality? And when some one
    breaks the lyre, or cuts and rends the strings, then he who
    takes this view would argue as you do, and on the same
    analogy, that the harmony survives and has not perished—you
    cannot imagine, he would say, that the lyre without the
    strings, and the broken strings themselves which are mortal
    remain, and yet that the harmony, which is of heavenly
    and immortal nature and kindred, has perished—perished
    before the mortal. The harmony must still be somewhere,
    and the wood and strings will decay before anything
    can happen to that. The thought, Socrates, must have
    occurred to your own mind that such is our conception of the
    soul; and that when the body is in a manner strung and
    held together by the elements of hot and cold, wet and dry,
    then the soul is the harmony or due proportionate admixture
    of them. But if so, whenever the strings of the body are
    unduly loosened or overstrained through disease or other
    injury, then the soul, though most divine, like other harmonies
    of music or works of art, of course perishes at once;
    although the material remains of the body may last for a
    considerable time, until they are either decayed or burnt.
    And if any one maintains that the soul, being the harmony
    of the elements of the body, is first to perish in that which is
    called death, how shall we answer him?

    Socrates looked fixedly at us as his manner was, and said
    with a smile: Simmias has reason on his side; and why does
    not some one of you who is better able than myself answer
    him? for there is force in his attack upon me. But perhaps,
    before we answer him, we had better also hear what Cebes
    has to say that we may gain time for reflection, and when
    they have both spoken, we may either assent to them, if
    there is truth in what they say, or if not, we will maintain
    our position. Please to tell me then, Cebes, he said, what
    was the difficulty which troubled you?

[Sidenote: _The doubt of Cebes._]

[Sidenote: A weaver may outlive many coats and himself be outlived by the
last: so the soul which has passed through many bodies may in the end be
worn out.]

    Cebes said: I will tell you. My feeling is that the argument
    is where it was, and open to the same objections which
    were urged before; for I am ready to admit that the existence       87
    of the soul before entering into the bodily form has
    been very ingeniously, and, if I may say so, quite sufficiently
    proven; but the existence of the soul after death is still, in
    my judgment, unproven. Now my objection is not the same
    as that of Simmias; for I am not disposed to deny that the
    soul is stronger and more lasting than the body, being of
    opinion that in all such respects the soul very far excels the
    body. Well then, says the argument to me, why do you
    remain unconvinced?—When you see that the weaker continues
    in existence after the man is dead, will you not admit
    that the more lasting must also survive during the same
    period of time? Now I will ask you to consider whether
    the objection, which, like Simmias, I will express in a figure,
    is of any weight. The analogy which I will adduce is that
    of an old weaver, who dies, and after his death somebody
    says:—He is not dead, he must be alive;—see, there is the
    coat which he himself wove and wore, and which remains
    whole and undecayed. And then he proceeds to ask of some
    one who is incredulous, whether a man lasts longer, or the
    coat which is in use and wear; and when he is answered
    that a man lasts far longer, thinks that he has thus certainly
    demonstrated the survival of the man, who is the more
    lasting, because the less lasting remains. But that, Simmias,
    as I would beg you to remark, is a mistake; any one can see
    that he who talks thus is talking nonsense. For the truth is,
    that the weaver aforesaid, having woven and worn many
    such coats, outlived several of them; and was outlived by the
    last; but a man is not therefore proved to be slighter and
    weaker than a coat. Now the relation of the body to the
    soul may be expressed in a similar figure; and any one may
    very fairly say in like manner that the soul is lasting, and the
    body weak and short-lived in comparison. He may argue in
    like manner that every soul wears out many bodies, especially
    if a man live many years. While he is alive the body
    deliquesces and decays, and the soul always weaves another
    garment and repairs the waste. But of course, whenever
    the soul perishes, she must have on her last garment, and
    this will survive her; and then at length, when the soul is
    dead, the body will show its native weakness, and quickly
    decompose and pass away. I would therefore rather not
    rely on the argument from superior strength to prove the
    continued existence of the soul after death. For granting           88
    even more than you affirm to be possible, and acknowledging
    not only that the soul existed before birth, but also that the
    souls of some exist, and will continue to exist after death,
    and will be born and die again and again, and that there is a
    natural strength in the soul which will hold out and be born
    many times—nevertheless, we may be still inclined to think
    that she will weary in the labours of successive births, and
    may at last succumb in one of her deaths and utterly perish;
    and this death and dissolution of the body which brings
    destruction to the soul may be unknown to any of us, for no
    one of us can have had any experience of it: and if so, then
    I maintain that he who is confident about death has but a
    foolish confidence, unless he is able to prove that the soul is
    altogether immortal and imperishable. But if he cannot
    prove the soul’s immortality, he who is about to die will
    always have reason to fear that when the body is disunited,
    the soul also may utterly perish.

[Sidenote: _The dejection of the audience._]

[Sidenote: The despair of the audience at hearing the overthrow of the
argument.]

    All of us, as we afterwards remarked to one another, had
    an unpleasant feeling at hearing what they said. When we
    had been so firmly convinced before, now to have our faith
    shaken seemed to introduce a confusion and uncertainty, not
    only into the previous argument, but into any future one;
    either we were incapable of forming a judgment, or there
    were no grounds of belief.

    _Ech._ There I feel with you—by heaven I do, Phaedo, and
    when you were speaking, I was beginning to ask myself the
    same question: What argument can I ever trust again? For
    what could be more convincing than the argument of Socrates,
    which has now fallen into discredit? That the soul is a harmony
    is a doctrine which has always had a wonderful attraction
    for me, and, when mentioned, came back to me at once,
    as my own original conviction. And now I must begin again
    and find another argument which will assure me that when
    the man is dead the soul survives. Tell me, I implore
    you, how did Socrates proceed? Did he appear to share
    the unpleasant feeling which you mention? or did he calmly
    meet the attack? And did he answer forcibly or feebly?
    Narrate what passed as exactly as you can.

[Sidenote: _Socrates comes to the rescue._]

[Sidenote: The wonderful manner in which Socrates soothes his
disappointed hearers and rehabilitates the argument.]

    _Phaed._ Often, Echecrates, I have wondered at Socrates,
    but never more than on that occasion. That he should be             89
    able to answer was nothing, but what astonished me was,
    first, the gentle and pleasant and approving manner in which
    he received the words of the young men, and then his quick
    sense of the wound which had been inflicted by the argument,
    and the readiness with which he healed it. He might be
    compared to a general rallying his defeated and broken
    army, urging them to accompany him and return to the field
    of argument.

    _Ech._ What followed?

    _Phaed._ You shall hear, for I was close to him on his right
    hand, seated on a sort of stool, and he on a couch which was
    a good deal higher. He stroked my head, and pressed the
    hair upon my neck—he had a way of playing with my hair;
    and then he said: To-morrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these
    fair locks of yours will be severed.

    Yes, Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied.

    Not so, if you will take my advice.

    What shall I do with them? I said.

    To-day, he replied, and not to-morrow, if this argument dies
    and we cannot bring it to life again, you and I will both
    shave our locks: and if I were you, and the argument got
    away from me, and I could not hold my ground against
    Simmias and Cebes, I would myself take an oath, like the
    Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had renewed the
    conflict and defeated them.

    Yes, I said; but Heracles himself is said not to be a match
    for two.

    Summon me then, he said, and I will be your Iolaus until
    the sun goes down.

    I summon you rather, I rejoined, not as Heracles summoning
    Iolaus, but as Iolaus might summon Heracles.

    That will do as well, he said. But first let us take care
    that we avoid a danger.

[Sidenote: _We must not become misologists._]

    Of what nature? I said.

[Sidenote: The danger of becoming haters of ideas greater than of
becoming haters of men.]

    Lest we become misologists, he replied: no worse thing
    can happen to a man than this. For as there are misanthropists
    or haters of men, there are also misologists or
    haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which
    is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises out of the too
    great confidence of inexperience;—you trust a man and think
    him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a
    little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then
    another and another, and when this has happened several
    times to a man, especially when it happens among those
    whom he deems to be his own most trusted and familiar
    friends, and he has often quarrelled with them, he at last
    hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him
    at all. You must have observed this trait of character?

    I have.

[Sidenote: There are few very bad or very good men; (although bad
arguments may be more numerous than bad men); the main point is that he
who has been often deceived by either is apt to lose faith in them.]

    And is not the feeling discreditable? Is it not obvious
    that such an one having to deal with other men, was clearly
    without any experience of human nature; for experience
    would have taught him the true state of the case, that few are
    the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in       90
    the interval between them.

    What do you mean? I said.

    I mean, he replied, as you might say of the very large and
    very small—that nothing is more uncommon than a very
    large or very small man; and this applies generally to all
    extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or
    fair and foul, or black and white: and whether the instances
    you select be men or dogs or anything else, few are the
    extremes, but many are in the mean between them. Did you
    never observe this?

    Yes, I said, I have.

    And do you not imagine, he said, that if there were a competition
    in evil, the worst would be found to be very few?

    Yes, that is very likely, I said.

    Yes, that is very likely, he replied; although in this
    respect arguments are unlike men—there I was led on by
    you to say more than I had intended; but the point of comparison
    was, that when a simple man who has no skill in
    dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterwards
    imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then
    another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and
    great disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they
    have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive
    the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments,
    or indeed, of all things, which, like the currents in the
    Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and
    flow.

[Sidenote: _Avoid scepticism._]

    That is quite true, I said.

    Yes, Phaedo, he replied, and how melancholy, if there be
    such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge—that
    a man should have lighted upon some argument or
    other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be
    false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of
    wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to
    transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general: and
    for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose
    truth and the knowledge of realities.

    Yes, indeed, I said; that is very melancholy.

[Sidenote: Socrates, who is soon to die, has too much at stake on the
argument to be a fair judge. Simmias and Cebes must help him to consider
the matter impartially.]

    Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing
    or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no
    health or soundness in any arguments at all. Rather say that
    we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that
    we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of
    mind—you and all other men having regard to the whole of
    your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death. For
    at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of          91
    a philosopher; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. Now
    the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing
    about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince
    his hearers of his own assertions. And the difference
    between him and me at the present moment is merely this—that
    whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he
    says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to
    convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me. And
    do but see how much I gain by the argument. For if what I
    say is true, then I do well to be persuaded of the truth; but
    if there be nothing after death, still, during the short time
    that remains, I shall not distress my friends with lamentations,
    and my ignorance will not last, but will die with me,
    and therefore no harm will be done. This is the state of
    mind, Simmias and Cebes, in which I approach the argument.
    And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of
    Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the
    truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may
    not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like
    the bee, leave my sting in you before I die.

[Sidenote: _Simmias and Cebes reassured and answered._]

[Sidenote: Simmias and Cebes are inclined to fear that the soul
may perish before the body, but they still hold to the doctrine of
reminiscence.]

    And now let us proceed, he said. And first of all let me
    be sure that I have in my mind what you were saying.
    Simmias, if I remember rightly, has fears and misgivings
    whether the soul, although a fairer and diviner thing than
    the body, being as she is in the form of harmony, may not
    perish first. On the other hand, Cebes appeared to grant
    that the soul was more lasting than the body, but he said that
    no one could know whether the soul, after having worn out
    many bodies, might not perish herself and leave her last
    body behind her; and that this is death, which is the
    destruction not of the body but of the soul, for in the body
    the work of destruction is ever going on. Are not these,
    Simmias and Cebes, the points which we have to consider?

    They both agreed to this statement of them.

    He proceeded: And did you deny the force of the whole
    preceding argument, or of a part only?

    Of a part only, they replied.

    And what did you think, he said, of that part of the
    argument in which we said that knowledge was recollection,
    and hence inferred that the soul must have previously
    existed somewhere else before she was enclosed in the               92
    body?

    Cebes said that he had been wonderfully impressed by that
    part of the argument, and that his conviction remained
    absolutely unshaken. Simmias agreed, and added that he
    himself could hardly imagine the possibility of his ever
    thinking differently.

[Sidenote: The elements of harmony are prior to harmony, but the body is
not prior to the soul.]

    But, rejoined Socrates, you will have to think differently,
    my Theban friend, if you still maintain that harmony is a
    compound, and that the soul is a harmony which is made out
    of strings set in the frame of the body; for you will surely
    never allow yourself to say that a harmony is prior to the
    elements which compose it.

[Sidenote: _Harmony not prior to the elements of harmony._]

    Never, Socrates.

    But do you not see that this is what you imply when you
    say that the soul existed before she took the form and body
    of man, and was made up of elements which as yet had no
    existence? For harmony is not like the soul, as you
    suppose; but first the lyre, and the strings, and the sounds
    exist in a state of discord, and then harmony is made last of
    all, and perishes first. And how can such a notion of the
    soul as this agree with the other?

    Not at all, replied Simmias.

    And yet, he said, there surely ought to be harmony in a
    discourse of which harmony is the theme?

    There ought, replied Simmias.

    But there is no harmony, he said, in the two propositions
    that knowledge is recollection, and that the soul is a harmony.
    Which of them will you retain?

[Sidenote: Simmias acknowledges that his argument does not harmonize with
the proposition that knowledge is recollection.]

    I think, he replied, that I have a much stronger faith,
    Socrates, in the first of the two, which has been fully
    demonstrated to me, than in the latter, which has not been
    demonstrated at all, but rests only on probable and plausible
    grounds; and is therefore believed by the many. I know
    too well that these arguments from probabilities are impostors,
    and unless great caution is observed in the use of
    them, they are apt to be deceptive—in geometry, and in
    other things too. But the doctrine of knowledge and recollection
    has been proven to me on trustworthy grounds: and
    the proof was that the soul must have existed before she
    came into the body, because to her belongs the essence of
    which the very name implies existence. Having, as I am
    convinced, rightly accepted this conclusion, and on sufficient
    grounds, I must, as I suppose, cease to argue or allow others
    to argue that the soul is a harmony.

    Let me put the matter, Simmias, he said, in another point
    of view: Do you imagine that a harmony or any other                 93
    composition can be in a state other than that of the elements,
    out of which it is compounded?

    Certainly not.

    Or do or suffer anything other than they do or suffer?

    He agreed.

    Then a harmony does not, properly speaking, lead the
    parts or elements which make up the harmony, but only
    follows them.

[Sidenote: _Harmony is an effect, not a cause._]

    He assented.

    For harmony cannot possibly have any motion, or sound,
    or other quality which is opposed to its parts.

    That would be impossible, he replied.

    And does not the nature of every harmony depend upon
    the manner in which the elements are harmonized?

    I do not understand you, he said.

[Sidenote: Harmony admits of degrees, but in the soul there are no
degrees; and therefore there cannot be a soul or harmony within a soul.]

    I mean to say that a harmony admits of degrees, and is
    more of a harmony, and more completely a harmony, when
    more truly and fully harmonized, to any extent which is
    possible; and less of a harmony, and less completely a
    harmony, when less truly and fully harmonized.

    True.

    But does the soul admit of degrees? or is one soul in the
    very least degree more or less, or more or less completely, a
    soul than another?

    Not in the least.

    Yet surely of two souls, one is said to have intelligence
    and virtue, and to be good, and the other to have folly and
    vice, and to be an evil soul: and this is said truly?

    Yes, truly.

    But what will those who maintain the soul to be a harmony
    say of this presence of virtue and vice in the soul?—will
    they say that here is another harmony, and another discord,
    and that the virtuous soul is harmonized, and herself being
    a harmony has another harmony within her, and that the
    vicious soul is inharmonical and has no harmony within her?

    I cannot tell, replied Simmias; but I suppose that something
    of the sort would be asserted by those who say that
    the soul is a harmony.

    And we have already admitted that no soul is more a soul
    than another; which is equivalent to admitting that harmony
    is not more or less harmony, or more or less completely a
    harmony?

    Quite true.

    And that which is not more or less a harmony is not more
    or less harmonized?

    True.

[Sidenote: _The soul not a harmony._]

    And that which is not more or less harmonized cannot
    have more or less of harmony, but only an equal harmony?

    Yes, an equal harmony.

    Then one soul not being more or less absolutely a soul
    than another, is not more or less harmonized?

    Exactly.

    And therefore has neither more nor less of discord, nor
    yet of harmony?

    She has not.

    And having neither more nor less of harmony or of discord,
    one soul has no more vice or virtue than another, if
    vice be discord and virtue harmony?

    Not at all more.

    Or speaking more correctly, Simmias, the soul, if she is a          94
    harmony, will never have any vice; because a harmony,
    being absolutely a harmony, has no part in the inharmonical.

    No.

[Sidenote: If the soul is a harmony, all souls must be equally good.]

    And therefore a soul which is absolutely a soul has no
    vice?

    How can she have, if the previous argument holds?

    Then, if all souls are equally by their nature souls, all
    souls of all living creatures will be equally good?

    I agree with you, Socrates, he said.

    And can all this be true, think you? he said; for these
    are the consequences which seem to follow from the assumption
    that the soul is a harmony?

    It cannot be true.

    Once more, he said, what ruler is there of the elements of
    human nature other than the soul, and especially the wise
    soul? Do you know of any?

    Indeed, I do not.

    And is the soul in agreement with the affections of the
    body? or is she at variance with them? For example, when
    the body is hot and thirsty, does not the soul incline us
    against drinking? and when the body is hungry, against
    eating? And this is only one instance out of ten thousand of
    the opposition of the soul to the things of the body.

    Very true.

[Sidenote: _Enough of Harmonia._]

    But we have already acknowledged that the soul, being a
    harmony, can never utter a note at variance with the tensions
    and relaxations and vibrations and other affections of the
    strings out of which she is composed; she can only follow,
    she cannot lead them?

    It must be so, he replied.

[Sidenote: The soul leads and does not follow. She constrains and
reprimands the passions.]

    And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the
    exact opposite—leading the elements of which she is believed
    to be composed; almost always opposing and coercing them
    in all sorts of ways throughout life, sometimes more violently
    with the pains of medicine and gymnastic; then again more
    gently; now threatening, now admonishing the desires,
    passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself,
    as Homer in the Odyssey represents Odysseus doing in the
    words—

      ‘He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart:
      Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured!’

    Do you think that Homer wrote this under the idea that the
    soul is a harmony capable of being led by the affections of
    the body, and not rather of a nature which should lead and
    master them—herself a far diviner thing than any harmony?

    Yes, Socrates, I quite think so.

    Then, my friend, we can never be right in saying that the
    soul is a harmony, for we should contradict the divine              95
    Homer, and contradict ourselves.

    True, he said.

    Thus much, said Socrates, of Harmonia, your Theban
    goddess, who has graciously yielded to us; but what shall I
    say, Cebes, to her husband Cadmus, and how shall I make
    peace with him?

    I think that you will discover a way of propitiating him,
    said Cebes; I am sure that you have put the argument with
    Harmonia in a manner that I could never have expected.
    For when Simmias was mentioning his difficulty, I quite
    imagined that no answer could be given to him, and therefore
    I was surprised at finding that his argument could not
    sustain the first onset of yours, and not impossibly the other,
    whom you call Cadmus, may share a similar fate.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation of the argument of Cebes.]

[Sidenote: _Let us now proceed to the Theban Cadmus._]

    Nay, my good friend, said Socrates, let us not boast, lest
    some evil eye should put to flight the word which I am about
    to speak. That, however, may be left in the hands of those
    above; while I draw near in Homeric fashion, and try the
    mettle of your words. Here lies the point:—You want to
    have it proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal,
    and the philosopher who is confident in death appears
    to you to have but a vain and foolish confidence, if he believes
    that he will fare better in the world below than one who has
    led another sort of life, unless he can prove this: and you
    say that the demonstration of the strength and divinity of
    the soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men,
    does not necessarily imply her immortality. Admitting the
    soul to be longlived, and to have known and done much in a
    former state, still she is not on that account immortal; and
    her entrance into the human form may be a sort of disease
    which is the beginning of dissolution, and may at last, after
    the toils of life are over, end in that which is called death.
    And whether the soul enters into the body once only or
    many times, does not, as you say, make any difference in
    the fears of individuals. For any man, who is not devoid of
    sense, must fear, if he has no knowledge and can give no
    account of the soul’s immortality. This, or something like
    this, I suspect to be your notion, Cebes; and I designedly
    recur to it in order that nothing may escape us, and that
    you may, if you wish, add or subtract anything.

    But, said Cebes, as far as I see at present, I have nothing
    to add or subtract: I mean what you say that I mean.

    Socrates paused awhile, and seemed to be absorbed in
    reflection. At length he said: You are raising a tremendous
    question, Cebes, involving the whole nature of
    generation and corruption, about which, if you like, I will         96
    give you my own experience; and if anything which I say is
    likely to avail towards the solution of your difficulty you may
    make use of it.

    I should very much like, said Cebes, to hear what you have
    to say.

[Sidenote: The speculations of Socrates about physics made him forget the
commonest things.]

[Sidenote: _Socrates incapable of enquiring into nature._]

    Then I will tell you, said Socrates. When I was young,
    Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know that department of
    philosophy which is called the investigation of nature; to
    know the causes of things, and why a thing is and is
    created or destroyed appeared to me to be a lofty profession;
    and I was always agitating myself with the consideration
    of questions such as these:—Is the growth of
    animals the result of some decay which the hot and cold
    principle contracts, as some have said? Is the blood the
    element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or
    perhaps nothing of the kind—but the brain may be the
    originating power of the perceptions of hearing and sight
    and smell, and memory and opinion may come from them,
    and science may be based on memory and opinion when they
    have attained fixity. And then I went on to examine the
    corruption of them, and then to the things of heaven and
    earth, and at last I concluded myself to be utterly and absolutely
    incapable of these enquiries, as I will satisfactorily
    prove to you. For I was fascinated by them to such a degree
    that my eyes grew blind to things which I had seemed to
    myself, and also to others, to know quite well; I forgot what
    I had before thought self-evident truths; e. g. such a fact as
    that the growth of man is the result of eating and drinking;
    for when by the digestion of food flesh is added to flesh and
    bone to bone, and whenever there is an aggregation of congenial
    elements, the lesser bulk becomes larger and the small
    man great. Was not that a reasonable notion?

    Yes, said Cebes, I think so.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of explaining relative notions.]

    Well; but let me tell you something more. There was a
    time when I thought that I understood the meaning of greater
    and less pretty well; and when I saw a great man standing
    by a little one, I fancied that one was taller than the other by
    a head; or one horse would appear to be greater than
    another horse: and still more clearly did I seem to perceive
    that ten is two more than eight, and that two cubits are more
    than one, because two is the double of one.

    And what is now your notion of such matters? said Cebes.

    I should be far enough from imagining, he replied, that I
    knew the cause of any of them, by heaven I should; for I
    cannot satisfy myself that, when one is added to one, the one
    to which the addition is made becomes two, or that the two          97
    units added together make two by reason of the addition. I
    cannot understand how, when separated from the other, each
    of them was one and not two, and now, when they are
    brought together, the mere juxtaposition or meeting of them
    should be the cause of their becoming two: neither can I
    understand how the division of one is the way to make two;
    for then a different cause would produce the same effect,—as
    in the former instance the addition and juxtaposition of one
    to one was the cause of two, in this the separation and subtraction
    of one from the other would be the cause. Nor am
    I any longer satisfied that I understand the reason why one
    or anything else is either generated or destroyed or is at all,
    but I have in my mind some confused notion of a new
    method, and can never admit the other.

[Sidenote: _The inconsistency of Anaxagoras._]

[Sidenote: The great expectations which Socrates had from the doctrine of
Anaxagoras, that all was Mind.]

    Then I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book
    of Anaxagoras, that mind was the disposer and cause of all,
    and I was delighted at this notion, which appeared quite
    admirable, and I said to myself: If mind is the disposer,
    mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in
    the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to find
    out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of
    anything, he must find out what state of being or doing or
    suffering was best for that thing, and therefore a man had only
    to consider the best for himself and others, and then he
    would also know the worse, since the same science comprehended
    both. And I rejoiced to think that I had found in
    Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired,
    and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the
    earth is flat or round; and whichever was true, he would
    proceed to explain the cause and the necessity of this being
    so, and then he would teach me the nature of the best and
    show that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in
    the centre, he would further explain that this position was
    the best, and I should be satisfied with the explanation
    given, and not want any other sort of cause. And I thought          98
    that I would then go on and ask him about the sun and moon
    and stars, and that he would explain to me their comparative
    swiftness, and their returnings and various states, active and
    passive, and how all of them were for the best. For I could
    not imagine that when he spoke of mind as the disposer of
    them, he would give any other account of their being as they
    are, except that this was best; and I thought that when he
    had explained to me in detail the cause of each and the
    cause of all, he would go on to explain to me what was best
    for each and what was good for all. These hopes I would
    not have sold for a large sum of money, and I seized the
    books and read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to
    know the better and the worse.

[Sidenote: _Confusion of the causes and conditions of actions._]

[Sidenote: The greatness of his disappointment.]

    What expectations I had formed, and how grievously was
    I disappointed! As I proceeded, I found my philosopher
    altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order,
    but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other
    eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began
    by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the
    actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavoured to explain
    the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to
    show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones
    and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and
    have joints which divide them, and the muscles are elastic,
    and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or
    environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as
    the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or
    relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and
    this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture—that is
    what he would say; and he would have a similar explanation
    of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and
    air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other
    causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause,
    which is, that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me,
    and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to
    remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to
    think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone          99
    off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would,
    if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was
    best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part,
    instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any
    punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a
    strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It
    may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the
    other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But
    to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the
    way in which mind acts, and not from the choice of the best,
    is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that
    they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which
    the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking
    and misnaming. And thus one man makes a vortex all
    round, and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives
    the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of broad
    trough. Any power which in arranging them as they are
    arranges them for the best never enters into their minds;
    and instead of finding any superior strength in it, they rather
    expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is stronger
    and more everlasting and more containing than the good;—of
    the obligatory and containing power of the good they think
    nothing; and yet this is the principle which I would fain
    learn if any one would teach me. But as I have failed either
    to discover myself, or to learn of any one else, the nature of
    the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found
    to be the second best mode of enquiring into the cause.

    I should very much like to hear, he replied.

[Sidenote: _The power of the best._]

[Sidenote: The eye of the soul.]

[Sidenote: The abstract as plain or plainer than the concrete.]

    Socrates proceeded:—I thought that as I had failed in the
    contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I
    did not lose the eye of my soul; as people may injure their
    bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an
    eclipse, unless they take the precaution of only looking at
    the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium.
    So in my own case, I was afraid that my soul might be
    blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes or tried
    to apprehend them by the help of the senses. And I thought
    that I had better have recourse to the world of mind and
    seek there the truth of existence. I dare say that the simile      100
    is not perfect—for I am very far from admitting that he who
    contemplates existences through the medium of thought, sees
    them only ‘through a glass darkly,’ any more than he who
    considers them in action and operation. However, this was
    the method which I adopted: I first assumed some principle
    which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as
    true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether relating to
    the cause or to anything else; and that which disagreed I regarded
    as untrue. But I should like to explain my meaning
    more clearly, as I do not think that you as yet understand
    me.

    No indeed, replied Cebes, not very well.

[Sidenote: _The ideas._]

[Sidenote: If the ideas have an absolute existence, the soul is immortal.]

    There is nothing new, he said, in what I am about to tell
    you; but only what I have been always and everywhere
    repeating in the previous discussion and on other occasions:
    I want to show you the nature of that cause which has
    occupied my thoughts. I shall have to go back to those
    familiar words which are in the mouth of every one, and first
    of all assume that there is an absolute beauty and goodness
    and greatness, and the like; grant me this, and I hope to be
    able to show you the nature of the cause, and to prove the
    immortality of the soul.

    Cebes said: You may proceed at once with the proof, for
    I grant you this.

    Well, he said, then I should like to know whether you
    agree with me in the next step; for I cannot help thinking,
    if there be anything beautiful other than absolute beauty
    should there be such, that it can be beautiful only in so far
    as it partakes of absolute beauty—and I should say the same
    of everything. Do you agree in this notion of the cause?

    Yes, he said, I agree.

[Sidenote: All things exist by participation in general ideas.]

    He proceeded: I know nothing and can understand
    nothing of any other of those wise causes which are alleged;
    and if a person says to me that the bloom of colour, or form,
    or any such thing is a source of beauty, I leave all that,
    which is only confusing to me, and simply and singly, and
    perhaps foolishly, hold and am assured in my own mind that
    nothing makes a thing beautiful but the presence and
    participation of beauty in whatever way or manner obtained;
    for as to the manner I am uncertain, but I stoutly contend
    that by beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. This
    appears to me to be the safest answer which I can give,
    either to myself or to another, and to this I cling, in the
    persuasion that this principle will never be overthrown, and
    that to myself or to any one who asks the question, I may safely
    reply, That by beauty beautiful things become beautiful. Do
    you not agree with me?

    I do.

    And that by greatness only great things become great and
    greater greater, and by smallness the less become less?

    True.

[Sidenote: We thus escape certain contradictions of relation.]

[Sidenote: _The puzzles of relation._]

    Then if a person were to remark that A is taller by a head
    than B, and B less by a head than A, you would refuse to           101
    admit his statement, and would stoutly contend that what
    you mean is only that the greater is greater by, and by
    reason of, greatness, and the less is less only by, and by
    reason of, smallness; and thus you would avoid the danger
    of saying that the greater is greater and the less less by the
    measure of the head, which is the same in both, and would
    also avoid the monstrous absurdity of supposing that the
    greater man is greater by reason of the head, which is small.
    You would be afraid to draw such an inference, would
    you not?

    Indeed, I should, said Cebes, laughing.

    In like manner you would be afraid to say that ten
    exceeded eight by, and by reason of, two; but would
    say by, and by reason of, number; or you would say
    that two cubits exceed one cubit not by a half, but by
    magnitude?—for there is the same liability to error in all
    these cases.

    Very true, he said.

    Again, would you not be cautious of affirming that the
    addition of one to one, or the division of one, is the cause of
    two? And you would loudly asseverate that you know of no
    way in which anything comes into existence except by participation
    in its own proper essence, and consequently, as far
    as you know, the only cause of two is the participation in
    duality—this is the way to make two, and the participation in
    one is the way to make one. You would say: I will let
    alone puzzles of division and addition—wiser heads than
    mine may answer them; inexperienced as I am, and ready to
    start, as the proverb says, at my own shadow, I cannot afford
    to give up the sure ground of a principle. And if any one
    assails you there, you would not mind him, or answer him,
    until you had seen whether the consequences which follow
    agree with one another or not, and when you are further
    required to give an explanation of this principle, you would
    go on to assume a higher principle, and a higher, until you
    found a resting-place in the best of the higher; but you
    would not confuse the principle and the consequences in
    your reasoning, like the Eristics—at least if you wanted to
    discover real existence. Not that this confusion signifies to
    them, who never care or think about the matter at all, for
    they have the wit to be well pleased with themselves however
    great may be the turmoil of their ideas. But you, if you are       102
    a philosopher, will certainly do as I say.

[Sidenote: _The effect of the argument on the company._]

    What you say is most true, said Simmias and Cebes, both
    speaking at once.

    _Ech._ Yes, Phaedo; and I do not wonder at their assenting.
    Any one who has the least sense will acknowledge the
    wonderful clearness of Socrates’ reasoning.

    _Phaed._ Certainly, Echecrates; and such was the feeling
    of the whole company at the time.

    _Ech._ Yes, and equally of ourselves, who were not of the
    company, and are now listening to your recital. But what
    followed?

    _Phaed._ After all this had been admitted, and they had
    agreed that ideas exist, and that other things participate in
    them and derive their names from them, Socrates, if I
    remember rightly, said:—

[Sidenote: There may still remain the contradiction of the same person
being both greater and less, but this is only because he has greatness or
smallness relatively to another person.]

    This is your way of speaking; and yet when you say that
    Simmias is greater than Socrates and less than Phaedo, do
    you not predicate of Simmias both greatness and smallness?

    Yes, I do.

    But still you allow that Simmias does not really exceed
    Socrates, as the words may seem to imply, because he is
    Simmias, but by reason of the size which he has; just as
    Simmias does not exceed Socrates because he is Simmias,
    any more than because Socrates is Socrates, but because
    he has smallness when compared with the greatness of
    Simmias?

    True.

    And if Phaedo exceeds him in size, this is not because
    Phaedo is Phaedo, but because Phaedo has greatness relatively
    to Simmias, who is comparatively smaller?

    That is true.

    And therefore Simmias is said to be great, and is also
    said to be small, because he is in a mean between them,
    exceeding the smallness of the one by his greatness, and
    allowing the greatness of the other to exceed his smallness.
    He added, laughing, I am speaking like a book, but I
    believe that what I am saying is true.

    Simmias assented.

[Sidenote: _Greatness absolute and relative._]

[Sidenote: The idea of greatness can never be small; and the greatness in
us drives out smallness.]

    I speak as I do because I want you to agree with me in
    thinking, not only that absolute greatness will never be
    great and also small, but that greatness in us or in the concrete
    will never admit the small or admit of being exceeded:
    instead of this, one of two things will happen, either the
    greater will fly or retire before the opposite, which is the
    less, or at the approach of the less has already ceased to
    exist; but will not, if allowing or admitting of smallness, be
    changed by that; even as I, having received and admitted
    smallness when compared with Simmias, remain just as I
    was, and am the same small person. And as the idea of
    greatness cannot condescend ever to be or become small, in
    like manner the smallness in us cannot be or become great;
    nor can any other opposite which remains the same ever
    be or become its own opposite, but either passes away or           103
    perishes in the change.

    That, replied Cebes, is quite my notion.

[Sidenote: Yet the greater comes from the less, and the less from the
greater.]

    Hereupon one of the company, though I do not exactly
    remember which of them, said: In heaven’s name, is not
    this the direct contrary of what was admitted before—that
    out of the greater came the less and out of the less the
    greater, and that opposites were simply generated from
    opposites; but now this principle seems to be utterly denied.

[Sidenote: Distinguish:—The things in which the opposites inhere generate
into and out of one another: never the opposites themselves.]

    Socrates inclined his head to the speaker and listened. I
    like your courage, he said, in reminding us of this. But
    you do not observe that there is a difference in the two
    cases. For then we were speaking of opposites in the
    concrete, and now of the essential opposite which, as is
    affirmed, neither in us nor in nature can ever be at variance
    with itself; then, my friend, we were speaking of things in
    which opposites are inherent and which are called after
    them, but now about the opposites which are inherent in
    them and which give their name to them; and these
    essential opposites will never, as we maintain, admit of
    generation into or out of one another. At the same time,
    turning to Cebes, he said: Are you at all disconcerted,
    Cebes, at our friend’s objection?

    No, I do not feel so, said Cebes; and yet I cannot deny
    that I am often disturbed by objections.

    Then we are agreed after all, said Socrates, that the opposite
    will never in any case be opposed to itself?

[Sidenote: _A seeming contradiction solved._]

    To that we are quite agreed, he replied.

[Sidenote: Snow may be converted into water at the approach of heat, but
not cold into heat.]

    Yet once more let me ask you to consider the question
    from another point of view, and see whether you agree with
    me:—There is a thing which you term heat, and another
    thing which you term cold?

    Certainly.

    But are they the same as fire and snow?

    Most assuredly not.

    Heat is a thing different from fire, and cold is not the
    same with snow?

    Yes.

    And yet you will surely admit, that when snow, as was
    before said, is under the influence of heat, they will not
    remain snow and heat; but at the advance of the heat, the
    snow will either retire or perish?

    Very true, he replied.

    And the fire too at the advance of the cold will either
    retire or perish; and when the fire is under the influence of
    the cold, they will not remain as before, fire and cold.

    That is true, he said.

    And in some cases the name of the idea is not only
    attached to the idea in an eternal connection, but anything
    else which, not being the idea, exists only in the form of the
    idea, may also lay claim to it. I will try to make this
    clearer by an example:—The odd number is always called
    by the name of odd?

    Very true.

    But is this the only thing which is called odd? Are there
    not other things which have their own name, and yet are            104
    called odd, because, although not the same as oddness, they
    are never without oddness?—that is what I mean to ask—whether
    numbers such as the number three are not of the
    class of odd. And there are many other examples: would
    you not say, for example, that three may be called by its
    proper name, and also be called odd, which is not the same
    with three? and this may be said not only of three but also
    of five, and of every alternate number—each of them without
    being oddness is odd; and in the same way two and four,
    and the other series of alternate numbers, has every number
    even, without being evenness. Do you agree?

[Sidenote: _Essential opposites and things which admit opposites._]

    Of course.

[Sidenote: Not only essential opposites, but some concrete things which
contain opposites, exclude each other.]

    Then now mark the point at which I am aiming:—not
    only do essential opposites exclude one another, but also
    concrete things, which, although not in themselves opposed,
    contain opposites; these, I say, likewise reject the idea
    which is opposed to that which is contained in them, and
    when it approaches them they either perish or withdraw.
    For example; Will not the number three endure annihilation
    or anything sooner than be converted into an even number,
    while remaining three?

    Very true, said Cebes.

    And yet, he said, the number two is certainly not opposed
    to the number three?

    It is not.

    Then not only do opposite ideas repel the advance of one
    another, but also there are other natures which repel the
    approach of opposites.

    Very true, he said.

    Suppose, he said, that we endeavour, if possible, to determine
    what these are.

    By all means.

[Sidenote: That is to say the opposites which give an impress to other
things.]

    Are they not, Cebes, such as compel the things of which
    they have possession, not only to take their own form, but
    also the form of some opposite?

    What do you mean?

    I mean, as I was just now saying, and as I am sure that
    you know, that those things which are possessed by the
    number three must not only be three in number, but must
    also be odd.

    Quite true.

    And on this oddness, of which the number three has the
    impress, the opposite idea will never intrude?

    No.

    And this impress was given by the odd principle?

    Yes.

    And to the odd is opposed the even?

    True.

    Then the idea of the even number will never arrive at
    three?

    No.

[Sidenote: _Recapitulation._]

    Then three has no part in the even?

    None.

    Then the triad or number three is uneven?

    Very true.

[Sidenote: Natures may not be opposed, and yet may not admit of
opposites; e. g. three is not opposed to two, and yet does not admit the
even any more than two admits of the odd.]

    To return then to my distinction of natures which are
    not opposed, and yet do not admit opposites—as, in the
    instance given, three, although not opposed to the even,
    does not any the more admit of the even, but always brings
    the opposite into play on the other side; or as two does not
    receive the odd, or fire the cold—from these examples (and          105
    there are many more of them) perhaps you may be able to
    arrive at the general conclusion, that not only opposites will
    not receive opposites, but also that nothing which brings the
    opposite will admit the opposite of that which it brings, in
    that to which it is brought. And here let me recapitulate—for
    there is no harm in repetition. The number five will
    not admit the nature of the even, any more than ten, which
    is the double of five, will admit the nature of the odd. The
    double has another opposite, and is not strictly opposed to
    the odd, but nevertheless rejects the odd altogether. Nor
    again will parts in the ratio 3:2, nor any fraction in which
    there is a half, nor again in which there is a third, admit
    the notion of the whole, although they are not opposed to
    the whole: You will agree?

    Yes, he said, I entirely agree and go along with you in that.

[Sidenote: The merely verbal truth may be replaced by a higher one.]

    And now, he said, let us begin again; and do not you
    answer my question in the words in which I ask it: let me
    have not the old safe answer of which I spoke at first, but
    another equally safe, of which the truth will be inferred by
    you from what has been just said. I mean that if any one
    asks you ‘what that is, of which the inherence makes the
    body hot,’ you will reply not heat (this is what I call the
    safe and stupid answer), but fire, a far superior answer,
    which we are now in a condition to give. Or if any one
    asks you ‘why a body is diseased,’ you will not say from
    disease, but from fever; and instead of saying that oddness
    is the cause of odd numbers, you will say that the monad is
    the cause of them: and so of things in general, as I dare
    say that you will understand sufficiently without my adducing
    any further examples.

[Sidenote: _Application of the argument to the soul._]

    Yes, he said, I quite understand you.

    Tell me, then, what is that of which the inherence will
    render the body alive?

[Sidenote: We may now say, not life makes alive, but the soul makes
alive; and the soul has a life-giving power which does not admit of death
and is therefore immortal.]

    The soul, he replied.

    And is this always the case?

    Yes, he said, of course.

    Then whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes
    bearing life?

    Yes, certainly.

    And is there any opposite to life?

    There is, he said.

    And what is that?

    Death.

    Then the soul, as has been acknowledged, will never
    receive the opposite of what she brings.

    Impossible, replied Cebes.

    And now, he said, what did we just now call that principle
    which repels the even?

    The odd.

    And that principle which repels the musical or the just?

    The unmusical, he said, and the unjust.

    And what do we call that principle which does not admit
    of death?

    The immortal, he said.

    And does the soul admit of death?

    No.

    Then the soul is immortal?

    Yes, he said.

    And may we say that this has been proven?

    Yes, abundantly proven, Socrates, he replied.

[Sidenote: Illustrations.]

    Supposing that the odd were imperishable, must not three           106
    be imperishable?

    Of course.

    And if that which is cold were imperishable, when the
    warm principle came attacking the snow, must not the snow
    have retired whole and unmelted—for it could never have
    perished, nor could it have remained and admitted the heat?

    True, he said.

    Again, if the uncooling or warm principle were imperishable,
    the fire when assailed by cold would not have perished
    or have been extinguished, but would have gone away unaffected?

    Certainly, he said.

[Sidenote: _The mortal and immortal principles._]

    And the same may be said of the immortal: if the immortal
    is also imperishable, the soul when attacked by death cannot
    perish; for the preceding argument shows that the soul will
    not admit of death, or ever be dead, any more than three or
    the odd number will admit of the even, or fire, or the heat in
    the fire, of the cold. Yet a person may say: ‘But although
    the odd will not become even at the approach of the even,
    why may not the odd perish and the even take the place of
    the odd?’ Now to him who makes this objection, we cannot
    answer that the odd principle is imperishable; for this has
    not been acknowledged, but if this had been acknowledged,
    there would have been no difficulty in contending that at the
    approach of the even the odd principle and the number three
    took their departure; and the same argument would have
    held good of fire and heat and any other thing.

    Very true.

[Sidenote: The immortal is imperishable, and therefore the soul is
imperishable.]

    And the same may be said of the immortal: if the immortal
    is also imperishable, then the soul will be imperishable as well
    as immortal; but if not, some other proof of her imperishableness
    will have to be given.

    No other proof is needed, he said; for if the immortal, being
    eternal, is liable to perish, then nothing is imperishable.

    Yes, replied Socrates, and yet all men will agree that God,
    and the essential form of life, and the immortal in general,
    will never perish.

    Yes, all men, he said—that is true; and what is more,
    gods, if I am not mistaken, as well as men.

    Seeing then that the immortal is indestructible, must not
    the soul, if she is immortal, be also imperishable?

    Most certainly.

    Then when death attacks a man, the mortal portion of him
    may be supposed to die, but the immortal retires at the
    approach of death and is preserved safe and sound?

    True.

[Sidenote: At death the soul retires into another world.]

    Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and
    imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in another            107
    world!

[Sidenote: _Revelation in a myth._]

    I am convinced, Socrates, said Cebes, and have nothing
    more to object; but if my friend Simmias, or any one else,
    has any further objection to make, he had better speak out,
    and not keep silence, since I do not know to what other
    season he can defer the discussion, if there is anything which
    he wants to say or to have said.

    But I have nothing more to say, replied Simmias; nor can
    I see any reason for doubt after what has been said. But I
    still feel and cannot help feeling uncertain in my own mind,
    when I think of the greatness of the subject and the feebleness
    of man.

    Yes, Simmias, replied Socrates, that is well said: and I
    may add that first principles, even if they appear certain,
    should be carefully considered; and when they are satisfactorily
    ascertained, then, with a sort of hesitating confidence
    in human reason, you may, I think, follow the course of the
    argument; and if that be plain and clear, there will be no
    need for any further enquiry.

    Very true.

[Sidenote: ‘Wherefore, seeing all these things, what manner of persons
ought we to be?’]

    But then, O my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal,
    what care should be taken of her, not only in respect
    of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity!
    And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does
    indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been the end
    of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying,
    for they would have been happily quit not only of their body,
    but of their own evil together with their souls. But now,
    inasmuch as the soul is manifestly immortal, there is no
    release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the
    highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress
    to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture
    and education; and these are said greatly to benefit or
    greatly to injure the departed, at the very beginning of his
    journey thither.

[Sidenote: The attendant genius of each brings him after death to the
judgment.]

[Sidenote: _The purgation of souls._]

[Sidenote: The different destinies of pure and impure souls.]

    For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual,
    to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in
    which the dead are gathered together, whence after judgment
    has been given they pass into the world below, following
    the guide, who is appointed to conduct them from this
    world to the other: and when they have there received their
    due and remained their time, another guide brings them back
    again after many revolutions of ages. Now this way to the
    other world is not, as Æschylus says in the Telephus, a            108
    single and straight path—if that were so no guide would be
    needed, for no one could miss it; but there are many partings
    of the road, and windings, as I infer from the rites and
    sacrifices which are offered to the gods below in places where
    three ways meet on earth. The wise and orderly soul follows
    in the straight path and is conscious of her surroundings;
    but the soul which desires the body, and which, as I was
    relating before, has long been fluttering about the lifeless
    frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and
    many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by
    her attendant genius; and when she arrives at the place
    where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and
    have done impure deeds, whether foul murders or other
    crimes which are the brothers of these, and the works of
    brothers in crime—from that soul every one flees and turns
    away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but
    alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are
    fulfilled, and when they are fulfilled, she is borne irresistibly
    to her own fitting habitation; as every pure and just soul
    which has passed through life in the company and under the
    guidance of the gods has also her own proper home.

[Sidenote: Description of the divers regions of earth.]

    Now the earth has divers wonderful regions, and is indeed
    in nature and extent very unlike the notions of geographers,
    as I believe on the authority of one who shall be nameless.

    What do you mean, Socrates? said Simmias. I have
    myself heard many descriptions of the earth, but I do not
    know, and I should very much like to know, in which of these
    you put faith.

    And I, Simmias, replied Socrates, if I had the art of
    Glaucus would tell you; although I know not that the art of
    Glaucus could prove the truth of my tale, which I myself
    should never be able to prove, and even if I could, I fear,
    Simmias, that my life would come to an end before the argument
    was completed. I may describe to you, however, the
    form and regions of the earth according to my conception of
    them.

    That, said Simmias, will be enough.

[Sidenote: _The lower regions of earth._]

[Sidenote: The earth is a round body kept in her place by equipoise and
the equability of the surrounding element.]

    Well then, he said, my conviction is, that the earth is a
    round body in the centre of the heavens, and therefore has
    no need of air or of any similar force to be a support, but is     109
    kept there and hindered from falling or inclining any way by
    the equability of the surrounding heaven and by her own
    equipoise. For that which, being in equipoise, is in the
    centre of that which is equably diffused, will not incline any
    way in any degree, but will always remain in the same state
    and not deviate. And this is my first notion.

    Which is surely a correct one, said Simmias.

[Sidenote: _The earth seen from above._]

[Sidenote: Mankind lives only in a small portion of the earth at a
distance from the surface.]

[Sidenote: If, like fishes who now and then put their heads out of the
water, we could rise to the top of the atmosphere, we should behold the
true heaven and the true earth.]

    Also I believe that the earth is very vast, and that we who
    dwell in the region extending from the river Phasis to the
    Pillars of Heracles inhabit a small portion only about the sea,
    like ants or frogs about a marsh, and that there are other inhabitants
    of many other like places; for everywhere on the
    face of the earth there are hollows of various forms and sizes,
    into which the water and the mist and the lower air collect.
    But the true earth is pure and situated in the pure heaven—there
    are the stars also; and it is the heaven which is commonly
    spoken of by us as the ether, and of which our own
    earth is the sediment gathering in the hollows beneath. But
    we who live in these hollows are deceived into the notion that
    we are dwelling above on the surface of the earth; which is
    just as if a creature who was at the bottom of the sea were to
    fancy that he was on the surface of the water, and that the sea
    was the heaven through which he saw the sun and the other
    stars, he having never come to the surface by reason of his
    feebleness and sluggishness, and having never lifted up his
    head and seen, nor ever heard from one who had seen, how
    much purer and fairer the world above is than his own. And
    such is exactly our case: for we are dwelling in a hollow of
    the earth, and fancy that we are on the surface; and the air
    we call the heaven, in which we imagine that the stars move.
    But the fact is, that owing to our feebleness and sluggishness
    we are prevented from reaching the surface of the air: for if
    any man could arrive at the exterior limit, or take the wings
    of a bird and come to the top, then like a fish who puts his
    head out of the water and sees this world, he would see a
    world beyond; and, if the nature of man could sustain the
    sight, he would acknowledge that this other world was the
    place of the true heaven and the true light and the true earth.
    For our earth, and the stones, and the entire region which         110
    surrounds us, are spoilt and corroded, as in the sea all things
    are corroded by the brine, neither is there any noble or
    perfect growth, but caverns only, and sand, and an endless
    slough of mud; and even the shore is not to be compared to
    the fairer sights of this world. And still less is this our world
    to be compared with the other. Of that upper earth which is
    under the heaven, I can tell you a charming tale, Simmias,
    which is well worth hearing.

    And we, Socrates, replied Simmias, shall be charmed to
    listen to you.

[Sidenote: The upper earth is in every respect far fairer than the lower.
There is gold and purple, and pure light, and trees and flowers lovelier
far than our own, and all the stones are more precious than our precious
stones.]

[Sidenote: The blessed gods dwell there and hold converse with the
inhabitants.]

    The tale, my friend, he said, is as follows:—In the first
    place, the earth, when looked at from above, is in appearance
    streaked like one of those balls which have leather
    coverings in twelve pieces, and is decked with various
    colours, of which the colours used by painters on earth are
    in a manner samples. But there the whole earth is made
    up of them, and they are brighter far and clearer than ours:
    there is a purple of wonderful lustre, also the radiance of
    gold, and the white which is in the earth is whiter than any
    chalk or snow. Of these and other colours the earth is
    made up, and they are more in number and fairer than the
    eye of man has ever seen; the very hollows (of which I was
    speaking) filled with air and water have a colour of their
    own, and are seen like light gleaming amid the diversity of
    the other colours, so that the whole presents a single and
    continuous appearance of variety in unity. And in this fair
    region everything that grows—trees, and flowers, and fruits—are
    in a like degree fairer than any here; and there are
    hills, having stones in them in a like degree smoother, and
    more transparent, and fairer in colour than our highly-valued
    emeralds and sardonyxes and jaspers, and other
    gems, which are but minute fragments of them: for there all
    the stones are like our precious stones, and fairer still[28]. The
    reason is, that they are pure, and not, like our precious
    stones, infected or corroded by the corrupt briny elements
    which coagulate among us, and which breed foulness and
    disease both in earth and stones, as well as in animals and
    plants. They are the jewels of the upper earth, which also
    shines with gold and silver and the like, and they are set in      111
    the light of day and are large and abundant and in all
    places, making the earth a sight to gladden the beholder’s
    eye. And there are animals and men, some in a middle
    region, others dwelling about the air as we dwell about the
    sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near the
    continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the
    water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them what
    the air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their
    seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much
    longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell,
    and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same
    proportion that air is purer than water or the ether than
    air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the
    gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive
    their answers, and are conscious of them and hold converse
    with them; and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they
    truly are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.

[Sidenote: _The chasm of Tartarus._]

[Sidenote: Description of the interior of the earth and of the
subterranean seas and rivers.]

    Such is the nature of the whole earth, and of the things
    which are around the earth; and there are divers regions in
    the hollows on the face of the globe everywhere, some of
    them deeper and more extended than that which we inhabit,
    others deeper but with a narrower opening than ours, and
    some are shallower and also wider. All have numerous
    perforations, and there are passages broad and narrow in
    the interior of the earth, connecting them with one another;
    and there flows out of and into them, as into basins, a vast
    tide of water, and huge subterranean streams of perennial
    rivers, and springs hot and cold, and a great fire, and great
    rivers of fire, and streams of liquid mud, thin or thick (like
    the rivers of mud in Sicily, and the lava streams which
    follow them), and the regions about which they happen to
    flow are filled up with them. And there is a swinging or
    see-saw in the interior of the earth which moves all this up
    and down, and is due to the following cause:—There is
    a chasm which is the vastest of them all, and pierces right
    through the whole earth; this is that chasm which Homer            112
    describes in the words,—

      ‘Far off, where is the inmost depth beneath the earth;’

[Sidenote: _The four rivers of the world below._]

    and which he in other places, and many other poets, have
    called Tartarus. And the see-saw is caused by the streams
    flowing into and out of this chasm, and they each have the
    nature of the soil through which they flow. And the reason
    why the streams are always flowing in and out, is that the
    watery element has no bed or bottom, but is swinging and
    surging up and down, and the surrounding wind and air do
    the same; they follow the water up and down, hither and
    thither, over the earth—just as in the act of respiration the
    air is always in process of inhalation and exhalation;—and
    the wind swinging with the water in and out produces
    fearful and irresistible blasts: when the waters retire with a
    rush into the lower parts of the earth, as they are called,
    they flow through the earth in those regions, and fill them
    up like water raised by a pump, and then when they leave
    those regions and rush back hither, they again fill the
    hollows here, and when these are filled, flow through subterranean
    channels and find their way to their several
    places, forming seas, and lakes, and rivers, and springs.
    Thence they again enter the earth, some of them making a
    long circuit into many lands, others going to a few places
    and not so distant; and again fall into Tartarus, some at a
    point a good deal lower than that at which they rose, and
    others not much lower, but all in some degree lower than
    the point from which they came. And some burst forth
    again on the opposite side, and some on the same side, and
    some wind round the earth with one or many folds like the
    coils of a serpent, and descend as far as they can, but always
    return and fall into the chasm. The rivers flowing in either
    direction can descend only to the centre and no further, for
    opposite to the rivers is a precipice.

[Sidenote: Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Styx (or Cocytus).]

[Sidenote: _The geography of the world below._]

    Now these rivers are many, and mighty, and diverse, and
    there are four principal ones, of which the greatest and outermost
    is that called Oceanus, which flows round the earth in
    a circle; and in the opposite direction flows Acheron, which
    passes under the earth through desert places into the              113
    Acherusian lake: this is the lake to the shores of which the
    souls of the many go when they are dead, and after waiting
    an appointed time, which is to some a longer and to some a
    shorter time, they are sent back to be born again as animals.
    The third river passes out between the two, and near the place
    of outlet pours into a vast region of fire, and forms a lake
    larger than the Mediterranean Sea, boiling with water and
    mud; and proceeding muddy and turbid, and winding about
    the earth, comes, among other places, to the extremities of
    the Acherusian lake, but mingles not with the waters of the
    lake, and after making many coils about the earth plunges
    into Tartarus at a deeper level. This is that Pyriphlegethon,
    as the stream is called, which throws up jets of fire in
    different parts of the earth. The fourth river goes out on
    the opposite side, and falls first of all into a wild and savage
    region, which is all of a dark blue colour, like lapis lazuli;
    and this is that river which is called the Stygian river, and
    falls into and forms the Lake Styx, and after falling into the
    lake and receiving strange powers in the waters, passes
    under the earth, winding round in the opposite direction, and
    comes near the Acherusian lake from the opposite side to
    Pyriphlegethon. And the water of this river too mingles
    with no other, but flows round in a circle and falls into
    Tartarus over against Pyriphlegethon; and the name of the
    river, as the poets say, is Cocytus.

[Sidenote: The judgment of the dead.]

[Sidenote: _The mansions of the blessed._]

    Such is the nature of the other world; and when the dead
    arrive at the place to which the genius of each severally
    guides them, first of all, they have sentence passed upon
    them, as they have lived well and piously or not. And
    those who appear to have lived neither well nor ill, go to
    the river Acheron, and embarking in any vessels which
    they may find, are carried in them to the lake, and there
    they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and having
    suffered the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to
    others, they are absolved, and receive the rewards of their
    good deeds, each of them according to his deserts. But
    those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness
    of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible
    deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such
    are hurled into Tartarus which is their suitable
    destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have
    committed crimes, which, although great, are not irremediable—who
    in a moment of anger, for example, have
    done some violence to a father or a mother, and have
    repented for the remainder of their lives, or, who have taken      114
    the life of another under the like extenuating circumstances—these
    are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they
    are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the
    year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of
    Cocytus, parricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and
    they are borne to the Acherusian lake, and there they lift up
    their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain
    or wronged, to have pity on them, and to be kind to them,
    and let them come out into the lake. And if they prevail,
    then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if
    not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from
    thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy
    from those whom they have wronged: for that is the sentence
    inflicted upon them by their judges. Those too who
    have been pre-eminent for holiness of life are released from
    this earthly prison, and go to their pure home which is
    above, and dwell in the purer earth; and of these, such as
    have duly purified themselves with philosophy live henceforth
    altogether without the body, in mansions fairer still,
    which may not be described, and of which the time would
    fail me to tell.

    Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought
    not we to do that we may obtain virtue and wisdom in this
    life? Fair is the prize, and the hope great!

[Sidenote: These descriptions are not true to the letter, but something
like them is true.]

    A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be very confident,
    that the description which I have given of the soul and
    her mansions is exactly true. But I do say that, inasmuch
    as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to
    think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of the
    kind is true. The venture is a glorious one, and he ought to
    comfort himself with words like these, which is the reason
    why I lengthen out the tale. Wherefore, I say, let a man be
    of good cheer about his soul, who having cast away the
    pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to him and
    working harm rather than good, has sought after the pleasures
    of knowledge; and has arrayed the soul, not in some foreign
    attire, but in her own proper jewels, temperance, and justice,
    and courage, and nobility, and truth—in these adorned she          115
    is ready to go on her journey to the world below, when her
    hour comes. You, Simmias and Cebes, and all other men,
    will depart at some time or other. Me already, as a tragic
    poet would say, the voice of fate calls. Soon I must drink
    the poison; and I think that I had better repair to the bath
    first, in order that the women may not have the trouble of
    washing my body after I am dead.

[Sidenote: _The last words of Socrates and his friends._]

    When he had done speaking, Crito said: And have you
    any commands for us, Socrates—anything to say about your
    children, or any other matter in which we can serve you?

    Nothing particular, Crito, he replied: only, as I have
    always told you, take care of yourselves; that is a service
    which you may be ever rendering to me and mine and to
    all of us, whether you promise to do so or not. But if you
    have no thought for yourselves, and care not to walk according
    to the rule which I have prescribed for you, not now for the
    first time, however much you may profess or promise at the
    moment, it will be of no avail.

    We will do our best, said Crito: And in what way shall we
    bury you?

[Sidenote: The dead body which remains is not the true Socrates.]

    In any way that you like; but you must get hold of me,
    and take care that I do not run away from you. Then he
    turned to us, and added with a smile:—I cannot make Crito
    believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking
    and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other
    Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body—and he asks,
    How shall he bury me? And though I have spoken many
    words in the endeavour to show that when I have drunk the
    poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed,—these
    words of mine, with which I was comforting you and
    myself, have had, as I perceive, no effect upon Crito. And
    therefore I want you to be surety for me to him now, as
    at the trial he was surety to the judges for me: but let
    the promise be of another sort; for he was surety for me
    to the judges that I would remain, and you must be my
    surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and
    depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be
    grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried. I
    would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the
    burial, Thus we lay out Socrates, or, Thus we follow him to
    the grave or bury him; for false words are not only evil in
    themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good
    cheer then, my dear Crito, and say that you are burying my
    body only, and do with that whatever is usual, and what you        116
    think best.

[Sidenote: _Socrates is ready to depart._]

[Sidenote: He takes leave of his family.]

    When he had spoken these words, he arose and went
    into a chamber to bathe; Crito followed him and told us to
    wait. So we remained behind, talking and thinking of the
    subject of discourse, and also of the greatness of our sorrow;
    he was like a father of whom we were being bereaved, and
    we were about to pass the rest of our lives as orphans.
    When he had taken the bath his children were brought to
    him—(he had two young sons and an elder one); and the
    women of his family also came, and he talked to them and
    gave them a few directions in the presence of Crito; then
    he dismissed them and returned to us.

[Sidenote: The humanity of the jailer.]

    Now the hour of sunset was near, for a good deal of time
    had passed while he was within. When he came out, he sat
    down with us again after his bath, but not much was said.
    Soon the jailer, who was the servant of the Eleven, entered
    and stood by him, saying:—To you, Socrates, whom I know
    to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came
    to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other
    men, who rage and swear at me, when, in obedience to the
    authorities, I bid them drink the poison—indeed, I am sure
    that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are
    aware, and not I, are to blame. And so fare you well, and
    try to bear lightly what must needs be—you know my
    errand. Then bursting into tears he turned away and
    went out.

    Socrates looked at him and said: I return your good
    wishes, and will do as you bid. Then turning to us, he said,
    How charming the man is: since I have been in prison he
    has always been coming to see me, and at times he would
    talk to me, and was as good to me as could be, and now see
    how generously he sorrows on my account. We must do as
    he says, Crito; and therefore let the cup be brought, if the
    poison is prepared: if not, let the attendant prepare some.

[Sidenote: Crito would detain Socrates a little while.]

    Yet, said Crito, the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and I
    know that many a one has taken the draught late, and after
    the announcement has been made to him, he has eaten and
    drunk, and enjoyed the society of his beloved; do not hurry—there
    is time enough.

[Sidenote: _The closing scene._]

[Sidenote: Socrates thinks that there is nothing to be gained by delay.]

    Socrates said: Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak
    are right in so acting, for they think that they will be
    gainers by the delay; but I am right in not following their
    example, for I do not think that I should gain anything by
    drinking the poison a little later; I should only be ridiculous    117
    in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already
    forfeit. Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me.

[Sidenote: The poison is brought.]

[Sidenote: He drinks the poison.]

[Sidenote: The company of friends are unable to control themselves.]

    Crito made a sign to the servant, who was standing by;
    and he went out, and having been absent for some time,
    returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Socrates
    said: You, my good friend, who are experienced in these
    matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The
    man answered: You have only to walk about until your legs
    are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At
    the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the
    easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change
    of colour or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes,
    Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: What
    do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any
    god? May I, or not? The man answered: We only prepare,
    Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand,
    he said: but I may and must ask the gods to prosper
    my journey from this to the other world—even so—and so be
    it according to my prayer. Then raising the cup to his lips,
    quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And
    hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but
    now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had
    finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite
    of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered
    my face and wept, not for him, but at the thought of my own
    calamity in having to part from such a friend. Nor was I the
    first; for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his
    tears, had got up, and I followed; and at that moment,
    Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in
    a loud and passionate cry which made cowards of us all.

[Sidenote: Says Socrates, ‘A man should die in peace.’]

[Sidenote: The debt to Asclepius.]

    Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange
    outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order
    that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been
    told that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and
    have patience. When we heard his words we were ashamed,
    and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he
    said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back,
    according to the directions, and the man who gave him the
    poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a
    while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could
    feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and        118
    upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he
    felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the
    heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold
    about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had
    covered himself up, and said—they were his last words—he
    said: Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember
    to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is
    there anything else? There was no answer to this question;
    but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the
    attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito
    closed his eyes and mouth.

[Sidenote: _The end._]

    Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend; concerning
    whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I
    have known, he was the wisest and justest and best.


FOOTNOTES

[23] But cp. Rep. x. 611 A.

[24] Cp. Meno 83 ff.

[25] Cp. Apol. 40 E.

[26] Compare Milton, Comus, 463 foll.:—

                           ‘But when lust,
    By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
    But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
    Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
    The soul grows clotted by contagion,
    Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose,
    The divine property of her first being.
    Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
    Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
    Lingering, and sitting by a new made grave,
    As loath to leave the body that it lov’d,
    And linked itself by carnal sensuality
    To a degenerate and degraded state.’

[27] Cp. Rep. x. 619 C.

[28] Cp. Rev., esp. c. xxi. v. 18 ff.




GORGIAS.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Gorgias._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his
interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the
main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe
rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think,
with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus (177 C), that the
digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the
dialogues there is also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning
is not forgotten at the end, and numerous allusions and references are
interspersed, which form the loose connecting links of the whole. We
must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt to confine
the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Cp.
Introduction to the Phaedrus.)

Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this
matter. First, they have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one
another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite and
contradictory assertions respecting their order and sequence. The mantle
of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have applied his
method with the most various results. The value and use of the method has
been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them. Secondly, they
have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each separate dialogue;
in this way they think that they have escaped all difficulties, not
seeing that what they have gained in generality they have lost in truth
and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into one another;
and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only realize by an
effort, imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of modern
philosophers. An eye for proportion is needed (his own art of measuring)
in the study of Plato, as well as of other great artists. We may readily
admit that the moral antithesis of good and pleasure, or the intellectual
antithesis of knowledge and opinion, being an appearance, are never far
off in a Platonic discussion. But because they are in the background,
we should not bring them into the foreground, or expect to discern them
equally in all the dialogues.

[Sidenote: _The subject of the Dialogue._]

There may be some advantage in drawing out a little the main outlines
of the building; but the use of this is limited, and may be easily
exaggerated. We may give Plato too much system, and alter the natural
form and connection of his thoughts. Under the idea that his dialogues
are finished works of art, we may find a reason for everything, and lose
the highest characteristic of art, which is simplicity. Most great works
receive a new light from a new and original mind. But whether these new
lights are true or only suggestive, will depend on their agreement with
the spirit of Plato, and the amount of direct evidence which can be urged
in support of them. When a theory is running away with us, criticism does
a friendly office in counselling moderation, and recalling us to the
indications of the text.

Like the Phaedrus, the Gorgias has puzzled students of Plato by the
appearance of two or more subjects. Under the cover of rhetoric higher
themes are introduced; the argument expands into a general view of the
good and evil of man. After making an ineffectual attempt to obtain
a sound definition of his art from Gorgias, Socrates assumes the
existence of a universal art of flattery or simulation having several
branches;—this is the genus of which rhetoric is only one, and not the
highest species. To flattery is opposed the true and noble art of life
which he who possesses seeks always to impart to others, and which at
last triumphs, if not here, at any rate in another world. These two
aspects of life and knowledge appear to be the two leading ideas of
the dialogue. The true and the false in individuals and states, in the
treatment of the soul as well as of the body, are conceived under the
forms of true and false art. In the development of this opposition there
arise various other questions, such as the two famous paradoxes of
Socrates (paradoxes as they are to the world in general, ideals as they
may be more worthily called): (1) that to do is worse than to suffer
evil; and (2) that when a man has done evil he had better be punished
than unpunished; to which may be added (3) a third Socratic paradox or
ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but not what they desire,
for the desire of all is towards the good. That pleasure is to be
distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness of pleasure and
pain, and by the possibility of the bad having in certain cases pleasures
as great as those of the good, or even greater. Not merely rhetoricians,
but poets, musicians, and other artists, the whole tribe of statesmen,
past as well as present, are included in the class of flatterers. The
true and false finally appear before the judgment-seat of the gods below.

[Sidenote: _The character of the Dialogue._]

The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three
characters of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond; and
the form and manner change with the stages of the argument. Socrates is
deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting in dealing with the
youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his encounter with Callicles.
In the first division the question is asked—What is rhetoric? To this
there is no answer given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict himself
by Socrates, and the argument is transferred to the hands of his disciple
Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master. The answer has at last
to be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain his
meaning to Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of shams
or flatteries. When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to the level
of cookery, he replies that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have
great power. Socrates denies that they have any real power, and hence
arise the three paradoxes already mentioned. Although they are strange
to him, Polus is at last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem
to him to follow legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act
of the dialogue closes. Then Callicles appears on the scene, at first
maintaining that pleasure is good, and that might is right, and that law
is nothing but the combination of the many weak against the few strong.
When he is confuted he withdraws from the argument, and leaves Socrates
to arrive at the conclusion by himself. The conclusion is that there
are two kinds of statesmanship, a higher and a lower—that which makes
the people better, and that which only flatters them, and he exhorts
Callicles to choose the higher. The dialogue terminates with a mythus of
a final judgment, in which there will be no more flattery or disguise,
and no further use for the teaching of rhetoric.

[Sidenote: _Contrast of Gorgias and Polus._]

The characters of the three interlocutors also correspond to the parts
which are assigned to them. Gorgias is the great rhetorician, now
advanced in years, who goes from city to city displaying his talents, and
is celebrated throughout Greece. Like all the Sophists in the dialogues
of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has also a certain dignity,
and is treated by Socrates with considerable respect. But he is no match
for him in dialectics. Although he has been teaching rhetoric all his
life, he is still incapable of defining his own art. When his ideas
begin to clear up, he is unwilling to admit that rhetoric can be wholly
separated from justice and injustice, and this lingering sentiment of
morality, or regard for public opinion, enables Socrates to detect him
in a contradiction. Like Protagoras, he is described as of a generous
nature; he expresses his approbation of Socrates’ manner of approaching a
question; he is quite ‘one of Socrates’ sort, ready to be refuted as well
as to refute,’ and very eager that Callicles and Socrates should have the
game out. He knows by experience that rhetoric exercises great influence
over other men, but he is unable to explain the puzzle how rhetoric can
teach everything and know nothing.

Polus is an impetuous youth, a runaway ‘colt,’ as Socrates describes
him, who wanted originally to have taken the place of Gorgias under
the pretext that the old man was tired, and now avails himself of the
earliest opportunity to enter the lists. He is said to be the author of
a work on rhetoric (462 C), and is again mentioned in the Phaedrus (267
B), as the inventor of balanced or double forms of speech (cp. Gorg.
448 C, 467 C; Symp. 185 C). At first he is violent and ill-mannered,
and is angry at seeing his master overthrown. But in the judicious
hands of Socrates he is soon restored to good-humour, and compelled
to assent to the required conclusion. Like Gorgias, he is overthrown
because he compromises; he is unwilling to say that to do is fairer or
more honourable than to suffer injustice. Though he is fascinated by the
power of rhetoric, and dazzled by the splendour of success, he is not
insensible to higher arguments. Plato may have felt that there would be
an incongruity in a youth maintaining the cause of injustice against
the world. He has never heard the other side of the question, and he
listens to the paradoxes, as they appear to him, of Socrates with evident
astonishment. He can hardly understand the meaning of Archelaus being
miserable, or of rhetoric being only useful in self-accusation. When the
argument with him has fairly run out,

[Sidenote: _Callicles, the man of the world._]

Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the stage:
he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these
things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the foundations of
society are upside down. In him another type of character is represented;
he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world, and an
accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language
as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and
unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no desire on his
part to offer any compromise in the interests of morality; nor is any
concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic, though he is
not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently maintains that
might is right. His great motive of action is political ambition; in this
he is characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy
of the Sophists; but favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as
an excellent weapon of attack and defence. He is a despiser of mankind as
he is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the state only a violation
of the order of nature, which intended that the stronger should govern
the weaker (cp. Rep. ii. 358-360). Like other men of the world who are of
a speculative turn of mind, he generalizes the bad side of human nature,
and has easily brought down his principles to his practice. Philosophy
and poetry alike supply him with distinctions suited to his view of human
life. He has a good will to Socrates, whose talents he evidently admires,
while he censures the puerile use which he makes of them. He expresses
a keen intellectual interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he
has a sympathy with other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of
a former generation, who showed no weakness and made no mistakes, such
as Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of
human character is a man of great passions and great powers, which he has
developed to the utmost, and which he uses in his own enjoyment and in
the government of others. Had Critias been the name instead of Callicles,
about whom we know nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man
would have seemed to reflect the history of his life.

[Sidenote: _The representation of Socrates in the Gorgias._]

And now the combat deepens. In Callicles, far more than in any sophist or
rhetorician, is concentrated the spirit of evil against which Socrates is
contending, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the many contending
against the one wise man, of which the Sophists, as he describes them in
the Republic, are the imitators rather than the authors, being themselves
carried away by the great tide of public opinion. Socrates approaches his
antagonist warily from a distance, with a sort of irony which touches
with a light hand both his personal vices (probably in allusion to some
scandal of the day) and his servility to the populace. At the same time,
he is in most profound earnest, as Chaerephon remarks. Callicles soon
loses his temper, but the more he is irritated, the more provoking and
matter of fact does Socrates become. A repartee of his which appears
to have been really made to the ‘omniscient’ Hippias, according to the
testimony of Xenophon (Mem. iv. 4, 6, 10), is introduced (490 E). He is
called by Callicles a popular declaimer, and certainly shows that he has
the power, in the words of Gorgias, of being ‘as long as he pleases,’ or
‘as short as he pleases’ (cp. Protag. 336 D). Callicles exhibits great
ability in defending himself and attacking Socrates, whom he accuses
of trifling and word-splitting; he is scandalized (p. 494) that the
legitimate consequences of his own argument should be stated in plain
terms; after the manner of men of the world, he wishes to preserve the
decencies of life. But he cannot consistently maintain the bad sense
of words; and getting confused between the abstract notions of better,
superior, stronger, he is easily turned round by Socrates, and only
induced to continue the argument by the authority of Gorgias. Once, when
Socrates is describing the manner in which the ambitious citizen has to
identify himself with the people, he partially recognizes the truth of
his words.

The Socrates of the Gorgias may be compared with the Socrates of the
Protagoras and Meno. As in other dialogues, he is the enemy of the
Sophists and rhetoricians; and also of the statesmen, whom he regards as
another variety of the same species. His behaviour is governed by that
of his opponents; the least forwardness or egotism on their part is met
by a corresponding irony on the part of Socrates. He must speak, for
philosophy will not allow him to be silent. He is indeed more ironical
and provoking than in any other of Plato’s writings: for he is ‘fooled
to the top of his bent’ by the worldliness of Callicles. But he is also
more deeply in earnest. He rises higher than even in the Phaedo and
Crito: at first enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust and
dialectics, he ends by losing his method, his life, himself, in them.
As in the Protagoras and Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of irony, he
makes a speech, but, true to his character, not until his adversary has
refused to answer any more questions. The presentiment of his own fate is
hanging over him. He is aware that Socrates, the single real teacher of
politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot safely go to war with
the whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will be condemned.
But he will be justified in the world below. Then the position of
Socrates and Callicles will be reversed; all those things ‘unfit for ears
polite’ which Callicles has prophesied as likely to happen to him in this
life, the insulting language, the box on the ears, will recoil upon his
assailant. (Compare Rep. x. 613, D, E, and the similar reversal of the
position of the lawyer and the philosopher in the Theaetetus, 173-176.)

[Sidenote: _The representation of Socrates in the Gorgias._]

There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial of the
generals after the battle of Arginusae, which he ironically attributes
to his ignorance of the manner in which a vote of the assembly should be
taken (473 E). This is said to have happened ‘last year’ (B. C. 406), and
therefore the assumed date of the dialogue has been fixed at 405 B. C.,
when Socrates would already have been an old man. The date is clearly
marked, but is scarcely reconcilable with another indication of time,
viz. the ‘recent’ usurpation of Archelaus, which occurred in the year 413
(470 D); and still less with the ‘recent’ death (503 B) of Pericles, who
really died twenty-four years previously (429 B. C.) and is afterwards
reckoned among the statesmen of a past age (cp. 517 A); or with the
mention of Nicias, who died in 413, and is nevertheless spoken of as a
living witness (472 A, B). But we shall hereafter have reason to observe,
that although there is a general consistency of times and persons in
the Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an invention of his
commentators (Preface to Republic, p. ix).

[Sidenote: _Socrates the only true politician._]

The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable, (1) for the truly
characteristic declaration of Socrates (p. 509 A) that he is ignorant of
the true nature and bearing of these things, while he affirms at the same
time that no one can maintain any other view without being ridiculous.
The profession of ignorance reminds us of the earlier and more
exclusively Socratic Dialogues. But neither in them, nor in the Apology,
nor in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, does Socrates express any doubt of
the fundamental truths of morality. He evidently regards this ‘among
the multitude of questions’ which agitate human life ‘as the principle
which alone remains unshaken’ (527 B). He does not insist here, any more
than in the Phaedo, on the literal truth of the myth, but only on the
soundness of the doctrine which is contained in it, that doing wrong is
worse than suffering, and that a man should be rather than seem; for the
next best thing to a man’s being just is that he should be corrected and
become just; also that he should avoid all flattery, whether of himself
or of others; and that rhetoric should be employed for the maintenance of
the right only. The revelation of another life is a recapitulation of the
argument in a figure.

(2) Socrates makes the singular remark, that he is himself the only true
politician of his age. In other passages, especially in the Apology, he
disclaims being a politician at all. There he is convinced that he or
any other good man who attempted to resist the popular will would be
put to death before he had done any good to himself or others. Here he
anticipates such a fate for himself, from the fact that he is ‘the only
man of the present day who performs his public duties at all’ (521 D).
The two points of view are not really inconsistent, but the difference
between them is worth noticing: Socrates is and is not a public man. Not
in the ordinary sense, like Alcibiades or Pericles, but in a higher one;
and this will sooner or later entail the same consequences on him. He
cannot be a private man if he would; neither can he separate morals from
politics. Nor is he unwilling to be a politician, although he foresees
the dangers which await him; but he must first become a better and
wiser man, for he as well as Callicles is in a state of perplexity and
uncertainty (527 D, E). And yet there is an inconsistency: for should not
Socrates too have taught the citizens better than to put him to death
(519)?

And now, as he himself says (506 D), we will ‘resume the argument from
the beginning.’

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

[Sidenote: _Analysis 447-451._]

    Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple,    =Steph.= 447
    Chaerephon, meets Callicles in the streets of Athens. He is
    informed that he has just missed an exhibition of Gorgias, which he
    regrets, because he was desirous, not of hearing Gorgias display
    his rhetoric, but of interrogating him concerning the nature of his
    art. Callicles proposes that they shall go with him to his own
    house, where Gorgias is staying. There they find the great
    rhetorician and his younger friend and disciple Polus.             448

    _Soc._ Put the question to him, Chaerephon. _Ch._ What question?
    _Soc._ Who is he?—such a question as would elicit from a man the
    answer, ‘I am a cobbler.’ Polus suggests that Gorgias may be
    tired, and desires to answer for him. ‘Who is Gorgias?’ asks
    Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master Socrates. ‘One of
    the best of men, and a proficient in the best and noblest of
    experimental arts,’ etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical and balanced
    phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness of
    the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has mistaken
    the quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to Gorgias, that
    Polus has learnt how to make a speech, but not how to answer a
    question. He wishes that Gorgias would answer him. Gorgias is
    willing enough, and replies to the question asked by Chaerephon,—that
    he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric language, ‘boasts
    himself to be a good one.’ At the request of Socrates he promises  449
    to be brief; for ‘he can be as long as he pleases, and as short as
    he pleases.’ Socrates would have him bestow his length on
    others, and proceeds to ask him a number of questions, which are
    answered by him to his own great satisfaction, and with a brevity
    which excites the admiration of Socrates. The result of the
    discussion may be summed up as follows:—

[Sidenote: _Analysis 451-456._]

    Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and          450
    other particular arts, are also concerned with discourse; in what
    way then does rhetoric differ from them? Gorgias draws a
    distinction between the arts which deal with words, and the arts
    which have to do with external actions. Socrates extends this
    distinction further, and divides all productive arts into two
    classes: (1) arts which may be carried on in silence; and (2) arts
    which have to do with words, or in which words are coextensive
    with action, such as arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric. But still
    Gorgias could hardly have meant to say that arithmetic was the     451
    same as rhetoric. Even in the arts which are concerned with
    words there are differences. What then distinguishes rhetoric
    from the other arts which have to do with words? ‘The words
    which rhetoric uses relate to the best and greatest of human
    things.’ But tell me, Gorgias, what are the best? ‘Health first,
    beauty next, wealth third,’ in the words of the old song, or how
    would you rank them? The arts will come to you in a body, each     452
    claiming precedence and saying that her own good is superior to
    that of the rest—How will you choose between them? ‘I should
    say, Socrates, that the art of persuasion, which gives freedom to
    all men, and to individuals power in the state, is the greatest    453
    good.’ But what is the exact nature of this persuasion?—is the
    persevering retort: You could not describe Zeuxis as a painter,
    or even as a painter of figures, if there were other painters of
    figures; neither can you define rhetoric simply as an art of
    persuasion, because there are other arts which persuade, such as
    arithmetic, which is an art of persuasion about odd and even
    numbers. Gorgias is made to see the necessity of a further
    limitation, and he now defines rhetoric as the art of persuading   454
    in the law courts, and in the assembly, about the just and unjust.
    But still there are two sorts of persuasion: one which gives
    knowledge, and another which gives belief without knowledge;
    and knowledge is always true, but belief may be either true or     455
    false,—there is therefore a further question: which of the two
    sorts of persuasion does rhetoric effect in courts of law and
    assemblies? Plainly that which gives belief and not that which
    gives knowledge; for no one can impart a real knowledge of such
    matters to a crowd of persons in a few minutes. And there is
    another point to be considered:—when the assembly meets to
    advise about walls or docks or military expeditions, the rhetorician
    is not taken into counsel, but the architect, or the general. How
    would Gorgias explain this phenomenon? All who intend to
    become disciples, of whom there are several in the company, and
    not Socrates only, are eagerly asking:—About what then will
    rhetoric teach us to persuade or advise the state?

[Sidenote: _Analysis 456-461._]

    Gorgias illustrates the nature of rhetoric by adducing the
    example of Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians to build
    their docks and walls, and of Pericles, whom Socrates himself has
    heard speaking about the middle wall of the Piraeus. He adds       456
    that he has exercised a similar power over the patients of his
    brother Herodicus. He could be chosen a physician by the
    assembly if he pleased, for no physician could compete with a
    rhetorician in popularity and influence. He could persuade the
    multitude of anything by the power of his rhetoric; not that the
    rhetorician ought to abuse this power any more than a boxer
    should abuse the art of self-defence. Rhetoric is a good thing,    457
    but, like all good things, may be unlawfully used. Neither is the
    teacher of the art to be deemed unjust because his pupils are
    unjust and make a bad use of the lessons which they have learned
    from him.

    Socrates would like to know before he replies, whether Gorgias
    will quarrel with him if he points out a slight inconsistency into
    which he has fallen, or whether he, like himself, is one who loves
    to be refuted. Gorgias declares that he is quite one of his sort,  458
    but fears that the argument may be tedious to the company. The
    company cheer, and Chaerephon and Callicles exhort them to
    proceed. Socrates gently points out the supposed inconsistency
    into which Gorgias appears to have fallen, and which he is
    inclined to think may arise out of a misapprehension of his own.
    The rhetorician has been declared by Gorgias to be more persuasive 459
    to the ignorant than the physician, or any other expert.
    And he is said to be ignorant, and this ignorance of his is
    regarded by Gorgias as a happy condition, for he has escaped the
    trouble of learning. But is he as ignorant of just and unjust as he
    is of medicine or building? Gorgias is compelled to admit that if  460
    he did not know them previously he must learn them from his
    teacher as a part of the art of rhetoric. But he who has learned
    carpentry is a carpenter, and he who has learned music is a
    musician, and he who has learned justice is just. The rhetorician
    then must be a just man, and rhetoric is a just thing. But Gorgias
    has already admitted the opposite of this, viz. that rhetoric may
    be abused, and that the rhetorician may act unjustly. How is the
    inconsistency to be explained?                                     461

[Sidenote: _Analysis 461-464._]

    The fallacy of this argument is twofold; for in the first place,
    a man may know justice and not be just—here is the old confusion
    of the arts and the virtues;—nor can any teacher be
    expected to counteract wholly the bent of natural character; and
    secondly, a man may have a degree of justice, but not sufficient
    to prevent him from ever doing wrong. Polus is naturally
    exasperated at the sophism, which he is unable to detect; of
    course, he says, the rhetorician, like every one else, will admit
    that he knows justice (how can he do otherwise when pressed by
    the interrogations of Socrates?), but he thinks that great want of
    manners is shown in bringing the argument to such a pass.
    Socrates ironically replies, that when old men trip, the young set 462
    them on their legs again; and he is quite willing to retract, if he
    can be shown to be in error, but upon one condition, which is
    that Polus studies brevity. Polus is in great indignation at not
    being allowed to use as many words as he pleases in the free
    state of Athens. Socrates retorts, that yet harder will be his own
    case, if he is compelled to stay and listen to them. After some
    altercation they agree (cp. Protag. 338), that Polus shall ask and
    Socrates answer.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 464-472._]

    ‘What is the art of Rhetoric?’ says Polus. Not an art at all,
    replies Socrates, but a thing which in your book you affirm to
    have created art. Polus asks, ‘What thing?’ and Socrates
    answers, An experience or routine of making a sort of delight
    or gratification. ‘But is not rhetoric a fine thing?’ I have not
    yet told you what rhetoric is. Will you ask me another question—What
    is cookery? ‘What is cookery?’ An experience or
    routine of making a sort of delight or gratification. Then they
    are the same, or rather fall under the same class, and rhetoric    463
    has still to be distinguished from cookery. ‘What is rhetoric?’
    asks Polus once more. A part of a not very creditable whole,
    which may be termed flattery, is the reply. ‘But what part?’ A
    shadow of a part of politics. This, as might be expected, is
    wholly unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus; and, in order    464
    to explain his meaning to them, Socrates draws a distinction
    between shadows or appearances and realities; e. g. there is real
    health of body or soul, and the appearance of them; real arts and
    sciences, and the simulations of them. Now the soul and body
    have two arts waiting upon them, first the art of politics, which
    attends on the soul, having a legislative part and a judicial part;
    and another art attending on the body, which has no generic
    name, but may also be described as having two divisions, one of
    which is medicine and the other gymnastic. Corresponding with
    these four arts or sciences there are four shams or simulations of
    them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they
    give no reason of their own existence. The art of dressing up is
    the sham or simulation of gymnastic, the art of cookery, of medicine;
    rhetoric is the simulation of justice, and sophistic of            465
    legislation. They may be summed up in an arithmetical formula:—

    Tiring : gymnastic :: cookery : medicine :: sophistic : legislation.

    And,

    Cookery : medicine :: rhetoric : the art of justice.

    And this is the true scheme of them, but when measured only by
    the gratification which they procure, they become jumbled together
    and return to their aboriginal chaos. Socrates apologizes for the
    length of his speech, which was necessary to the explanation of    466
    the subject, and begs Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.

    ‘Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed
    flatterers?’ They are not esteemed at all. ‘Why, have they not
    great power, and can they not do whatever they desire?’ They have  467
    no power, and they only do what they think best, and never what
    they desire; for they never attain the true object of desire, which
    is the good. ‘As if you, Socrates, would not envy the possessor
    of despotic power, who can imprison, exile, kill any one whom he
    pleases.’ But Socrates replies that he has no wish to put any one -469
    to death; he who kills another, even justly, is not to be envied,
    and he who kills him unjustly is to be pitied; it is better to suffer
    than to do injustice. He does not consider that going about with
    a dagger and putting men out of the way, or setting a house on
    fire, is real power. To this Polus assents, on the ground that     470
    such acts would be punished, but he is still of opinion that
    evil-doers, if they are unpunished, may be happy enough. He
    instances Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia.
    Does not Socrates think him happy?—Socrates would like to          471
    know more about him; he cannot pronounce even the great king
    to be happy, unless he knows his mental and moral condition.
    Polus explains that Archelaus was a slave, being the son of a
    woman who was the slave of Alcetas, brother of Perdiccas king
    of Macedon—and he, by every species of crime, first murdering
    his uncle and cousin and then his half-brother, obtained the
    kingdom. This was very wicked, and yet all the world, including
    Socrates, would like to have his place. Socrates dismisses the     472
    appeal to numbers; Polus, if he will, may summon all the rich
    men of Athens, Nicias and his brothers, Aristocrates, the house of
    Pericles, or any other great family—this is the kind of evidence
    which is adduced in courts of justice, where truth depends upon
    numbers. But Socrates employs proof of another sort; his
    appeal is to one witness only,—that is to say, the person with
    whom he is speaking; him he will convict out of his own mouth.
    And he is prepared to show, after his manner, that Archelaus
    cannot be a wicked man and yet happy.                              473

[Sidenote: _Analysis 472-475._]

    The evil-doer is deemed happy if he escapes, and miserable if
    he suffers punishment; but Socrates thinks him less miserable if
    he suffers than if he escapes. Polus is of opinion that such a paradox
    as this hardly deserves refutation, and is at any rate sufficiently
    refuted by the fact. Socrates has only to compare the lot of the
    successful tyrant who is the envy of the world, and of the wretch
    who, having been detected in a criminal attempt against the state,
    is crucified or burnt to death. Socrates replies, that if they are
    both criminal they are both miserable, but that the unpunished is
    the more miserable of the two. At this Polus laughs outright, which
    leads Socrates to remark that laughter is a new species of refutation.
    Polus replies, that he is already refuted; for if he will take the
    votes of the company, he will find that no one agrees with him.    474
    To this Socrates rejoins, that he is not a public man, and
    (referring to his own conduct at the trial of the generals after the
    battle of Arginusae) is unable to take the suffrages of any company,
    as he had shown on a recent occasion; he can only deal with one
    witness at a time, and that is the person with whom he is arguing.
    But he is certain that in the opinion of any man to do is worse
    than to suffer evil.

    Polus, though he will not admit this, is ready to acknowledge
    that to do evil is considered the more foul or dishonourable of the
    two. But what is fair and what is foul; whether the terms are
    applied to bodies, colours, figures, laws, habits, studies, must
    they not be defined with reference to pleasure and utility? Polus  475
    assents to this latter doctrine, and is easily persuaded that the
    fouler of two things must exceed either in pain or in hurt. But the
    doing cannot exceed the suffering of evil in pain, and therefore
    must exceed in hurt. Thus doing is proved by the testimony of
    Polus himself to be worse or more hurtful than suffering.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 476-482._]

    There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better off
    when he is punished or when he is unpunished? Socrates replies,    476
    that what is done justly is suffered justly: if the act is just, the
    effect is just; if to punish is just, to be punished is just, and
    therefore fair, and therefore beneficent; and the benefit is that the
    soul is improved. There are three evils from which a man may       477
    suffer, and which affect him in estate, body, and soul;—these are,
    poverty, disease, injustice; and the foulest of these is injustice, the
    evil of the soul, because that brings the greatest hurt. And there are
    three arts which heal these evils—trading, medicine, justice—and   478
    the fairest of these is justice. Happy is he who has never committed
    injustice, and happy in the second degree he who has been          479
    healed by punishment. And therefore the criminal should himself
    go to the judge as he would to the physician, and purge away his   480
    crime. Rhetoric will enable him to display his guilt in proper
    colours, and to sustain himself and others in enduring the necessary
    penalty. And similarly if a man has an enemy, he will desire not   481
    to punish him, but that he shall go unpunished and become worse
    and worse, taking care only that he does no injury to himself.
    These are at least conceivable uses of the art, and no others have
    been discovered by us.

    Here Callicles, who has been listening in silent amazement, asks
    Chaerephon whether Socrates is in earnest, and on receiving the
    assurance that he is, proceeds to ask the same question of Socrates
    himself. For if such doctrines are true, life must have been turned
    upside down, and all of us are doing the opposite of what we ought
    to be doing.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 482-486._]

    Socrates replies in a style of playful irony, that before men can
    understand one another they must have some common feeling.
    And such a community of feeling exists between himself and
    Callicles, for both of them are lovers, and they have both a pair of
    loves; the beloved of Callicles are the Athenian Demos and Demos   482
    the son of Pyrilampes; the beloved of Socrates are Alcibiades
    and philosophy. The peculiarity of Callicles is that he can never
    contradict his loves; he changes as his Demos changes in all his
    opinions; he watches the countenance of both his loves, and
    repeats their sentiments, and if any one is surprised at his sayings
    and doings, the explanation of them is, that he is not a free agent,
    but must always be imitating his two loves. And this is the
    explanation of Socrates’ peculiarities also. He is always repeating
    what his mistress, Philosophy, is saying to him, who, unlike his
    other love, Alcibiades, is ever the same, ever true. Callicles must
    refute her, or he will never be at unity with himself; and discord
    in life is far worse than the discord of musical sounds.

    Callicles answers, that Gorgias was overthrown because, as Polus
    said, in compliance with popular prejudice he had admitted that if
    his pupil did not know justice the rhetorician must teach him; and
    Polus has been similarly entangled, because his modesty led him
    to admit that to suffer is more honourable than to do injustice. By
    custom ‘yes,’ but not by nature, says Callicles. And Socrates is   483
    always playing between the two points of view, and putting one in
    the place of the other. In this very argument, what Polus only
    meant in a conventional sense has been affirmed by him to be a
    law of nature. For convention says that ‘injustice is dishonourable,’
    but nature says that ‘might is right.’ And we are always
    taming down the nobler spirits among us to the conventional level.
    But sometimes a great man will rise up and reassert his original
    rights, trampling under foot all our formularies, and then the     484
    light of natural justice shines forth. Pindar says, ‘Law, the king
    of all, does violence with high hand;’ as is indeed proved by the
    example of Heracles, who drove off the oxen of Geryon and never
    paid for them.

    This is the truth, Socrates, as you will be convinced, if you leave
    philosophy and pass on to the real business of life. A little
    philosophy is an excellent thing; too much is the ruin of a man. He
    who has not ‘passed his metaphysics’ before he has grown up to
    manhood will never know the world. Philosophers are ridiculous
    when they take to politics, and I dare say that politicians are
    equally ridiculous when they take to philosophy: ‘Every man,’ as
    Euripides says, ‘is fondest of that in which he is best.’          485
    Philosophy is graceful in youth, like the lisp of infancy, and
    should be cultivated as a part of education; but when a grown-up
    man lisps or studies philosophy, I should like to beat him. None
    of those over-refined natures ever come to any good; they avoid
    the busy haunts of men, and skulk in corners, whispering to a few
    admiring youths, and never giving utterance to any noble sentiments.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 486-491._]

    For you, Socrates, I have a regard, and therefore I say to you,
    as Zethus says to Amphion in the play, that you have ‘a noble soul 486
    disguised in a puerile exterior.’ And I would have you consider
    the danger which you and other philosophers incur. For you
    would not know how to defend yourself if any one accused you in
    a law-court,—there you would stand, with gaping mouth and dizzy
    brain, and might be murdered, robbed, boxed on the ears with
    impunity. Take my advice, then, and get a little common sense;
    leave to others these frivolities; walk in the ways of the wealthy
    and be wise.

    Socrates professes to have found in Callicles the philosopher’s
    touchstone; and he is certain that any opinion in which they both
    agree must be the very truth. Callicles has all the three qualities
    which are needed in a critic—knowledge, good-will, frankness;      487
    Gorgias and Polus, although learned men, were too modest, and
    their modesty made them contradict themselves. But Callicles is
    well-educated; and he is not too modest to speak out (of this he
    has already given proof), and his good-will is shown both by his
    own profession and by his giving the same caution against philosophy
    to Socrates, which Socrates remembers hearing him give
    long ago to his own clique of friends. He will pledge himself to   488
    retract any error into which he may have fallen, and which Callicles
    may point out. But he would like to know first of all what he and
    Pindar mean by natural justice. Do they suppose that the rule of
    justice is the rule of the stronger or of the better? ‘There is no
    difference.’ Then are not the many superior to the one, and the
    opinions of the many better? And their opinion is that justice is
    equality, and that to do is more dishonourable than to suffer wrong.
    And as they are the superior or stronger, this opinion of theirs   489
    must be in accordance with natural as well as conventional justice.
    ‘Why will you continue splitting words? Have I not told you that
    the superior is the better?’ But what do you mean by the better?
    Tell me that, and please to be a little milder in your language, if
    you do not wish to drive me away. ‘I mean the worthier, the        490
    wiser.’ You mean to say that one man of sense ought to rule
    over ten thousand fools? ‘Yes, that is my meaning.’ Ought the
    physician then to have a larger share of meats and drinks? or
    the weaver to have more coats, or the cobbler larger shoes, or the
    farmer more seed? ‘You are always saying the same things,          491
    Socrates.’ Yes, and on the same subjects too; but you are never
    saying the same things. For, first, you defined the superior to be
    the stronger, and then the wiser, and now something else;—what
    _do_ you mean? ‘I mean men of political ability, who ought to
    govern and to have more than the governed.’ Than themselves?
    ‘What do you mean?’ I mean to say that every man is his own
    governor. ‘I see that you mean those dolts, the temperate. But
    my doctrine is, that a man should let his desires grow, and take
    the means of satisfying them. To the many this is impossible,      492
    and therefore they combine to prevent him. But if he is a king,
    and has power, how base would he be in submitting to them! To
    invite the common herd to be lord over him, when he might have
    the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates, that
    luxury and self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest
    is mere talk.’

[Sidenote: _Analysis 491-494._]

    Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what
    other men only think. According to his view, those who want
    nothing are not happy. ‘Why,’ says Callicles, ‘if they were,
    stones and the dead would be happy.’ Socrates in reply is led
    into a half-serious, half-comic vein of reflection. ‘Who knows,’ as
    Euripides says, ‘whether life may not be death, and death life?’
    Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even in life we are  493
    dead, and that the body (σῶμα) is the tomb (σῆμα) of the soul. And
    some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he represents
    fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying
    water to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve,
    and this sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but
    nevertheless is a figure of a truth which I want to make you
    acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment is better than the life
    of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? ‘Far otherwise.’
    Then hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and
    self-indulgence may be represented respectively by two men, who are
    filling jars with streams of wine, honey, milk,—the jars of the one
    are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fills his jars,
    and has no more trouble with them; the second is always filling    494
    them, and would suffer extreme misery if he desisted. Are you
    of the same opinion still? ‘Yes, Socrates, and the figure expresses
    what I mean. For true pleasure is a perpetual stream, flowing in
    and flowing out. To be hungry and always eating, to be thirsty
    and always drinking, and to have all the other desires and to
    satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of happiness.’ And to be
    itching and always scratching? ‘I do not deny that there may be
    happiness even in that.’ And to indulge unnatural desires, if they
    are abundantly satisfied? Callicles is indignant at the introduction
    of such topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that they are
    introduced, not by him, but by the maintainer of the identity of   495
    pleasure and good. Will Callicles still maintain this? ‘Yes, for
    the sake of consistency, he will.’ The answer does not satisfy
    Socrates, who fears that he is losing his touchstone. A profession
    of seriousness on the part of Callicles reassures him, and they
    proceed with the argument. Pleasure and good are the same,
    but knowledge and courage are not the same either with pleasure
    or good, or with one another. Socrates disproves the first of these
    statements by showing that two opposites cannot co-exist, but must
    alternate with one another—to be well and ill together is          496
    impossible. But pleasure and pain are simultaneous, and the cessation
    of them is simultaneous; e. g. in the case of drinking and thirsting,
    whereas good and evil are not simultaneous, and do not cease       497
    simultaneously, and therefore pleasure cannot be the same as
    good.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 494-501._]

    Callicles has already lost his temper, and can only be persuaded
    to go on by the interposition of Gorgias. Socrates, having already
    guarded against objections by distinguishing courage and knowledge
    from pleasure and good, proceeds:—The good are good by
    the presence of good, and the bad are bad by the presence of evil.
    And the brave and wise are good, and the cowardly and foolish      498
    are bad. And he who feels pleasure is good, and he who feels
    pain is bad, and both feel pleasure and pain in nearly the same
    degree, and sometimes the bad man or coward in a greater degree.
    Therefore the bad man or coward is as good as the brave or may     499
    be even better.

    Callicles endeavours now to avert the inevitable absurdity by
    affirming that he and all mankind admitted some pleasures to be
    good and others bad. The good are the beneficial, and the bad
    are the hurtful, and we should choose the one and avoid the other.
    But this, as Socrates observes, is a return to the old doctrine of
    himself and Polus, that all things should be done for the sake of
    the good.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 501-506._]

    Callicles assents to this, and Socrates, finding that they are     500
    agreed in distinguishing pleasure from good, returns to his old
    division of empirical habits, or shams, or flatteries, which study 501
    pleasure only, and the arts which are concerned with the higher
    interests of soul and body. Does Callicles agree to this division?
    Callicles will agree to anything, in order that he may get through
    the argument. Which of the arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing,
    harp-playing, choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of
    Cinesias are all equally condemned on the ground that they give
    pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who was the father of    502
    Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of Tragedy is bent
    upon pleasure, and not upon improvement. Poetry in general is
    only a rhetorical address to a mixed audience of men, women, and
    children. And the orators are very far from speaking with a view
    to what is best; their way is to humour the assembly as if they
    were children.

    Callicles replies, that this is only true of some of them; others
    have a real regard for their fellow-citizens. Granted; then there
    are two species of oratory; the one a flattery, another which has
    a real regard for the citizens. But where are the orators among
    whom you find the latter? Callicles admits that there are none     503
    remaining, but there were such in the days when Themistocles,
    Cimon, Miltiades, and the great Pericles were still alive. Socrates
    replies that none of these were true artists, setting before
    themselves the duty of bringing order out of disorder. The good    504
    man and true orator has a settled design, running through his
    life, to which he conforms all his words and actions; he desires
    to implant justice and eradicate injustice, to implant all virtue
    and eradicate all vice in the minds of his citizens. He is the     505
    physician who will not allow the sick man to indulge his appetites
    with a variety of meats and drinks, but insists on his exercising
    self-restraint. And this is good for the soul, and better than the
    unrestrained indulgence which Callicles was recently approving.

    Here Callicles, who had been with difficulty brought to this
    point, turns restive, and suggests that Socrates shall answer his
    own questions. ‘Then,’ says Socrates, ‘one man must do for
    two;’ and though he had hoped to have given Callicles an ‘Amphion’
    in return for his ‘Zethus,’ he is willing to proceed; at the       506
    same time, he hopes that Callicles will correct him, if he falls
    into error. He recapitulates the advantages which he has already
    won:—

[Sidenote: _Analysis 506-511._]

    The pleasant is not the same as the good—Callicles and I are
    agreed about that,—but pleasure is to be pursued for the sake of
    the good, and the good is that of which the presence makes us
    good; we and all things good have acquired some virtue or other.
    And virtue, whether of body or soul, of things or persons, is
    not attained by accident, but is due to order and harmonious
    arrangement. And the soul which has order is better than the soul  507
    which is without order, and is therefore temperate and is therefore
    good, and the intemperate is bad. And he who is temperate
    is also just and brave and pious, and has attained the perfection of
    goodness and therefore of happiness, and the intemperate whom
    you approve is the opposite of all this and is wretched. He
    therefore who would be happy must pursue temperance and avoid
    intemperance, and if possible escape the necessity of punishment,
    but if he have done wrong he must endure punishment. In this
    way states and individuals should seek to attain harmony, which,   508
    as the wise tell us, is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and
    men. Callicles has never discovered the power of geometrical
    proportion in both worlds; he would have men aim at disproportion
    and excess. But if he be wrong in this, and if self-control is the
    true secret of happiness, then the paradox is true that the only
    use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus was right in saying
    that to do wrong is worse than to suffer wrong, and Gorgias was
    right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man. And you
    were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in
    saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the
    ears with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is
    worse than to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then   509
    is now made fast in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the
    true nature of these things, but I know that no one can deny my
    words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the greatest of evils,
    and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would        510
    avoid the last must be a ruler, or the friend of a ruler; and to be
    the friend he must be the equal of the ruler, and must also resemble
    him. Under his protection he will suffer no evil, but will
    he also do no evil? Nay, will he not rather do all the evil which
    he can and escape? And in this way the greatest of all evils will  511
    befall him. ‘But this imitator of the tyrant,’ rejoins Callicles,
    ‘will kill any one who does not similarly imitate him.’ Socrates
    replies that he is not deaf, and that he has heard that repeated
    many times, and can only reply, that a bad man will kill a good
    one. ‘Yes, and that is the provoking thing.’ Not provoking to a
    man of sense who is not studying the arts which will preserve
    him from danger; and this, as you say, is the use of rhetoric in
    courts of justice. But how many other arts are there which also
    save men from death, and are yet quite humble in their
    pretensions—such as the art of swimming, or the art of the pilot?
    Does not the pilot do men at least as much service as the
    rhetorician, and yet for the voyage from Aegina to Athens he does
    not charge more than two obols, and when he disembarks is quite
    unassuming in his demeanour? The reason is that he is not certain  512
    whether he has done his passengers any good in saving them from
    death, if one of them is diseased in body, and still more if he is
    diseased in mind—who can say? The engineer too will often
    save whole cities, and yet you despise him, and would not
    allow your son to marry his daughter, or his son to marry yours.
    But what reason is there in this? For if virtue only means the
    saving of life, whether your own or another’s, you have no right to
    despise him or any practiser of saving arts. But is not virtue
    something different from saving and being saved? I would have      513
    you rather consider whether you ought not to disregard length of
    life, and think only how you can live best, leaving all besides to
    the will of Heaven. For you must not expect to have influence
    either with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of Pyrilampes,
    unless you become like them. What do you say to this?

[Sidenote: _Analysis 511-515._]

    ‘There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not
    entirely believe you.’

[Sidenote: _Analysis 515-520._]

    That is because you are in love with Demos. But let us have a
    little more conversation. You remember the two processes—one
    which was directed to pleasure, the other which was directed to
    making men as good as possible. And those who have the care
    of the city should make the citizens as good as possible. But who  514
    would undertake a public building, if he had never had a teacher
    of the art of building, and had never constructed a building before?
    or who would undertake the duty of state-physician, if he had
    never cured either himself or any one else? Should we not
    examine him before we entrusted him with the office? And as
    Callicles is about to enter public life, should we not examine
    him? Whom has he made better? For we have already admitted that    515
    this is the statesman’s proper business. And we must ask the
    same question about Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and
    Themistocles. Whom did they make better? Nay, did not Pericles
    make the citizens worse? For he gave them pay, and at first he
    was very popular with them, but at last they condemned him to
    death. Yet surely he would be a bad tamer of animals who,          516
    having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt, and
    man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only
    made him wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he
    could not have been a good statesman. The same tale might
    be repeated about Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades. But the
    charioteer who keeps his seat at first is not thrown out when he   517
    gains greater experience and skill. The inference is, that the
    statesmen of a past age were no better than those of our own.
    They may have been cleverer constructors of docks and harbours,
    but they did not improve the character of the citizens. I have
    told you again and again (and I purposely use the same images)
    that the soul, like the body, may be treated in two ways—there is
    the meaner and the higher art. You seemed to understand what       518
    I said at the time, but when I ask you who were the really good
    statesmen, you answer—as if I asked you who were the good
    trainers, and you answered, Thearion, the baker, Mithoecus, the
    author of the Sicilian cookery-book, Sarambus, the vintner. And
    you would be affronted if I told you that these are a parcel of
    cooks who make men fat only to make them thin. And those
    whom they have fattened applaud them, instead of finding fault
    with them, and lay the blame of their subsequent disorders on
    their physicians. In this respect, Callicles, you are like them;
    you applaud the statesmen of old, who pandered to the vices of the
    citizens, and filled the city with docks and harbours, but neglected
    virtue and justice. And when the fit of illness comes, the         519
    citizens who in like manner applauded Themistocles, Pericles, and
    others, will lay hold of you and my friend Alcibiades, and you will
    suffer for the misdeeds of your predecessors. The old story is always
    being repeated—‘after all his services, the ungrateful city banished
    him, or condemned him to death.’ As if the statesman should not
    have taught the city better! He surely cannot blame the state for
    having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or teacher
    can find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist  520
    and orator are in the same case; although you admire rhetoric
    and despise sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the higher of the
    two. The teacher of the arts takes money, but the teacher of
    virtue or politics takes no money, because this is the only kind of
    service which makes the disciple desirous of requiting his teacher.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 520-524._]

    Socrates concludes by finally asking, to which of the two modes
    of serving the state Callicles invites him:—‘to the inferior and
    ministerial one,’ is the ingenuous reply. That is the only way of  521
    avoiding death, replies Socrates; and he has heard often enough,
    and would rather not hear again, that the bad man will kill the
    good. But he thinks that such a fate is very likely reserved for
    him, because he remarks that he is the only person who teaches
    the true art of politics. And very probably, as in the case which  522
    he described to Polus, he may be the physician who is tried by a
    jury of children. He cannot say that he has procured the citizens
    any pleasure, and if any one charges him with perplexing them, or
    with reviling their elders, he will not be able to make them
    understand that he has only been actuated by a desire for their
    good. And therefore there is no saying what his fate may be. ‘And
    do you think that a man who is unable to help himself is in a good
    condition?’ Yes, Callicles, if he have the true self-help, which is
    never to have said or done any wrong to himself or others. If I
    had not this kind of self-help, I should be ashamed; but if I die
    for want of your flattering rhetoric, I shall die in peace. For
    death is no evil, but to go to the world below laden with offences
    is the worst of evils. In proof of which I will tell you a tale:—

    Under the rule of Cronos, men were judged on the day of their      523
    death, and when judgment had been given upon them they departed—the
    good to the islands of the blest, the bad to the house of vengeance.
    But as they were still living, and had their clothes on at
    the time when they were being judged, there was favouritism, and
    Zeus, when he came to the throne, was obliged to alter the mode
    of procedure, and try them after death, having first sent down
    Prometheus to take away from them the foreknowledge of death.
    Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus were appointed to be the           524
    judges; Rhadamanthus for Asia, Aeacus for Europe, and Minos
    was to hold the court of appeal. Now death is the separation of
    soul and body, but after death soul and body alike retain their
    characteristics; the fat man, the dandy, the branded slave, are all
    distinguishable. Some prince or potentate, perhaps even the great
    king himself, appears before Rhadamanthus, and he instantly
    detects him, though he knows not who he is; he sees the scars of   525
    perjury and iniquity, and sends him away to the house of torment.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 524-527._]

    For there are two classes of souls who undergo punishment—the
    curable and the incurable. The curable are those who are
    benefited by their punishment; the incurable are such as Archelaus,
    who benefit others by becoming a warning to them. The
    latter class are generally kings and potentates; meaner persons,
    happily for themselves, have not the same power of doing injustice.
    Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites, are supposed by
    Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not that there
    is anything to prevent a great man from being a good one, as is
    shown by the famous example of Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus.  526
    But to Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as good or
    bad; they are stripped of their dignities and preferments; he
    despatches the bad to Tartarus, labelled either as curable or
    incurable, and looks with love and admiration on the soul of some
    just one, whom he sends to the islands of the blest. Similar is
    the practice of Aeacus; and Minos overlooks them, holding a
    golden sceptre, as Odysseus in Homer saw him

      ‘Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.’

    My wish for myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present
    our souls undefiled to the judge in that day; my desire in life is
    to be able to meet death. And I exhort you, and retort upon you    527
    the reproach which you cast upon me,—that you will stand before
    the judge, gaping, and with dizzy brain, and any one may box you
    on the ear, and do you all manner of evil.

    Perhaps you think that this is an old wives’ fable. But you,
    who are the three wisest men in Hellas, have nothing better to
    say, and no one will ever show that to do is better than to suffer
    evil. A man should study to be, and not merely to seem. If he
    is bad, he should become good, and avoid all flattery, whether of
    the many or of the few.

    Follow me, then; and if you are looked down upon, that will do
    you no harm. And when we have practised virtue, we will betake
    ourselves to politics, but not until we are delivered from the
    shameful state of ignorance and uncertainty in which we are at
    present. Let us follow in the way of virtue and justice, and not in
    the way to which you, Callicles, invite us; for that way is nothing
    worth.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _The logic and dialectic of the Dialogue._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

We will now consider in order some of the principal points of the
dialogue. Having regard (1) to the age of Plato and the ironical
character of his writings, we may compare him with himself and with
other great teachers, and we may note in passing the objections of his
critics. And then (2) casting one eye upon him, we may cast another upon
ourselves, and endeavour to draw out the great lessons which he teaches
for all time, stripped of the accidental form in which they are enveloped.

(1) In the Gorgias, as in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, we are
made aware that formal logic has as yet no existence. The old difficulty
of framing a definition recurs. The illusive analogy of the arts and the
virtues also continues. The ambiguity of several words, such as nature,
custom, the honourable, the good, is not cleared up. The Sophists are
still floundering about the distinction of the real and seeming. Figures
of speech are made the basis of arguments. The possibility of conceiving
a universal art or science, which admits of application to a particular
subject-matter, is a difficulty which remains unsolved, and has not
altogether ceased to haunt the world at the present day (cp. Charmides,
166 ff.). The defect of clearness is also apparent in Socrates himself,
unless we suppose him to be practising on the simplicity of his opponent,
or rather perhaps trying an experiment in dialectics. Nothing can be more
fallacious than the contradiction which he pretends to have discovered
in the answers of Gorgias (see Analysis). The advantages which he gains
over Polus are also due to a false antithesis of pleasure and good, and
to an erroneous assertion that an agent and a patient may be described by
similar predicates;—a mistake which Aristotle partly shares and partly
corrects in the Nicomachean Ethics, V. i. 4; xi. 2. Traces of a ‘robust
sophistry’ are likewise discernible in his argument with Callicles (pp.
490, 496, 516).

[Sidenote: _The ideal of suffering virtue._]

(2) Although Socrates professes to be convinced by reason only, yet the
argument is often a sort of dialectical fiction, by which he conducts
himself and others to his own ideal of life and action. And we may
sometimes wish that we could have suggested answers to his antagonists,
or pointed out to them the rocks which lay concealed under the ambiguous
terms good, pleasure, and the like. But it would be as useless to examine
his arguments by the requirements of modern logic, as to criticise this
ideal from a merely utilitarian point of view. If we say that the ideal
is generally regarded as unattainable, and that mankind will by no means
agree in thinking that the criminal is happier when punished than when
unpunished, any more than they would agree to the stoical paradox that a
man may be happy on the rack, Plato has already admitted that the world
is against him. Neither does he mean to say that Archelaus is tormented
by the stings of conscience; or that the sensations of the impaled
criminal are more agreeable than those of the tyrant drowned in luxurious
enjoyment. Neither is he speaking, as in the Protagoras, of virtue as a
calculation of pleasure, an opinion which he afterwards repudiates in
the Phaedo. What then is his meaning? His meaning we shall be able to
illustrate best by parallel notions, which, whether justifiable by logic
or not, have always existed among mankind. We must remind the reader that
Socrates himself implies that he will be understood or appreciated by
very few.

He is speaking not of the consciousness of happiness, but of the idea of
happiness. When a martyr dies in a good cause, when a soldier falls in
battle, we do not suppose that death or wounds are without pain, or that
their physical suffering is always compensated by a mental satisfaction.
Still we regard them as happy, and we would a thousand times rather have
their death than a shameful life. Nor is this only because we believe
that they will obtain an immortality of fame, or that they will have
crowns of glory in another world, when their enemies and persecutors will
be proportionably tormented. Men are found in a few instances to do what
is right, without reference to public opinion or to consequences. And we
regard them as happy on this ground only, much as Socrates’ friends in
the opening of the Phaedo are described as regarding him; or as was said
of another, ‘they looked upon his face as upon the face of an angel.’ We
are not concerned to justify this idealism by the standard of utility or
public opinion, but merely to point out the existence of such a sentiment
in the better part of human nature.

[Sidenote: _Plato’s theory of punishment._]

The idealism of Plato is founded upon this sentiment. He would maintain
that in some sense or other truth and right are alone to be sought,
and that all other goods are only desirable as means towards these. He
is thought to have erred in ‘considering the agent only, and making
no reference to the happiness of others, as affected by him.’ But the
happiness of others or of mankind, if regarded as an end, is really quite
as ideal and almost as paradoxical to the common understanding as Plato’s
conception of happiness. For the greatest happiness of the greatest
number may mean also the greatest pain of the individual which will
procure the greatest pleasure of the greatest number. Ideas of utility,
like those of duty and right, may be pushed to unpleasant consequences.
Nor can Plato in the Gorgias be deemed purely self-regarding, considering
that Socrates expressly mentions the duty of imparting the truth when
discovered to others. Nor must we forget that the side of ethics which
regards others is by the ancients merged in politics. Both in Plato and
Aristotle, as well as in the Stoics, the social principle, though taking
another form, is really far more prominent than in most modern treatises
on ethics.

The idealizing of suffering is one of the conceptions which have
exercised the greatest influence on mankind. Into the theological import
of this, or into the consideration of the errors to which the idea may
have given rise, we need not now enter. All will agree that the ideal of
the Divine Sufferer, whose words the world would not receive, the man of
sorrows of whom the Hebrew prophets spoke, has sunk deep into the heart
of the human race. It is a similar picture of suffering goodness which
Plato desires to pourtray, not without an allusion to the fate of his
master Socrates. He is convinced that, somehow or other, such an one must
be happy in life or after death. In the Republic, he endeavours to show
that his happiness would be assured here in a well-ordered state. But
in the actual condition of human things the wise and good are weak and
miserable; such an one is like a man fallen among wild beasts, exposed to
every sort of wrong and obloquy.

[Sidenote: _Plato’s theory of punishment._]

Plato, like other philosophers, is thus led on to the conclusion, that
if ‘the ways of God’ to man are to be ‘justified,’ the hopes of another
life must be included. If the question could have been put to him,
whether a man dying in torments was happy still, even if, as he suggests
in the Apology (40 C), ‘death be only a long sleep,’ we can hardly tell
what would have been his answer. There have been a few, who, quite
independently of rewards and punishments or of posthumous reputation, or
any other influence of public opinion, have been willing to sacrifice
their lives for the good of others. It is difficult to say how far in
such cases an unconscious hope of a future life, or a general faith in
the victory of good in the world, may have supported the sufferers. But
this extreme idealism is not in accordance with the spirit of Plato. He
supposes a day of retribution, in which the good are to be rewarded and
the wicked punished (522 E). Though, as he says in the Phaedo, no man of
sense will maintain that the details of the stories about another world
are true, he will insist that something of the kind is true, and will
frame his life with a view to this unknown future. Even in the Republic
he introduces a future life as an afterthought, when the superior
happiness of the just has been established on what is thought to be an
immutable foundation. At the same time he makes a point of determining
his main thesis independently of remoter consequences (x. 612 A).

(3) Plato’s theory of punishment is partly vindictive, partly corrective.
In the Gorgias, as well as in the Phaedo and Republic, a few great
criminals, chiefly tyrants, are reserved as examples. But most men
have never had the opportunity of attaining this pre-eminence of evil.
They are not incurable, and their punishment is intended for their
improvement. They are to suffer because they have sinned; like sick men,
they must go to the physician and be healed. On this representation of
Plato’s the criticism has been made, that the analogy of disease and
injustice is partial only, and that suffering, instead of improving men,
may have just the opposite effect.

Like the general analogy of the arts and the virtues, the analogy
of disease and injustice, or of medicine and justice, is certainly
imperfect. But ideas must be given through something; the nature of the
mind which is unseen can only be represented under figures derived from
visible objects. If these figures are suggestive of some new aspect under
which the mind may be considered, we cannot find fault with them for
not exactly coinciding with the ideas represented. They partake of the
imperfect nature of language, and must not be construed in too strict
a manner. That Plato sometimes reasons from them as if they were not
figures but realities, is due to the defective logical analysis of his
age.

[Sidenote: _Plato’s theory of punishment._]

Nor does he distinguish between the suffering which improves and the
suffering which only punishes and deters. He applies to the sphere of
ethics a conception of punishment which is really derived from criminal
law. He does not see that such punishment is only negative, and supplies
no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off the
higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and to
be continued in other stages of existence, which is further developed
in the Republic. And Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of the
beaten track in their meditations on the ‘last things,’ have found a
ray of light in his writings. But he has not explained how or in what
way punishment is to contribute to the improvement of mankind. He has
not followed out the principle which he affirms in the Republic (ii.
380), that ‘God is the author of evil only with a view to good,’ and
that ‘they were the better for being punished.’ Still his doctrine of
a future state of rewards and punishments may be compared favourably
with that perversion of Christian doctrine which makes the everlasting
punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment of time, or even on
the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the difficulty which has
often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of the meaner sort of
men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good nor very bad, by
not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.

We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of
argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the
horizon of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design.
The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a
future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and
to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according
to the truth. Plato may be accused of representing a superhuman or
transcendental virtue in the description of the just man in the Gorgias,
or in the companion portrait of the philosopher in the Theaetetus; and at
the same time may be thought to be condemning a state of the world which
always has existed and always will exist among men. But such ideals act
powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And such condemnations are not
mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the natural rebellion of the higher
sense of right in man against the ordinary conditions of human life. The
greatest statesmen have fallen very far short of the political ideal, and
are therefore justly involved in the general condemnation.

[Sidenote: _Good and pleasure._]

Subordinate to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other questions,
which may be briefly considered:—

_a._ The antithesis of good and pleasure, which as in other dialogues is
supposed to consist in the permanent nature of the one compared with the
transient and relative nature of the other. Good and pleasure, knowledge
and sense, truth and opinion, essence and generation, virtue and
pleasure, the real and the apparent, the infinite and finite, harmony or
beauty and discord, dialectic and rhetoric or poetry, are so many pairs
of opposites, which in Plato easily pass into one another, and are seldom
kept perfectly distinct. And we must not forget that Plato’s conception
of pleasure is the Heracleitean flux transferred to the sphere of human
conduct. There is some degree of unfairness in opposing the principle
of good, which is objective, to the principle of pleasure, which is
subjective. For the assertion of the permanence of good is only based
on the assumption of its objective character. Had Plato fixed his mind,
not on the ideal nature of good, but on the subjective consciousness of
happiness, that would have been found to be as transient and precarious
as pleasure.

_b._ The arts or sciences, when pursued without any view to truth,
or the improvement of human life, are called flatteries. They are
all alike dependent upon the opinion of mankind, from which they are
derived. To Plato the whole world appears to be sunk in error, based on
self-interest. To this is opposed the one wise man hardly professing
to have found truth, yet strong in the conviction that a virtuous life
is the only good, whether regarded with reference to this world or to
another. Statesmen, Sophists, rhetoricians, poets, are alike brought up
for judgment. They are the parodies of wise men, and their arts are the
parodies of true arts and sciences. All that they call science is merely
the result of that study of the tempers of the Great Beast, which he
describes in the Republic.

[Sidenote: _Relation of the Gorgias to the other Dialogues._]

_c._ Various other points of contact naturally suggest themselves between
the Gorgias and other dialogues, especially the Republic, the Philebus,
and the Protagoras. There are closer resemblances both of spirit
and language in the Republic than in any other dialogue, the verbal
similarity tending to show that they were written at the same period of
Plato’s life. For the Republic supplies that education and training of
which the Gorgias suggests the necessity. The theory of the many weak
combining against the few strong in the formation of society (which is
indeed a partial truth), is similar in both of them, and is expressed
in nearly the same language. The sufferings and fate of the just man,
the powerlessness of evil, and the reversal of the situation in another
life, are also points of similarity. The poets, like the rhetoricians,
are condemned because they aim at pleasure only, as in the Republic they
are expelled the State, because they are imitators, and minister to the
weaker side of human nature. That poetry is akin to rhetoric may be
compared with the analogous notion, which occurs in the Protagoras, that
the ancient poets were the Sophists of their day. In some other respects
the Protagoras rather offers a contrast than a parallel. The character
of Protagoras may be compared with that of Gorgias, but the conception
of happiness is different in the two dialogues; being described in the
former, according to the old Socratic notion, as deferred or accumulated
pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and in the Phaedo, pleasure and good are
distinctly opposed.

This opposition is carried out from a speculative point of view in the
Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief
good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the
Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains,
are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias’
definition of rhetoric (Philebus, 58 A, B; cp. Gorg. 452 D, E), as the
art of persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit,
not by compulsion, but of their own free will—marks a close and perhaps
designed connection between the two dialogues. In both the ideas of
measure, order, harmony, are the connecting links between the beautiful
and the good.

[Sidenote: _Some minor points._]

In general spirit and character, that is, in irony and antagonism to
public opinion, the Gorgias most nearly resembles the Apology, Crito,
and portions of the Republic, and like the Philebus, though from another
point of view, may be thought to stand in the same relation to Plato’s
theory of morals which the Theaetetus bears to his theory of knowledge.

_d._ A few minor points still remain to be summed up: (1) The extravagant
irony in the reason which is assigned for the pilot’s modest charge
(p. 512); and in the proposed use of rhetoric as an instrument of
self-condemnation (p. 480); and in the mighty power of geometrical
equality in both worlds (p. 508). (2) The reference of the mythus to
the previous discussion should not be overlooked: the fate reserved for
incurable criminals such as Archelaus (p. 525); the retaliation of the
box on the ears (p. 527); the nakedness of the souls and of the judges
who are stript of the clothes or disguises which rhetoric and public
opinion have hitherto provided for them (p. 523; cp. Swift’s notion that
the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub, section 2). The fiction
seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing that the soul
retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death (p. 524). (3) The
appeal to the authority of Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos in his
court ‘holding a golden sceptre,’ which gives verisimilitude to the tale
(p. 526).

It is scarcely necessary to repeat that Plato is playing ‘both sides of
the game,’ and that in criticising the characters of Gorgias and Polus,
we are not passing any judgment on historical individuals, but only
attempting to analyze the ‘dramatis personae’ as they were conceived by
him. Neither is it necessary to enlarge upon the obvious fact that Plato
is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be assumed to be
those which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any other speaker who
appears to have the best of the argument; or to repeat the observation
that he is a poet as well as a philosopher; or to remark that he is not
to be tried by a modern standard, but interpreted with reference to his
place in the history of thought and the opinion of his time.

[Sidenote: _The irony of Socrates._]

It has been said that the most characteristic feature of the Gorgias is
the assertion of the right of dissent, or private judgment. But this mode
of stating the question is really opposed both to the spirit of Plato and
of ancient philosophy generally. For Plato is not asserting any abstract
right or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived from freedom
of thought; indeed, in some other parts of his writings (e. g. Laws,
x), he has fairly laid himself open to the charge of intolerance. No
speculations had as yet arisen respecting the ‘liberty of prophesying;’
and Plato is not affirming any abstract right of this nature: but he is
asserting the duty and right of the one wise and true man to dissent from
the folly and falsehood of the many. At the same time he acknowledges the
natural result, which he hardly seeks to avert, that he who speaks the
truth to a multitude, regardless of consequences, will probably share the
fate of Socrates.

       *       *       *       *       *

The irony of Plato sometimes veils from us the height of idealism to
which he soars. When declaring truths which the many will not receive,
he puts on an armour which cannot be pierced by them. The weapons of
ridicule are taken out of their hands and the laugh is turned against
themselves. The disguises which Socrates assumes are like the parables
of the New Testament, or the oracles of the Delphian God; they half
conceal, half reveal, his meaning. The more he is in earnest, the more
ironical he becomes; and he is never more in earnest or more ironical
than in the Gorgias. He hardly troubles himself to answer seriously the
objections of Gorgias and Polus, and therefore he sometimes appears to
be careless of the ordinary requirements of logic. Yet in the highest
sense he is always logical and consistent with himself. The form of the
argument may be paradoxical; the substance is an appeal to the higher
reason. He is uttering truths before they can be understood, as in all
ages the words of philosophers, when they are first uttered, have found
the world unprepared for them. A further misunderstanding arises out of
the wildness of his humour; he is supposed not only by Callicles, but
by the rest of mankind, to be jesting when he is profoundly serious. At
length he makes even Polus (p. 468) in earnest. Finally, he drops the
argument, and heedless any longer of the forms of dialectic, he loses
himself in a sort of triumph, while at the same time he retaliates upon
his adversaries. From this confusion of jest and earnest, we may now
return to the ideal truth, and draw out in a simple form the main theses
of the dialogue.

[Sidenote: _Worse to do than to suffer injustice._]

First Thesis:—

    It is a greater evil to do than to suffer injustice.

Compare the New Testament—

    ‘It is better to suffer for well doing than for evil doing.’—1 Pet.
    iii. 17.

And the Sermon on the Mount—

    ‘Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’
    sake.’—Matt. v. 10.

The words of Socrates are more abstract than the words of Christ, but
they equally imply that the only real evil is moral evil. The righteous
may suffer or die, but they have their reward; and even if they had no
reward, would be happier than the wicked. The world, represented by
Polus, is ready, when they are asked, to acknowledge that injustice
is dishonourable, and for their own sakes men are willing to punish
the offender (cp. Rep. ii. 360 D). But they are not equally willing to
acknowledge that injustice, even if successful, is essentially evil, and
has the nature of disease and death. Especially when crimes are committed
on the great scale—the crimes of tyrants, ancient or modern—after a
while, seeing that they cannot be undone, and have become a part of
history, mankind are disposed to forgive them, not from any magnanimity
or charity, but because their feelings are blunted by time, and ‘to
forgive is convenient to them.’ The tangle of good and evil can no longer
be unravelled; and although they know that the end cannot justify the
means, they feel also that good has often come out of evil. But Socrates
would have us pass the same judgment on the tyrant now and always; though
he is surrounded by his satellites, and has the applauses of Europe and
Asia ringing in his ears; though he is the civilizer or liberator of
half a continent, he is, and always will be, the most miserable of men.
The greatest consequences for good or for evil cannot alter a hair’s
breadth the morality of actions which are right or wrong in themselves.
This is the standard which Socrates holds up to us. Because politics, and
perhaps human life generally, are of a mixed nature we must not allow our
principles to sink to the level of our practice.

[Sidenote: _Better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer._]

And so of private individuals—to them, too, the world occasionally speaks
of the consequences of their actions:—if they are lovers of pleasure,
they will ruin their health; if they are false or dishonest, they will
lose their character. But Socrates would speak to them, not of what will
be, but of what is—of the present consequence of lowering and degrading
the soul. And all higher natures, or perhaps all men everywhere, if they
were not tempted by interest or passion, would agree with him—they would
rather be the victims than the perpetrators of an act of treachery or
of tyranny. Reason tells them that death comes sooner or later to all,
and is not so great an evil as an unworthy life, or rather, if rightly
regarded, not an evil at all, but to a good man the greatest good. For in
all of us there are slumbering ideals of truth and right, which may at
any time awaken and develop a new life in us.

Second Thesis:—

    It is better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer.

There might have been a condition of human life in which the penalty
followed at once, and was proportioned to the offence. Moral evil would
then be scarcely distinguishable from physical; mankind would avoid
vice as they avoid pain or death. But nature, with a view of deepening
and enlarging our characters, has for the most part hidden from us the
consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee them by an effort of
reflection. To awaken in us this habit of reflection is the business of
early education, which is continued in maturer years by observation and
experience. The spoilt child is in later life said to be unfortunate—he
had better have suffered when he was young, and been saved from suffering
afterwards. But is not the sovereign equally unfortunate whose education
and manner of life are always concealing from him the consequences of his
own actions, until at length they are revealed to him in some terrible
downfall, which may, perhaps, have been caused not by his own fault?
Another illustration is afforded by the pauper and criminal classes, who
scarcely reflect at all, except on the means by which they can compass
their immediate ends. We pity them, and make allowances for them; but
we do not consider that the same principle applies to human actions
generally. Not to have been found out in some dishonesty or folly,
regarded from a moral or religious point of view, is the greatest of
misfortunes. The success of our evil doings is a proof that the gods have
ceased to strive with us, and have given us over to ourselves. There is
nothing to remind us of our sins, and therefore nothing to correct them.
Like our sorrows, they are healed by time;

    ‘While rank corruption, mining all within,
    Infects unseen.’

The ‘accustomed irony’ of Socrates adds a corollary to the
argument:—‘Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape
unpunished’—this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of
Proverbs, xxv. 21, 22, ‘Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,’ etc.,
quoted in Romans xii. 20.)

[Sidenote: _Better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer._]

Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side of their own
lives: they do not easily see themselves as others see them. They are
very kind and very blind to their own faults; the rhetoric of self-love
is always pleading with them on their own behalf. Adopting a similar
figure of speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in defence
but in accusation of themselves. As they are guided by feeling rather
than by reason, to their feelings the appeal must be made. They must
speak to themselves; they must argue with themselves; they must paint in
eloquent words the character of their own evil deeds. To any suffering
which they have deserved, they must persuade themselves to submit. Under
the figure there lurks a real thought, which, expressed in another form,
admits of an easy application to ourselves. For do not we too accuse as
well as excuse ourselves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of prayer
and preaching, which the mind silently employs while the struggle between
the better and the worse is going on within us. And sometimes we are
too hard upon ourselves, because we want to restore the balance which
self-love has overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may hear a voice
as of a parent consoling us. In religious diaries a sort of drama is
often enacted by the consciences of men ‘accusing or else excusing them.’
For all our life long we are talking with ourselves:—What is thought but
speech (Soph. 263 E)? What is feeling but rhetoric? And if rhetoric is
used on one side only we shall be always in danger of being deceived. And
so the words of Socrates, which at first sounded paradoxical, come home
to the experience of all of us.

Third Thesis:—

    We do not what we will, but what we wish.

[Sidenote: _We do not what we will, but what we wish._]

Socrates would teach us a lesson which we are slow to learn—that good
intentions, and even benevolent actions, when they are not prompted by
wisdom, are of no value. We believe something to be for our good which
we afterwards find out not to be for our good. The consequences may be
inevitable, for they may follow an invariable law, yet they may often be
the very opposite of what is expected by us. When we increase pauperism
by almsgiving; when we tie up property without regard to changes of
circumstances; when we say hastily what we deliberately disapprove;
when we do in a moment of passion what upon reflection we regret; when
from any want of self-control we give another an advantage over us—we
are doing not what we will, but what we wish. All actions of which the
consequences are not weighed and foreseen, are of this impotent and
paralytic sort; and the author of them has ‘the least possible power’
while seeming to have the greatest. For he is actually bringing about
the reverse of what he intended. And yet the book of nature is open
to him, in which he who runs may read if he will exercise ordinary
attention; every day offers him experiences of his own and of other
men’s characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The contemplation
of the consequences of actions, and the ignorance of men in regard
to them, seems to have led Socrates to his famous thesis:—‘Virtue is
knowledge;’ which is not so much an error or paradox as a half truth,
seen first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but also the half of
the truth which is especially needed in the present age. For as the
world has grown older men have been too apt to imagine a right and wrong
apart from consequences; while a few, on the other hand, have sought
to resolve them wholly into their consequences. But Socrates, or Plato
for him, neither divides nor identifies them; though the time has not
yet arrived either for utilitarian or transcendental systems of moral
philosophy, he recognizes the two elements which seem to lie at the basis
of morality[29].

[Sidenote: _We ought to be, not to seem._]

Fourth Thesis:—

    To be and not to seem is the end of life.

The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one of the chief
incentives to moral virtue, and to most men the opinion of their fellows
is a leading principle of action. Hence a certain element of seeming
enters into all things; all or almost all desire to appear better than
they are, that they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A man
of ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and there
is an unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy which, according
to Socrates, is the worst of the two. Again, there is the sophistry
of classes and professions. There are the different opinions about
themselves and one another which prevail in different ranks of society.
There is the bias given to the mind by the study of one department of
human knowledge to the exclusion of the rest; and stronger far the
prejudice engendered by a pecuniary or party interest in certain tenets.
There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry
of politics, the sophistry of theology. All of these disguises wear
the appearance of the truth; some of them are very ancient, and we do
not easily disengage ourselves from them; for we have inherited them,
and they have become a part of us. The sophistry of an ancient Greek
sophist is nothing compared with the sophistry of a religious order, or
of a church in which during many ages falsehood has been accumulating,
and everything has been said on one side, and nothing on the other.
The conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and the
opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another (‘the
buyer saith, it is nought—it is nought,’ etc.), are always obscuring
our sense of truth and right. The sophistry of human nature is far more
subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely from
their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for himself: most
of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us, which
we partly help to make. A man who would shake himself loose from them,
requires great force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in the
search after truth. On every side he is met by the world, which is not
an abstraction of theologians, but the most real of all things, being
another name for ourselves when regarded collectively and subjected to
the influences of society.

[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]

Then comes Socrates, impressed as no other man ever was, with the
unreality and untruthfulness of popular opinion, and tells mankind that
they must be and not seem. How are they to be? At any rate they must have
the spirit and desire to be. If they are ignorant, they must acknowledge
their ignorance to themselves; if they are conscious of doing evil, they
must learn to do well; if they are weak, and have nothing in them which
they can call themselves, they must acquire firmness and consistency;
if they are indifferent, they must begin to take an interest in the
great questions which surround them. They must try to be what they would
fain appear in the eyes of their fellow-men. A single individual cannot
easily change public opinion; but he can be true and innocent, simple
and independent; he can know what he does, and what he does not know;
and though not without an effort, he can form a judgment of his own, at
least in common matters. In his most secret actions he can show the same
high principle (cp. Rep. viii. 554 D) which he shows when supported and
watched by public opinion. And on some fitting occasion, on some question
of humanity or truth or right, even an ordinary man, from the natural
rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up arms against a
whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too much for them.

Who is the true and who the false statesman?—

The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; who first
organizes and then administers the government of his own country; and
having made a nation, seeks to reconcile the national interests with
those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a
dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow together in his mind;
while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although obliged
to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His thoughts are fixed
not on power or riches or extension of territory, but on an ideal state,
in which all the citizens have an equal chance of health and life, and
the highest education is within the reach of all, and the moral and
intellectual qualities of every individual are freely developed, and ‘the
idea of good’ is the animating principle of the whole. Not the attainment
of freedom alone, or of order alone, but how to unite freedom with order
is the problem which he has to solve.

[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]

The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a
task which will call forth all his powers. He must control himself before
he can control others; he must know mankind before he can manage them.
He has no private likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal enmity
under the disguise of moral or political principle: such meannesses,
into which men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed in the
consciousness of his mission, and in his love for his country and for
mankind. He will sometimes ask himself what the next generation will say
of him; not because he is careful of posthumous fame, but because he
knows that the result of his life as a whole will then be more fairly
judged. He will take time for the execution of his plans; not hurrying
them on when the mind of a nation is unprepared for them; but like the
Ruler of the Universe Himself, working in the appointed time, for he
knows that human life, ‘if not long in comparison with eternity’ (Rep.
vi. 498 D), is sufficient for the fulfilment of many great purposes. He
knows, too, that the work will be still going on when he is no longer
here; and he will sometimes, especially when his powers are failing,
think of that other ‘city of which the pattern is in heaven’ (Rep. ix.
592 B).

The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In order to govern
men he becomes like them; their ‘minds are married in conjunction;’ they
‘bear themselves’ like vulgar and tyrannical masters, and he is their
obedient servant. The true politician, if he would rule men, must make
them like himself; he must ‘educate his party’ until they cease to be a
party; he must breathe into them the spirit which will hereafter give
form to their institutions. Politics with him are not a mechanism for
seeming what he is not, or for carrying out the will of the majority.
Himself a representative man, he is the representative not of the lower
but of the higher elements of the nation. There is a better (as well as
a worse) public opinion of which he seeks to lay hold; as there is also
a deeper current of human affairs in which he is borne up when the waves
nearer the shore are threatening him. He acknowledges that he cannot
take the world by force—two or three moves on the political chessboard
are all that he can foresee—two or three weeks or months are granted to
him in which he can provide against a coming struggle. But he knows also
that there are permanent principles of politics which are always tending
to the well-being of states—better administration, better education,
the reconciliation of conflicting elements, increased security against
external enemies. These are not ‘of to-day or yesterday,’ but are the
same in all times, and under all forms of government. Then when the storm
descends and the winds blow, though he knows not beforehand the hour of
danger, the pilot, not like Plato’s captain in the Republic, half-blind
and deaf, but with penetrating eye and quick ear, is ready to take
command of the ship and guide her into port.

[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]

The false politician asks not what is true, but what is the opinion of
the world—not what is right, but what is expedient. The only measures of
which he approves are the measures which will pass. He has no intention
of fighting an uphill battle; he keeps the roadway of politics. He is
unwilling to incur the persecution and enmity which political convictions
would entail upon him. He begins with popularity, and in fair weather
sails gallantly along. But unpopularity soon follows him. For men expect
their leaders to be better and wiser than themselves: to be their guides
in danger, their saviours in extremity; they do not really desire them
to obey all the ignorant impulses of the popular mind; and if they fail
them in a crisis they are disappointed. Then, as Socrates says, the cry
of ingratitude is heard, which is most unreasonable; for the people, who
have been taught no better, have done what might be expected of them, and
their statesmen have received justice at their hands.

The true statesman is aware that he must adapt himself to times and
circumstances. He must have allies if he is to fight against the world;
he must enlighten public opinion; he must accustom his followers to
act together. Although he is not the mere executor of the will of the
majority, he must win over the majority to himself. He is their leader
and not their follower, but in order to lead he must also follow. He
will neither exaggerate nor undervalue the power of a statesman, neither
adopting the ‘laissez faire’ nor the ‘paternal government’ principle;
but he will, whether he is dealing with children in politics, or with
full-grown men, seek to do for the people what the government can do
for them, and what, from imperfect education or deficient powers of
combination, they cannot do for themselves. He knows that if he does
too much for them they will do nothing; and that if he does nothing for
them they will in some states of society be utterly helpless. For the
many cannot exist without the few; if the material force of a country is
from below, wisdom and experience are from above. It is not a small part
of human evils which kings and governments make or cure. The statesman
is well aware that a great purpose carried out consistently during many
years will at last be executed. He is playing for a stake which may be
partly determined by some accident, and therefore he will allow largely
for the unknown element of politics. But the game being one in which
chance and skill are combined, if he plays long enough he is certain of
victory. He will not be always consistent, for the world is changing; and
though he depends upon the support of a party, he will remember that he
is the minister of the whole. He lives not for the present, but for the
future, and he is not at all sure that he will be appreciated either now
or then. For he may have the existing order of society against him, and
may not be remembered by a distant posterity.

[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]

There are always discontented idealists in politics who, like Socrates in
the Gorgias, find fault with all statesmen past as well as present, not
excepting the greatest names of history. Mankind have an uneasy feeling
that they ought to be better governed than they are. Just as the actual
philosopher falls short of the one wise man, so does the actual statesman
fall short of the ideal. And so partly from vanity and egotism, but
partly also from a true sense of the faults of eminent men, a temper of
dissatisfaction and criticism springs up among those who are ready enough
to acknowledge the inferiority of their own powers. No matter whether a
statesman makes high professions or none at all—they are reduced sooner
or later to the same level. And sometimes the more unscrupulous man is
better esteemed than the more conscientious, because he has not equally
deceived expectations. Such sentiments may be unjust, but they are widely
spread; we constantly find them recurring in reviews and newspapers, and
still oftener in private conversation.

We may further observe that the art of government, while in some
respects tending to improve, has in others a tendency to degenerate, as
institutions become more popular. Governing for the people cannot easily
be combined with governing by the people: the interests of classes are
too strong for the ideas of the statesman who takes a comprehensive view
of the whole. According to Socrates the true governor will find ruin or
death staring him in the face, and will only be induced to govern from
the fear of being governed by a worse man than himself (Rep. i. 347 C).
And in modern times, though the world has grown milder, and the terrible
consequences which Plato foretells no longer await an English statesman,
any one who is not actuated by a blind ambition will only undertake from
a sense of duty a work in which he is most likely to fail; and even if he
succeed, will rarely be rewarded by the gratitude of his own generation.

[Sidenote: _The true and the false statesman._]

Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the only
real politician of his time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his words
by applying them to the history of our own country. He would have said
that not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the real politicians
of their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo. These
during the greater part of their lives occupied an inconsiderable space
in the eyes of the public. They were private persons; nevertheless
they sowed in the minds of men seeds which in the next generation have
become an irresistible power. ‘Herein is that saying true, One soweth
and another reapeth.’ We may imagine with Plato an ideal statesman in
whom practice and speculation are perfectly harmonized; for there is
no necessary opposition between them. But experience shows that they
are commonly divorced—the ordinary politician is the interpreter or
executor of the thoughts of others, and hardly ever brings to the birth
a new political conception. One or two only in modern times, like the
Italian statesman Cavour, have created the world in which they moved.
The philosopher is naturally unfitted for political life; his great
ideas are not understood by the many; he is a thousand miles away from
the questions of the day. Yet perhaps the lives of thinkers, as they are
stiller and deeper, are also happier than the lives of those who are more
in the public eye. They have the promise of the future, though they are
regarded as dreamers and visionaries by their own contemporaries. And
when they are no longer here, those who would have been ashamed of them
during their lives claim kindred with them, and are proud to be called by
their names. (Cp. Thucyd. vi. 16.)

[Sidenote: _The true office of the poet._]

Who is the true poet?

Plato expels the poets from his Republic because they are allied to
sense; because they stimulate the emotions; because they are thrice
removed from the ideal truth. And in a similar spirit he declares in
the Gorgias that the stately muse of tragedy is a votary of pleasure
and not of truth. In modern times we almost ridicule the idea of poetry
admitting of a moral. The poet and the prophet, or preacher, in primitive
antiquity are one and the same; but in later ages they seem to fall
apart. The great art of novel writing, that peculiar creation of our
own and the last century, which, together with the sister art of review
writing, threatens to absorb all literature, has even less of seriousness
in her composition. Do we not often hear the novel writer censured for
attempting to convey a lesson to the minds of his readers?

Yet the true office of a poet or writer of fiction is not merely to give
amusement, or to be the expression of the feelings of mankind, good
or bad, or even to increase our knowledge of human nature. There have
been poets in modern times, such as Goethe or Wordsworth, who have not
forgotten their high vocation of teachers; and the two greatest of the
Greek dramatists owe their sublimity to their ethical character. The
noblest truths, sung of in the purest and sweetest language, are still
the proper material of poetry. The poet clothes them with beauty, and
has a power of making them enter into the hearts and memories of men. He
has not only to speak of themes above the level of ordinary life, but
to speak of them in a deeper and tenderer way than they are ordinarily
felt, so as to awaken the feeling of them in others. The old he makes
young again; the familiar principle he invests with a new dignity; he
finds a noble expression for the commonplaces of morality and politics.
He uses the things of sense so as to indicate what is beyond; he raises
us through earth to heaven. He expresses what the better part of us
would fain say, and the half-conscious feeling is strengthened by the
expression. He is his own critic, for the spirit of poetry and of
criticism are not divided in him. His mission is not to disguise men from
themselves, but to reveal to them their own nature, and make them better
acquainted with the world around them. True poetry is the remembrance
of youth, of love, the embodiment in words of the happiest and holiest
moments of life, of the noblest thoughts of man, of the greatest deeds of
the past. The poet of the future may return to his greater calling of the
prophet or teacher; indeed, we hardly know what may not be effected for
the human race by a better use of the poetical and imaginative faculty.
The reconciliation of poetry, as of religion, with truth, may still be
possible. Neither is the element of pleasure to be excluded. For when we
substitute a higher pleasure for a lower we raise men in the scale of
existence. Might not the novelist, too, make an ideal, or rather many
ideals of social life, better than a thousand sermons? Plato, like the
Puritans, is too much afraid of poetic and artistic influences. But he
is not without a true sense of the noble purposes to which art may be
applied (Rep. iii. 401).

[Sidenote: _The true office of the poet._]

Modern poetry is often a sort of plaything, or, in Plato’s language, a
flattery, a sophistry, or sham, in which, without any serious purpose,
the poet lends wings to his fancy and exhibits his gifts of language and
metre. Such an one seeks to gratify the taste of his readers; he has the
‘_savoir faire_,’ or trick of writing, but he has not the higher spirit
of poetry. He has no conception that true art should bring order out of
disorder (504 A); that it should make provision for the soul’s highest
interest (501 C); that it should be pursued only with a view to ‘the
improvement of the citizens’ (502, 503). He ministers to the weaker side
of human nature (Rep. x. 603-605); he idealizes the sensual; he sings
the strain of love in the latest fashion; instead of raising men above
themselves he brings them back to the ‘tyranny of the many masters,’ from
which all his life long a good man has been praying to be delivered.
And often, forgetful of measure and order, he will express not that
which is truest, but that which is strongest. Instead of a great and
nobly-executed subject, perfect in every part, some fancy of a heated
brain is worked out with the strangest incongruity. He is not the master
of his words, but his words—perhaps borrowed from another—the faded
reflection of some French or German or Italian writer, have the better of
him. Though we are not going to banish the poets, how can we suppose that
such utterances have any healing or life-giving influence on the minds of
men?

[Sidenote: _The triumph of right and truth._]

‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:’ Art then must be true,
and politics must be true, and the life of man must be true and not a
seeming or sham. In all of them order has to be brought out of disorder,
truth out of error and falsehood. This is what we mean by the greatest
improvement of man. And so, having considered in what way ‘we can best
spend the appointed time, we leave the result with God’ (512 E). Plato
does not say that God will order all things for the best (cp. Phaedo,
97 C), but he indirectly implies that the evils of this life will be
corrected in another. And as we are very far from the best imaginable
world at present, Plato here, as in the Phaedo and Republic, supposes a
purgatory or place of education for mankind in general, and for a very
few a Tartarus or hell. The myth which terminates the dialogue is not the
revelation, but rather, like all similar descriptions, whether in the
Bible or Plato, the veil of another life. For no visible thing can reveal
the invisible. Of this Plato, unlike some commentators on Scripture,
is fully aware. Neither will he dogmatize about the manner in which we
are ‘born again’ (Rep. vi. 498 D). Only he is prepared to maintain the
ultimate triumph of truth and right, and declares that no one, not even
the wisest of the Greeks, can affirm any other doctrine without being
ridiculous.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _Virtue indifferent to reward._]

There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure and pain are held
to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of action and without regard to
consequences is happiness. From this elevation or exaggeration of feeling
Plato seems to shrink: he leaves it to the Stoics in a later generation
to maintain that when impaled or on the rack the philosopher may be happy
(cp. Rep. ii. 361 ff.). It is observable that in the Republic he raises
this question, but it is not really discussed; the veil of the ideal
state, the shadow of another life, are allowed to descend upon it and
it passes out of sight. The martyr or sufferer in the cause of right or
truth is often supposed to die in raptures, having his eye fixed on a
city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might he not still
be happy in the performance of an action which was attended only by a
painful death? He himself may be ready to thank God that he was thought
worthy to do Him the least service, without looking for a reward; the
joys of another life may not have been present to his mind at all. Do we
suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Catharine
of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who lately devoted himself to death by
a lingering disease that he might solace and help others, was thinking
of the ‘sweets’ of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and
enough. Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming of the praises of
man or of an immortality of fame: the sense of duty, of right, and trust
in God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind can reach, in that
hour. If he were certain that there were no life to come, he would not
have wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth
or of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose that God
has forsaken him or that the future is to be a mere blank to him. The
greatest act of faith, the only faith which cannot pass away, is his
who has not known, but yet has believed. A very few among the sons of
men have made themselves independent of circumstances, past, present,
or to come. He who has attained to such a temper of mind has already
present with him eternal life; he needs no arguments to convince him
of immortality; he has in him already a principle stronger than death.
He who serves man without the thought of reward is deemed to be a more
faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not the service of
God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the higher? And
although only a very few in the course of the world’s history—Christ
himself being one of them—have attained to such a noble conception of God
and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be present to us, and
the remembrance of them be an example to us, and their lives may shed a
light on many dark places both of philosophy and theology.


_The Myths of Plato._

[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]

The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are four
longer ones: these occur in the Phaedrus (244-256), Phaedo (110-115),
Gorgias (523-527), and Republic (x. 614-621). That in the Republic is
the most elaborate and finished of them. Three of these greater myths,
namely those contained in the Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic,
relate to the destiny of human souls in a future life. The magnificent
myth in the Phaedrus treats of the immortality, or rather the eternity
of the soul, in which is included a former as well as a future state
of existence. To these may be added, (1) the myth, or rather fable,
occurring in the Statesman (268-274), in which the life of innocence is
contrasted with the ordinary life of man and the consciousness of evil:
(2) the legend of the Island of Atlantis, an imaginary history, which
is a fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus (21-26) and continued in
the Critias: (3) the much less artistic fiction of the foundation of
the Cretan colony which is introduced in the preface to the Laws (iii.
702), but soon falls into the background: (4) the beautiful but rather
artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in his rhetorical
manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called after him (320-328): (5) the
speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus (231-234), which is a parody of
the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of
it (237-241). To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers,
and (7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus (259 and
274-5): (8) the parable of the Cave (Rep. vii. _ad init._), in which
the previous argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees
of knowledge having been previously set forth in the abstract are
represented in a picture: (9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Rep.
iii. 414; cp. Laws ii. 664), in which by the adaptation of an old
tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10) the myth of
Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym. 189: (11) the
parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors (Rep.
vi. 488), in which is represented the relation of the better part of
the world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians: (12) the
ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging
only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that
he is uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gorg. 511):
(13) the treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves
by their apprentices,—a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to
illustrate the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws
iv. 720). There also occur in Plato continuous images; some of them
extend over several pages, appearing and reappearing at intervals: such
as the bees stinging and stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth
Book of the Republic (554), who are generated in the transition from
timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the
idea of good is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic
(508-9): the composite animal, having the form of a man, but containing
under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster (Rep. ix. 588-9):
the great beast (vi. 493), i. e. the populace: and the wild beast within
us, meaning the passions which are always liable to break out (ix. 571):
the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to
the dishonoured maiden (vi. 495-6), and of the tyrant to the parricide,
who ‘beats his father, having first taken away his arms’ (viii. 569):
the dog, who is your only philosopher (ii. 376 B): the grotesque and
rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws
vi. 752), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias (509 D): the
argument personified as veiling her face (Rep. vi. 503 A), as engaged in
a chase (iv. 427 C), as breaking upon us in a first, second and third
wave (v. 457 C, 472 A, 473 C):—on these figures of speech the changes are
rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all these parables or
continuous images are found in the Republic; that which occurs in the
Theaetetus (149 ff.), of the midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only
exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical figure of the
number of the state (Rep. viii. 546), or the numerical interval which
separates king from tyrant (ix. 587-8), should not be forgotten.

[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]

The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life
which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which
await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue,
and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo
and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The
argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning
breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency
of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief
point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is
no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of
foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their
judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to
view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from
seeing into or being seen by one another.

[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]

The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more cosmological,
and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato
that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in one, a glorified
earth, fairer and purer than that in which we dwell. As the fishes live
in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out of which they
put their heads for a moment or two and behold a world beyond. The earth
which we inhabit is a sediment of the coarser particles which drop from
the world above, and is to that heavenly earth what the desert and the
shores of the ocean are to us. A part of the myth consists of description
of the interior of the earth, which gives the opportunity of introducing
several mythological names and of providing places of torment for the
wicked. There is no clear distinction of soul and body; the spirits
beneath the earth are spoken of as souls only, yet they retain a sort
of shadowy form when they cry for mercy on the shores of the lake; and
the philosopher alone is said to have got rid of the body. All the three
myths in Plato which relate to the world below have a place for repentant
sinners, as well as other homes or places for the very good and very bad.
It is a natural reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two
extremes of human character are rarely met with, and that the generality
of mankind are between them. Hence a place must be found for them. In
the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the
Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds,
and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners,
who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious
crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class of hardly
curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to approach the shores
of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for mercy; which
if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease from their torments.

Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps
any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent
with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of mythology;
abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech into
realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim’s Progress of
Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the incidents
of travel, and mythological personages are associated with human beings:
they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and
with other fragments of Greek tradition.

[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]

The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than
either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have,
and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It
will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which
Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by
the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often
made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say
in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes
in their choice of life than those who have had more experience of the
world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we constantly blame
others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must
acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in
human life with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That
men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a
poetical description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men
who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest.
We should like to know what became of the infants ‘dying almost as soon
as they were born’ (x. 615 B), but Plato only raises, without satisfying,
our curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending and descending at
either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing when they come out into
the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges sitting in heaven, the
voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which have an
indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made respecting the
inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended also to this: it is
at once an orrery, or model of the heavens, and a picture of the Day of
Judgment.

[Sidenote: _The myth in the Phaedrus._]

The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental,
or rather an Egyptian element in them, and they have an affinity to
the mysteries and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a certain extent
they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly anything like them in
other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in spirit they are
mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the underground religion
in all ages and countries. They are presented in the most lively and
graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as true; it is only
affirmed that nothing better can be said about a future life. Plato seems
to make use of them when he has reached the limits of human knowledge;
or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is standing on the
outside of the intellectual world. They are very simple in style; a few
touches bring the picture home to the mind, and make it present to us.
They have also a kind of authority gained by the employment of sacred and
familiar names, just as mere fragments of the words of Scripture, put
together in any form and applied to any subject, have a power of their
own. They are a substitute for poetry and mythology; and they are also a
reform of mythology. The moral of them may be summed up in a word or two:
After death the Judgment; and ‘there is some better thing remaining for
the good than for the evil.’

All literature gathers into itself many elements of the past: for
example, the tale of the earth-born men in the Republic appears at
first sight to be an extravagant fancy, but it is restored to propriety
when we remember that it is based on a legendary belief. The art of
making stories of ghosts and apparitions credible is said to consist
in the manner of telling them. The effect is gained by many literary
and conversational devices, such as the previous raising of curiosity,
the mention of little circumstances, simplicity, picturesqueness, the
naturalness of the occasion, and the like. This art is possessed by Plato
in a degree which has never been equalled.

The myth in the Phaedrus is even greater than the myths which have been
already described, but is of a different character. It treats of a former
rather than of a future life. It represents the conflict of reason
aided by passion or righteous indignation on the one hand, and of the
animal lusts and instincts on the other. The soul of man has followed
the company of some god, and seen truth in the form of the universal
before it was born in this world. Our present life is the result of the
struggle which was then carried on. This world is relative to a former
world, as it is often projected into a future. We ask the question, Where
were men before birth? as we likewise enquire, What will become of them
after death? The first question is unfamiliar to us, and therefore seems
to be unnatural; but if we survey the whole human race, it has been as
influential and as widely spread as the other. In the Phaedrus it is
really a figure of speech in which the ‘spiritual combat’ of this life
is represented. The majesty and power of the whole passage—especially of
what may be called the theme or proem (beginning ‘The mind through all
her being is immortal’)—can only be rendered very inadequately in another
language.

[Sidenote: _The myth in the Statesman._]

The myth in the Statesman relates to a former cycle of existence, in
which men were born of the earth, and by the reversal of the earth’s
motion had their lives reversed and were restored to youth and beauty:
the dead came to life, the old grew middle-aged, and the middle-aged
young; the youth became a child, the child an infant, the infant vanished
into the earth. The connection between the reversal of the earth’s motion
and the reversal of human life is of course verbal only, yet Plato, like
theologians in other ages, argues from the consistency of the tale to its
truth. The new order of the world was immediately under the government
of God; it was a state of innocence in which men had neither wants nor
cares, in which the earth brought forth all things spontaneously, and God
was to man what man now is to the animals. There were no great estates,
or families, or private possessions, nor any traditions of the past,
because men were all born out of the earth. This is what Plato calls the
‘reign of Cronos;’ and in like manner he connects the reversal of the
earth’s motion with some legend of which he himself was probably the
inventor.

The question is then asked, under which of these two cycles of existence
was man the happier,—under that of Cronos, which was a state of
innocence, or that of Zeus, which is our ordinary life? For a while Plato
balances the two sides of the serious controversy, which he has suggested
in a figure. The answer depends on another question: What use did the
children of Cronos make of their time? They had boundless leisure and the
faculty of discoursing, not only with one another, but with the animals.
Did they employ these advantages with a view to philosophy, gathering
from every nature some addition to their store of knowledge? or, Did
they pass their time in eating and drinking and telling stories to one
another and to the beasts?—in either case there would be no difficulty in
answering. But then, as Plato rather mischievously adds, ‘Nobody knows
what they did,’ and therefore the doubt must remain undetermined.

[Sidenote: _Transition in Plato from the abstract to the concrete._]

To the first there succeeds a second epoch. After another natural
convulsion, in which the order of the world and of human life is once
more reversed, God withdraws his guiding hand, and man is left to the
government of himself. The world begins again, and arts and laws are
slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a theocratical.
In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost dropped, the garb of
mythology. He suggests several curious and important thoughts, such as
the possibility of a state of innocence, the existence of a world without
traditions, and the difference between human and divine government. He
has also carried a step further his speculations concerning the abolition
of the family and of property, which he supposes to have no place among
the children of Cronos any more than in the ideal state.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to pass from the abstract to
the concrete, from poetry to reality. Language is the expression of the
seen, and also of the unseen, and moves in a region between them. A great
writer knows how to strike both these chords, sometimes remaining within
the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a wider range
and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the same sentence he
may employ both modes of speech not improperly or inharmoniously. It is
useless to criticise the broken metaphors of Plato, if the effect of the
whole is to create a picture not such as can be painted on canvas, but
which is full of life and meaning to the reader. A poem may be contained
in a word or two, which may call up not one but many latent images; or
half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often
the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the
other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked
out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and
philosophy we necessarily include both ‘the moral law within and the
starry heaven above,’ and pass from one to the other (cp. for examples
Psalm xviii. 1-25, xix. 1-9, etc.). Whether such a use of language is
puerile or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or speaker, and
the familiarity of the associations employed.

[Sidenote: _The myths not written, but spoken words._]

In the myths and parables of Plato the ease and grace of conversation
is not forgotten: they are spoken, not written words, stories which
are told to a living audience, and so well told that we are more than
half-inclined to believe them (cp. Phaedrus 274). As in conversation
too, the striking image or figure of speech is not forgotten, but is
quickly caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it would still be
in our own day in a genial and sympathetic society. The descriptions of
Plato have a greater life and reality than is to be found in any modern
writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato can do
with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed ‘more plastic
than wax’ (Rep. ix. 588 D). We are in the habit of opposing speech and
writing, poetry and prose. But he has discovered a use of language in
which they are united; which gives a fitting expression to the highest
truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities of
daily life are not overlooked.


GORGIAS.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

CALLICLES. GORGIAS. SOCRATES. POLUS. CHAEREPHON.

SCENE:—The house of Callicles.

[Sidenote: _Gorgias._]

    _Callicles._ The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a
    fray, but not for a feast.                                =Steph.= 447

    _Socrates._ And are we late for a feast?

    _Cal._ Yes, and a delightful feast; for Gorgias has just been
    exhibiting to us many fine things.

    _Soc._ It is not my fault, Callicles; our friend Chaerephon
    is to blame; for he would keep us loitering in the Agora.

    _Chaerephon._ Never mind, Socrates; the misfortune of
    which I have been the cause I will also repair; for Gorgias
    is a friend of mine, and I will make him give the exhibition
    again either now, or, if you prefer, at some other time.

    _Cal._ What is the matter, Chaerephon—does Socrates want
    to hear Gorgias?

    _Chaer._ Yes, that was our intention in coming.

    _Cal._ Come into my house, then; for Gorgias is staying
    with me, and he shall exhibit to you.

    _Soc._ Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions?
    for I want to hear from him what is the nature of his
    art, and what it is which he professes and teaches; he may,
    as you [Chaerephon] suggest, defer the exhibition to some
    other time.

    _Cal._ There is nothing like asking him, Socrates; and indeed
    to answer questions is a part of his exhibition, for he
    was saying only just now, that any one in my house might
    put any question to him, and that he would answer.

[Sidenote: _Gorgias is ready to answer all comers._]

    _Soc._ How fortunate! will you ask him, Chaerephon—?

    _Chaer._ What shall I ask him?

    _Soc._ Ask him who he is.

    _Chaer._ What do you mean?

    _Soc._ I mean such a question as would elicit from him, if he
    had been a maker of shoes, the answer that he is a cobbler.
    Do you understand?

    _Chaer._ I understand, and will ask him: Tell me, Gorgias,
    is our friend Callicles right in saying that you undertake to
    answer any questions which you are asked?

    _Gorgias._ Quite right, Chaerephon: I was saying as much
    only just now; and I may add, that many years have elapsed         448
    since any one has asked me a new one.

    _Chaer._ Then you must be very ready, Gorgias.

    _Gor._ Of that, Chaerephon, you can make trial.

[Sidenote: Polus offers to take the place of Gorgias in the argument.]

    _Polus._ Yes, indeed, and if you like, Chaerephon, you may
    make trial of me too, for I think that Gorgias, who has been
    talking a long time, is tired.

    _Chaer._ And do you, Polus, think that you can answer
    better than Gorgias?

    _Pol._ What does that matter if I answer well enough for
    you?

    _Chaer._ Not at all:—and you shall answer if you like.

    _Pol._ Ask:—

    _Chaer._ My question is this: If Gorgias had the skill of his
    brother Herodicus, what ought we to call him? Ought he
    not to have the name which is given to his brother?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Chaer._ Then we should be right in calling him a physician?

    _Pol._ Yes.

[Sidenote: The question is asked, ‘What is Gorgias?’]

    _Chaer._ And if he had the skill of Aristophon the son of
    Aglaophon, or of his brother Polygnotus, what ought we to
    call him?

    _Pol._ Clearly, a painter.

    _Chaer._ But now what shall we call him—what is the art in
    which he is skilled?

[Sidenote: _Gorgias supersedes Polus._]

[Sidenote: Answer:—Gorgias is one of the best proficients in the noblest
art.]

    _Pol._ O Chaerephon, there are many arts among mankind
    which are experimental, and have their origin in experience,
    for experience makes the days of men to proceed according
    to art, and inexperience according to chance, and different
    persons in different ways are proficient in different arts, and
    the best persons in the best arts. And our friend Gorgias is
    one of the best, and the art in which he is a proficient is the
    noblest.

    _Soc._ Polus has been taught how to make a capital speech,
    Gorgias; but he is not fulfilling the promise which he made
    to Chaerephon.

    _Gor._ What do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I mean that he has not exactly answered the question
    which he was asked.

    _Gor._ Then why not ask him yourself?

    _Soc._ But I would much rather ask you, if you are disposed
    to answer: for I see, from the few words which Polus has
    uttered, that he has attended more to the art which is called
    rhetoric than to dialectic.

    _Pol._ What makes you say so, Socrates?

[Sidenote: This is no answer.]

    _Soc._ Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asked you what
    was the art which Gorgias knows, you praised it as if you
    were answering some one who found fault with it, but you
    never said what the art was.

    _Pol._ Why, did I not say that it was the noblest of arts?

    _Soc._ Yes, indeed, but that was no answer to the question:
    nobody asked what was the quality, but what was the nature,
    of the art, and by what name we were to describe Gorgias.
    And I would still beg you briefly and clearly, as you              449
    answered Chaerephon when he asked you at first, to say
    what this art is, and what we ought to call Gorgias: Or
    rather, Gorgias, let me turn to you, and ask the same question,—what
    are we to call you, and what is the art which you
    profess?

[Sidenote: Better:—Gorgias is a rhetorician and a teacher of rhetoric.]

    _Gor._ Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.

    _Soc._ Then I am to call you a rhetorician?

    _Gor._ Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would call
    me that which, in Homeric language, ‘I boast myself
    to be.’

    _Soc._ I should wish to do so.

    _Gor._ Then pray do.

[Sidenote: _The admirable brevity of Gorgias._]

    _Soc._ And are we to say that you are able to make other
    men rhetoricians?

    _Gor._ Yes, that is exactly what I profess to make them, not
    only at Athens, but in all places.

    _Soc._ And will you continue to ask and answer questions,
    Gorgias, as we are at present doing, and reserve for another
    occasion the longer mode of speech which Polus was attempting?
    Will you keep your promise, and answer shortly the
    questions which are asked of you?

    _Gor._ Some answers, Socrates, are of necessity longer; but
    I will do my best to make them as short as possible; for a
    part of my profession is that I can be as short as any one.

    _Soc._ That is what is wanted, Gorgias; exhibit the shorter
    method now, and the longer one at some other time.

    _Gor._ Well, I will; and you will certainly say, that you
    never heard a man use fewer words.

    _Soc._ Very good then; as you profess to be a rhetorician,
    and a maker of rhetoricians, let me ask you, with what is
    rhetoric concerned: I might ask with what is weaving concerned,
    and you would reply (would you not?), with the
    making of garments?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And music is concerned with the composition of
    melodies?

    _Gor._ It is.

    _Soc._ By Herè, Gorgias, I admire the surpassing brevity of
    your answers.

    _Gor._ Yes, Socrates, I do think myself good at that.

[Sidenote: And rhetoric is concerned with discourse.]

    _Soc._ I am glad to hear it; answer me in like manner about
    rhetoric: with what is rhetoric concerned?

    _Gor._ With discourse.

    _Soc._ What sort of discourse, Gorgias?—such discourse as
    would teach the sick under what treatment they might get
    well?

    _Gor._ No.

    _Soc._ Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?

    _Gor._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And yet rhetoric makes men able to speak?

    _Gor._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _How is rhetoric distinguished from more special arts?_]

    _Soc._ And to understand that about which they speak?

    _Gor._ Of course.

    _Soc._ But does not the art of medicine, which we were just
    now mentioning, also make men able to understand and               450
    speak about the sick?

    _Gor._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then medicine also treats of discourse?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Of discourse concerning diseases?

    _Gor._ Just so.

    _Soc._ And does not gymnastic also treat of discourse concerning
    the good or evil condition of the body?

    _Gor._ Very true.

[Sidenote: But so are all the other arts.]

    _Soc._ And the same, Gorgias, is true of the other arts:—all
    of them treat of discourse concerning the subjects with which
    they severally have to do.

    _Gor._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ Then why, if you call rhetoric the art which treats of
    discourse, and all the other arts treat of discourse, do you
    not call them arts of rhetoric?

    _Gor._ Because, Socrates, the knowledge of the other arts
    has only to do with some sort of external action, as of the
    hand; but there is no such action of the hand in rhetoric
    which works and takes effect only through the medium of
    discourse. And therefore I am justified in saying that rhetoric
    treats of discourse.

    _Soc._ I am not sure whether I entirely understand you, but
    I dare say I shall soon know better; please to answer me a
    question:—you would allow that there are arts?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ As to the arts generally, they are for the most part
    concerned with doing, and require little or no speaking; in
    painting, and statuary, and many other arts, the work may
    proceed in silence; and of such arts I suppose you would
    say that they do not come within the province of rhetoric.

    _Gor._ You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates.

[Sidenote: You mean to say that rhetoric belongs to that class of arts
which is chiefly concerned with words.]

[Sidenote: _Rhetoric and arithmetic._]

    _Soc._ But there are other arts which work wholly through
    the medium of language, and require either no action or very
    little, as, for example, the arts of arithmetic, of calculation, of
    geometry, and of playing draughts; in some of these speech
    is pretty nearly coextensive with action, but in most of them
    the verbal element is greater—they depend wholly on words
    for their efficacy and power: and I take your meaning to
    be that rhetoric is an art of this latter sort?

    _Gor._ Exactly.

[Sidenote: And yet you would not call arithmetic rhetoric.]

    _Soc._ And yet I do not believe that you really mean to call
    any of these arts rhetoric; although the precise expression
    which you used was, that rhetoric is an art which works and
    takes effect only through the medium of discourse; and an
    adversary who wished to be captious might say, ‘And so,
    Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric.’ But I do not think
    that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry
    would be so called by you.                                         451

    _Gor._ You are quite right, Socrates, in your apprehension of
    my meaning.

[Sidenote: Illustrations.]

    _Soc._ Well, then, let me now have the rest of my answer:—seeing
    that rhetoric is one of those arts which works mainly
    by the use of words, and there are other arts which also use
    words, tell me what is that quality in words with which rhetoric
    is concerned:—Suppose that a person asks me about
    some of the arts which I was mentioning just now; he might
    say, ‘Socrates, what is arithmetic?’ and I should reply to
    him, as you replied to me, that arithmetic is one of those arts
    which take effect through words. And then he would proceed
    to ask: ‘Words about what?’ and I should reply,
    Words about odd and even numbers, and how many there are
    of each. And if he asked again: ‘What is the art of calculation?’
    I should say, That also is one of the arts which is
    concerned wholly with words. And if he further said, ‘Concerned
    with what?’ I should say, like the clerks in the
    assembly, ‘as aforesaid’ of arithmetic, but with a difference,
    the difference being that the art of calculation considers not
    only the quantities of odd and even numbers, but also their
    numerical relations to themselves and to one another. And
    suppose, again, I were to say that astronomy is only words—he
    would ask, ‘Words about what, Socrates?’ and I should
    answer, that astronomy tells us about the motions of the
    stars and sun and moon, and their relative swiftness.

    _Gor._ You would be quite right, Socrates.

[Sidenote: _The old drinking song._]

    _Soc._ And now let us have from you, Gorgias, the truth
    about rhetoric: which you would admit (would you not?) to
    be one of those arts which act always and fulfil all their
    ends through the medium of words?

[Sidenote: Rhetoric has to do with words: about the greatest and best of
human things.]

    _Gor._ True.

    _Soc._ Words which do what? I should ask. To what
    class of things do the words which rhetoric uses relate?

    _Gor._ To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of human
    things.

    _Soc._ That again, Gorgias, is ambiguous; I am still in the
    dark: for which are the greatest and best of human things?
    I dare say that you have heard men singing at feasts the old
    drinking song, in which the singers enumerate the goods of
    life, first health, beauty next, thirdly, as the writer of the
    song says, wealth honestly obtained.

    _Gor._ Yes, I know the song; but what is your drift?               452

[Sidenote: But which are they?]

[Sidenote: _Gorgias is brought to the point._]

    _Soc._ I mean to say, that the producers of those things
    which the author of the song praises, that is to say, the
    physician, the trainer, the money-maker, will at once come
    to you, and first the physician will say: ‘O Socrates,
    Gorgias is deceiving you, for my art is concerned with the
    greatest good of men and not his.’ And when I ask, Who
    are you? he will reply, ‘I am a physician.’ What do you
    mean? I shall say. Do you mean that your art produces
    the greatest good? ‘Certainly,’ he will answer, ‘for is not
    health the greatest good? What greater good can men
    have, Socrates?’ And after him the trainer will come and
    say, ‘I too, Socrates, shall be greatly surprised if Gorgias
    can show more good of his art than I can show of mine.’
    To him again I shall say, Who are you, honest friend, and
    what is your business? ‘I am a trainer,’ he will reply, ‘and
    my business is to make men beautiful and strong in body.’
    When I have done with the trainer, there arrives the
    money-maker, and he, as I expect, will utterly despise them
    all. ‘Consider, Socrates,’ he will say, ‘whether Gorgias or
    any one else can produce any greater good than wealth.’
    Well, you and I say to him, and are you a creator of
    wealth? ‘Yes,’ he replies. And who are you? ‘A money-maker.’
    And do you consider wealth to be the greatest
    good of man? ‘Of course,’ will be his reply. And we
    shall rejoin: Yes; but our friend Gorgias contends that his
    art produces a greater good than yours. And then he will
    be sure to go on and ask, ‘What good? Let Gorgias
    answer.’ Now I want you, Gorgias, to imagine that this
    question is asked of you by them and by me; What is that
    which, as you say, is the greatest good of man, and of which
    you are the creator? Answer us.

[Sidenote: Freedom and power, and the word which gives them.]

    _Gor._ That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest,
    being that which gives to men freedom in their own persons,
    and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their
    several states.

    _Soc._ And what would you consider this to be?

    _Gor._ What is there greater than the word which persuades
    the judges in the courts, or the senators in the
    council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other
    political meeting?—if you have the power of uttering this
    word, you will have the physician your slave, and the trainer
    your slave, and the money-maker of whom you talk will be
    found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who
    are able to speak and to persuade the multitude.

    _Soc._ Now I think, Gorgias, that you have very accurately
    explained what you conceive to be the art of rhetoric; and
    you mean to say, if I am not mistaken, that rhetoric is the        453
    artificer of persuasion, having this and no other business,
    and that this is her crown and end. Do you know any
    other effect of rhetoric over and above that of producing
    persuasion?

[Sidenote: Rhetoric is the art of persuading, says Gorgias.]

    _Gor._ No: the definition seems to me very fair, Socrates;
    for persuasion is the chief end of rhetoric.

    _Soc._ Then hear me, Gorgias, for I am quite sure that if
    there ever was a man who entered on the discussion of a
    matter from a pure love of knowing the truth, I am such
    a one, and I should say the same of you.

    _Gor._ What is coming, Socrates?

[Sidenote: _Socrates insists on taking ‘one step at a time.’_]

    _Soc._ I will tell you: I am very well aware that I do not
    know what, according to you, is the exact nature, or what
    are the topics of that persuasion of which you speak, and
    which is given by rhetoric; although I have a suspicion
    about both the one and the other. And I am going to ask—what
    is this power of persuasion which is given by rhetoric,
    and about what? But why, if I have a suspicion, do I ask
    instead of telling you? Not for your sake, but in order that
    the argument may proceed in such a manner as is most
    likely to set forth the truth. And I would have you observe,
    that I am right in asking this further question: If I asked,
    ‘What sort of a painter is Zeuxis?’ and you said, ‘The
    painter of figures,’ should I not be right in asking, ‘What
    kind of figures, and where do you find them?’

    _Gor._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And the reason for asking this second question
    would be, that there are other painters besides, who paint
    many other figures?

    _Gor._ True.

    _Soc._ But if there had been no one but Zeuxis who painted
    them, then you would have answered very well?

    _Gor._ Quite so.

[Sidenote: But so is arithmetic, so is painting.]

    _Soc._ Now I want to know about rhetoric in the same way;—is
    rhetoric the only art which brings persuasion, or do
    other arts have the same effect? I mean to say—Does he
    who teaches anything persuade men of that which he teaches
    or not?

    _Gor._ He persuades, Socrates,—there can be no mistake
    about that.

    _Soc._ Again, if we take the arts of which we were just now
    speaking:—do not arithmetic and the arithmeticians teach us
    the properties of number?

    _Gor._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And therefore persuade us of them?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then arithmetic as well as rhetoric is an artificer of
    persuasion?

    _Gor._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And if any one asks us what sort of persuasion, and
    about what,—we shall answer, persuasion which teaches the
    quantity of odd and even; and we shall be able to show that
    all the other arts of which we were just now speaking are          454
    artificers of persuasion, and of what sort, and about what.

    _Gor._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Then rhetoric is not the only artificer of persuasion?

    _Gor._ True.

[Sidenote: _Knowledge and belief._]

[Sidenote: Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer?]

    _Soc._ Seeing, then, that not only rhetoric works by persuasion,
    but that other arts do the same, as in the case of
    the painter, a question has arisen which is a very fair one:
    Of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer, and about what?—is
    not that a fair way of putting the question?

    _Gor._ I think so.

    _Soc._ Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, what is
    the answer?

[Sidenote: Of persuasion in the courts and assemblies about the just and
unjust.]

    _Gor._ I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion
    in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just
    now saying, and about the just and unjust.

    _Soc._ And that, Gorgias, was what I was suspecting to be
    your notion; yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by
    I am found repeating a seemingly plain question; for I ask
    not in order to confute you, but as I was saying that the
    argument may proceed consecutively, and that we may not
    get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of
    one another’s words; I would have you develope your own
    views in your own way, whatever may be your hypothesis.

    _Gor._ I think that you are quite right, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Then let me raise another question; there is such
    a thing as ‘having learned’?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And there is also ‘having believed’?

    _Gor._ Yes.

[Sidenote: Knowledge and belief are not the same things; for there may be
a false belief, but not a false knowledge.]

    _Soc._ And is the ‘having learned’ the same as ‘having
    believed,’ and are learning and belief the same things?

    _Gor._ In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same.

    _Soc._ And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain in
    this way:—If a person were to say to you, ‘Is there,
    Gorgias, a false belief as well as a true?’—you would reply,
    if I am not mistaken, that there is.

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a
    true?

    _Gor._ No.

    _Soc._ No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge
    and belief differ.

    _Gor._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And yet those who have learned as well as those
    who have believed are persuaded?

[Sidenote: _What do we really mean concerning rhetoric?_]

    _Gor._ Just so.

    _Soc._ Shall we then assume two sorts of persuasion,—one
    which is the source of belief without knowledge, as the other
    is of knowledge?

    _Gor._ By all means.

    _Soc._ And which sort of persuasion does rhetoric create in
    courts of law and other assemblies about the just and unjust,
    the sort of persuasion which gives belief without knowledge,
    or that which gives knowledge?

    _Gor._ Clearly, Socrates, that which only gives belief.            455

[Sidenote: And rhetoric is only the creator of a belief, but gives no
instruction.]

    _Soc._ Then rhetoric, as would appear, is the artificer of a
    persuasion which creates belief about the just and unjust,
    but gives no instruction about them?

    _Gor._ True.

    _Soc._ And the rhetorician does not instruct the courts of
    law or other assemblies about things just and unjust, but he
    creates belief about them; for no one can be supposed to
    instruct such a vast multitude about such high matters in a
    short time?

    _Gor._ Certainly not.

[Sidenote: Neither is the rhetorician taken into counsel when anything
has to be done.]

    _Soc._ Come, then, and let us see what we really mean about
    rhetoric; for I do not know what my own meaning is as yet.
    When the assembly meets to elect a physician or a shipwright
    or any other craftsman, will the rhetorician be taken
    into counsel? Surely not. For at every election he ought
    to be chosen who is most skilled; and, again, when walls
    have to be built or harbours or docks to be constructed, not
    the rhetorician but the master workman will advise; or when
    generals have to be chosen and an order of battle arranged,
    or a position taken, then the military will advise and not the
    rhetoricians: what do you say, Gorgias? Since you profess
    to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians, I cannot do
    better than learn the nature of your art from you. And here
    let me assure you that I have your interest in view as well
    as my own. For likely enough some one or other of the
    young men present might desire to become your pupil, and in
    fact I see some, and a good many too, who have this wish,
    but they would be too modest to question you. And therefore
    when you are interrogated by me, I would have you
    imagine that you are interrogated by them. ‘What is the
    use of coming to you, Gorgias?’ they will say—‘about what
    will you teach us to advise the state?—about the just and
    unjust only, or about those other things also which Socrates
    has just mentioned?’ How will you answer them?

[Sidenote: _Gorgias and his brother Herodicus._]

[Sidenote: But, says Gorgias, he will persuade people to do it.]

    _Gor._ I like your way of leading us on, Socrates, and I will
    endeavour to reveal to you the whole nature of rhetoric.
    You must have heard, I think, that the docks and the walls
    of the Athenians and the plan of the harbour were devised
    in accordance with the counsels, partly of Themistocles, and
    partly of Pericles, and not at the suggestion of the builders.

    _Soc._ Such is the tradition, Gorgias, about Themistocles;
    and I myself heard the speech of Pericles when he advised
    us about the middle wall.

    _Gor._ And you will observe, Socrates, that when a decision        456
    has to be given in such matters the rhetoricians are the
    advisers; they are the men who win their point.

    _Soc._ I had that in my admiring mind, Gorgias, when I
    asked what is the nature of rhetoric, which always appears
    to me, when I look at the matter in this way, to be a marvel
    of greatness.

[Sidenote: The rhetorician more than a match for a man of any other
profession.]

[Sidenote: _The apology of Gorgias._]

[Sidenote: His pupils may make a bad use of his instructions, but he is
not to be blamed for this.]

    _Gor._ A marvel, indeed, Socrates, if you only knew how
    rhetoric comprehends and holds under her sway all the
    inferior arts. Let me offer you a striking example of this.
    On several occasions I have been with my brother Herodicus
    or some other physician to see one of his patients, who
    would not allow the physician to give him medicine, or
    apply the knife or hot iron to him; and I have persuaded
    him to do for me what he would not do for the physician
    just by the use of rhetoric. And I say that if a rhetorician
    and a physician were to go to any city, and had there to
    argue in the Ecclesia or any other assembly as to which of
    them should be elected state-physician, the physician would
    have no chance; but he who could speak would be chosen if
    he wished; and in a contest with a man of any other profession
    the rhetorician more than any one would have the
    power of getting himself chosen, for he can speak more
    persuasively to the multitude than any of them, and on
    any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art
    of rhetoric! And yet, Socrates, rhetoric should be used
    like any other competitive art, not against everybody,—the
    rhetorician ought not to abuse his strength any more than
    a pugilist or pancratiast or other master of fence;—because
    he has powers which are more than a match either for
    friend or enemy, he ought not therefore to strike, stab, or
    slay his friends. Suppose a man to have been trained in
    the palestra and to be a skilful boxer,—he in the fulness of
    his strength goes and strikes his father or mother or one of
    his familiars or friends; but that is no reason why the trainers
    or fencing-masters should be held in detestation or banished
    from the city;—surely not. For they taught their art for a
    good purpose, to be used against enemies and evil-doers, in
    self-defence not in aggression, and others have perverted
    their instructions, and turned to a bad use their own strength     457
    and skill. But not on this account are the teachers bad,
    neither is the art in fault, or bad in itself; I should rather
    say that those who make a bad use of the art are to blame.
    And the same argument holds good of rhetoric; for the
    rhetorician can speak against all men and upon any subject,—in
    short, he can persuade the multitude better than
    any other man of anything which he pleases, but he should
    not therefore seek to defraud the physician or any other
    artist of his reputation merely because he has the power; he
    ought to use rhetoric fairly, as he would also use his athletic
    powers. And if after having become a rhetorician he makes
    a bad use of his strength and skill, his instructor surely
    ought not on that account to be held in detestation or
    banished. For he was intended by his teacher to make
    a good use of his instructions, but he abuses them. And
    therefore he is the person who ought to be held in detestation,
    banished, and put to death, and not his instructor.

[Sidenote: If Gorgias, like Socrates, is one of those who rejoice in
being refuted, he would like to cross-examine him; if not, not.]

[Sidenote: _The inconsistency of Gorgias._]

    _Soc._ You, Gorgias, like myself, have had great experience
    of disputations, and you must have observed, I think, that
    they do not always terminate in mutual edification, or in the
    definition by either party of the subjects which they are
    discussing; but disagreements are apt to arise—somebody
    says that another has not spoken truly or clearly; and then
    they get into a passion and begin to quarrel, both parties
    conceiving that their opponents are arguing from personal
    feeling only and jealousy of themselves, not from any
    interest in the question at issue. And sometimes they will
    go on abusing one another until the company at last are quite
    vexed at themselves for ever listening to such fellows. Why
    do I say this? Why, because I cannot help feeling that you
    are now saying what is not quite consistent or accordant with
    what you were saying at first about rhetoric. And I am
    afraid to point this out to you, lest you should think that I
    have some animosity against you, and that I speak, not for
    the sake of discovering the truth, but from jealousy of you.
    Now if you are one of my sort, I should like to cross-examine
    you, but if not I will let you alone. And what is my sort?         458
    you will ask. I am one of those who are very willing to be
    refuted if I say anything which is not true, and very willing
    to refute any one else who says what is not true, and quite as
    ready to be refuted as to refute; for I hold that this is the
    greater gain of the two, just as the gain is greater of being
    cured of a very great evil than of curing another. For I
    imagine that there is no evil which a man can endure so great
    as an erroneous opinion about the matters of which we are
    speaking; and if you claim to be one of my sort, let us have
    the discussion out, but if you would rather have done, no
    matter;—let us make an end of it.

    _Gor._ I should say, Socrates, that I am quite the man whom
    you indicate; but, perhaps, we ought to consider the audience,
    for, before you came, I had already given a long exhibition,
    and if we proceed the argument may run on to a great length.
    And therefore I think that we should consider whether we
    may not be detaining some part of the company when they
    are wanting to do something else.

[Sidenote: Delight of the audience at the prospect of an argument.]

    _Chaer._ You hear the audience cheering, Gorgias and
    Socrates, which shows their desire to listen to you; and for
    myself, Heaven forbid that I should have any business on
    hand which would take me away from a discussion so
    interesting and so ably maintained.

    _Cal._ By the gods, Chaerephon, although I have been present
    at many discussions, I doubt whether I was ever so much
    delighted before, and therefore if you go on discoursing all
    day I shall be the better pleased.

    _Soc._ I may truly say, Callicles, that I am willing, if
    Gorgias is.

[Sidenote: _The rhetorician need only know appearance._]

    _Gor._ After all this, Socrates, I should be disgraced if I
    refused, especially as I have promised to answer all comers;
    in accordance with the wishes of the company, then, do you
    begin, and ask of me any question which you like.

    _Soc._ Let me tell you then, Gorgias, what surprises me in
    your words; though I dare say that you may be right, and I
    may have misunderstood your meaning. You say that you
    can make any man, who will learn of you, a rhetorician?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Do you mean that you will teach him to gain the ears
    of the multitude on any subject, and this not by instruction
    but by persuasion?                                                 459

    _Gor._ Quite so.

[Sidenote: The rhetorician has greater powers of persuasion with the mob
than e. g. the physician.]

    _Soc._ You were saying, in fact, that the rhetorician will
    have greater powers of persuasion than the physician even
    in a matter of health?

    _Gor._ Yes, with the multitude,—that is.

    _Soc._ You mean to say, with the ignorant; for with those
    who know he cannot be supposed to have greater powers of
    persuasion.

    _Gor._ Very true.

[Sidenote: The more ignorant therefore will have more power than he who
knows.]

    _Soc._ But if he is to have more power of persuasion than
    the physician, he will have greater power than he who knows?

    _Gor._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Although he is not a physician:—is he?

    _Gor._ No.

    _Soc._ And he who is not a physician must, obviously, be
    ignorant of what the physician knows.

    _Gor._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than
    the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the
    ignorant than he who has knowledge?—is not that the
    inference?

    _Gor._ In the case supposed:—yes.

    _Soc._ And the same holds of the relation of rhetoric to all
    the other arts; the rhetorician need not know the truth about
    things; he has only to discover some way of persuading
    the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who
    know?

[Sidenote: _The false analogy of the arts._]

    _Gor._ Yes, Socrates, and is not this a great comfort?—not
    to have learned the other arts, but the art of rhetoric only,
    and yet to be in no way inferior to the professors of
    them?

[Sidenote: And is the rhetorician as ignorant of good and evil, just and
unjust, as about special arts; or will Gorgias teach him these things
first?]

    _Soc._ Whether the rhetorician is or is not inferior on this
    account is a question which we will hereafter examine if the
    enquiry is likely to be of any service to us; but I would
    rather begin by asking, whether he is or is not as ignorant of
    the just and unjust, base and honourable, good and evil, as
    he is of medicine and the other arts; I mean to say, does
    he really know anything of what is good and evil, base or
    honourable, just or unjust in them; or has he only a way
    with the ignorant of persuading them that he not knowing is
    to be esteemed to know more about these things than some
    one else who knows? Or must the pupil know these things
    and come to you knowing them before he can acquire the art
    of rhetoric? If he is ignorant, you who are the teacher of
    rhetoric will not teach him—it is not your business; but
    you will make him seem to the multitude to know them,
    when he does not know them; and seem to be a good man,
    when he is not. Or will you be unable to teach him rhetoric        460
    at all, unless he knows the truth of these things first? What
    is to be said about all this? By heaven, Gorgias, I wish that
    you would reveal to me the power of rhetoric, as you were
    saying that you would.

[Sidenote: He must be taught.]

    _Gor._ Well, Socrates, I suppose that if the pupil does chance
    not to know them, he will have to learn of me these things as
    well.

    _Soc._ Say no more, for there you are right; and so he
    whom you make a rhetorician must either know the nature
    of the just and unjust already, or he must be taught by
    you.

    _Gor._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Well, and is not he who has learned carpentering a
    carpenter?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he who has learned music a musician?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he who has learned medicine is a physician, in
    like manner? He who has learned anything whatever is
    that which his knowledge makes him.

    _Gor._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _The inconsistency of Gorgias pointed out._]

    _Soc._ And in the same way, he who has learned what is just
    is just?

    _Gor._ To be sure.

[Sidenote: He who has learned what is just, is admitted to be just and to
act justly. But if so, the rhetorician, having learned what is just, must
act justly, and can never therefore make an ill use of rhetoric.]

    _Soc._ And he who is just may be supposed to do what is
    just?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And must not[30] the just man always desire to do what
    is just?

    _Gor._ That is clearly the inference.

    _Soc._ Surely, then, the just man will never consent to do
    injustice?

    _Gor._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And according to the argument the rhetorician must
    be a just man?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And will therefore never be willing to do injustice?

    _Gor._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ But do you remember saying just now that the trainer
    is not to be accused or banished if the pugilist makes a wrong
    use of his pugilistic art; and in like manner, if the rhetorician
    makes a bad and unjust use of his rhetoric, that is not to be
    laid to the charge of his teacher, who is not to be banished,
    but the wrong-doer himself who made a bad use of his rhetoric—he
    is to be banished—was not that said?

    _Gor._ Yes, it was.

    _Soc._ But now we are affirming that the aforesaid rhetorician
    will never have done injustice at all?

    _Gor._ True.

    _Soc._ And at the very outset, Gorgias, it was said that
    rhetoric treated of discourse, not [like arithmetic] about odd
    and even, but about just and unjust? Was not this said?

    _Gor._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _A change in the parts._]

    _Soc._ I was thinking at the time, when I heard you saying
    so, that rhetoric, which is always discoursing about justice,
    could not possibly be an unjust thing. But when you added,
    shortly afterwards, that the rhetorician might make a bad use
    of rhetoric I noted with surprise the inconsistency into which     461
    you had fallen; and I said, that if you thought, as I did, that
    there was a gain in being refuted, there would be an advantage
    in going on with the question, but if not, I would leave off.
    And in the course of our investigations, as you will see yourself,
    the rhetorician has been acknowledged to be incapable
    of making an unjust use of rhetoric, or of willingness to do
    injustice. By the dog, Gorgias, there will be a great deal of
    discussion, before we get at the truth of all this.

[Sidenote: The paradoxes of Socrates arouse the ire of Polus.]

    _Polus._ And do even you, Socrates, seriously believe what
    you are now saying about rhetoric? What! because Gorgias
    was ashamed to deny that the rhetorician knew the just and
    the honourable and the good, and admitted that to any one
    who came to him ignorant of them he could teach them,
    and then out of this admission there arose a contradiction—the
    thing which you so dearly love, and to which not he, but
    you, brought the argument by your captious questions—[do
    you seriously believe that there is any truth in all this?] For
    will any one ever acknowledge that he does not know, or
    cannot teach, the nature of justice? The truth is, that there
    is great want of manners in bringing the argument to such a
    pass.

[Sidenote: Socrates is willing enough to receive his correction, if he
will only be brief.]

    _Soc._ Illustrious Polus, the reason why we provide ourselves
    with friends and children is, that when we get old and
    stumble, a younger generation may be at hand to set us on
    our legs again in our words and in our actions: and now, if I
    and Gorgias are stumbling, here are you who should raise us
    up; and I for my part engage to retract any error into which
    you may think that I have fallen—upon one condition:

    _Pol._ What condition?

    _Soc._ That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in
    which you indulged at first.

[Sidenote: ‘Am I to be deprived of speech in a free state?’]

    _Pol._ What! do you mean that I may not use as many
    words as I please?

[Sidenote: ‘Am I to be compelled to listen?’]

[Sidenote: _Socrates asks instead of answering._]

    _Soc._ Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit
    to Athens, which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you
    when you got there, and you alone, should be deprived of the
    power of speech—that would be hard indeed. But then consider
    my case:—shall not I be very hardly used, if, when you
    are making a long oration, and refusing to answer what you
    are asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and may       462
    not go away? I say rather, if you have a real interest in the
    argument, or, to repeat my former expression, have any
    desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement which you
    please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and
    Gorgias—refute and be refuted: for I suppose that you would
    claim to know what Gorgias knows—would you not?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And you, like him, invite any one to ask you about
    anything which he pleases, and you will know how to answer
    him?

    _Pol._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And now, which will you do, ask or answer?

    _Pol._ I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same
    question which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to answer:
    What is rhetoric?

    _Soc._ Do you mean what sort of an art?

    _Pol._ Yes.

[Sidenote: Socrates in his answer contrives to give Polus a lesson.]

    _Soc._ To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all, in my
    opinion.

    _Pol._ Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric?

    _Soc._ A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book of
    yours, you say created art.

    _Pol._ What thing?

    _Soc._ I should say a sort of experience.

    _Pol._ Does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience?

    _Soc._ That is my view, but you may be of another mind.

    _Pol._ An experience in what?

    _Soc._ An experience in producing a sort of delight and
    gratification.

    _Pol._ And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be
    a fine thing?

    _Soc._ What are you saying, Polus? Why do you ask me
    whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, when I have not as
    yet told you what rhetoric is?

    _Pol._ Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of
    experience?

    _Soc._ Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others, afford
    a slight gratification to me?

    _Pol._ I will.

    _Soc._ Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery?

    _Pol._ What sort of an art is cookery?

[Sidenote: _Once more, ‘What is rhetoric?’_]

    _Soc._ Not an art at all, Polus.

    _Pol._ What then?

    _Soc._ I should say an experience.

    _Pol._ In what? I wish that you would explain to me.

[Sidenote: He puts rhetoric and cookery in the same class; and that class
is flattery.]

    _Soc._ An experience in producing a sort of delight and
    gratification, Polus.

    _Pol._ Then are cookery and rhetoric the same?

    _Soc._ No, they are only different parts of the same profession.

    _Pol._ Of what profession?

    _Soc._ I am afraid that the truth may seem discourteous;
    and I hesitate to answer, lest Gorgias should imagine that
    I am making fun of his own profession. For whether or
    no this is that art of rhetoric which Gorgias practises I          463
    really cannot tell:—from what he was just now saying,
    nothing appeared of what he thought of his art, but the
    rhetoric which I mean is a part of a not very creditable
    whole.

    _Gor._ A part of what, Socrates? Say what you mean, and
    never mind me.

    _Soc._ In my opinion then, Gorgias, the whole of which
    rhetoric is a part is not an art at all, but the habit of a
    bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind:
    this habit I sum up under the word ‘flattery’; and it appears
    to me to have many other parts, one of which is cookery,
    which may seem to be an art, but, as I maintain, is only an
    experience or routine and not an art:—another part is
    rhetoric, and the art of attiring and sophistry are two
    others: thus there are four branches, and four different
    things answering to them. And Polus may ask, if he likes,
    for he has not as yet been informed, what part of flattery
    is rhetoric: he did not see that I had not yet answered him
    when he proceeded to ask a further question: Whether I
    do not think rhetoric a fine thing? But I shall not tell him
    whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not, until I have first
    answered, ‘What is rhetoric?’ For that would not be
    right, Polus; but I shall be happy to answer, if you will
    ask me, What part of flattery is rhetoric?

    _Pol._ I will ask, and do you answer? What part of flattery
    is rhetoric?

[Sidenote: _Shams and flatteries._]

[Sidenote: Rhetoric is the shadow of a part of politics.]

    _Soc._ Will you understand my answer? Rhetoric, according
    to my view, is the ghost or counterfeit of a part of
    politics.

    _Pol._ And noble or ignoble?

    _Soc._ Ignoble, I should say, if I am compelled to answer,
    for I call what is bad ignoble:—though I doubt whether
    you understand what I was saying before.

    _Gor._ Indeed, Socrates, I cannot say that I understand
    myself.

    _Soc._ I do not wonder, Gorgias; for I have not as yet
    explained myself, and our friend Polus, colt by name and
    colt by nature, is apt to run away[31].

[Sidenote: ‘But what in the world does this mean?’]

    _Gor._ Never mind him, but explain to me what you mean
    by saying that rhetoric is the counterfeit of a part of politics.

    _Soc._ I will try, then, to explain my notion of rhetoric, and
    if I am mistaken, my friend Polus shall refute me. We may          464
    assume the existence of bodies and of souls?

    _Gor._ Of course.

[Sidenote: Returning to first principles, Socrates assumes the existence
of souls and bodies which may or may not be in a good condition, real or
apparent.]

    _Soc._ You would further admit that there is a good condition
    of either of them?

    _Gor._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Which condition may not be really good, but good
    only in appearance? I mean to say, that there are many
    persons who appear to be in good health, and whom only
    a physician or trainer will discern at first sight not to be in
    good health.

    _Gor._ True.

    _Soc._ And this applies not only to the body, but also to the
    soul: in either there may be that which gives the appearance
    of health and not the reality?

    _Gor._ Yes, certainly.

[Sidenote: To the soul corresponds the art of politics which has two
parts, legislation and justice, and to the body corresponds another
nameless art of training which has two parts, medicine and gymnastic; and
these four have four shams corresponding to them.]

[Sidenote: _Rhetoric and Sophistic._]

    _Soc._ And now I will endeavour to explain to you more
    clearly what I mean: The soul and body being two, have
    two arts corresponding to them: there is the art of politics
    attending on the soul; and another art attending on the
    body, of which I know no single name, but which may be
    described as having two divisions, one of them gymnastic,
    and the other medicine. And in politics there is a legislative
    part, which answers to gymnastic, as justice does to medicine;
    and the two parts run into one another, justice having to do
    with the same subject as legislation, and medicine with the
    same subject as gymnastic, but with a difference. Now,
    seeing that there are these four arts, two attending on the
    body and two on the soul for their highest good; flattery
    knowing, or rather guessing their natures, has distributed
    herself into four shams or simulations of them; she puts
    on the likeness of some one or other of them, and pretends
    to be that which she simulates, and having no regard for
    men’s highest interests, is ever making pleasure the bait of
    the unwary, and deceiving them into the belief that she is
    of the highest value to them. Cookery simulates the disguise
    of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the
    best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had
    to enter into a competition in which children were the
    judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as
    to which of them best understands the goodness or badness
    of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery
    I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort, Polus, for to you        465
    I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure
    without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but
    only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give
    a reason of the nature of its own applications. And I do not
    call any irrational thing an art; but if you dispute my words,
    I am prepared to argue in defence of them.

    Cookery, then, I maintain to be a flattery which takes the
    form of medicine; and tiring, in like manner, is a flattery
    which takes the form of gymnastic, and is knavish, false,
    ignoble, illiberal, working deceitfully by the help of lines, and
    colours, and enamels, and garments, and making men affect
    a spurious beauty to the neglect of the true beauty which is
    given by gymnastic.

[Sidenote: The shams are cooking, dressing up, sophistry, rhetoric.]

[Sidenote: _Hard words pass between Polus and Socrates._]

[Sidenote: Socrates excuses himself for the length at which he has
spoken.]

    I would rather not be tedious, and therefore I will only
    say, after the manner of the geometricians, (for I think that
    by this time you will be able to follow,)

    as tiring : gymnastic :: cookery : medicine;

    or rather,

    as tiring : gymnastic :: sophistry : legislation;

    and

    as cookery : medicine :: rhetoric : justice.

    And this, I say, is the natural difference between the rhetorician
    and the sophist, but by reason of their near connection,
    they are apt to be jumbled up together, neither do they
    know what to make of themselves, nor do other men know
    what to make of them. For if the body presided over itself,
    and were not under the guidance of the soul, and the soul
    did not discern and discriminate between cookery and
    medicine, but the body was made the judge of them, and
    the rule of judgment was the bodily delight which was given
    by them, then the word of Anaxagoras, that word with which
    you, friend Polus, are so well acquainted, would prevail far and
    wide: ‘Chaos’ would come again, and cookery, health, and
    medicine would mingle in an indiscriminate mass. And now
    I have told you my notion of rhetoric, which is, in relation to
    the soul, what cookery is to the body. I may have been
    inconsistent in making a long speech, when I would not
    allow you to discourse at length. But I think that I may be
    excused, because you did not understand me, and could
    make no use of my answer when I spoke shortly, and therefore
    I had to enter into an explanation. And if I show an               466
    equal inability to make use of yours, I hope that you will
    speak at equal length; but if I am able to understand you,
    let me have the benefit of your brevity, as is only fair: And
    now you may do what you please with my answer.

    _Pol._ What do you mean? do you think that rhetoric is
    flattery?

    _Soc._ Nay, I said a part of flattery; if at your age, Polus,
    you cannot remember, what will you do by-and-by, when
    you get older?

    _Pol._ And are the good rhetoricians meanly regarded in
    states, under the idea that they are flatterers?

    _Soc._ Is that a question or the beginning of a speech?

    _Pol._ I am asking a question.

    _Soc._ Then my answer is, that they are not regarded at all.

[Sidenote: Polus cannot be made to understand that rhetoricians have no
real power in a state, because they do not do what they ultimately will,
but only what they think best.]

    _Pol._ How not regarded? Have they not very great
    power in states?

    _Soc._ Not if you mean to say that power is a good to the
    possessor.

[Sidenote: _Polus is greatly irritated by Socrates._]

    _Pol._ And that is what I do mean to say.

    _Soc._ Then, if so, I think that they have the least power of
    all the citizens.

    _Pol._ What! are they not like tyrants? They kill and
    despoil and exile any one whom they please.

    _Soc._ By the dog, Polus, I cannot make out at each deliverance
    of yours, whether you are giving an opinion of your
    own, or asking a question of me.

    _Pol._ I am asking a question of you.

    _Soc._ Yes, my friend, but you ask two questions at once.

    _Pol._ How two questions?

    _Soc._ Why, did you not say just now that the rhetoricians
    are like tyrants, and that they kill and despoil or exile any
    one whom they please?

    _Pol._ I did.

    _Soc._ Well then, I say to you that here are two questions
    in one, and I will answer both of them. And I tell you,
    Polus, that rhetoricians and tyrants have the least possible
    power in states, as I was just now saying; for they do
    literally nothing which they will, but only what they think
    best.

    _Pol._ And is not that a great power?

    _Soc._ Polus has already said the reverse.

    _Pol._ Said the reverse! nay, that is what I assert.

    _Soc._ No, by the great—what do you call him?—not you,
    for you say that great power is a good to him who has the
    power.

    _Pol._ I do.

    _Soc._ And would you maintain that if a fool does what he
    thinks best, this is a good, and would you call this great
    power?

    _Pol._ I should not.

[Sidenote: For a fool and a flatterer cannot know what is good.]

    _Soc._ Then you must prove that the rhetorician is not a
    fool, and that rhetoric is an art and not a flattery—and so        467
    you will have refuted me; but if you leave me unrefuted,
    why, the rhetoricians who do what they think best in states,
    and the tyrants, will have nothing upon which to congratulate
    themselves, if, as you say, power be indeed a good, admitting
    at the same time that what is done without sense is an evil.

    _Pol._ Yes; I admit that.

[Sidenote: _What men will is not what they think best._]

    _Soc._ How then can the rhetoricians or the tyrants have
    great power in states, unless Polus can refute Socrates, and
    prove to him that they do as they will?

    _Pol._ This fellow—

    _Soc._ I say that they do not do as they will;—now refute
    me.

    _Pol._ Why, have you not already said that they do as they
    think best?

    _Soc._ And I say so still.

    _Pol._ Then surely they do as they will?

    _Soc._ I deny it.

    _Pol._ But they do what they think best?

    _Soc._ Aye.

    _Pol._ That, Socrates, is monstrous and absurd.

    _Soc._ Good words, good Polus, as I may say in your own
    peculiar style; but if you have any questions to ask of
    me, either prove that I am in error or give the answer
    yourself.

    _Pol._ Very well, I am willing to answer that I may know
    what you mean.

    _Soc._ Do men appear to you to will that which they do, or
    to will that further end for the sake of which they do a
    thing? when they take medicine, for example, at the bidding
    of a physician, do they will the drinking of the medicine
    which is painful, or the health for the sake of which they
    drink?

    _Pol._ Clearly, the health.

    _Soc._ And when men go on a voyage or engage in business,
    they do not will that which they are doing at the time; for
    who would desire to take the risk of a voyage or the trouble
    of business?—But they will, to have the wealth for the sake
    of which they go on a voyage.

    _Pol._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: A man cannot will unless he knows the ultimate good for the
sake of which he acts.]

    _Soc._ And is not this universally true? If a man does
    something for the sake of something else, he wills not that
    which he does, but that for the sake of which he does it.

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And are not all things either good or evil, or intermediate
    and indifferent?

    _Pol._ To be sure, Socrates.

[Sidenote: _Good is the end of human action._]

    _Soc._ Wisdom and health and wealth and the like you
    would call goods, and their opposites evils?

    _Pol._ I should.

    _Soc._ And the things which are neither good nor evil, and         468
    which partake sometimes of the nature of good and at other
    times of evil, or of neither, are such as sitting, walking,
    running, sailing; or, again, wood, stones, and the like:—these
    are the things which you call neither good nor evil?

    _Pol._ Exactly so.

    _Soc._ Are these indifferent things done for the sake of the
    good, or the good for the sake of the indifferent?

    _Pol._ Clearly, the indifferent for the sake of the good.

    _Soc._ When we walk we walk for the sake of the good, and
    under the idea that it is better to walk, and when we stand
    we stand equally for the sake of the good?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And when we kill a man we kill him or exile him or
    despoil him of his goods, because, as we think, it will conduce
    to our good?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Men who do any of these things do them for the sake
    of the good?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And did we not admit that in doing something for the
    sake of something else, we do not will those things which we
    do, but that other thing for the sake of which we do them?

    _Pol._ Most true.

    _Soc._ Then we do not will simply to kill a man or to exile
    him or to despoil him of his goods, but we will to do that
    which conduces to our good, and if the act is not conducive
    to our good we do not will it; for we will, as you say, that
    which is our good, but that which is neither good nor evil, or
    simply evil, we do not will. Why are you silent, Polus?
    Am I not right?

    _Pol._ You are right.

    _Soc._ Hence we may infer, that if any one, whether he be
    a tyrant or a rhetorician, kills another or exiles another or
    deprives him of his property, under the idea that the act is
    for his own interests when really not for his own interests, he
    may be said to do what seems best to him?

[Sidenote: _Will is the correlative of good._]

    _Pol._ Yes.

[Sidenote: No man does what he wills who does what is evil.]

    _Soc._ But does he do what he wills if he does what is evil?
    Why do you not answer?

    _Pol._ Well, I suppose not.

    _Soc._ Then if great power is a good as you allow, will such
    a one have great power in a state?

    _Pol._ He will not.

    _Soc._ Then I was right in saying that a man may do what
    seems good to him in a state, and not have great power, and
    not do what he wills?

    _Pol._ As though you, Socrates, would not like to have the
    power of doing what seemed good to you in the state, rather
    than not; you would not be jealous when you saw any one
    killing or despoiling or imprisoning whom he pleased,
    Oh, no!

    _Soc._ Justly or unjustly, do you mean?                            469

    _Pol._ In either case is he not equally to be envied?

    _Soc._ Forbear, Polus!

    _Pol._ Why ‘forbear’?

    _Soc._ Because you ought not to envy wretches who are not
    to be envied, but only to pity them.

    _Pol._ And are those of whom I spoke wretches?

    _Soc._ Yes, certainly they are.

[Sidenote: He who makes a bad use of power is not to be envied, but
pitied.]

    _Pol._ And so you think that he who slays any one whom he
    pleases, and justly slays him, is pitiable and wretched?

    _Soc._ No, I do not say that of him: but neither do I think
    that he is to be envied.

    _Pol._ Were you not saying just now that he is wretched?

    _Soc._ Yes, my friend, if he killed another unjustly, in which
    case he is also to be pitied; and he is not to be envied if he
    killed him justly.

    _Pol._ At any rate you will allow that he who is unjustly put
    to death is wretched, and to be pitied?

    _Soc._ Not so much, Polus, as he who kills him, and not so
    much as he who is justly killed.

    _Pol._ How can that be, Socrates?

    _Soc._ That may very well be, inasmuch as doing injustice is
    the greatest of evils.

    _Pol._ But is it the greatest? Is not suffering injustice a
    greater evil?

[Sidenote: _A paradox._]

    _Soc._ Certainly not.

    _Pol._ Then would you rather suffer than do injustice?

[Sidenote: Better to suffer than to do injustice.]

    _Soc._ I should not like either, but if I must choose between
    them, I would rather suffer than do.

    _Pol._ Then you would not wish to be a tyrant?

    _Soc._ Not if you mean by tyranny what I mean.

    _Pol._ I mean, as I said before, the power of doing whatever
    seems good to you in a state, killing, banishing, doing in all
    things as you like.

[Sidenote: A tyrant has no real power any more than a man who runs out
into the Agora carrying a dagger.]

    _Soc._ Well then, illustrious friend, when I have said my
    say, do you reply to me. Suppose that I go into a crowded
    Agora, and take a dagger under my arm. Polus, I say to
    you, I have just acquired rare power, and become a tyrant;
    for if I think that any of these men whom you see ought to
    be put to death, the man whom I have a mind to kill is as
    good as dead; and if I am disposed to break his head or
    tear his garment, he will have his head broken or his garment
    torn in an instant. Such is my great power in this city.
    And if you do not believe me, and I show you the dagger,
    you would probably reply: Socrates, in that sort of way any
    one may have great power—he may burn any house which he
    pleases, and the docks and triremes of the Athenians, and all
    their other vessels, whether public or private—but can you
    believe that this mere doing as you think best is great
    power?

    _Pol._ Certainly not such doing as this.

    _Soc._ But can you tell me why you disapprove of such a            470
    power?

    _Pol._ I can.

    _Soc._ Why then?

    _Pol._ Why, because he who did as you say would be certain
    to be punished.

    _Soc._ And punishment is an evil?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And you would admit once more, my good sir, that
    great power is a benefit to a man if his actions turn out to his
    advantage, and that this is the meaning of great power; and
    if not, then his power is an evil and is no power. But let us
    look at the matter in another way:—do we not acknowledge
    that the things of which we were speaking, the infliction of
    death, and exile, and the deprivation of property are sometimes
    a good and sometimes not a good?

[Sidenote: _Is Archelaus happy?_]

    _Pol._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Even what we commonly call the evils of life may be goods in
disguise.]

    _Soc._ About that you and I may be supposed to agree?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Tell me, then, when do you say that they are good
    and when that they are evil—what principle do you lay
    down?

    _Pol._ I would rather, Socrates, that you should answer as
    well as ask that question.

    _Soc._ Well, Polus, since you would rather have the answer
    from me, I say that they are good when they are just, and
    evil when they are unjust.

    _Pol._ You are hard of refutation, Socrates, but might not a
    child refute that statement?

    _Soc._ Then I shall be very grateful to the child, and equally
    grateful to you if you will refute me and deliver me from my
    foolishness. And I hope that refute me you will, and not
    weary of doing good to a friend.

    _Pol._ Yes, Socrates, and I need not go far or appeal to
    antiquity; events which happened only a few days ago are
    enough to refute you, and to prove that many men who do
    wrong are happy.

    _Soc._ What events?

    _Pol._ You see, I presume, that Archelaus the son of Perdiccas
    is now the ruler of Macedonia?

    _Soc._ At any rate I hear that he is.

    _Pol._ And do you think that he is happy or miserable?

    _Soc._ I cannot say, Polus, for I have never had any acquaintance
    with him.

    _Pol._ And cannot you tell at once, and without having an
    acquaintance with him, whether a man is happy?

    _Soc._ Most certainly not.

[Sidenote: Is the great king happy?]

    _Pol._ Then clearly, Socrates, you would say that you
    did not even know whether the great king was a happy
    man?

    _Soc._ And I should speak the truth; for I do not know how
    he stands in the matter of education and justice.

    _Pol._ What! and does all happiness consist in this?

[Sidenote: _Certainly not, if he is wicked._]

    _Soc._ Yes, indeed, Polus, that is my doctrine; the men and
    women who are gentle and good are also happy, as I maintain,
    and the unjust and evil are miserable.

    _Pol._ Then, according to your doctrine, the said Archelaus        471
    is miserable?

    _Soc._ Yes, my friend, if he is wicked.

[Sidenote: Polus attempts to prove the happiness of the unjust by the
story of Archelaus, who has lately by many crimes gained the throne of
Macedonia.]

    _Pol._ That he is wicked I cannot deny; for he had no title
    at all to the throne which he now occupies, he being only the
    son of a woman who was the slave of Alcetas the brother of
    Perdiccas; he himself therefore in strict right was the slave
    of Alcetas; and if he had meant to do rightly he would have
    remained his slave, and then, according to your doctrine,
    he would have been happy. But now he is unspeakably
    miserable, for he has been guilty of the greatest crimes: in
    the first place he invited his uncle and master, Alcetas, to
    come to him, under the pretence that he would restore to
    him the throne which Perdiccas had usurped, and after
    entertaining him and his son Alexander, who was his own
    cousin, and nearly of an age with him, and making them
    drunk, he threw them into a waggon and carried them off by
    night, and slew them, and got both of them out of the way;
    and when he had done all this wickedness he never discovered
    that he was the most miserable of all men, and was
    very far from repenting: shall I tell you how he showed his
    remorse? he had a younger brother, a child of seven years
    old, who was the legitimate son of Perdiccas, and to him
    of right the kingdom belonged; Archelaus, however, had no
    mind to bring him up as he ought and restore the kingdom to
    him; that was not his notion of happiness; but not long
    afterwards he threw him into a well and drowned him, and
    declared to his mother Cleopatra that he had fallen in while
    running after a goose, and had been killed. And now as he
    is the greatest criminal of all the Macedonians, he may be
    supposed to be the most miserable and not the happiest
    of them, and I dare say that there are many Athenians, and
    you would be at the head of them, who would rather be any
    other Macedonian than Archelaus!

[Sidenote: Socrates sees no force in such arguments.]

[Sidenote: _Socrates alone in his opinion._]

    _Soc._ I praised you at first, Polus, for being a rhetorician
    rather than a reasoner. And this, as I suppose, is the sort
    of argument with which you fancy that a child might refute
    me, and by which I stand refuted when I say that the unjust
    man is not happy. But, my good friend, where is the
    refutation? I cannot admit a word which you have been
    saying.

    _Pol._ That is because you will not; for you surely must
    think as I do.

[Sidenote: The multitude of witnesses are nothing to him.]

[Sidenote: He must convince his opponent and himself by argument.]

    _Soc._ Not so, my simple friend, but because you will refute
    me after the manner which rhetoricians practise in courts of
    law. For there the one party think that they refute the
    other when they bring forward a number of witnesses of
    good repute in proof of their allegations, and their adversary
    has only a single one or none at all. But this kind of proof       472
    is of no value where truth is the aim; a man may often be
    sworn down by a multitude of false witnesses who have a
    great air of respectability. And in this argument nearly
    every one, Athenian and stranger alike, would be on your
    side, if you should bring witnesses in disproof of my statement;—you
    may, if you will, summon Nicias the son of
    Niceratus, and let his brothers, who gave the row of tripods
    which stand in the precincts of Dionysus, come with him; or
    you may summon Aristocrates, the son of Scellius, who is
    the giver of that famous offering which is at Delphi; summon,
    if you will, the whole house of Pericles, or any other great
    Athenian family whom you choose;—they will all agree with
    you: I only am left alone and cannot agree, for you do not
    convince me; although you produce many false witnesses
    against me, in the hope of depriving me of my inheritance,
    which is the truth. But I consider that nothing worth speaking
    of will have been effected by me unless I make you the one
    witness of my words; nor by you, unless you make me the one
    witness of yours; no matter about the rest of the world. For
    there are two ways of refutation, one which is yours and that
    of the world in general; but mine is of another sort—let us
    compare them, and see in what they differ. For, indeed, we
    are at issue about matters which to know is honourable
    and not to know disgraceful; to know or not to know
    happiness and misery—that is the chief of them. And what
    knowledge can be nobler? or what ignorance more disgraceful
    than this? And therefore I will begin by asking
    you whether you do not think that a man who is unjust
    and doing injustice can be happy, seeing that you think
    Archelaus unjust, and yet happy? May I assume this to be
    your opinion?

[Sidenote: _A greater paradox than the last;_]

    _Pol._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: According to Polus the unjust man may be happy if he is
unpunished: Socrates maintains that he is more happy, or less unhappy, if
he meets with retribution.]

    _Soc._ But I say that this is an impossibility—here is one
    point about which we are at issue:—very good. And do you
    mean to say also that if he meets with retribution and punishment
    he will still be happy?

    _Pol._ Certainly not; in that case he will be most miserable.

    _Soc._ On the other hand, if the unjust be not punished, then,
    according to you, he will be happy?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But in my opinion, Polus, the unjust or doer of unjust
    actions is miserable in any case,—more miserable, however, if
    he be not punished and does not meet with retribution, and
    less miserable if he be punished and meets with retribution at
    the hands of gods and men.                                         473

    _Pol._ You are maintaining a strange doctrine, Socrates.

    _Soc._ I shall try to make you agree with me, O my friend,
    for as a friend I regard you. Then these are the points at
    issue between us—are they not? I was saying that to do is
    worse than to suffer injustice?

    _Pol._ Exactly so.

    _Soc._ And you said the opposite?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ I said also that the wicked are miserable, and you refuted
    me?

    _Pol._ By Zeus I did.

    _Soc._ In your own opinion, Polus.

    _Pol._ Yes, and I rather suspect that I was in the right.

    _Soc._ You further said that the wrong-doer is happy if he
    be unpunished?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And I affirm that he is most miserable, and that those
    who are punished are less miserable—are you going to refute
    this proposition also?

    _Pol._ A proposition which is harder of refutation than the
    other, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Say rather, Polus, impossible; for who can refute the
    truth?

[Sidenote: _which Polus begins by laughing at;_]

[Sidenote: What nonsense! Do you mean that the man who expires among
tortures is happier than the successful tyrant?]

    _Pol._ What do you mean? If a man is detected in an
    unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant, and when detected
    is racked, mutilated, has his eyes burned out, and after having
    had all sorts of great injuries inflicted on him, and having
    seen his wife and children suffer the like, is at last impaled
    or tarred and burned alive, will he be happier than if he
    escape and become a tyrant, and continue all through life
    doing what he likes and holding the reins of government, the
    envy and admiration both of citizens and strangers? Is that
    the paradox which, as you say, cannot be refuted?

    _Soc._ There again, noble Polus, you are raising hobgoblins
    instead of refuting me; just now you were calling witnesses
    against me. But please to refresh my memory a little; did
    you say—‘in an unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant’?

    _Pol._ Yes, I did.

[Sidenote: Neither is to be called happy if both are wicked.]

    _Soc._ Then I say that neither of them will be happier than
    the other,—neither he who unjustly acquires a tyranny, nor
    he who suffers in the attempt, for of two miserables one
    cannot be the happier, but that he who escapes and becomes
    a tyrant is the more miserable of the two. Do you laugh,
    Polus? Well, this is a new kind of refutation,—when any
    one says anything, instead of refuting him to laugh at him.

[Sidenote: Why refute what nobody believes? Ask the company.]

    _Pol._ But do you not think, Socrates, that you have been
    sufficiently refuted, when you say that which no human being
    will allow? Ask the company.

[Sidenote: Socrates never could count heads. This is his description of
one of the noblest actions of his life.]

[Sidenote: Say rather, why affirm what every body knows?]

    _Soc._ O Polus, I am not a public man, and only last year,
    when my tribe were serving as Prytanes, and it became my
    duty as their president to take the votes, there was a laugh at
    me, because I was unable to take them. And as I failed             474
    then, you must not ask me to count the suffrages of the
    company now; but if, as I was saying, you have no better
    argument than numbers, let me have a turn, and do you
    make trial of the sort of proof which, as I think, is required;
    for I shall produce one witness only of the truth of my words,
    and he is the person with whom I am arguing; his suffrage I
    know how to take; but with the many I have nothing to do,
    and do not even address myself to them. May I ask then
    whether you will answer in turn and have your words put to
    the proof? For I certainly think that I and you and every
    man do really believe, that to do is a greater evil than to
    suffer injustice: and not to be punished than to be punished.

[Sidenote: _but ends by acknowledging the truth of it._]

    _Pol._ And I should say neither I, nor any man: would you
    yourself, for example, suffer rather than do injustice?

    _Soc._ Yes, and you, too; I or any man would.

    _Pol._ Quite the reverse; neither you, nor I, nor any man.

    _Soc._ But will you answer?

    _Pol._ To be sure, I will; for I am curious to hear what you
    can have to say.

[Sidenote: Polus, while denying that to do injustice is worse than to
suffer, acknowledges it to be more disgraceful. Hence the shipwreck of
his argument.]

    _Soc._ Tell me, then, and you will know, and let us suppose
    that I am beginning at the beginning: which of the two,
    Polus, in your opinion, is the worst?—to do injustice or to
    suffer?

    _Pol._ I should say that suffering was worst.

    _Soc._ And which is the greater disgrace?—Answer.

    _Pol._ To do.

    _Soc._ And the greater disgrace is the greater evil?

    _Pol._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ I understand you to say, if I am not mistaken, that
    the honourable is not the same as the good, or the disgraceful
    as the evil?

    _Pol._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Let me ask a question of you: When you speak of
    beautiful things, such as bodies, colours, figures, sounds,
    institutions, do you not call them beautiful in reference to
    some standard: bodies, for example, are beautiful in proportion
    as they are useful, or as the sight of them gives pleasure
    to the spectators; can you give any other account of personal
    beauty?

    _Pol._ I cannot.

    _Soc._ And you would say of figures or colours generally
    that they were beautiful, either by reason of the pleasure
    which they give, or of their use, or of both?

    _Pol._ Yes, I should.

    _Soc._ And you would call sounds and music beautiful for
    the same reason?

    _Pol._ I should.

    _Soc._ Laws and institutions also have no beauty in them
    except in so far as they are useful or pleasant or both?

    _Pol._ I think not.                                                475

    _Soc._ And may not the same be said of the beauty of knowledge?

[Sidenote: _The standard of utility._]

    _Pol._ To be sure, Socrates; and I very much approve of
    your measuring beauty by the standard of pleasure and
    utility.

[Sidenote: All things may be measured by the standard of pleasure and
utility or of pain and evil.]

    _Soc._ And deformity or disgrace may be equally measured
    by the opposite standard of pain and evil?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then when of two beautiful things one exceeds in
    beauty, the measure of the excess is to be taken in one or
    both of these; that is to say, in pleasure or utility or both?

    _Pol._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in
    deformity or disgrace, exceeds either in pain or evil—must it
    not be so?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But then again, what was the observation which you
    just now made, about doing and suffering wrong? Did you
    not say, that suffering wrong was more evil, and doing wrong
    more disgraceful?

    _Pol._ I did.

[Sidenote: If to do is, as Polus admits, more disgraceful than to endure
wrong, it must also be more evil.]

    _Soc._ Then, if doing wrong is more disgraceful than suffering,
    the more disgraceful must be more painful and must
    exceed in pain or in evil or both: does not that also follow?

    _Pol._ Of course.

    _Soc._ First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice
    exceeds the suffering in the consequent pain: Do the
    injurers suffer more than the injured?

    _Pol._ No, Socrates; certainly not.

    _Soc._ Then they do not exceed in pain?

    _Pol._ No.

    _Soc._ But if not in pain, then not in both?

    _Pol._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Then they can only exceed in the other?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ That is to say, in evil?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ Then doing injustice will have an excess of evil, and
    will therefore be a greater evil than suffering injustice?

    _Pol._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ But have not you and the world already agreed that
    to do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer?

[Sidenote: _The two sorts of refutation._]

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And that is now discovered to be more evil?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ And would you prefer a greater evil or a greater dishonour
    to a less one? Answer, Polus, and fear not; for you
    will come to no harm if you nobly resign yourself into the
    healing hand of the argument as to a physician without
    shrinking, and either say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to me.

    _Pol._ I should say ‘No.’

    _Soc._ Would any other man prefer a greater to a less evil?

    _Pol._ No, not according to this way of putting the case,
    Socrates.

[Sidenote: Polus is refuted out of his own mouth.]

    _Soc._ Then I said truly, Polus, that neither you, nor I, nor
    any man, would rather do than suffer injustice; for to do injustice
    is the greater evil of the two.

    _Pol._ That is the conclusion.

[Sidenote: The next question: Is it better for the guilty to suffer or
not to suffer punishment?]

    _Soc._ You see, Polus, when you compare the two kinds of
    refutations, how unlike they are. All men, with the exception
    of myself, are of your way of thinking; but your single
    assent and witness are enough for me,—I have no need of any        476
    other; I take your suffrage, and am regardless of the rest.
    Enough of this, and now let us proceed to the next question;
    which is, Whether the greatest of evils to a guilty man
    is to suffer punishment, as you supposed, or whether to
    escape punishment is not a greater evil, as I supposed.
    Consider:—You would say that to suffer punishment is
    another name for being justly corrected when you do wrong?

    _Pol._ I should.

    _Soc._ And would you not allow that all just things are
    honourable in so far as they are just? Please to reflect, and
    tell me your opinion.

    _Pol._ Yes, Socrates, I think that they are.

    _Soc._ Consider again:—Where there is an agent, must
    there not also be a patient?

    _Pol._ I should say so.

    _Soc._ And will not the patient suffer that which the agent
    does, and will not the suffering have the quality of the
    action? I mean, for example, that if a man strikes, there
    must be something which is stricken?

    _Pol._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _Correspondence of suffering and action._]

    _Soc._ And if the striker strikes violently or quickly, that
    which is struck will be struck violently or quickly?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ And the suffering to him who is stricken is of the
    same nature as the act of him who strikes?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if a man burns, there is something which is
    burned?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And if he burns in excess or so as to cause pain, the
    thing burned will be burned in the same way?

    _Pol._ Truly.

    _Soc._ And if he cuts, the same argument holds—there will
    be something cut?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if the cutting be great or deep or such as will
    cause pain, the cut will be of the same nature?

    _Pol._ That is evident.

[Sidenote: Since the affection of the patient answers to the act of the
agent, it follows that he who is punished justly suffers justly, and
therefore honourably, and is delivered from the greatest of all evils,
the evil of the soul, which, being the most disgraceful, is also the most
painful or hurtful.]

    _Soc._ Then you would agree generally to the universal proposition
    which I was just now asserting: that the affection of
    the patient answers to the act of the agent?

    _Pol._ I agree.

    _Soc._ Then, as this is admitted, let me ask whether being
    punished is suffering or acting?

    _Pol._ Suffering, Socrates; there can be no doubt of that.

    _Soc._ And suffering implies an agent?

    _Pol._ Certainly, Socrates; and he is the punisher.

    _Soc._ And he who punishes rightly, punishes justly?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And therefore he acts justly?

    _Pol._ Justly.

    _Soc._ Then he who is punished and suffers retribution,
    suffers justly?

    _Pol._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ And that which is just has been admitted to be
    honourable?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then the punisher does what is honourable, and the
    punished suffers what is honourable?

    _Pol._ True.

[Sidenote: _Sophistry of Socrates._]

    _Soc._ And if what is honourable, then what is good, for the
    honourable is either pleasant or useful?                           477

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then he who is punished suffers what is good?

    _Pol._ That is true.

    _Soc._ Then he is benefited?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Do I understand you to mean what I mean by the
    term ‘benefited’? I mean, that if he be justly punished
    his soul is improved.

    _Pol._ Surely.

    _Soc._ Then he who is punished is delivered from the evil
    of his soul?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And is he not then delivered from the greatest evil?
    Look at the matter in this way:—In respect of a man’s
    estate, do you see any greater evil than poverty?

    _Pol._ There is no greater evil.

    _Soc._ Again, in a man’s bodily frame, you would say that
    the evil is weakness and disease and deformity?

    _Pol._ I should.

    _Soc._ And do you not imagine that the soul likewise has
    some evil of her own?

    _Pol._ Of course.

    _Soc._ And this you would call injustice and ignorance and
    cowardice, and the like?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ So then, in mind, body, and estate, which are three,
    you have pointed out three corresponding evils—injustice,
    disease, poverty?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ And which of the evils is the most disgraceful?—Is
    not the most disgraceful of them injustice, and in general the
    evil of the soul?

    _Pol._ By far the most.

    _Soc._ And if the most disgraceful, then also the worst?

    _Pol._ What do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I mean to say, that what is most disgraceful has been
    already admitted to be most painful or hurtful, or both.

    _Pol._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _Analogy of soul and body._]

    _Soc._ And now injustice and all evil in the soul has been
    admitted by us to be most disgraceful?

    _Pol._ It has been admitted.

    _Soc._ And most disgraceful either because most painful and
    causing excessive pain, or most hurtful, or both?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And therefore to be unjust and intemperate, and
    cowardly and ignorant, is more painful than to be poor and
    sick?

[Sidenote: Polus stumbles at the notion which he has already admitted,
that the evil of the soul is more painful than that of the body.]

    _Pol._ Nay, Socrates; the painfulness does not appear to
    me to follow from your premises.

    _Soc._ Then, if, as you would argue, not more painful, the
    evil of the soul is of all evils the most disgraceful; and the
    excess of disgrace must be caused by some preternatural
    greatness, or extraordinary hurtfulness of the evil.

    _Pol._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And that which exceeds most in hurtfulness will be
    the greatest of evils?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then injustice and intemperance, and in general the
    depravity of the soul, are the greatest of evils?

    _Pol._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ Now, what art is there which delivers us from
    poverty? Does not the art of making money?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And what art frees us from disease? Does not the
    art of medicine?

    _Pol._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And what from vice and injustice? If you are not            478
    able to answer at once, ask yourself whither we go with the
    sick, and to whom we take them.

    _Pol._ To the physicians, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And to whom do we go with the unjust and intemperate?

    _Pol._ To the judges, you mean.

    _Soc._ —Who are to punish them?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And do not those who rightly punish others, punish
    them in accordance with a certain rule of justice?

    _Pol._ Clearly.

[Sidenote: _The judge and the physician._]

    _Soc._ Then the art of money-making frees a man from
    poverty; medicine from disease; and justice from intemperance
    and injustice?

    _Pol._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ Which, then, is the best of these three?

    _Pol._ Will you enumerate them?

    _Soc._ Money-making, medicine, and justice.

    _Pol._ Justice, Socrates, far excels the two others.

    _Soc._ And justice, if the best, gives the greatest pleasure or
    advantage or both?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But is the being healed a pleasant thing, and are
    those who are being healed pleased?

    _Pol._ I think not.

    _Soc._ A useful thing, then?

    _Pol._ Yes.

[Sidenote: Punishment is the deliverance from evil, and he who is
punished, like him who is healed, is happier than he who is not punished
or not healed.]

    _Soc._ Yes, because the patient is delivered from a great
    evil; and this is the advantage of enduring the pain—that
    you get well?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And would he be the happier man in his bodily condition,
    who is healed, or who never was out of health?

    _Pol._ Clearly he who was never out of health.

    _Soc._ Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in being
    delivered from evils, but in never having had them.

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ And suppose the case of two persons who have some
    evil in their bodies, and that one of them is healed and
    delivered from evil, and another is not healed, but retains
    the evil—which of them is the most miserable?

    _Pol._ Clearly he who is not healed.

    _Soc._ And was not punishment said by us to be a deliverance
    from the greatest of evils, which is vice?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ And justice punishes us, and makes us more just, and
    is the medicine of our vice?

    _Pol._ True.

[Sidenote: Happiest of all is he who is just; happy in the second degree
he who is delivered from injustice by punishment, most deluded and most
unhappy of all he who lives on, enjoying the fruit of his crimes.]

    _Soc._ He, then, has the first place in the scale of happiness
    who has never had vice in his soul; for this has been shown
    to be the greatest of evils.

[Sidenote: _The escape from punishment an evil._]

    _Pol._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And he has the second place, who is delivered from
    vice?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ That is to say, he who receives admonition and
    rebuke and punishment?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then he lives worst, who, having been unjust, has no
    deliverance from injustice?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ That is, he lives worst who commits the greatest            479
    crimes, and who, being the most unjust of men, succeeds in
    escaping rebuke or correction or punishment; and this, as
    you say, has been accomplished by Archelaus and other
    tyrants and rhetoricians and potentates[32]?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared
    to the conduct of a person who is afflicted with the
    worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the penalty to
    the physician for his sins against his constitution, and will
    not be cured, because, like a child, he is afraid of the pain of
    being burned or cut:—Is not that a parallel case?

    _Pol._ Yes, truly.

    _Soc._ He would seem as if he did not know the nature of
    health and bodily vigour; and if we are right, Polus, in our
    previous conclusions, they are in a like case who strive to
    evade justice, which they see to be painful, but are blind to
    the advantage which ensues from it, not knowing how far
    more miserable a companion a diseased soul is than a
    diseased body; a soul, I say, which is corrupt and unrighteous
    and unholy. And hence they do all that they
    can to avoid punishment and to avoid being released from
    the greatest of evils; they provide themselves with money
    and friends, and cultivate to the utmost their powers of
    persuasion. But if we, Polus, are right, do you see what
    follows, or shall we draw out the consequences in form?

    _Pol._ If you please.

    _Soc._ Is it not a fact that injustice, and the doing of injustice,
    is the greatest of evils?

[Sidenote: _The case of Archelaus regarded in a new light._]

    _Pol._ That is quite clear.

    _Soc._ And further, that to suffer punishment is the way to
    be released from this evil?

    _Pol._ True.

    _Soc._ And not to suffer, is to perpetuate the evil?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ To do wrong, then, is second only in the scale of
    evils; but to do wrong and not to be punished, is first and
    greatest of all?

    _Pol._ That is true.

[Sidenote: Archelaus then is more miserable than his victims.]

    _Soc._ Well, and was not this the point in dispute, my
    friend? You deemed Archelaus happy, because he was a
    very great criminal and unpunished: I, on the other hand,
    maintained that he or any other who like him has done
    wrong and has not been punished, is, and ought to be, the
    most miserable of all men; and that the doer of injustice is
    more miserable than the sufferer; and he who escapes
    punishment, more miserable than he who suffers.—Was not
    that what I said?

    _Pol._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And it has been proved to be true?

    _Pol._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the great use    480
    of rhetoric? If we admit what has been just now said,
    every man ought in every way to guard himself against
    doing wrong, for he will thereby suffer great evil?

    _Pol._ True.

[Sidenote: Injustice, if not removed, will become the cancer of the soul.]

    _Soc._ And if he, or any one about whom he cares, does
    wrong, he ought of his own accord to go where he will be
    immediately punished; he will run to the judge, as he would
    to the physician, in order that the disease of injustice may
    not be rendered chronic and become the incurable cancer of
    the soul; must we not allow this consequence, Polus, if our
    former admissions are to stand:—is any other inference
    consistent with them?

    _Pol._ To that, Socrates, there can be but one answer.

[Sidenote: The only use of rhetoric is that it enables a man to expose
his own injustice and to petition for speedy punishment.]

[Sidenote: _Of what use then is rhetoric?_]

    _Soc._ Then rhetoric is of no use to us, Polus, in helping a
    man to excuse his own injustice, or that of his parents or
    friends, or children or country; but may be of use to any
    one who holds that instead of excusing he ought to accuse—himself
    above all, and in the next degree his family or any of
    his friends who may be doing wrong; he should bring to
    light the iniquity and not conceal it, that so the wrong-doer
    may suffer and be made whole; and he should even force
    himself and others not to shrink, but with closed eyes like
    brave men to let the physician operate with knife or searing
    iron, not regarding the pain, in the hope of attaining the
    good and the honourable; let him who has done things
    worthy of stripes, allow himself to be scourged, if of bonds,
    to be bound, if of a fine, to be fined, if of exile, to be exiled,
    if of death, to die, himself being the first to accuse himself
    and his own relations, and using rhetoric to this end, that
    his and their unjust actions may be made manifest, and that
    they themselves may be delivered from injustice, which is
    the greatest evil. Then, Polus, rhetoric would indeed be
    useful. Do you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to that?

    _Pol._ To me, Socrates, what you are saying appears very
    strange, though probably in agreement with your premises.

    _Soc._ Is not this the conclusion, if the premises are not disproven?

    _Pol._ Yes; it certainly is.

[Sidenote: A slighter and secondary use of rhetoric in self-defence
against an enemy, or in preventing the punishment of an enemy.]

    _Soc._ And from the opposite point of view, if indeed it be
    our duty to harm another, whether an enemy or not—I
    except the case of self-defence—then I have to be upon my
    guard—but if my enemy injures a third person, then in              481
    every sort of way, by word as well as deed, I should try to
    prevent his being punished, or appearing before the judge;
    and if he appears, I should contrive that he should escape,
    and not suffer punishment: if he has stolen a sum of money,
    let him keep what he has stolen and spend it on him and his,
    regardless of religion and justice; and if he have done
    things worthy of death, let him not die, but rather be immortal
    in his wickedness; or, if this is not possible, let him
    at any rate be allowed to live as long as he can. For such
    purposes, Polus, rhetoric may be useful, but is of small if of
    any use to him who is not intending to commit injustice; at
    least, there was no such use discovered by us in the previous
    discussion.

    _Cal._ Tell me, Chaerephon, is Socrates in earnest, or is he
    joking?

[Sidenote: _Is Socrates in earnest?_]

[Sidenote: Callicles asks in amazement whether Socrates really means what
he says.]

    _Chaer._ I should say, Callicles, that he is in most profound
    earnest; but you may as well ask him.

    _Cal._ By the gods, and I will. Tell me, Socrates, are you
    in earnest, or only in jest? For if you are in earnest, and
    what you say is true, is not the whole of human life turned
    upside down; and are we not doing, as would appear, in
    everything the opposite of what we ought to be doing?

[Sidenote: I am only repeating the words of philosophy, whose lover I am.
For as you love the Athenian people and their namesake Demus, so I have
two loves, philosophy and Alcibiades.]

[Sidenote: The son of Cleinias is inconstant, but philosophy is ever the
same: she it is whom you have to refute: I am only her mouth-piece.]

    _Soc._ O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings
    among mankind, however varying in different persons—I
    mean to say, if every man’s feelings were peculiar to himself
    and were not shared by the rest of his species—I do not
    see how we could ever communicate our impressions to one
    another. I make this remark because I perceive that you
    and I have a common feeling. For we are lovers both, and
    both of us have two loves apiece:—I am the lover of Alcibiades,
    the son of Cleinias, and of philosophy; and you of
    the Athenian Demus, and of Demus the son of Pyrilampes.
    Now, I observe that you, with all your cleverness, do not
    venture to contradict your favourite in any word or opinion
    of his; but as he changes you change, backwards and forwards.
    When the Athenian Demus denies anything that
    you are saying in the assembly, you go over to his opinion;
    and you do the same with Demus, the fair young son of
    Pyrilampes. For you have not the power to resist the words
    and ideas of your loves; and if a person were to express
    surprise at the strangeness of what you say from time to time
    when under their influence, you would probably reply to            482
    him, if you were honest, that you cannot help saying what
    your loves say unless they are prevented; and that you can
    only be silent when they are. Now you must understand
    that my words are an echo too, and therefore you need not
    wonder at me; but if you want to silence me, silence philosophy,
    who is my love, for she is always telling me what I
    am now telling you, my friend; neither is she capricious like
    my other love, for the son of Cleinias says one thing to-day
    and another thing to-morrow, but philosophy is always true.
    She is the teacher at whose words you are now wondering,
    and you have heard her yourself. Her you must refute, and
    either show, as I was saying, that to do injustice and to escape
    punishment is not the worst of all evils; or, if you leave her
    word unrefuted, by the dog the god of Egypt, I declare, O
    Callicles, that Callicles will never be at one with himself, but
    that his whole life will be a discord. And yet, my friend, I
    would rather that my lyre should be inharmonious, and that
    there should be no music in the chorus which I provided;
    aye, or that the whole world should be at odds with me, and
    oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with
    myself, and contradict myself.

[Sidenote: _Polus and Callicles._]

[Sidenote: Polus was vanquished because he refused to take a bold line.]

[Sidenote: Callicles would return to the rule of nature in the lower
sense of the term.]

[Sidenote: Convention was only introduced by the weak majority in order
to protect themselves against the few strong.]

[Sidenote: A man of courage would easily break down the guards of
convention.]

[Sidenote: _Convention and nature._]

[Sidenote: A little philosophy not a bad thing in youth.]

    _Cal._ O Socrates, you are a regular declaimer, and seem to
    be running riot in the argument. And now you are declaiming
    in this way because Polus has fallen into the same
    error himself of which he accused Gorgias:—for he said
    that when Gorgias was asked by you, whether, if some one
    came to him who wanted to learn rhetoric, and did not
    know justice, he would teach him justice, Gorgias in his
    modesty replied that he would, because he thought that mankind
    in general would be displeased if he answered ‘No;’
    and then in consequence of this admission, Gorgias was
    compelled to contradict himself, that being just the sort of
    thing in which you delight. Whereupon Polus laughed at
    you, deservedly, as I think; but now he has himself fallen
    into the same trap. I cannot say very much for his wit
    when he conceded to you that to do is more dishonourable
    than to suffer injustice, for this was the admission which
    led to his being entangled by you; and because he was
    too modest to say what he thought, he had his mouth
    stopped. For the truth is, Socrates, that you, who pretend
    to be engaged in the pursuit of truth, are appealing now to
    the popular and vulgar notions of right, which are not natural,
    but only conventional. Convention and nature are generally
    at variance with one another: and hence, if a person is too
    modest to say what he thinks, he is compelled to contradict        483
    himself; and you, in your ingenuity perceiving the advantage
    to be thereby gained, slyly ask of him who is arguing conventionally
    a question which is to be determined by the rule
    of nature; and if he is talking of the rule of nature, you slip
    away to custom: as, for instance, you did in this very discussion
    about doing and suffering injustice. When Polus
    was speaking of the conventionally dishonourable, you
    assailed him from the point of view of nature; for by the rule
    of nature, to suffer injustice is the greater disgrace because
    the greater evil; but conventionally, to do evil is the more
    disgraceful. For the suffering of injustice is not the part of
    a man, but of a slave, who indeed had better die than live;
    since when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is unable
    to help himself, or any other about whom he cares. The
    reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of laws are the
    majority who are weak; and they make laws and distribute
    praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their
    own interests; and they terrify the stronger sort of men, and
    those who are able to get the better of them, in order that
    they may not get the better of them; and they say, that
    dishonesty is shameful and unjust; meaning, by the word
    injustice, the desire of a man to have more than his neighbours;
    for knowing their own inferiority, I suspect that they
    are too glad of equality. And therefore the endeavour to
    have more than the many, is conventionally said to be shameful
    and unjust, and is called injustice[33], whereas nature herself
    intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the
    worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many
    ways she shows, among men as well as among animals, and
    indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in
    the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior.
    For on what principle of justice did Xerxes invade Hellas,
    or his father the Scythians? (not to speak of numberless
    other examples). Nay, but these are the men who act
    according to nature; yes, by Heaven, and according to the
    law of nature: not, perhaps, according to that artificial law,
    which we invent and impose upon our fellows, of whom we
    take the best and strongest from their youth upwards, and
    tame them like young lions,—charming them with the sound           484
    of the voice, and saying to them, that with equality they must
    be content, and that the equal is the honourable and the just.
    But if there were a man who had sufficient force, he would
    shake off and break through, and escape from all this; he
    would trample under foot all our formulas and spells and
    charms, and all our laws which are against nature: the slave
    would rise in rebellion and be lord over us, and the light of
    natural justice would shine forth. And this I take to be the
    sentiment of Pindar, when he says in his poem, that

[Sidenote: _Might is right._]

      ‘Law is the king of all, of mortals as well as of immortals;’

    this, as he says,

[Sidenote: Pindar.]

      ‘Makes might to be right, doing violence with highest
      hand; as I infer from the deeds of Heracles, for without
      buying them—‘[34]

    —I do not remember the exact words, but the meaning is,
    that without buying them, and without their being given to
    him, he carried off the oxen of Geryon, according to the law
    of natural right, and that the oxen and other possessions of
    the weaker and inferior properly belong to the stronger and
    superior. And this is true, as you may ascertain, if you will
    leave philosophy and go on to higher things: for philosophy,
    Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is
    an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the
    ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he
    carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant
    of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour
    ought to know; he is inexperienced in the laws of the State,
    and in the language which ought to be used in the dealings
    of man with man, whether private or public, and utterly
    ignorant of the pleasures and desires of mankind and of human
    character in general. And people of this sort, when they
    betake themselves to politics or business, are as ridiculous as
    I imagine the politicians to be, when they make their appearance
    in the arena of philosophy. For, as Euripides says,

[Sidenote: Euripides.]

[Sidenote: _Philosophy not to be carried too far._]

[Sidenote: But the study should not be continued into later life.]

      ‘Every man shines in that and pursues that, and devotes
      the greatest portion of the day to that in which he most
      excels[35],’

    but anything in which he is inferior, he avoids and depreciates,   485
    and praises the opposite from partiality to himself, and
    because he thinks that he will thus praise himself. The true
    principle is to unite them. Philosophy, as a part of education,
    is an excellent thing, and there is no disgrace to a man while
    he is young in pursuing such a study; but when he is more
    advanced in years, the thing becomes ridiculous, and I feel
    towards philosophers as I do towards those who lisp and
    imitate children. For I love to see a little child, who is not
    of an age to speak plainly, lisping at his play; there is an
    appearance of grace and freedom in his utterance, which is
    natural to his childish years. But when I hear some small
    creature carefully articulating its words, I am offended; the
    sound is disagreeable, and has to my ears the twang of slavery.
    So when I hear a man lisping, or see him playing like a
    child, his behaviour appears to me ridiculous and unmanly
    and worthy of stripes. And I have the same feeling about
    students of philosophy; when I see a youth thus engaged,—the
    study appears to me to be in character, and becoming a
    man of a liberal education, and him who neglects philosophy
    I regard as an inferior man, who will never aspire to anything
    great or noble. But if I see him continuing the study in
    later life, and not leaving off, I should like to beat him,
    Socrates; for, as I was saying, such a one, even though he
    have good natural parts, becomes effeminate. He flies from
    the busy centre and the market-place, in which, as the poet
    says, men become distinguished; he creeps into a corner for
    the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four
    admiring youths, but never speaks out like a freeman in a
    satisfactory manner. Now I, Socrates, am very well inclined
    towards you, and my feeling may be compared with that of
    Zethus towards Amphion, in the play of Euripides, whom I
    was mentioning just now: for I am disposed to say to you
    much what Zethus said to his brother, that you, Socrates, are
    careless about the things of which you ought to be careful;
    and that you                                                       486

      ‘Who have a soul so noble, are remarkable for a puerile exterior;
      Neither in a court of justice could you state a case, or give any
        reason or proof,
      Or offer valiant counsel on another’s behalf.’

    And you must not be offended, my dear Socrates, for I am
    speaking out of good-will towards you, if I ask whether you
    are not ashamed of being thus defenceless; which I affirm
    to be the condition not of you only but of all those who will
    carry the study of philosophy too far. For suppose that
    some one were to take you, or any one of your sort, off to
    prison, declaring that you had done wrong when you had
    done no wrong, you must allow that you would not know
    what to do:—there you would stand giddy and gaping, and
    not having a word to say; and when you went up before the
    Court, even if the accuser were a poor creature and not good
    for much, you would die if he were disposed to claim the
    penalty of death. And yet, Socrates, what is the value of

[Sidenote: _Callicles makes an appeal to the poets._]

      ‘An art which converts a man of sense into a fool,’

    who is helpless, and has no power to save either himself or
    others, when he is in the greatest danger and is going to be
    despoiled by his enemies of all his goods, and has to live,
    simply deprived of his rights of citizenship?—he being a
    man who, if I may use the expression, may be boxed on the
    ears with impunity. Then, my good friend, take my advice,
    and refute no more:

      ‘Learn the philosophy of business, and acquire the reputation of
         wisdom.
      But leave to others these niceties,’

    whether they are to be described as follies or absurdities:

      ‘For they will only
      Give you poverty for the inmate of your dwelling.’

    Cease, then, emulating these paltry splitters of words, and
    emulate only the man of substance and honour, who is well
    to do.

[Sidenote: Callicles the desired touchstone of Socrates.]

    _Soc._ If my soul, Callicles, were made of gold, should I not
    rejoice to discover one of those stones with which they test
    gold, and the very best possible one to which I might bring
    my soul; and if the stone and I agreed in approving of her
    training, then I should know that I was in a satisfactory
    state, and that no other test was needed by me.

    _Cal._ What is your meaning, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I will tell you; I think that I have found in you the
    desired touchstone.

    _Cal._ Why?

[Sidenote: _The gain of having an adversary like Callicles._]

[Sidenote: Other men have not the knowledge or frankness or good-will
which is required; and they are too modest. His sincerity is shown by his
consistency.]

[Sidenote: But still he would ask, What Callicles means by the superior?]

    _Soc._ Because I am sure that if you agree with me in any
    of the opinions which my soul forms, I have at last found the
    truth indeed. For I consider that if a man is to make a
    complete trial of the good or evil of the soul, he ought to        487
    have three qualities—knowledge, good-will, outspokenness,
    which are all possessed by you. Many whom I meet are unable
    to make trial of me, because they are not wise as you are;
    others are wise, but they will not tell me the truth, because
    they have not the same interest in me which you have;
    and these two strangers, Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly
    wise men and my very good friends, but they are not outspoken
    enough, and they are too modest. Why, their
    modesty is so great that they are driven to contradict themselves,
    first one and then the other of them, in the face of
    a large company, on matters of the highest moment. But
    you have all the qualities in which these others are deficient,
    having received an excellent education; to this many Athenians
    can testify. And you are my friend. Shall I tell you
    why I think so? I know that you, Callicles, and Tisander of
    Aphidnae, and Andron the son of Androtion, and Nausicydes
    of the deme of Cholarges, studied together: there were four
    of you, and I once heard you advising with one another as
    to the extent to which the pursuit of philosophy should be
    carried, and, as I know, you came to the conclusion that the
    study should not be pushed too much into detail. You were
    cautioning one another not to be overwise; you were afraid
    that too much wisdom might unconsciously to yourselves be
    the ruin of you. And now when I hear you giving the same
    advice to me which you then gave to your most intimate
    friends, I have a sufficient evidence of your real good-will
    to me. And of the frankness of your nature and freedom
    from modesty I am assured by yourself, and the assurance
    is confirmed by your last speech. Well then, the inference
    in the present case clearly is, that if you agree with me in
    an argument about any point, that point will have been
    sufficiently tested by us, and will not require to be submitted
    to any further test. For you could not have agreed with
    me, either from lack of knowledge or from superfluity of
    modesty, nor yet from a desire to deceive me, for you are
    my friend, as you tell me yourself. And therefore when you
    and I are agreed, the result will be the attainment of perfect
    truth. Now there is no nobler enquiry, Callicles, than that
    which you censure me for making,—What ought the character
    of a man to be, and what his pursuits, and how far is he to
    go, both in maturer years and in youth? For be assured
    that if I err in my own conduct I do not err intentionally,        488
    but from ignorance. Do not then desist from advising me,
    now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what
    this is which I am to practise, and how I may acquire it.
    And if you find me assenting to your words, and hereafter
    not doing that to which I assented, call me ‘dolt,’ and deem
    me unworthy of receiving further instruction. Once more,
    then, tell me what you and Pindar mean by natural justice:
    Do you not mean that the superior should take the property
    of the inferior by force; that the better should rule the
    worse, the noble have more than the mean? Am I not
    right in my recollection?

[Sidenote: _Callicles is drawn into a contradiction._]

    _Cal._ Yes; that is what I was saying, and so I still aver.

    _Soc._ And do you mean by the better the same as the
    superior? for I could not make out what you were saying
    at the time—whether you meant by the superior the stronger,
    and that the weaker must obey the stronger, as you seemed
    to imply when you said that great cities attack small ones
    in accordance with natural right, because they are superior
    and stronger, as though the superior and stronger and better
    were the same; or whether the better may be also the inferior
    and weaker, and the superior the worse, or whether
    better is to be defined in the same way as superior:—this is
    the point which I want to have cleared up. Are the superior
    and better and stronger the same or different?

    _Cal._ I say unequivocally that they are the same.

[Sidenote: He means the better and stronger, and therefore the many who
make the laws, which are noble because they are made by the better.]

    _Soc._ Then the many are by nature superior to the one,
    against whom, as you were saying, they make the laws?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then the laws of the many are the laws of the
    superior?

    _Cal._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Then they are the laws of the better; for the superior
    class are far better, as you were saying?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And since they are superior, the laws which are made
    by them are by nature good?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: And the many are also of opinion that to do is more
disgraceful than to suffer injustice.]

    _Soc._ And are not the many of opinion, as you were lately
    saying, that justice is equality, and that to do is more           489
    disgraceful than to suffer injustice?—is that so or not? Answer,
    Callicles, and let no modesty be found to come in the way[36];
    do the many think, or do they not think thus?—I must beg
    of you to answer, in order that if you agree with me I may
    fortify myself by the assent of so competent an authority.

[Sidenote: _He flounders impatiently._]

    _Cal._ Yes; the opinion of the many is what you say.

    _Soc._ Then not only custom but nature also affirms that
    to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that
    justice is equality; so that you seem to have been wrong
    in your former assertion, when accusing me you said that
    nature and custom are opposed, and that I, knowing this,
    was dishonestly playing between them, appealing to custom
    when the argument is about nature, and to nature when the
    argument is about custom?

[Sidenote: ‘Of course I don’t mean the mob.’]

    _Cal._ This man will never cease talking nonsense. At
    your age, Socrates, are you not ashamed to be catching at
    words and chuckling over some verbal slip? do you not
    see—have I not told you already, that by superior I mean
    better: do you imagine me to say, that if a rabble of slaves
    and nondescripts, who are of no use except perhaps for
    their physical strength, get together, their ipsissima verba
    are laws?

    _Soc._ Ho! my philosopher, is that your line?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ I was thinking, Callicles, that something of the kind
    must have been in your mind, and that is why I repeated
    the question,—What is the superior? I wanted to know
    clearly what you meant; for you surely do not think that
    two men are better than one, or that your slaves are better
    than you because they are stronger? Then please to begin
    again, and tell me who the better are, if they are not the
    stronger; and I will ask you, great Sir, to be a little milder
    in your instructions, or I shall have to run away from you.

    _Cal._ You are ironical.

[Sidenote: Then once more,—Who are the better?]

    _Soc._ No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose aid you
    were just now saying (486 A) many ironical things against
    me, I am not:—tell me, then, whom you mean by the better?

    _Cal._ I mean the more excellent.

    _Soc._ Do you not see that you are yourself using words
    which have no meaning and that you are explaining nothing?—will
    you tell me whether you mean by the better and
    superior the wiser, or if not, whom?

[Sidenote: _Callicles grows more and more exasperated._]

    _Cal._ Most assuredly, I do mean the wiser.                        490

[Sidenote: The wiser: the one wise among ten thousand fools,—he ought to
rule.]

    _Soc._ Then according to you, one wise man may often
    be superior to ten thousand fools, and he ought to rule
    them, and they ought to be his subjects, and he ought to
    have more than they should. This is what I believe that
    you mean (and you must not suppose that I am word-catching),
    if you allow that the one is superior to the ten
    thousand?

    _Cal._ Yes; that is what I mean, and that is what I conceive
    to be natural justice—that the better and wiser should rule
    and have more than the inferior.

[Sidenote: But this is contrary to the analogy of the other arts.]

    _Soc._ Stop there, and let me ask you what you would say
    in this case: Let us suppose that we are all together as we
    are now; there are several of us, and we have a large
    common store of meats and drinks, and there are all sorts
    of persons in our company having various degrees of strength
    and weakness, and one of us, being a physician, is wiser in
    the matter of food than all the rest, and he is probably
    stronger than some and not so strong as others of us—will
    he not, being wiser, be also better than we are, and our
    superior in this matter of food?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Either, then, he will have a larger share of the meats
    and drinks, because he is better, or he will have the distribution
    of all of them by reason of his authority, but he will not
    expend or make use of a larger share of them on his own
    person, or if he does, he will be punished;—his share will
    exceed that of some, and be less than that of others, and if
    he be the weakest of all, he being the best of all will have
    the smallest share of all, Callicles:—am I not right, my
    friend?

[Sidenote: Callicles is disgusted at the commonplace parallels of
Socrates.]

    _Cal._ You talk about meats and drinks and physicians and
    other nonsense; I am not speaking of them.

    _Soc._ Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the better?
    Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And ought not the better to have a larger share?

    _Cal._ Not of meats and drinks.

[Sidenote: _Socrates grows more and more ironical._]

    _Soc._ I understand: then, perhaps, of coats the skilfullest
    weaver ought to have the largest coat, and the greatest
    number of them, and go about clothed in the best and finest
    of them?

    _Cal._ Fudge about coats!

    _Soc._ Then the skilfullest and best in making shoes ought
    to have the advantage in shoes; the shoemaker, clearly,
    should walk about in the largest shoes, and have the greatest
    number of them?

    _Cal._ Fudge about shoes! What nonsense are you talking?

    _Soc._ Or, if this is not your meaning, perhaps you would
    say that the wise and good and true husbandman should
    actually have a larger share of seeds, and have as much seed
    as possible for his own land?

    _Cal._ How you go on, always talking in the same way, Socrates!

    _Soc._ Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things.             491

    _Cal._ Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always talking of
    cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if this had to
    do with our argument.

    _Soc._ But why will you not tell me in what a man must be
    superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share; will you
    neither accept a suggestion, nor offer one?

    _Cal._ I have already told you. In the first place, I mean
    by superiors not cobblers or cooks, but wise politicians who
    understand the administration of a state, and who are not
    only wise, but also valiant and able to carry out their
    designs, and not the men to faint from want of soul.

[Sidenote: Socrates is accused of always saying the same things: he
accuses Callicles of never saying the same about the same.]

    _Soc._ See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my
    charge against you is from that which you bring against me,
    for you reproach me with always saying the same; but I reproach
    you with never saying the same about the same
    things, for at one time you were defining the better and the
    superior to be the stronger, then again as the wiser, and now
    you bring forward a new notion; the superior and the better
    are now declared by you to be the more courageous: I wish,
    my good friend, that you would tell me, once for all, whom
    you affirm to be the better and superior, and in what they
    are better?

[Sidenote: _The delights of successful wickedness._]

    _Cal._ I have already told you that I mean those who are
    wise and courageous in the administration of a state—they
    ought to be the rulers of their states, and justice consists in
    their having more than their subjects.

    _Soc._ But whether rulers or subjects will they or will they
    not have more than themselves, my friend?

    _Cal._ What do you mean?

    _Soc._ I mean that every man is his own ruler; but perhaps
    you think that there is no necessity for him to rule himself;
    he is only required to rule others?

    _Cal._ What do you mean by his ‘ruling over himself’?

    _Soc._ A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said,
    that a man should be temperate and master of himself, and
    ruler of his own pleasures and passions.

    _Cal._ What innocence! you mean those fools,—the temperate?

    _Soc._ Certainly:—any one may know that to be my
    meaning.

[Sidenote: Callicles reasserts his doctrine that the esteem in which
virtue and justice are held is due only to men’s fear for themselves. No
man who has the power to enjoy himself practises self-control.]

[Sidenote: _The soul of the ignorant._]

    _Cal._ Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for how
    can a man be happy who is the servant of anything? On
    the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly live
    ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to
    chastise them; but when they have grown to their greatest
    he should have courage and intelligence to minister to             492
    them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be
    natural justice and nobility. To this however the many cannot
    attain; and they blame the strong man because they are
    ashamed of their own weakness, which they desire to conceal,
    and hence they say that intemperance is base. As I
    have remarked already, they enslave the nobler natures, and
    being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance
    and justice out of their own cowardice. For if a man
    had been originally the son of a king, or had a nature
    capable of acquiring an empire or a tyranny or sovereignty,
    what could be more truly base or evil than temperance—to a
    man like him, I say, who might freely be enjoying every
    good, and has no one to stand in his way, and yet has
    admitted custom and reason and the opinion of other men to
    be lords over him?—must not he be in a miserable plight
    whom the reputation of justice and temperance hinders from
    giving more to his friends than to his enemies, even though
    he be a ruler in his city? Nay, Socrates, for you profess to
    be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:—that luxury
    and intemperance and licence, if they be provided with
    means, are virtue and happiness—all the rest is a mere
    bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of men,
    nothing worth[37].

    _Soc._ There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of
    approaching the argument; for what you say is what the
    rest of the world think, but do not like to say. And I must
    beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life may
    become manifest. Tell me, then:—you say, do you not, that
    in the rightly-developed man the passions ought not to be
    controlled, but that we should let them grow to the utmost
    and somehow or other satisfy them, and that this is virtue?

    _Cal._ Yes; I do.

    _Soc._ Then those who want nothing are not truly said to
    be happy?

[Sidenote: To live without pleasure or passion is to be dead.]

[Sidenote: No; the true death, as Pythagorean philosophy tells us, is to
pour water out of a vessel full of holes into a colander full of holes.]

[Sidenote: _The sound and leaky vessels._]

    _Cal._ No indeed, for then stones and dead men would be
    the happiest of all.

    _Soc._ But surely life according to your view is an awful
    thing; and indeed I think that Euripides may have been
    right in saying,

      ‘Who knows if life be not death and death life;’

    and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philosopher       493
    say that at this moment we are actually dead, and that the
    body (σῶμα) is our tomb (σῆμα[38]), and that the part of the soul
    which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by
    words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person,
    probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word,
    invented a tale in which he called the soul—because of its
    believing and make-believe nature—a vessel[39], and the ignorant
    he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in
    the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated,
    being the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to
    a vessel full of holes, because it can never be satisfied. He
    is not of your way of thinking, Callicles, for he declares, that
    of all the souls in Hades, meaning the invisible world (ἀειδὲς),
    these uninitiated or leaky persons are the most miserable,
    and that they pour water into a vessel which is full of holes
    out of a colander which is similarly perforated. The colander,
    as my informer assures me, is the soul, and the soul
    which he compares to a colander is the soul of the ignorant,
    which is likewise full of holes, and therefore incontinent,
    owing to a bad memory and want of faith. These notions
    are strange enough, but they show the principle which, if I
    can, I would fain prove to you; that you should change your
    mind, and, instead of the intemperate and insatiate life, choose
    that which is orderly and sufficient and has a due provision
    for daily needs. Do I make any impression on you, and are
    you coming over to the opinion that the orderly are happier
    than the intemperate? Or do I fail to persuade you, and,
    however many tales I rehearse to you, do you continue of
    the same opinion still?

    _Cal._ The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.

[Sidenote: The temperate man is the sound, the intemperate the leaky
vessel.]

    _Soc._ Well, I will tell you another image, which comes out
    of the same school:—Let me request you to consider how
    far you would accept this as an account of the two lives of
    the temperate and intemperate in a figure:—There are two
    men, both of whom have a number of casks; the one man
    has his casks sound and full, one of wine, another of honey,
    and a third of milk, besides others filled with other liquids,
    and the streams which fill them are few and scanty, and he
    can only obtain them with a great deal of toil and difficulty;
    but when his casks are once filled he has no need to feed
    them any more, and has no further trouble with them or care
    about them. The other, in like manner, can procure streams,
    though not without difficulty; but his vessels are leaky and
    unsound, and night and day he is compelled to be filling
    them, and if he pauses for a moment, he is in an agony of          494
    pain. Such are their respective lives:—And now would you
    say that the life of the intemperate is happier than that of
    the temperate? Do I not convince you that the opposite is
    the truth?

[Sidenote: The life of desire and pleasure is not to be compared to a
full vessel, but to an ever-running stream.]

    _Cal._ You do not convince me, Socrates, for the one who
    has filled himself has no longer any pleasure left; and this,
    as I was just now saying, is the life of a stone: he has
    neither joy nor sorrow after he is once filled; but the pleasure
    depends on the superabundance of the influx.

[Sidenote: _Callicles no longer a test,_]

    _Soc._ But the more you pour in, the greater the waste; and
    the holes must be large for the liquid to escape.

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ The life which you are now depicting is not that of a
    dead man, or of a stone, but of a cormorant; you mean that
    he is to be hungering and eating?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he is to be thirsting and drinking?

    _Cal._ Yes, that is what I mean; he is to have all his desires
    about him, and to be able to live happily in the gratification
    of them.

    _Soc._ Capital, excellent; go on as you have begun, and
    have no shame; I, too, must disencumber myself of shame:
    and first, will you tell me whether you include itching and
    scratching, provided you have enough of them and pass your
    life in scratching, in your notion of happiness?

    _Cal._ What a strange being you are, Socrates! a regular
    mob-orator.

    _Soc._ That was the reason, Callicles, why I scared Polus
    and Gorgias, until they were too modest to say what they
    thought; but you will not be too modest and will not be
    scared, for you are a brave man. And now, answer my
    question.

    _Cal._ I answer, that even the scratcher would live pleasantly.

    _Soc._ And if pleasantly, then also happily?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ But what if the itching is not confined to the head?
    Shall I pursue the question? And here, Callicles, I would
    have you consider how you would reply if consequences are
    pressed upon you, especially if in the last resort you are
    asked, whether the life of a catamite is not terrible, foul,
    miserable? Or would you venture to say, that they too are
    happy, if they only get enough of what they want?

[Sidenote: Callicles professes a virtuous indignation at the very mention
of the consequences of his own doctrine.]

    _Cal._ Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of introducing such
    topics into the argument?

    _Soc._ Well, my fine friend, but am I the introducer of these
    topics, or he who says without any qualification that all who
    feel pleasure in whatever manner are happy, and who admits
    of no distinction between good and bad pleasures? And I            495
    would still ask, whether you say that pleasure and good are
    the same, or whether there is some pleasure which is not a
    good?

[Sidenote: _because he will not say what he thinks._]

    _Cal._ Well, then, for the sake of consistency, I will say that
    they are the same.

    _Soc._ You are breaking the original agreement, Callicles,
    and will no longer be a satisfactory companion in the search
    after truth, if you say what is contrary to your real opinion.

    _Cal._ Why, that is what you are doing too, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Then we are both doing wrong. Still, my dear friend,
    I would ask you to consider whether pleasure, from whatever
    source derived, is the good; for, if this be true, then the
    disagreeable consequences which have been darkly intimated
    must follow, and many others.

    _Cal._ That, Socrates, is only your opinion.

    _Soc._ And do you, Callicles, seriously maintain what you
    are saying?

    _Cal._ Indeed I do.

    _Soc._ Then, as you are in earnest, shall we proceed with
    the argument?

    _Cal._ By all means[40].

[Sidenote: Callicles, having admitted that pleasure and good are the
same, is led to make the further admission that pleasure and knowledge
and courage are different.]

    _Soc._ Well, if you are willing to proceed, determine this
    question for me:—There is something, I presume, which you
    would call knowledge?

    _Cal._ There is.

    _Soc._ And were you not saying just now, that some courage
    implied knowledge?

    _Cal._ I was.

    _Soc._ And you were speaking of courage and knowledge as
    two things different from one another?

    _Cal._ Certainly I was.

    _Soc._ And would you say that pleasure and knowledge are
    the same, or not the same?

    _Cal._ Not the same, O man of wisdom.

    _Soc._ And would you say that courage differed from
    pleasure?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Well, then, let us remember that Callicles, the Acharnian,
    says that pleasure and good are the same; but that
    knowledge and courage are not the same, either with one
    another, or with the good.

[Sidenote: _The law of contradiction._]

    _Cal._ And what does our friend Socrates, of Foxton, say—does
    he assent to this, or not?

    _Soc._ He does not assent; neither will Callicles, when he
    sees himself truly. You will admit, I suppose, that good and
    evil fortune are opposed to each other?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if they are opposed to each other, then, like
    health and disease, they exclude one another; a man cannot
    have them both, or be without them both, at the same time?

    _Cal._ What do you mean?

    _Soc._ Take the case of any bodily affection:—a man may
    have the complaint in his eyes which is called ophthalmia?

    _Cal._ To be sure.                                                 496

    _Soc._ But he surely cannot have the same eyes well and
    sound at the same time?

    _Cal._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And when he has got rid of his ophthalmia, has he got
    rid of the health of his eyes too? Is the final result, that he
    gets rid of them both together?

    _Cal._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ That would surely be marvellous and absurd?

    _Cal._ Very.

[Sidenote: A man may have good and evil by turns, but not at the same
time.]

    _Soc._ I suppose that he is affected by them, and gets rid of
    them in turns?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he may have strength and weakness in the same
    way, by fits?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Or swiftness and slowness?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And does he have and not have good and happiness,
    and their opposites, evil and misery, in a similar
    alternation[41]?

    _Cal._ Certainly he has.

    _Soc._ If then there be anything which a man has and has
    not at the same time, clearly that cannot be good and evil—do
    we agree? Please not to answer without consideration.

[Sidenote: _The law of contradiction._]

    _Cal._ I entirely agree.

    _Soc._ Go back now to our former admissions.—Did you say
    that to hunger, I mean the mere state of hunger, was pleasant
    or painful?

    _Cal._ I said painful, but that to eat when you are hungry is
    pleasant.

    _Soc._ I know; but still the actual hunger is painful: am I
    not right?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And thirst, too, is painful?

    _Cal._ Yes, very.

    _Soc._ Need I adduce any more instances, or would you
    agree that all wants or desires are painful?

    _Cal._ I agree, and therefore you need not adduce any more
    instances.

    _Soc._ Very good. And you would admit that to drink, when
    you are thirsty, is pleasant?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And in the sentence which you have just uttered, the
    word ‘thirsty’ implies pain?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the word ‘drinking’ is expressive of pleasure,
    and of the satisfaction of the want?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ There is pleasure in drinking?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ When you are thirsty?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And in pain?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: But he may have pleasure and pain at the same time.]

    _Soc._ Do you see the inference:—that pleasure and pain are
    simultaneous, when you say that being thirsty, you drink?
    For are they not simultaneous, and do they not affect at the
    same time the same part, whether of the soul or the body?—which
    of them is affected cannot be supposed to be of any
    consequence: Is not this true?

    _Cal._ It is.

    _Soc._ You said also, that no man could have good and evil
    fortune at the same time?

    _Cal._ Yes, I did.

[Sidenote: _The dialectical process_]

    _Soc._ But you admitted, that when in pain a man might also        497
    have pleasure?

    _Cal._ Clearly.

[Sidenote: Therefore pleasure and pain are not the same as good and evil.]

    _Soc._ Then pleasure is not the same as good fortune, or
    pain the same as evil fortune, and therefore the good is not
    the same as the pleasant?

    _Cal._ I wish I knew, Socrates, what your quibbling means.

    _Soc._ You know, Callicles, but you affect not to know.

    _Cal._ Well, get on, and don’t keep fooling: then you will
    know what a wiseacre you are in your admonition of me.

    _Soc._ Does not a man cease from his thirst and from his
    pleasure in drinking at the same time?

    _Cal._ I do not understand what you are saying.

    _Gor._ Nay, Callicles, answer, if only for our sakes;—we
    should like to hear the argument out.

    _Cal._ Yes, Gorgias, but I must complain of the habitual
    trifling of Socrates; he is always arguing about little and
    unworthy questions.

    _Gor._ What matter? Your reputation, Callicles, is not at
    stake. Let Socrates argue in his own fashion.

    _Cal._ Well, then, Socrates, you shall ask these little peddling
    questions, since Gorgias wishes to have them.

    _Soc._ I envy you, Callicles, for having been initiated into
    the great mysteries before you were initiated into the lesser.
    I thought that this was not allowable. But to return to our
    argument:—Does not a man cease from thirsting and from
    the pleasure of drinking at the same moment?

    _Cal._ True.

    _Soc._ And if he is hungry, or has any other desire, does he
    not cease from the desire and the pleasure at the same
    moment?

    _Cal._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Then he ceases from pain and pleasure at the same
    moment?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But he does not cease from good and evil at the same
    moment, as you have admitted:—do you still adhere to what
    you said?

    _Cal._ Yes, I do; but what is the inference?

[Sidenote: _to the man of the world is foolishness._]

[Sidenote: Another point of view.]

    _Soc._ Why, my friend, the inference is that the good is not
    the same as the pleasant, or the evil the same as the painful;
    there is a cessation of pleasure and pain at the same moment;
    but not of good and evil, for they are different. How then
    can pleasure be the same as good, or pain as evil? And I
    would have you look at the matter in another light, which
    could hardly, I think, have been considered by you when you
    identified them: Are not the good good because they have
    good present with them, as the beautiful are those who have
    beauty present with them?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And do you call the fools and cowards good men?
    For you were saying just now that the courageous and the
    wise are the good—would you not say so?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And did you never see a foolish child rejoicing?

    _Cal._ Yes, I have.

    _Soc._ And a foolish man too?

    _Cal._ Yes, certainly; but what is your drift?

    _Soc._ Nothing particular, if you will only answer.                498

    _Cal._ Yes, I have.

    _Soc._ And did you ever see a sensible man rejoicing or
    sorrowing?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Which rejoice and sorrow most—the wise or the
    foolish?

    _Cal._ They are much upon a par, I think, in that respect.

    _Soc._ Enough: And did you ever see a coward in battle?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And which rejoiced most at the departure of the
    enemy, the coward or the brave?

    _Cal._ I should say ‘most’ of both; or at any rate, they rejoiced
    about equally.

    _Soc._ No matter; then the cowards, and not only the brave,
    rejoice?

    _Cal._ Greatly.

    _Soc._ And the foolish; so it would seem?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And are only the cowards pained at the approach of
    their enemies, or are the brave also pained?

    _Cal._ Both are pained.

[Sidenote: _A far-fetched argument,_]

    _Soc._ And are they equally pained?

    _Cal._ I should imagine that the cowards are more pained.

    _Soc._ And are they not better pleased at the enemy’s departure?

    _Cal._ I dare say.

[Sidenote: Good is in proportion to pleasure, and the bad are often as
much or more pleased than the good.]

    _Soc._ Then are the foolish and the wise and the cowards
    and the brave all pleased and pained, as you were saying, in
    nearly equal degree; but are the cowards more pleased and
    pained than the brave?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But surely the wise and brave are the good, and the
    foolish and the cowardly are the bad?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then the good and the bad are pleased and pained in
    a nearly equal degree?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then are the good and bad good and bad in a nearly
    equal degree, or have the bad the advantage both in good
    and evil? [i. e. in having more pleasure and more pain.]

    _Cal._ I really do not know what you mean.

    _Soc._ Why, do you not remember saying that the good were
    good because good was present with them, and the evil
    because evil; and that pleasures were goods and pains
    evils?

    _Cal._ Yes, I remember.

    _Soc._ And are not these pleasures or goods present to those
    who rejoice—if they do rejoice?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then those who rejoice are good when goods are
    present with them?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And those who are in pain have evil or sorrow present
    with them?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And would you still say that the evil are evil by reason
    of the presence of evil?

    _Cal._ I should.

    _Soc._ Then those who rejoice are good, and those who are
    in pain evil?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _of which Callicles fails to see the drift._]

    _Soc._ The degrees of good and evil vary with the degrees
    of pleasure and of pain?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Have the wise man and the fool, the brave and the
    coward, joy and pain in nearly equal degrees? or would you
    say that the coward has more?

    _Cal._ I should say that he has.

    _Soc._ Help me then to draw out the conclusion which
    follows from our admissions; for it is good to repeat and
    review what is good twice and thrice over, as they say.            499
    Both the wise man and the brave man we allow to be good?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the foolish man and the coward to be evil?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And he who has joy is good?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he who is in pain is evil?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ The good and evil both have joy and pain, but, perhaps,
    the evil has more of them?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: Therefore the bad man is as good as the good, or perhaps even
better.]

    _Soc._ Then must we not infer, that the bad man is as good
    and bad as the good, or, perhaps, even better?—is not this a
    further inference which follows equally with the preceding
    from the assertion that the good and the pleasant are the
    same:—can this be denied, Callicles?

    _Cal._ I have been listening and making admissions to you,
    Socrates; and I remark that if a person grants you anything
    in play, you, like a child, want to keep hold and will not give
    it back. But do you really suppose that I or any other
    human being denies that some pleasures are good and others
    bad?

[Sidenote: Socrates begins again with some obvious truisms.]

    _Soc._ Alas, Callicles, how unfair you are! you certainly treat
    me as if I were a child, sometimes saying one thing, and then
    another, as if you were meaning to deceive me. And yet I
    thought at first that you were my friend, and would not have
    deceived me if you could have helped. But I see that I was
    mistaken; and now I suppose that I must make the best
    of a bad business, as they said of old, and take what I
    can get out of you.—Well, then, as I understand you to
    say, I may assume that some pleasures are good and others
    evil?

[Sidenote: _The unfairness of Callicles who, when beaten,_]

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ The beneficial are good, and the hurtful are evil?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And the beneficial are those which do some good, and
    the hurtful are those which do some evil?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Take, for example, the bodily pleasures of eating and
    drinking, which we were just now mentioning—you mean to
    say that those which promote health, or any other bodily excellence,
    are good, and their opposites evil?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And in the same way there are good pains and there
    are evil pains?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And ought we not to choose and use the good
    pleasures and pains?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ But not the evil?

    _Cal._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ Because, if you remember, Polus and I have agreed
    that all our actions are to be done for the sake of the good;—and
    will you agree with us in saying, that the good is the
    end of all our actions, and that all our actions are to be done
    for the sake of the good, and not the good for the sake of         500
    them?—will you add a third vote to our two?

    _Cal._ I will.

    _Soc._ Then pleasure, like everything else, is to be sought
    for the sake of that which is good, and not that which is good
    for the sake of pleasure?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ But can every man choose what pleasures are good
    and what are evil, or must he have art or knowledge of them
    in detail?

    _Cal._ He must have art.

[Sidenote: _pretends that his answers are not serious._]

    _Soc._ Let me now remind you of what I was saying to
    Gorgias and Polus; I was saying, as you will not have forgotten,
    that there were some processes which aim only at
    pleasure, and know nothing of a better and worse, and there
    are other processes which know good and evil. And I
    considered that cookery, which I do not call an art, but only
    an experience, was of the former class, which is concerned
    with pleasure, and that the art of medicine was of the class
    which is concerned with the good. And now, by the god of
    friendship, I must beg you, Callicles, not to jest, or to
    imagine that I am jesting with you; do not answer at
    random and contrary to your real opinion;—for you will observe
    that we are arguing about the way of human life; and to
    a man who has any sense at all, what question can be more
    serious than this?—whether he should follow after that way
    of life to which you exhort me, and act what you call the
    manly part of speaking in the assembly, and cultivating
    rhetoric, and engaging in public affairs, according to the
    principles now in vogue; or whether he should pursue the
    life of philosophy;—and in what the latter way differs from
    the former. But perhaps we had better first try to distinguish
    them, as I did before, and when we have come to
    an agreement that they are distinct, we may proceed to consider
    in what they differ from one another, and which of
    them we should choose. Perhaps, however, you do not
    even now understand what I mean?

    _Cal._ No, I do not.

    _Soc._ Then I will explain myself more clearly: seeing that
    you and I have agreed that there is such a thing as good,
    and that there is such a thing as pleasure, and that pleasure
    is not the same as good, and that the pursuit and process of
    acquisition of the one, that is pleasure, is different from the
    pursuit and process of acquisition of the other, which is
    good—I wish that you would tell me whether you agree
    with me thus far or not—do you agree?

    _Cal._ I do.

[Sidenote: Socrates repeats his distinction between true arts and
flatteries or shams, to which Callicles pretends to give assent.]

[Sidenote: _Callicles grows more and more_]

    _Soc._ Then I will proceed, and ask whether you also agree
    with me, and whether you think that I spoke the truth when         501
    I further said to Gorgias and Polus that cookery in my
    opinion is only an experience, and not an art at all; and
    that whereas medicine is an art, and attends to the nature and
    constitution of the patient, and has principles of action and
    reason in each case, cookery in attending upon pleasure
    never regards either the nature or reason of that pleasure to
    which she devotes herself, but goes straight to her end, nor
    ever considers or calculates anything, but works by experience
    and routine, and just preserves the recollection of what she
    has usually done when producing pleasure. And first, I
    would have you consider whether I have proved what I was
    saying, and then whether there are not other similar processes
    which have to do with the soul—some of them processes
    of art, making a provision for the soul’s highest
    interest—others despising the interest, and, as in the
    previous case, considering only the pleasure of the soul,
    and how this may be acquired, but not considering what
    pleasures are good or bad, and having no other aim but to
    afford gratification, whether good or bad. In my opinion,
    Callicles, there are such processes, and this is the sort of
    thing which I term flattery, whether concerned with the
    body or the soul, or whenever employed with a view to
    pleasure and without any consideration of good and evil.
    And now I wish that you would tell me whether you agree
    with us in this notion, or whether you differ.

    _Cal._ I do not differ; on the contrary, I agree; for in that
    way I shall soonest bring the argument to an end, and shall
    oblige my friend Gorgias.

    _Soc._ And is this notion true of one soul, or of two or
    more?

    _Cal._ Equally true of two or more.

    _Soc._ Then a man may delight a whole assembly, and yet
    have no regard for their true interests?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: There are arts which delight mankind but which never consider
the soul’s higher interest.]

    _Soc._ Can you tell me the pursuits which delight mankind—or
    rather, if you would prefer, let me ask, and do you
    answer, which of them belong to the pleasurable class, and
    which of them not? In the first place, what say you of flute-playing?
    Does not that appear to be an art which seeks
    only pleasure, Callicles, and thinks of nothing else?

    _Cal._ I assent.

    _Soc._ And is not the same true of all similar arts, as, for
    example, the art of playing the lyre at festivals?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And what do you say of the choral art and of dithyrambic
    poetry?—are not they of the same nature? Do you
    imagine that Cinesias the son of Meles cares about what
    will tend to the moral improvement of his hearers, or about        502
    what will give pleasure to the multitude?

[Sidenote: _impatient of the argument._]

    _Cal._ There can be no mistake about Cinesias, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And what do you say of his father, Meles the harp-player?
    Did he perform with any view to the good of his
    hearers? Could he be said to regard even their pleasure?
    For his singing was an infliction to his audience. And of
    harp-playing and dithyrambic poetry in general, what would
    you say? Have they not been invented wholly for the sake
    of pleasure?

    _Cal._ That is my notion of them.

    _Soc._ And as for the Muse of Tragedy, that solemn and
    august personage—what are her aspirations? Is all her
    aim and desire only to give pleasure to the spectators, or
    does she fight against them and refuse to speak of their
    pleasant vices, and willingly proclaim in word and song
    truths welcome and unwelcome?—which in your judgment
    is her character?

    _Cal._ There can be no doubt, Socrates, that Tragedy has
    her face turned towards pleasure and the gratification of the
    audience.

    _Soc._ And is not that the sort of thing, Callicles, which we
    were just now describing as flattery?

    _Cal._ Quite true.

    _Soc._ Well now, suppose that we strip all poetry of song
    and rhythm and metre, there will remain speech[42]?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And this speech is addressed to a crowd of people?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then poetry is a sort of rhetoric?

    _Cal._ True.

    _Soc._ And do not the poets in the theatres seem to you to
    be rhetoricians?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: Poetry is of the nature of flattery.]

    _Soc._ Then now we have discovered a sort of rhetoric
    which is addressed to a crowd of men, women, and children,
    freemen and slaves. And this is not much to our taste, for
    we have described it as having the nature of flattery.

[Sidenote: _The two sorts of rhetoric._]

    _Cal._ Quite true.

[Sidenote: Oratory, too, as practised regards the interest of the speaker
rather than the good of the people.]

    _Soc._ Very good. And what do you say of that other
    rhetoric which addresses the Athenian assembly and the
    assemblies of freemen in other states? Do the rhetoricians
    appear to you always to aim at what is best, and do they
    seek to improve the citizens by their speeches, or are they
    too, like the rest of mankind, bent upon giving them pleasure,
    forgetting the public good in the thought of their own
    interest, playing with the people as with children, and trying
    to amuse them, but never considering whether they are
    better or worse for this?

    _Cal._ I must distinguish. There are some who have a real          503
    care of the public in what they say, while others are such as
    you describe.

[Sidenote: There might be a higher style of oratory; and Callicles thinks
that such really existed in the great days of old, the days of Miltiades
and Themistocles and Pericles.]

    _Soc._ I am contented with the admission that rhetoric is of
    two sorts; one, which is mere flattery and disgraceful declamation;
    the other, which is noble and aims at the
    training and improvement of the souls of the citizens, and
    strives to say what is best, whether welcome or unwelcome,
    to the audience; but have you ever known such a rhetoric;
    or if you have, and can point out any rhetorician who is of
    this stamp, who is he?

    _Cal._ But, indeed, I am afraid that I cannot tell you of any
    such among the orators who are at present living.

    _Soc._ Well, then, can you mention any one of a former
    generation, who may be said to have improved the Athenians,
    who found them worse and made them better, from the day
    that he began to make speeches? for, indeed, I do not know
    of such a man.

    _Cal._ What! did you never hear that Themistocles was a
    good man, and Cimon and Miltiades and Pericles, who is
    just lately dead, and whom you heard yourself?

[Sidenote: Yet even these famous men had no ideal or standard.]

    _Soc._ Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at
    first, true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our own
    desires and those of others; but if not, and if, as we were
    afterwards compelled to acknowledge, the satisfaction of
    some desires makes us better, and of others, worse, and we
    ought to gratify the one and not the other, and there is an
    art in distinguishing them,—can you tell me of any of these
    statesmen who did distinguish them?

[Sidenote: _The good man, like the good artist, a lover of order._]

    _Cal._ No, indeed, I cannot.

[Sidenote: Some standard needed other than a man’s interest.]

    _Soc._ Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such
    a one. Suppose that we just calmly consider whether any
    of these was such as I have described. Will not the good
    man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best,
    speak with a reference to some standard and not at random;
    just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the
    shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work,
    and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but
    strive to give a definite form to it? The artist disposes all
    things in order, and compels the one part to harmonize and         504
    accord with the other part, until he has constructed a regular
    and systematic whole; and this is true of all artists, and in
    the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we spoke
    before, give order and regularity to the body: do you deny
    this?

    _Cal._ No; I am ready to admit it.

[Sidenote: Order is good, disorder evil, in a ship, in a human body, in a
human soul.]

    _Soc._ Then the house in which order and regularity prevail
    is good; that in which there is disorder, evil?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the same is true of a ship?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the same may be said of the human body?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And what would you say of the soul? Will the good
    soul be that in which disorder is prevalent, or that in which
    there is harmony and order?

    _Cal._ The latter follows from our previous admissions.

    _Soc._ What is the name which is given to the effect of
    harmony and order in the body?

    _Cal._ I suppose that you mean health and strength?

    _Soc._ Yes, I do; and what is the name which you
    would give to the effect of harmony and order in the
    soul? Try and discover a name for this as well as for the
    other.

    _Cal._ Why not give the name yourself, Socrates?

    _Soc._ Well, if you had rather that I should, I will; and
    you shall say whether you agree with me, and if not, you
    shall refute and answer me. ‘Healthy,’ as I conceive, is the
    name which is given to the regular order of the body,
    whence comes health and every other bodily excellence: is
    that true or not?

[Sidenote: _Callicles again turns restive._]

    _Cal._ True.

[Sidenote: From order and law spring temperance and justice.]

    _Soc._ And ‘lawful’ and ‘law’ are the names which are
    given to the regular order and action of the soul, and these
    make men lawful and orderly:—and so we have temperance
    and justice: have we not?

    _Cal._ Granted.

[Sidenote: The true rhetorician will seek to implant these virtues, to
implant justice and take away injustice.]

    _Soc._ And will not the true rhetorician who is honest and
    understands his art have his eye fixed upon these, in all the
    words which he addresses to the souls of men, and in all his
    actions, both in what he gives and in what he takes away?
    Will not his aim be to implant justice in the souls of his
    citizens and take away injustice, to implant temperance and
    take away intemperance, to implant every virtue and take
    away every vice? Do you not agree?

    _Cal._ I agree.

    _Soc._ For what use is there, Callicles, in giving to the body
    of a sick man who is in a bad state of health a quantity of
    the most delightful food or drink or any other pleasant
    thing, which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him       505
    nothing, or even worse if rightly estimated. Is not that
    true?

    _Cal._ I will not say No to it.

[Sidenote: The body of the sick and the soul of the wicked must be
chastised and improved.]

    _Soc._ For in my opinion there is no profit in a man’s life if
    his body is in an evil plight—in that case his life also is evil:
    am I not right?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ When a man is in health the physicians will generally
    allow him to eat when he is hungry and drink when he
    is thirsty, and to satisfy his desires as he likes, but when he
    is sick they hardly suffer him to satisfy his desires at all:
    even you will admit that?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And does not the same argument hold of the soul,
    my good sir? While she is in a bad state and is senseless
    and intemperate and unjust and unholy, her desires ought to
    be controlled, and she ought to be prevented from doing
    anything which does not tend to her own improvement.

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _Then ‘One man must do for two.’_]

    _Soc._ Such treatment will be better for the soul herself?

    _Cal._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And to restrain her from her appetites is to chastise
    her?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then restraint or chastisement is better for the soul
    than intemperance or the absence of control, which you
    were just now preferring?

    _Cal._ I do not understand you, Socrates, and I wish that
    you would ask some one who does.

[Sidenote: Callicles does not wish to be improved.]

    _Soc._ Here is a gentleman who cannot endure to be improved
    or to subject himself to that very chastisement of
    which the argument speaks!

    _Cal._ I do not heed a word of what you are saying, and
    have only answered hitherto out of civility to Gorgias.

    _Soc._ What are we to do, then? Shall we break off in the
    middle?

    _Cal._ You shall judge for yourself.

    _Soc._ Well, but people say that ‘a tale should have a head
    and not break off in the middle,’ and I should not like to
    have the argument going about without a head[43]; please
    then to go on a little longer, and put the head on.

    _Cal._ How tyrannical you are, Socrates! I wish that you
    and your argument would rest, or that you would get some
    one else to argue with you.

    _Soc._ But who else is willing?—I want to finish the
    argument.

    _Cal._ Cannot you finish without my help, either talking
    straight on, or questioning and answering yourself?

[Sidenote: _Recapitulation of the argument._]

    _Soc._ Must I then say with Epicharmus, ‘Two men spoke
    before, but now one shall be enough’? I suppose that there
    is absolutely no help. And if I am to carry on the enquiry
    by myself, I will first of all remark that not only I but all of
    us should have an ambition to know what is true and what is
    false in this matter, for the discovery of the truth is a common
    good. And now I will proceed to argue according to
    my own notion. But if any of you think that I arrive at            506
    conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute
    me, for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am
    saying, I am an enquirer like yourselves, and therefore, if
    my opponent says anything which is of force, I shall be the
    first to agree with him. I am speaking on the supposition
    that the argument ought to be completed; but if you think
    otherwise let us leave off and go our ways.

    _Gor._ I think, Socrates, that we should not go our ways
    until you have completed the argument; and this appears to
    me to be the wish of the rest of the company; I myself
    should very much like to hear what more you have to say.

    _Soc._ I too, Gorgias, should have liked to continue the
    argument with Callicles, and then I might have given him an
    ‘Amphion’ in return for his ‘Zethus’[44]; but since you, Callicles,
    are unwilling to continue, I hope that you will listen,
    and interrupt me if I seem to you to be in error. And if you
    refute me, I shall not be angry with you as you are with me,
    but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the
    tablets of my soul.

    _Cal._ My good fellow, never mind me, but get on.

[Sidenote: The pleasant not the same as the good, and is to be sought
only for the sake of the good: and we are good when good is present in
us, and good is the effect of order and truth and art.]

    _Soc._ Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument:—Is
    the pleasant the same as the good? Not the same.
    Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the pleasant
    to be pursued for the sake of the good? or the good for the
    sake of the pleasant? The pleasant is to be pursued for the
    sake of the good. And that is pleasant at the presence of
    which we are pleased, and that is good at the presence of
    which we are good? To be sure. And we are good, and all
    good things whatever are good when some virtue is present
    in us or them? That, Callicles, is my conviction. But the
    virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument or
    creature, when given to them in the best way comes to them
    not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and
    art which are imparted to them: Am I not right? I maintain
    that I am. And is not the virtue of each thing dependent on
    order or arrangement? Yes, I say. And that which makes
    a thing good is the proper order inhering in each thing?
    Such is my view. And is not the soul which has an order of
    her own better than that which has no order? Certainly.
    And the soul which has order is orderly? Of course. And
    that which is orderly is temperate? Assuredly. And the             507
    temperate soul is good? No other answer can I give, Callicles
    dear; have you any?

[Sidenote: _The intercommunion of the virtues._]

    _Cal._ Go on, my good fellow.

    _Soc._ Then I shall proceed to add, that if the temperate
    soul is the good soul, the soul which is in the opposite
    condition, that is, the foolish and intemperate, is the bad soul.
    Very true.

[Sidenote: The temperate soul is the good soul, just in relation to men,
and holy in relation to gods, and is therefore happy; and the intemperate
is the reverse of all this.]

[Sidenote: If it be admitted that virtue is happiness and vice misery,
then what Socrates said about the use of rhetoric in self-accusation
turns out to be true.]

[Sidenote: _Geometry in both worlds._]

    And will not the temperate man do what is proper, both in
    relation to the gods and to men;—for he would not be temperate
    if he did not? Certainly he will do what is proper.
    In his relation to other men he will do what is just; and in
    his relation to the gods he will do what is holy; and he who
    does what is just and holy must be just and holy? Very
    true. And must he not be courageous? for the duty of a
    temperate man is not to follow or to avoid what he ought not,
    but what he ought, whether things or men or pleasures or
    pains, and patiently to endure when he ought; and therefore,
    Callicles, the temperate man, being, as we have described,
    also just and courageous and holy, cannot be other than
    a perfectly good man, nor can the good man do otherwise
    than well and perfectly whatever he does; and he who does
    well must of necessity be happy and blessed, and the evil
    man who does evil, miserable: now this latter is he whom
    you were applauding—the intemperate who is the opposite of
    the temperate. Such is my position, and these things I
    affirm to be true. And if they are true, then I further affirm
    that he who desires to be happy must pursue and practise
    temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as his
    legs will carry him: he had better order his life so as not to
    need punishment; but if either he or any of his friends,
    whether private individual or city, are in need of punishment,
    then justice must be done and he must suffer punishment, if
    he would be happy. This appears to me to be the aim which
    a man ought to have, and towards which he ought to direct
    all the energies both of himself and of the state, acting so
    that he may have temperance and justice present with him
    and be happy, not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained, and
    in the never-ending desire to satisfy them leading a robber’s
    life. Such a one is the friend neither of God nor man, for
    he is incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of
    communion is also incapable of friendship. And philosophers
    tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship
    and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together           508
    heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is
    therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule,
    my friend. But although you are a philosopher you seem to
    me never to have observed that geometrical equality is
    mighty, both among gods and men; you think that you ought
    to cultivate inequality or excess, and do not care about
    geometry.—Well, then, either the principle that the happy
    are made happy by the possession of justice and temperance,
    and the miserable miserable by the possession of vice, must
    be refuted, or, if it is granted, what will be the consequences?
    All the consequences which I drew before, Callicles, and
    about which you asked me whether I was in earnest when I
    said that a man ought to accuse himself and his son and his
    friend if he did anything wrong, and that to this end he
    should use his rhetoric—all those consequences are true.
    And that which you thought that Polus was led to admit out
    of modesty is true, viz. that, to do injustice, if more disgraceful
    than to suffer, is in that degree worse; and the other
    position, which, according to Polus, Gorgias admitted out of
    modesty, that he who would truly be a rhetorician ought to
    be just and have a knowledge of justice, has also turned out
    to be true.

[Sidenote: _The paradoxes are proven._]

[Sidenote: The greatest evil to do injustice, but there is a greater
still, not to be punished for doing injustice.]

    And now, these things being as we have said, let us
    proceed in the next place to consider whether you are right
    in throwing in my teeth that I am unable to help myself
    or any of my friends or kinsmen, or to save them in the
    extremity of danger, and that I am in the power of another
    like an outlaw to whom any one may do what he likes,—he
    may box my ears, which was a brave saying of yours; or
    take away my goods or banish me, or even do his worst and
    kill me; a condition which, as you say, is the height of
    disgrace. My answer to you is one which has been already
    often repeated, but may as well be repeated once more. I
    tell you, Callicles, that to be boxed on the ears wrongfully is
    not the worst evil which can befall a man, nor to have my
    purse or my body cut open, but that to smite and slay me
    and mine wrongfully is far more disgraceful and more evil;
    aye, and to despoil and enslave and pillage, or in any way at
    all to wrong me and mine, is far more disgraceful and evil to
    the doer of the wrong than to me who am the sufferer.
    These truths, which have been already set forth as I state         509
    them in the previous discussion, would seem now to have
    been fixed and riveted by us, if I may use an expression
    which is certainly bold, in words which are like bonds of
    iron and adamant; and unless you or some other still more
    enterprising hero shall break them, there is no possibility of
    denying what I say. For my position has always been, that
    I myself am ignorant how these things are, but that I have
    never met any one who could say otherwise, any more than
    you can, and not appear ridiculous. This is my position
    still, and if what I am saying is true, and injustice is the
    greatest of evils to the doer of injustice, and yet there is if
    possible a greater than this greatest of evils[45], in an unjust
    man not suffering retribution, what is that defence of which
    the want will make a man truly ridiculous? Must not the
    defence be one which will avert the greatest of human evils?
    And will not the worst of all defences be that with which
    a man is unable to defend himself or his family or his
    friends?—and next will come that which is unable to avert
    the next greatest evil; thirdly that which is unable to avert
    the third greatest evil; and so of other evils. As is the
    greatness of evil so is the honour of being able to avert them
    in their several degrees, and the disgrace of not being able to
    avert them. Am I not right, Callicles?

    _Cal._ Yes, quite right.

    _Soc._ Seeing then that there are these two evils, the doing
    injustice and the suffering injustice—and we affirm that to do
    injustice is a greater, and to suffer injustice a lesser evil—by
    what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two
    advantages, the one of not doing and the other of not suffering
    injustice? must he have the power, or only the will to
    obtain them? I mean to ask whether a man will escape injustice
    if he has only the will to escape, or must he have
    provided himself with the power?

    _Cal._ He must have provided himself with the power; that
    is clear.

[Sidenote: _The tyrant and his satellites._]

    _Soc._ And what do you say of doing injustice? Is the will
    only sufficient, and will that prevent him from doing injustice,
    or must he have provided himself with power and art; and
    if he have not studied and practised, will he be unjust still?
    Surely you might say, Callicles, whether you think that Polus
    and I were right in admitting the conclusion that no one
    does wrong voluntarily, but that all do wrong against their
    will?

    _Cal._ Granted, Socrates, if you will only have done.              510

    _Soc._ Then, as would appear, power and art have to be provided
    in order that we may do no injustice?

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And what art will protect us from suffering injustice,
    if not wholly, yet as far as possible? I want to know whether
    you agree with me; for I think that such an art is the art of
    one who is either a ruler or even tyrant himself, or the equal
    and companion of the ruling power.

    _Cal._ Well said, Socrates; and please to observe how
    ready I am to praise you when you talk sense.

    _Soc._ Think and tell me whether you would approve of another
    view of mine: To me every man appears to be most
    the friend of him who is most like to him—like to like, as
    ancient sages say: Would you not agree to this?

    _Cal._ I should.

[Sidenote: The tyrant naturally hates both his superiors and inferiors:
he likes only those who resemble him in character.]

    _Soc._ But when the tyrant is rude and uneducated, he may
    be expected to fear any one who is his superior in virtue, and
    will never be able to be perfectly friendly with him.

    _Cal._ That is true.

    _Soc._ Neither will he be the friend of any one who is greatly
    his inferior, for the tyrant will despise him, and will never
    seriously regard him as a friend.

    _Cal._ That again is true.

    _Soc._ Then the only friend worth mentioning, whom the
    tyrant can have, will be one who is of the same character, and
    has the same likes and dislikes, and is at the same time
    willing to be subject and subservient to him; he is the man
    who will have power in the state, and no one will injure him
    with impunity:—is not that so?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _The bad man will kill the good._]

    _Soc._ And if a young man begins to ask how he may become
    great and formidable, this would seem to be the way—he
    will accustom himself, from his youth upward, to feel
    sorrow and joy on the same occasions as his master, and will
    contrive to be as like him as possible?

    _Cal._ Yes.

[Sidenote: And the way to be a great man and not to suffer injury is to
become like him. And there can be no greater evil to him than this.]

    _Soc._ And in this way he will have accomplished, as you
    and your friends would say, the end of becoming a great man
    and not suffering injury?

    _Cal._ Very true.

    _Soc._ But will he also escape from doing injury? Must not
    the very opposite be true, if he is to be like the tyrant in his
    injustice, and to have influence with him? Will he not             511
    rather contrive to do as much wrong as possible, and not be
    punished?

    _Cal._ True.

    _Soc._ And by the imitation of his master and by the power
    which he thus acquires will not his soul become bad and
    corrupted, and will not this be the greatest evil to him?

    _Cal._ You always contrive somehow or other, Socrates, to
    invert everything: do you not know that he who imitates the
    tyrant will, if he has a mind, kill him who does not imitate
    him and take away his goods?

[Sidenote: But how provoking that the bad man should slay the good!]

    _Soc._ Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard
    that a great many times from you and from Polus and from
    nearly every man in the city, but I wish that you would hear
    me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind—the
    bad man will kill the good and true.

    _Cal._ And is not that just the provoking thing?

[Sidenote: Nay, but we should not always study the arts which save us
from death;—the art of swimming, the art of the pilot, &c.]

    _Soc._ Nay, not to a man of sense, as the argument shows: do
    you think that all our cares should be directed to prolonging
    life to the uttermost, and to the study of those arts which
    secure us from danger always; like that art of rhetoric
    which saves men in courts of law, and which you advise me
    to cultivate?

    _Cal._ Yes, truly, and very good advice too.

    _Soc._ Well, my friend, but what do you think of swimming;
    is that an art of any great pretensions?

    _Cal._ No, indeed.

    _Soc._ And yet surely swimming saves a man from death,
    and there are occasions on which he must know how to swim.

[Sidenote: _Who can say whether to be saved_]

[Sidenote: The pilot demands a very moderate payment as the fare of
a passenger from Athens to Aegina, because he is not certain whether
salvation from death be a good or an evil.]

    And if you despise the swimmers, I will tell you of another
    and greater art, the art of the pilot, who not only saves the
    souls of men, but also their bodies and properties from the
    extremity of danger, just like rhetoric. Yet his art is modest
    and unpresuming: it has no airs or pretences of doing anything
    extraordinary, and, in return for the same salvation
    which is given by the pleader, demands only two obols, if he
    brings us from Aegina to Athens, or for the longer voyage
    from Pontus or Egypt, at the utmost two drachmae, when he
    has saved, as I was just now saying, the passenger and his
    wife and children and goods, and safely disembarked them at
    the Piraeus,—this is the payment which he asks in return for
    so great a boon; and he who is the master of the art, and has
    done all this, gets out and walks about on the sea-shore by
    his ship in an unassuming way. For he is able to reflect and
    is aware that he cannot tell which of his fellow-passengers he
    has benefited, and which of them he has injured in not allowing
    them to be drowned. He knows that they are just the
    same when he has disembarked them as when they embarked,           512
    and not a whit better either in their bodies or in their souls;
    and he considers that if a man who is afflicted by great and
    incurable bodily diseases is only to be pitied for having
    escaped, and is in no way benefited by him in having been
    saved from drowning, much less he who has great and incurable
    diseases, not of the body, but of the soul, which is the
    more valuable part of him; neither is life worth having nor
    of any profit to the bad man, whether he be delivered from
    the sea, or the law-courts, or any other devourer;—and so he
    reflects that such a one had better not live, for he cannot
    live well[46].

[Sidenote: _from death be good or evil?_]

[Sidenote: The engineer, too:—how much better than the pleader!]

[Sidenote: He too is another of your saviours: but you despise him,
whereas you ought to esteem him highly.]

[Sidenote: I want you to consider whether you can possibly become great
among the people unless you become like them.]

    And this is the reason why the pilot, although he is our
    saviour, is not usually conceited, any more than the engineer,
    who is not at all behind either the general, or the pilot, or
    any one else, in his saving power, for he sometimes saves
    whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and the
    pleader? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose
    style, he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring
    and insisting that we ought all of us to be engine-makers,
    and that no other profession is worth thinking about;
    he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you despise him
    and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and
    you will not allow your daughters to marry his son, or marry
    your son to his daughters. And yet, on your principle, what
    justice or reason is there in your refusal? What right have
    you to despise the engine-maker, and the others whom I was
    just now mentioning? I know that you will say, ‘I am
    better, and better born.’ But if the better is not what I say,
    and virtue consists only in a man saving himself and his,
    whatever may be his character, then your censure of the
    engine-maker, and of the physician, and of the other arts of
    salvation, is ridiculous. O my friend! I want you to see that
    the noble and the good may possibly be something different
    from saving and being saved:—May not he who is truly a
    man cease to care about living a certain time?—he knows, as
    women say, that no man can escape fate, and therefore he is
    not fond of life; he leaves all that with God, and considers
    in what way he can best spend his appointed term;—whether
    by assimilating himself to the constitution under which he
    lives, as you at this moment have to consider how you may          513
    become as like as possible to the Athenian people, if you
    mean to be in their good graces, and to have power in the
    state; whereas I want you to think and see whether this is
    for the interest of either of us;—I would not have us risk
    that which is dearest on the acquisition of this power, like
    the Thessalian enchantresses, who, as they say, bring down
    the moon from heaven at the risk of their own perdition.
    But if you suppose that any man will show you the art of
    becoming great in the city, and yet not conforming yourself
    to the ways of the city, whether for better or worse, then I
    can only say that you are mistaken, Callicles; for he who
    would deserve to be the true natural friend of the Athenian
    Demus, aye, or of Pyrilampes’ darling who is called after
    them, must be by nature like them, and not an imitator only.
    He, then, who will make you most like them, will make you
    as you desire, a statesman and orator: for every man is
    pleased when he is spoken to in his own language and spirit,
    and dislikes any other. But perhaps you, sweet Callicles,
    may be of another mind. What do you say?

[Sidenote: Callicles inclines for an instant to the Gospel of Socrates,
but the love of the world and of popularity overcomes him.]

[Sidenote: _Reiteration._]

    _Cal._ Somehow or other your words, Socrates, always
    appear to me to be good words; and yet, like the rest of the
    world, I am not quite convinced by them[47].

    _Soc._ The reason is, Callicles, that the love of Demus which
    abides in your soul is an adversary to me; but I dare say that
    if we recur to these same matters, and consider them more
    thoroughly, you may be convinced for all that. Please, then,
    to remember that there are two processes of training all
    things, including body and soul; in the one, as we said, we
    treat them with a view to pleasure, and in the other with a
    view to the highest good, and then we do not indulge but
    resist them: was not that the distinction which we drew?

[Sidenote: Two processes of training: one having a view to pleasure, the
other to good.]

    _Cal._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And the one which had pleasure in view was just a
    vulgar flattery:—was not that another of our conclusions?

    _Cal._ Be it so, if you will have it.

    _Soc._ And the other had in view the greatest improvement
    of that which was ministered to, whether body or soul?

    _Cal._ Quite true.

[Sidenote: And we must train our citizens with a view to their good; and,
as in other arts, we must show that we can be trusted to improve them.]

    _Soc._ And must we not have the same end in view in the
    treatment of our city and citizens? Must we not try and
    make them as good as possible? For we have already discovered
    that there is no use in imparting to them any other                514
    good, unless the mind of those who are to have the good,
    whether money, or office, or any other sort of power, be
    gentle and good. Shall we say that?

    _Cal._ Yes, certainly, if you like.

    _Soc._ Well, then, if you and I, Callicles, were intending[48] to
    set about some public business, and were advising one another
    to undertake buildings, such as walls, docks or temples of the
    largest size, ought we not to examine ourselves, first, as to
    whether we know or do not know the art of building, and
    who taught us?—would not that be necessary, Callicles?

    _Cal._ True.

    _Soc._ In the second place, we should have to consider
    whether we had ever constructed any private house, either of
    our own or for our friends, and whether this building of ours
    was a success or not; and if upon consideration we found
    that we had had good and eminent masters, and had been
    successful in constructing many fine buildings, not only with
    their assistance, but without them, by our own unaided skill—in
    that case prudence would not dissuade us from proceeding
    to the construction of public works. But if we had no
    master to show, and only a number of worthless buildings or
    none at all, then, surely, it would be ridiculous in us to
    attempt public works, or to advise one another to undertake
    them. Is not this true?

[Sidenote: _The silence of Callicles._]

    _Cal._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And does not the same hold in all other cases? If
    you and I were physicians, and were advising one another
    that we were competent to practise as state-physicians,
    should I not ask about you, and would you not ask about
    me, Well, but how about Socrates himself, has he good
    health? and was any one else ever known to be cured by
    him, whether slave or freeman? And I should make the
    same enquiries about you. And if we arrived at the conclusion
    that no one, whether citizen or stranger, man or
    woman, had ever been any the better for the medical skill
    of either of us, then, by Heaven, Callicles, what an absurdity
    to think that we or any human being should be so silly as to
    set up as state-physicians and advise others like ourselves to
    do the same, without having first practised in private,
    whether successfully or not, and acquired experience of the
    art! Is not this, as they say, to begin with the big jar
    when you are learning the potter’s art; which is a foolish
    thing?

    _Cal._ True.                                                       515

[Sidenote: And now, Callicles, what are you who are a public character
doing for the improvement of the citizens?]

    _Soc._ And now, my friend, as you are already beginning to
    be a public character, and are admonishing and reproaching
    me for not being one, suppose that we ask a few questions
    of one another. Tell me, then, Callicles, how about making
    any of the citizens better? Was there ever a man who was
    once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate, or foolish, and became
    by the help of Callicles good and noble? Was there ever
    such a man, whether citizen or stranger, slave or freeman?
    Tell me, Callicles, if a person were to ask these questions
    of you, what would you answer? Whom would you say
    that you had improved by your conversation? There may
    have been good deeds of this sort which were done by you
    as a private person, before you came forward in public.
    Why will you not answer?

[Sidenote: _Pericles a bad political shepherd._]

[Sidenote: Callicles makes no answer.]

    _Cal._ You are contentious, Socrates.

[Sidenote: Or how did Pericles and the great of old benefit the citizens?]

    _Soc._ Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but
    because I really want to know in what way you think that
    affairs should be administered among us—whether, when you
    come to the administration of them, you have any other aim
    but the improvement of the citizens? Have we not already
    admitted many times over that such is the duty of a public
    man? Nay, we have surely said so; for if you will not
    answer for yourself I must answer for you. But if this is
    what the good man ought to effect for the benefit of his own
    state, allow me to recall to you the names of those whom
    you were just now mentioning, Pericles, and Cimon, and
    Miltiades, and Themistocles, and ask whether you still think
    that they were good citizens.

    _Cal._ I do.

    _Soc._ But if they were good, then clearly each of them
    must have made the citizens better instead of worse?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And, therefore, when Pericles first began to speak in
    the assembly, the Athenians were not so good as when he
    spoke last?

    _Cal._ Very likely.

    _Soc._ Nay, my friend, ‘likely’ is not the word; for if he
    was a good citizen, the inference is certain.

    _Cal._ And what difference does that make?

[Sidenote: Pericles corrupted them by giving them pay.]

    _Soc._ None; only I should like further to know whether
    the Athenians are supposed to have been made better by
    Pericles, or, on the contrary, to have been corrupted by him;
    for I hear that he was the first who gave the people pay,
    and made them idle and cowardly, and encouraged them in
    the love of talk and of money.

    _Cal._ You heard that, Socrates, from the laconising set
    who bruise their ears.

[Sidenote: He made them worse instead of better, for they all but put him
to death.]

[Sidenote: _For he taught the citizens only to kick and butt._]

    _Soc._ But what I am going to tell you now is not mere
    hearsay, but well known both to you and me: that at first,
    Pericles was glorious and his character unimpeached by any
    verdict of the Athenians—this was during the time when             516
    they were not so good—yet afterwards, when they had been
    made good and gentle by him, at the very end of his life
    they convicted him of theft, and almost put him to death,
    clearly under the notion that he was a malefactor.

    _Cal._ Well, but how does that prove Pericles’ badness?

    _Soc._ Why, surely, you would say that he was a bad
    manager of asses or horses or oxen, who had received them
    originally neither kicking nor butting nor biting him, and
    implanted in them all these savage tricks? Would he not
    be a bad manager of any animals who received them gentle,
    and made them fiercer than they were when he received
    them? What do you say?

    _Cal._ I will do you the favour of saying ‘yes.’

    _Soc._ And will you also do me the favour of saying whether
    man is an animal?

    _Cal._ Certainly he is.

    _Soc._ And was not Pericles a shepherd of men?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if he was a good political shepherd, ought not
    the animals who were his subjects, as we were just now
    acknowledging, to have become more just, and not more
    unjust?

    _Cal._ Quite true.

    _Soc._ And are not just men gentle, as Homer says?—or
    are you of another mind?

    _Cal._ I agree.

    _Soc._ And yet he really did make them more savage than
    he received them, and their savageness was shown towards
    himself; which he must have been very far from desiring.

    _Cal._ Do you want me to agree with you?

    _Soc._ Yes, if I seem to you to speak the truth.

    _Cal._ Granted then.

    _Soc._ And if they were more savage, must they not have
    been more unjust and inferior?

    _Cal._ Granted again.

    _Soc._ Then upon this view, Pericles was not a good statesman?

    _Cal._ That is, upon your view.

[Sidenote: Cimon was ostracised; Themistocles was exiled; Miltiades was
nearly thrown from the rock.]

[Sidenote: _The old argument repeated, with illustrations taken from
common life._]

    _Soc._ Nay, the view is yours, after what you have admitted.
    Take the case of Cimon again. Did not the very persons
    whom he was serving ostracize him, in order that they might
    not hear his voice for ten years? and they did just the same
    to Themistocles, adding the penalty of exile; and they voted
    that Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, should be thrown into
    the pit of death, and he was only saved by the Prytanis.
    And yet, if they had been really good men, as you say, these
    things would never have happened to them. For the good
    charioteers are not those who at first keep their place, and
    then, when they have broken-in their horses, and themselves
    become better charioteers, are thrown out—that is not the
    way either in charioteering or in any profession.—What do
    you think?

    _Cal._ I should think not.

[Sidenote: The older statesmen no better than the existing ones.]

    _Soc._ Well, but if so, the truth is as I have said already,       517
    that in the Athenian State no one has ever shown himself to
    be a good statesman—you admitted that this was true of
    our present statesmen, but not true of former ones, and you
    preferred them to the others; yet they have turned out
    to be no better than our present ones; and therefore, if
    they were rhetoricians, they did not use the true art of
    rhetoric or of flattery, or they would not have fallen out
    of favour.

    _Cal._ But surely, Socrates, no living man ever came near
    any one of them in his performances.

[Sidenote: The older statesmen not able really to elevate the state to a
higher level, but more capable of gratifying its desires.]

[Sidenote: You might as well say that the cook or the baker is a good
trainer as that they were great statesmen.]

[Sidenote: The statesman-like the Sophist; neither has any right to
accuse their followers of wronging them; they should have taught them
better.]

[Sidenote: _Nonsense about the cry of ingratitude which_]

    _Soc._ O, my dear friend, I say nothing against them regarded
    as the serving-men of the State; and I do think that
    they were certainly more serviceable than those who are
    living now, and better able to gratify the wishes of the State;
    but as to transforming those desires and not allowing them
    to have their way, and using the powers which they had,
    whether of persuasion or of force, in the improvement of
    their fellow-citizens, which is the prime object of the truly
    good citizen, I do not see that in these respects they were a
    whit superior to our present statesmen, although I do admit
    that they were more clever at providing ships and walls and
    docks, and all that. You and I have a ridiculous way, for
    during the whole time that we are arguing, we are always
    going round and round to the same point, and constantly
    misunderstanding one another. If I am not mistaken, you
    have admitted and acknowledged more than once, that there
    are two kinds of operations which have to do with the body,
    and two which have to do with the soul: one of the two is
    ministerial, and if our bodies are hungry provides food for
    them, and if they are thirsty gives them drink, or if they are
    cold supplies them with garments, blankets, shoes, and all
    that they crave. I use the same images as before intentionally,
    in order that you may understand me the better.
    The purveyor of the articles may provide them either wholesale
    or retail, or he may be the maker of any of them,—the
    baker, or the cook, or the weaver, or the shoemaker, or the
    currier; and in so doing, being such as he is, he is naturally
    supposed by himself and every one to minister to the body.
    For none of them know that there is another art—an art of
    gymnastic and medicine which is the true minister of the
    body, and ought to be the mistress of all the rest, and to
    use their results according to the knowledge which she has
    and they have not, of the real good or bad effects of meats
    and drinks on the body. All other arts which have to do            518
    with the body are servile and menial and illiberal; and
    gymnastic and medicine are, as they ought to be, their
    mistresses. Now, when I say that all this is equally true of
    the soul, you seem at first to know and understand and
    assent to my words, and then a little while afterwards you
    come repeating, Has not the State had good and noble
    citizens? and when I ask you who they are, you reply,
    seemingly quite in earnest, as if I had asked, Who are or
    have been good trainers?—and you had replied, Thearion,
    the baker, Mithoecus, who wrote the Sicilian cookery-book,
    Sarambus, the vintner: these are ministers of the body,
    first-rate in their art; for the first makes admirable loaves,
    the second excellent dishes, and the third capital wine;—to
    me these appear to be the exact parallel of the statesmen
    whom you mention. Now you would not be altogether
    pleased if I said to you, My friend, you know nothing of
    gymnastics; those of whom you are speaking to me are only
    the ministers and purveyors of luxury, who have no good or
    noble notions of their art, and may very likely be filling and
    fattening men’s bodies and gaining their approval, although
    the result is that they lose their original flesh in the long
    run, and become thinner than they were before; and yet
    they, in their simplicity, will not attribute their diseases and
    loss of flesh to their entertainers; but when in after years
    the unhealthy surfeit brings the attendant penalty of disease,
    he who happens to be near them at the time, and offers them
    advice, is accused and blamed by them, and if they could they
    would do him some harm; while they proceed to eulogize
    the men who have been the real authors of the mischief.
    And that, Callicles, is just what you are now doing. You
    praise the men who feasted the citizens and satisfied their
    desires, and people say that they have made the city great,
    not seeing that the swollen and ulcerated condition of the
    State is to be attributed to these elder statesmen; for they
    have filled the city full of harbours and docks and walls and
    revenues and all that, and have left no room for justice and
    temperance. And when the crisis of the disorder comes,             519
    the people will blame the advisers of the hour, and applaud
    Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, who are the real
    authors of their calamities; and if you are not careful they
    may assail you and my friend Alcibiades, when they are
    losing not only their new acquisitions, but also their original
    possessions; not that you are the authors of these misfortunes
    of theirs, although you may perhaps be accessories to them.
    A great piece of work is always being made, as I see and
    am told, now as of old, about our statesmen. When the
    State treats any of them as malefactors, I observe that there
    is a great uproar and indignation at the supposed wrong
    which is done to them; ‘after all their many services to the
    State, that they should unjustly perish,’—so the tale runs.
    But the cry is all a lie; for no statesman ever could be unjustly
    put to death by the city of which he is the head. The
    case of the professed statesman is, I believe, very much like
    that of the professed sophist; for the sophists, although they
    are wise men, are nevertheless guilty of a strange piece of
    folly; professing to be teachers of virtue, they will often
    accuse their disciples of wronging them, and defrauding
    them of their pay, and showing no gratitude for their services.
    Yet what can be more absurd than that men who have become
    just and good, and whose injustice has been taken
    away from them, and who have had justice implanted in
    them by their teachers, should act unjustly by reason of the
    injustice which is not in them? Can anything be more
    irrational, my friend, than this? You, Callicles, compel me
    to be a mob-orator, because you will not answer.

[Sidenote: _is shown to statesmen at Athens._]

    _Cal._ And you are the man who cannot speak unless there
    is some one to answer?

    _Soc._ I suppose that I can; just now, at any rate, the
    speeches which I am making are long enough because you
    refuse to answer me. But I adjure you by the god of
    friendship, my good sir, do tell me whether there does
    not appear to you to be a great inconsistency in saying
    that you have made a man good, and then blaming him for
    being bad?

    _Cal._ Yes, it appears so to me.

    _Soc._ Do you never hear our professors of education speaking      520
    in this inconsistent manner?

    _Cal._ Yes, but why talk of men who are good for nothing?

[Sidenote: Sophistry is much superior to rhetoric.]

    _Soc._ I would rather say, why talk of men who profess to
    be rulers, and declare that they are devoted to the improvement
    of the city, and nevertheless upon occasion declaim
    against the utter vileness of the city:—do you think that
    there is any difference between one and the other? My
    good friend, the sophist and the rhetorician, as I was saying
    to Polus, are the same, or nearly the same; but you ignorantly
    fancy that rhetoric is a perfect thing, and sophistry a thing to
    be despised; whereas the truth is, that sophistry is as much
    superior to rhetoric as legislation is to the practice of law, or
    gymnastic to medicine. The orators and sophists, as I am
    inclined to think, are the only class who cannot complain of
    the mischief ensuing to themselves from that which they
    teach others, without in the same breath accusing themselves
    of having done no good to those whom they profess to
    benefit. Is not this a fact?

    _Cal._ Certainly it is.

[Sidenote: He who teaches honesty ought to teach his pupils to pay him
for the lesson.]

[Sidenote: _The physician of the state_]

    _Soc._ If they were right in saying that they make men
    better, then they are the only class who can afford to leave
    their remuneration to those who have been benefited by
    them. Whereas if a man has been benefited in any other
    way, if, for example, he has been taught to run by a trainer,
    he might possibly defraud him of his pay, if the trainer left
    the matter to him, and made no agreement with him that he
    should receive money as soon as he had given him the
    utmost speed; for not because of any deficiency of speed do
    men act unjustly, but by reason of injustice.

    _Cal._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And he who removes injustice can be in no danger
    of being treated unjustly: he alone can safely leave the
    honorarium to his pupils, if he be really able to make them
    good—am I not right[49]?

    _Cal._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then we have found the reason why there is no dishonour
    in a man receiving pay who is called in to advise
    about building or any other art?

    _Cal._ Yes, we have found the reason.

    _Soc._ But when the point is, how a man may become best
    himself, and best govern his family and state, then to say
    that you will give no advice gratis is held to be dishonourable?

    _Cal._ True.

    _Soc._ And why? Because only such benefits call forth a
    desire to requite them, and there is evidence that a benefit
    has been conferred when the benefactor receives a return;
    otherwise not. Is this true?

    _Cal._ It is.

[Sidenote: Callicles advises Socrates to be the servant of the state, and
not run the risk of popular enmity.]

    _Soc._ Then to which service of the State do you invite
    me? determine for me. Am I to be the physician of the              521
    State who will strive and struggle to make the Athenians as
    good as possible; or am I to be the servant and flatterer of
    the State? Speak out, my good friend, freely and fairly as
    you did at first and ought to do again, and tell me your
    entire mind.

    _Cal._ I say then that you should be the servant of the
    State.

[Sidenote: _and the flatterer of the state._]

    _Soc._ The flatterer? well, sir, that is a noble invitation.

    _Cal._ The Mysian, Socrates, or what you please. For if
    you refuse, the consequences will be—

    _Soc._ Do not repeat the old story—that he who likes will
    kill me and get my money; for then I shall have to repeat
    the old answer, that he will be a bad man and will kill the
    good, and that the money will be of no use to him, but that
    he will wrongly use that which he wrongly took, and if
    wrongly, basely, and if basely, hurtfully.

    _Cal._ How confident you are, Socrates, that you will never
    come to harm! you seem to think that you are living in
    another country, and can never be brought into a court of
    justice, as you very likely may be brought by some miserable
    and mean person.

[Sidenote: Socrates has no fear of popular enmity, but is quite aware
that he will incur it, because he is the only true politician of his
time, and he has no defence against men such as his opponents: that is
to say, he has the defence of truth, but not such a defence as men
ordinarily produce.]

    _Soc._ Then I must indeed be a fool, Callicles, if I do not
    know that in the Athenian State any man may suffer anything.
    And if I am brought to trial and incur the dangers
    of which you speak, he will be a villain who brings me to
    trial—of that I am very sure, for no good man would accuse
    the innocent. Nor shall I be surprised if I am put to death.
    Shall I tell you why I anticipate this?

    _Cal._ By all means.

    _Soc._ I think that I am the only or almost the only
    Athenian living who practises the true art of politics; I am
    the only politician of my time. Now, seeing that when I
    speak my words are not uttered with any view of gaining
    favour, and that I look to what is best and not to what is
    most pleasant, having no mind to use those arts and graces
    which you recommend, I shall have nothing to say in the
    justice court. And you might argue with me, as I was
    arguing with Polus:—I shall be tried just as a physician
    would be tried in a court of little boys at the indictment of
    the cook. What would he reply under such circumstances,
    if some one were to accuse him, saying, ‘O my boys, many
    evil things has this man done to you: he is the death of
    you, especially of the younger ones among you, cutting and
    burning and starving and suffocating you, until you know           522
    not what to do; he gives you the bitterest potions, and
    compels you to hunger and thirst. How unlike the variety
    of meats and sweets on which I feasted you!’ What do
    you suppose that the physician would be able to reply when
    he found himself in such a predicament? If he told the
    truth he could only say, ‘All these evil things, my boys, I
    did for your health,’ and then would there not just be a
    clamour among a jury like that? How they would cry out!

    _Cal._ I dare say.

    _Soc._ Would he not be utterly at a loss for a reply?

[Sidenote: _The myth._]

    _Cal._ He certainly would.

    _Soc._ And I too shall be treated in the same way, as I well
    know, if I am brought before the court. For I shall not
    be able to rehearse to the people the pleasures which I have
    procured for them, and which, although I am not disposed
    to envy either the procurers or enjoyers of them, are deemed
    by them to be benefits and advantages. And if any one says
    that I corrupt young men, and perplex their minds, or that
    I speak evil of old men, and use bitter words towards them,
    whether in private or public, it is useless for me to reply, as
    I truly might:—‘All this I do for the sake of justice, and
    with a view to your interest, my judges, and to nothing else.’
    And therefore there is no saying what may happen to me.

    _Cal._ And do you think, Socrates, that a man who is thus
    defenceless is in a good position?

    _Soc._ Yes, Callicles, if he have that defence, which as you
    have often acknowledged he should have—if he be his own
    defence, and have never said or done anything wrong, either
    in respect of gods or men; and this has been repeatedly acknowledged
    by us to be the best sort of defence. And if any
    one could convict me of inability to defend myself or others
    after this sort, I should blush for shame, whether I was convicted
    before many, or before a few, or by myself alone; and
    if I died from want of ability to do so, that would indeed grieve
    me. But if I died because I have no powers of flattery or
    rhetoric, I am very sure that you would not find me repining
    at death. For no man who is not an utter fool and coward
    is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong.
    For to go to the world below having one’s soul full of injustice
    is the last and worst of all evils. And in proof of
    what I say, if you have no objection, I should like to tell you
    a story.

    _Cal._ Very well, proceed; and then we shall have done.

[Sidenote: The philosopher has no reason to dread death, as Socrates will
prove by a relation of what happens in the world below.]

[Sidenote: Before the days of Zeus, the judgments of another world too
much resembled the judgments of this.]

[Sidenote: Zeus takes measures for the correction and improvement of
them.]

[Sidenote: _The souls of the departed._]

    _Soc._ Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty        523
    tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as
    a fable only, but which, as I believe, is a true tale, for I
    mean to speak the truth. Homer tells us[50], how Zeus and
    Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited
    from their father. Now in the days of Cronos there existed
    a law respecting the destiny of man, which has always been,
    and still continues to be in Heaven,—that he who has lived
    all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead,
    to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect
    happiness out of the reach of evil; but that he who has lived
    unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance
    and punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time
    of Cronos, and even quite lately in the reign of Zeus, the
    judgment was given on the very day on which the men were
    to die; the judges were alive, and the men were alive; and
    the consequence was that the judgments were not well given.
    Then Pluto and the authorities from the Islands of the
    Blessed came to Zeus, and said that the souls found their
    way to the wrong places. Zeus said: ‘I shall put a stop to
    this; the judgments are not well given, because the persons
    who are judged have their clothes on, for they are alive; and
    there are many who, having evil souls, are apparelled in fair
    bodies, or encased in wealth or rank, and, when the day of
    judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come forward and
    testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously. The
    judges are awed by them, and they themselves too have their
    clothes on when judging; their eyes and ears and their whole
    bodies are interposed as a veil before their own souls. All
    this is a hindrance to them; there are the clothes of the
    judges and the clothes of the judged.—What is to be done?
    I will tell you:—In the first place, I will deprive men of
    the foreknowledge of death, which they possess at present:
    this power which they have Prometheus has already received
    my orders to take from them: in the second place, they shall
    be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be
    judged when they are dead; and the judge too shall be naked,
    that is to say, dead—he with his naked soul shall pierce
    into the other naked souls; and they shall die suddenly
    and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their brave
    attire strewn upon the earth—conducted in this manner, the
    judgment will be just. I knew all about the matter before
    any of you, and therefore I have made my sons judges; two
    from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe,
    Aeacus. And these, when they are dead, shall give judgment         524
    in the meadow at the parting of the ways, whence the
    two roads lead, one to the Islands of the Blessed, and the
    other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who
    come from Asia, and Aeacus those who come from Europe.
    And to Minos I shall give the primacy, and he shall hold
    a court of appeal, in case either of the two others are in any
    doubt:—then the judgment respecting the last journey of
    men will be as just as possible.’

[Sidenote: As the body is, so is the soul after death; they both retain
the traces of what they were in life, and they are punished accordingly.]

    From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe,
    I draw the following inferences:—Death, if I am right, is in
    the first place the separation from one another of two things,
    soul and body; nothing else. And after they are separated
    they retain their several natures, as in life; the body keeps
    the same habit, and the results of treatment or accident are
    distinctly visible in it: for example, he who by nature or
    training or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will
    remain as he was, after he is dead; and the fat man will
    remain fat; and so on; and the dead man, who in life had a
    fancy to have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he
    was marked with the whip and had the prints of the scourge,
    or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the
    same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or mis-shapen
    when he was alive, the same appearance would be
    visible in the dead. And in a word, whatever was the habit
    of the body during life would be distinguishable after death,
    either perfectly, or in a great measure and for a certain time.
    And I should imagine that this is equally true of the soul,
    Callicles; when a man is stripped of the body, all the natural
    or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view.—And
    when they come to the judge, as those from Asia come
    to Rhadamanthus, he places them near him and inspects
    them quite impartially, not knowing whose the soul is: perhaps
    he may lay hands on the soul of the great king, or of
    some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him,
    but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints
    and scars of perjuries and crimes with which each action has
    stained him, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture,   525
    and has no straightness, because he has lived without
    truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of all deformity
    and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury
    and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously
    to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment
    which he deserves.

[Sidenote: _The Homeric heroes in the world below._]

[Sidenote: The proper office of punishment is either to improve or to
deter.]

[Sidenote: The meaner sort of men are incapable of great crimes.]

[Sidenote: Great men have sometimes been good men; but power is apt to
corrupt them.]

    Now the proper office of punishment is twofold: he who
    is rightly punished ought either to become better and profit
    by it, or he ought to be made an example to his fellows, that
    they may see what he suffers, and fear and become better.
    Those who are improved when they are punished by gods
    and men, are those whose sins are curable; and they are
    improved, as in this world so also in another, by pain and
    suffering; for there is no other way in which they can be
    delivered from their evil. But they who have been guilty of
    the worst crimes, and are incurable by reason of their crimes,
    are made examples; for, as they are incurable, the time has
    passed at which they can receive any benefit. They get no
    good themselves, but others get good when they behold them
    enduring for ever the most terrible and painful and fearful
    sufferings as the penalty of their sins—there they are, hanging
    up as examples, in the prison-house of the world below,
    a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men who come
    thither. And among them, as I confidently affirm, will be
    found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of him, and any other
    tyrant who is like him. Of these fearful examples, most, as
    I believe, are taken from the class of tyrants and kings and
    potentates and public men, for they are the authors of the
    greatest and most impious crimes, because they have the
    power. And Homer witnesses to the truth of this; for they
    are always kings and potentates whom he has described as
    suffering everlasting punishment in the world below: such
    were Tantalus and Sisyphus and Tityus. But no one ever
    described Thersites, or any private person who was a villain,
    as suffering everlasting punishment, or as incurable. For to
    commit the worst crimes, as I am inclined to think, was not
    in his power, and he was happier than those who had the
    power. No, Callicles, the very bad men come from the               526
    class of those who have power[51]. And yet in that very class
    there may arise good men, and worthy of all admiration they
    are, for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and
    to die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and
    few there are who attain to this. Such good and true men,
    however, there have been, and will be again, at Athens and
    in other states, who have fulfilled their trust righteously; and
    there is one who is quite famous all over Hellas, Aristeides,
    the son of Lysimachus. But, in general, great men are also
    bad, my friend.

[Sidenote: _The spiritual combat._]

[Sidenote: The impartiality of the judges in another world.]

    As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of
    the bad kind, knows nothing about him, neither who he is,
    nor who his parents are; he knows only that he has got hold
    of a villain; and seeing this, he stamps him as curable or incurable,
    and sends him away to Tartarus, whither he goes
    and receives his proper recompense. Or, again, he looks
    with admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived
    in holiness and truth; he may have been a private man or
    not; and I should say, Callicles, that he is most likely to
    have been a philosopher who has done his own work, and
    not troubled himself with the doings of other men in his lifetime;
    him Rhadamanthus sends to the Islands of the Blessed.
    Aeacus does the same; and they both have sceptres, and
    judge; but Minos alone has a golden sceptre and is seated
    looking on, as Odysseus in Homer[52] declares that he saw
    him:

      ‘Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.’

    Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things,
    and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and
    undefiled before the judge in that day. Renouncing the
    honours at which the world aims, I desire only to know the
    truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as
    well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all
    other men to do the same. And, in return for your exhortation
    of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat,
    which is the combat of life, and greater than every other
    earthly conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say,
    that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of
    trial and judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon
    you; you will go before the judge, the son of Aegina, and,
    when he has got you in his grip and is carrying you off, you       527
    will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would
    in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will
    shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon you any sort of
    insult.

[Sidenote: _The better path._]

    Perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife’s tale,
    which you will contemn. And there might be reason in your
    contemning such tales, if by searching we could find out anything
    better or truer: but now you see that you and Polus
    and Gorgias, who are the three wisest of the Greeks of our
    day, are not able to show that we ought to live any life which
    does not profit in another world as well as in this. And of
    all that has been said, nothing remains unshaken but the
    saying, that to do injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer
    injustice, and that the reality and not the appearance of virtue
    is to be followed above all things, as well in public as in
    private life; and that when any one has been wrong in anything,
    he is to be chastised, and that the next best thing to a
    man being just is that he should become just, and be chastised
    and punished; also that he should avoid all flattery of himself
    as well as of others, of the few or of the many: and
    rhetoric and any other art should be used by him, and all his
    actions should be done always, with a view to justice.

    Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be
    happy in life and after death, as the argument shows. And
    never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults
    you, if he has a mind; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do
    you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for
    you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if
    you are a really good and true man. When we have practised
    virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if
    that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else
    may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge
    then. In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves
    airs, for even on the most important subjects we are
    always changing our minds; so utterly stupid are we! Let
    us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed
    to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every
    virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in this
    exhort all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust
    and in which you exhort me to follow you; for that way, Callicles,
    is nothing worth.


FOOTNOTES

[29] Compare the following: ‘Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenize
and to praise knowing; for we have Hebraized too much and have overvalued
doing. But the habits and discipline received from Hebraism remain for
our race an eternal possession. And as humanity is constituted, one must
never assign them the second rank to-day without being ready to restore
them to the first to-morrow.’ Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.

[30] Omitting the words τὸν ῥητορικὸν δίκαιον εἶναι and δὲ in next clause.

[31] There is an untranslatable play on the name ‘Polus,’ which means ‘a
colt.’

[32] Cp. Rep. ix. 579, 580.

[33] Cp. Rep. ii. 359.

[34] Fragm. Incert. 151 (Böckh).

[35] Antiope, fragm. 20 (Dindorf).

[36] Cp. what is said of Gorgias by Callicles at p. 482.

[37] Cp. Rep. i. 348.

[38] Cp. Phaedr. 250 C.

[39] An untranslateable pun,—διὰ τὸ πιθανόν τε καὶ πιστικὸν ὠνόμασε πίθον.

[40] Or, ‘I am in profound earnest.’

[41] Cp. Rep. iv. 436.

[42] Cp. Rep. iii. 392 foll.

[43] Cp. Laws vi. 752 A.

[44] p. 485.

[45] Cp. Republic, 9. 578 ff.

[46] Cp. Rep. iii. 407 E.

[47] Cp. Symp. 216; 1 Alcib. 135.

[48] Reading with the majority of MSS. πράξοντες.

[49] Cp. Protag. 328.

[50] Il. xv. 187 foll.

[51] Cp. Rep. x. 615 E.

[52] Odyss. xi. 569.




APPENDIX I.


[Sidenote: APPENDIX I.]

It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings
of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which
is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues
of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the
Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty
concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to
him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato,
and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are
taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular
author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the
genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more
likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation,
than longer ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or
panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those,
again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later
age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a
motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which
seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in
some classical author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no
instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines
excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no
object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator,
the ‘literary hack’ of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant
originality or genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for
and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the
Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines,
Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are
all said to have composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very
likely to have occurred. Greek literature in the third century before
Christ was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of
regular publication, or printing, or binding, or even of distinct titles.
An unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works
bore the same character; and the name once appended easily obtained
authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the works and
opinions of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist,
the difference between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as
to ourselves. The Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are
but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away.
And we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness
of a particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.

[Sidenote: _Criteria of genuineness._]

These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of
genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato’s which Aristotle
attributes to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3)
great excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of
the Platonic writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be
distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various
degrees of importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning
Plato, under their own names, e. g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the
Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They
may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in
the case of really great works, e. g. the Phaedo, this is not credible;
those again which are quoted but not named, are still more defective
in their external credentials. There may be also a possibility that
Aristotle was mistaken, or may have confused the master and his scholars
in the case of a short writing; but this is inconceivable about a more
important work, e. g. the Laws, especially when we remember that he was
living at Athens, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during
the last twenty years of Plato’s life. Nor must we forget that in all his
numerous citations from the Platonic writings he never attributes any
passage found in the extant dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly,
we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and
the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials
may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length, (3)
excellence, and (4) accordance with the general spirit of his writings.
Indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient
Greek authors may be summed up under two heads only: (1) excellence; and
(2) uniformity of tradition—a kind of evidence, which though in many
cases sufficient, is of inferior value.

[Sidenote: _Inferior works not necessarily spurious._]

Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion
that nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been
ascribed to Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of
them, including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by
the ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute,
Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and
external evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there
still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either
that they are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth,
or possibly like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly
the compositions of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some
contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of
Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate
his master. Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we
should lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of
execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive
of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself,
or who writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who
exhibits the greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of
sentences, and in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared
with his later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who
can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship
extending over above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual
activity, as well as of political and literary transition? Certainly not
Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as
wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his
later writings from Aristotle.

[Sidenote: _The Lesser Hippias._]

The dialogues which have been translated in the first Appendix, and which
appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings,
are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First
Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are
cited by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, iv. 29, 5, the latter
in the Rhetoric, iii. 14, 11. Neither of them are expressly attributed to
Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to
passages in the extant dialogues. From the mention of ‘Hippias’ in the
singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with
a second dialogue bearing the same name. Moreover, the mere existence
of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of a First and Second Alcibiades,
does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon both of them. Though a very
clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias does not appear to contain
anything beyond the power of an imitator, who was also a careful student
of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent. The motive or leading
thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen. Mem. iv. 2, 21, and
there is no similar instance of a ‘motive’ which is taken from Xenophon
in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of
the genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic
spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and
treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will
detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning
upon Homer, in the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the doctrine that vice is
ignorance, traces of a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last
point we are doubtful, as in some of the other dialogues, whether the
author is asserting or overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely
following the argument ‘whither the wind blows.’ That no conclusion
is arrived at is also in accordance with the character of the earlier
dialogues. The resemblances or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras,
and Euthydemus, which have been observed in the Hippias, cannot with
certainty be adduced on either side of the argument. On the whole, more
may be said in favour of the genuineness of the Hippias than against it.

[Sidenote: _Menexenus: Alcibiades I._]

The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is
interesting as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators
praised ‘the Athenians among the Athenians,’ falsifying persons and
dates, and casting a veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history.
It exhibits an acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and
was, perhaps, intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper
place of the Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical
opening and the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier
dialogues; the oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the
speeches in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison
of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is
expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the
subject, in the same manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested
by the slight mention of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus
in the Republic, cp. 465 A; and the Theages by the mention of Theages
in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades seems to be
founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. i. 3, 1. A similar taste for
parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the Protagoras, in the
Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.

To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First
Alcibiades, which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the
greatest merit, and is somewhat longer than any other of them, though not
verified by the testimony of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance
with the Symposium in the description of the relations of Socrates and
Alcibiades. Like the Lesser Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be
compared to the earlier writings of Plato. The motive of the piece may,
perhaps, be found in that passage of the Symposium in which Alcibiades
describes himself as self-convicted by the words of Socrates (216 B, C).
For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher has spoken of this
dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At the same time,
the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more transparent than in
the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that Alcibiades was a
favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues bearing this
name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to contemporaries of
Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real external evidence
(for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot be regarded
as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of the highest marks either of
poetical or philosophical excellence; and (3) considering that we have
express testimony to the existence of contemporary writings bearing
the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on the
genuineness of the extant dialogue.

[Sidenote: _Various degrees of genuineness._]

Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an
absolute line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of
Plato. They fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may
have been degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there
are certainly degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The
traditions of the oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have
formed the basis of semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the
same mixed character which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates,
although the form of them is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike
the writings of Aristotle, seem never to have been confused with the
writings of his disciples: this was probably due to their definite form,
and to their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we have
offered in the Appendix to the criticism of the reader may be partly
spurious and partly genuine; they may be altogether spurious;—that is an
alternative which must be frankly admitted. Nor can we maintain of some
other dialogues, such as the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus,
that no considerable objection can be urged against them, though greatly
over-balanced by the weight (chiefly) of internal evidence in their
favour. Nor, on the other hand, can we exclude a bare possibility that
some dialogues which are usually rejected, such as the Greater Hippias
and the Cleitophon, may be genuine. The nature and object of these
semi-Platonic writings require more careful study and more comparison of
them with one another, and with forged writings in general, than they
have yet received, before we can finally decide on their character. We do
not consider them all as genuine until they can be proved to be spurious,
as is often maintained and still more often implied in this and similar
discussions; but should say of some of them, that their genuineness is
neither proven nor disproven until further evidence about them can be
adduced. And we are as confident that the Epistles are spurious, as that
the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine.

[Sidenote: _The doubtful works neither numerous nor important._]

On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under
the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients
themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly
doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and
growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth
debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato,
either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting
questions to the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the
general reader.




LESSER HIPPIAS.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Lesser Hippias._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

The Lesser Hippias may be compared with the earlier dialogues of Plato,
in which the contrast of Socrates and the Sophists is most strongly
exhibited. Hippias, like Protagoras and Gorgias, though civil, is vain
and boastful: he knows all things; he can make anything, including his
own clothes; he is a manufacturer of poems and declamations, and also
of seal-rings, shoes, strigils; his girdle, which he has woven himself,
is of a finer than Persian quality. He is a vainer, lighter nature
than the two great Sophists (cp. Protag. 314, 337), but of the same
character with them, and equally impatient of the short cut-and-thrust
method of Socrates, whom he endeavours to draw into a long oration. At
last, he gets tired of being defeated at every point by Socrates, and is
with difficulty induced to proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras,
Callicles, and others, to whom the same reluctance is ascribed).

[Sidenote: _Analysis 372-376._]

    Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side,    =Steph.= -363
    when he argues, citing passages of the Iliad in support of his view,
    that Homer intended Achilles to be the bravest, Odysseus the wisest
    of the Greeks. But he is easily overthrown by the superior
    dialectics of Socrates, who pretends to show that Achilles is not
    true to his word, and that no similar inconsistency is to be found 369
    in Odysseus. Hippias replies that Achilles unintentionally, but
    Odysseus intentionally, speaks falsehood. But is it better to do   370
    wrong intentionally or unintentionally? Socrates, relying on the
    analogy of the arts, maintains the former, Hippias the latter of the
    two alternatives.... All this is quite conceived in the spirit of -372
    Plato, who is very far from making Socrates always argue on the side
    of truth. The over-reasoning on Homer, which is of course satirical,
    is also in the spirit of Plato. Poetry turned logic is even more
    ridiculous than ‘rhetoric turned logic,’ and equally fallacious.
    There were reasoners in ancient as well as in modern times, who
    could never receive the natural impression of Homer, or of any
    other book which they read. The argument of Socrates, in which
    he picks out the apparent inconsistencies and discrepancies in the
    speech and actions of Achilles, and the final paradox, ‘that he
    who is true is also false,’ reminds us of the interpretation by
    Socrates of Simonides in the Protagoras, and of similar reasonings
    in the first book of the Republic. The discrepancies which
    Socrates discovers in the words of Achilles are perhaps as great
    as those discovered by some of the modern separatists of the      -376
    Homeric poems....

    At last, Socrates having caught Hippias in the toils of the
    voluntary and involuntary, is obliged to confess that he is wandering
    about in the same labyrinth; he makes the reflection on
    himself which others would make upon him (cp. Protagoras, sub
    fin.). He does not wonder that he should be in a difficulty, but
    he wonders at Hippias, and he becomes sensible of the gravity of
    the situation, when ordinary men like himself can no longer go to
    the wise and be taught by them.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

[Sidenote: _The Dialogue probably genuine._]

It may be remarked as bearing on the genuineness of this dialogue: (1)
that the manners of the speakers are less subtle and refined than in
the other dialogues of Plato; (2) that the sophistry of Socrates is
more palpable and unblushing, and also more unmeaning; (3) that many
turns of thought and style are found in it which appear also in the
other dialogues:—whether resemblances of this kind tell in favour of or
against the genuineness of an ancient writing, is an important question
which will have to be answered differently in different cases. For that
a writer may repeat himself is as true as that a forger may imitate;
and Plato elsewhere, either of set purpose or from forgetfulness, is
full of repetitions. The parallelisms of the Lesser Hippias, as already
remarked, are not of the kind which necessarily imply that the dialogue
is the work of a forger. The parallelisms of the Greater Hippias with
the other dialogues, and the allusion to the Lesser 285, 286 A, B
(where Hippias sketches the programme of his next lecture, and invites
Socrates to attend and bring any friends with him who may be competent
judges), are more than suspicious:—they are of a very poor sort, such
as we cannot suppose to have been due to Plato himself. The Greater
Hippias more resembles the Euthydemus than any other dialogue; but is
immeasurably inferior to it. The Lesser Hippias seems to have more merit
than the Greater, and to be more Platonic in spirit. The character of
Hippias is the same in both dialogues, but his vanity and boasting are
even more exaggerated in the Greater Hippias. His art of memory is
specially mentioned in both. He is an inferior type of the same species
as Hippodamus of Miletus (Arist. Pol. II. 8, § 1). Some passages in which
the Lesser Hippias may be advantageously compared with the undoubtedly
genuine dialogues of Plato are the following:—Less. Hipp. 369 B: cp.
Rep. vi. 487 (Socrates’ cunning in argument): || ib. D, E: cp. Laches
188 (Socrates’ feeling about arguments): || 372 B, C: cp. Rep. i. 338
B (Socrates not unthankful): || 373 B: cp. Rep. i. 340 D (Socrates
dishonest in argument).

The Lesser Hippias, though inferior to the other dialogues, may be
reasonably believed to have been written by Plato, on the ground (1)
of considerable excellence; (2) of uniform tradition beginning with
Aristotle and his school. That the dialogue falls below the standard of
Plato’s other works, or that he has attributed to Socrates an unmeaning
paradox (perhaps with the view of showing that he could beat the Sophists
at their own weapons; or that he could ‘make the worse appear the better
cause’; or merely as a dialectical experiment)—are not sufficient reasons
for doubting the genuineness of the work.


LESSER HIPPIAS.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

EUDICUS, SOCRATES, HIPPIAS.

[Sidenote: _Lesser Hippias._]

    _Eudicus._ Why are you silent, Socrates, after the        =Steph.= 363
    magnificent display which Hippias has been making? Why do
    you not either refute his words, if he seems to you to have
    been wrong in any point, or join with us in commending
    him? There is the more reason why you should speak,
    because we are now alone, and the audience is confined to
    those who may fairly claim to take part in a philosophical
    discussion.

[Sidenote: The Iliad of Homer a finer work than the Odyssey, because
Achilles, the hero of the poem, is greater than Odysseus.]

    _Socrates._ I should greatly like, Eudicus, to ask Hippias
    the meaning of what he was saying just now about Homer.
    I have heard your father, Apemantus, declare that the Iliad
    of Homer is a finer poem than the Odyssey in the same
    degree that Achilles was a better man than Odysseus;
    Odysseus, he would say, is the central figure of the one poem
    and Achilles of the other. Now, I should like to know, if
    Hippias has no objection to tell me, what he thinks about
    these two heroes, and which of them he maintains to be the
    better; he has already told us in the course of his exhibition
    many things of various kinds about Homer and divers other
    poets.

    _Eud._ I am sure that Hippias will be delighted to answer
    anything which you would like to ask; tell me, Hippias, if
    Socrates asks you a question, will you answer him?

    _Hippias._ Indeed, Eudicus, I should be strangely inconsistent
    if I refused to answer Socrates, when at each Olympic
    festival, as I went up from my house at Elis to the temple of
    Olympia, where all the Hellenes were assembled, I continually
    professed my willingness to perform any of the
    exhibitions which I had prepared, and to answer any
    questions which any one had to ask.

[Sidenote: _Achilles and Odysseus._]

    _Soc._ Truly, Hippias, you are to be congratulated, if at          364
    every Olympic festival you have such an encouraging opinion
    of your own wisdom when you go up to the temple. I doubt
    whether any muscular hero would be so fearless and confident
    in offering his body to the combat at Olympia, as you
    are in offering your mind.

    _Hip._ And with good reason, Socrates; for since the day
    when I first entered the lists at Olympia I have never found
    any man who was my superior in anything[53].

    _Soc._ What an ornament, Hippias, will the reputation of
    your wisdom be to the city of Elis and to your parents!
    But to return: what say you of Odysseus and Achilles?
    Which is the better of the two? and in what particular does
    either surpass the other? For when you were exhibiting
    and there was company in the room, though I could not
    follow you, I did not like to ask what you meant, because a
    crowd of people were present, and I was afraid that the
    question might interrupt your exhibition. But now that
    there are not so many of us, and my friend Eudicus bids me
    ask, I wish you would tell me what you were saying about
    these two heroes, so that I may clearly understand; how
    did you distinguish them?

[Sidenote: Achilles the bravest, Nestor the wisest, and Odysseus the
wiliest of the Greeks at Troy.]

    _Hip._ I shall have much pleasure, Socrates, in explaining
    to you more clearly than I could in public my views about
    these and also about other heroes. I say that Homer
    intended Achilles to be the bravest of the men who went to
    Troy, Nestor the wisest, and Odysseus the wiliest.

    _Soc._ O rare Hippias, will you be so good as not to
    laugh, if I find a difficulty in following you, and repeat my
    questions several times over? Please to answer me kindly
    and gently.

    _Hip._ I should be greatly ashamed of myself, Socrates,
    if I, who teach others and take money of them, could not,
    when I was asked by you, answer in a civil and agreeable
    manner.

[Sidenote: _The courtesy of Hippias._]

    _Soc._ Thank you: the fact is, that I seemed to understand
    what you meant when you said that the poet intended
    Achilles to be the bravest of men, and also that he intended
    Nestor to be the wisest; but when you said that he meant
    Odysseus to be the wiliest, I must confess that I could not
    understand what you were saying. Will you tell me, and
    then I shall perhaps understand you better; has not Homer
    made Achilles wily?

    _Hip._ Certainly not, Socrates; he is the most straight-forward
    of mankind, and when Homer introduces them
    talking with one another in the passage called the Prayers,
    Achilles is supposed by the poet to say to Odysseus:—

      ‘Son of Laertes, sprung from heaven, crafty Odysseus, I will     365
      speak out plainly the word which I intend to carry out in
      act, and which will, I believe, be accomplished. For I hate
      him like the gates of death who thinks one thing and says
      another. But I will speak that which shall be accomplished.’

    Now, in these verses he clearly indicates the character of
    the two men; he shows Achilles to be true and simple, and
    Odysseus to be wily and false; for he supposes Achilles to
    be addressing Odysseus in these lines.

[Sidenote: Wily means false: And the false have the power of deceiving
mankind; they are prudent and knowing and wise, and have the ability to
speak falsely.]

    _Soc._ Now, Hippias, I think that I understand your
    meaning; when you say that Odysseus is wily, you clearly
    mean that he is false?

    _Hip._ Exactly so, Socrates; it is the character of Odysseus,
    as he is represented by Homer in many passages both of
    the Iliad and Odyssey.

    _Soc._ And Homer must be presumed to have meant that
    the true man is not the same as the false?

    _Hip._ Of course, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And is that your own opinion, Hippias?

    _Hip._ Certainly; how can I have any other?

    _Soc._ Well, then, as there is no possibility of asking
    Homer what he meant in these verses of his, let us leave
    him; but as you show a willingness to take up his cause,
    and your opinion agrees with what you declare to be his,
    will you answer on behalf of yourself and him?

    _Hip._ I will; ask shortly anything which you like.

    _Soc._ Do you say that the false, like the sick, have no
    power to do things, or that they have the power to do things?

[Sidenote: _True and False._]

    _Hip._ I should say that they have power to do many things,
    and in particular to deceive mankind.

    _Soc._ Then, according to you, they are both powerful and
    wily, are they not?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And are they wily, and do they deceive by reason of
    their simplicity and folly, or by reason of their cunning and
    a certain sort of prudence?

    _Hip._ By reason of their cunning and prudence, most
    certainly.

    _Soc._ Then they are prudent, I suppose?

    _Hip._ So they are—very.

    _Soc._ And if they are prudent, do they know or do they not
    know what they do?

    _Hip._ Of course, they know very well; and that is why
    they do mischief to others.

    _Soc._ And having this knowledge, are they ignorant, or are
    they wise?

    _Hip._ Wise, certainly; at least, in so far as they can
    deceive.

    _Soc._ Stop, and let us recall to mind what you are saying;        366
    are you not saying that the false are powerful and prudent
    and knowing and wise in those things about which they are
    false?

    _Hip._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And the true differ from the false—the true and the
    false are the very opposite of each other?

    _Hip._ That is my view.

    _Soc._ Then, according to your view, it would seem that
    the false are to be ranked in the class of the powerful and
    wise?

    _Hip._ Assuredly.

    _Soc._ And when you say that the false are powerful and
    wise in so far as they are false, do you mean that they have
    or have not the power of uttering their falsehoods if they
    like?

    _Hip._ I mean to say that they have the power.

    _Soc._ In a word, then, the false are they who are wise and
    have the power to speak falsely?

    _Hip._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _True and False._]

    _Soc._ Then a man who has not the power of speaking
    falsely and is ignorant cannot be false?

    _Hip._ You are right.

    _Soc._ And every man has power who does that which he
    wishes at the time when he wishes. I am not speaking of
    any special case in which he is prevented by disease or
    something of that sort, but I am speaking generally, as I
    might say of you, that you are able to write my name when
    you like. Would you not call a man able who could do that?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And tell me, Hippias, are you not a skilful calculator
    and arithmetician?

    _Hip._ Yes, Socrates, assuredly I am.

    _Soc._ And if some one were to ask you what is the sum of
    3 multiplied by 700, you would tell him the true answer in
    a moment, if you pleased?

    _Hip._ Certainly I should.

    _Soc._ Is not that because you are the wisest and ablest of
    men in these matters?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And being as you are the wisest and ablest of men
    in these matters of calculation, are you not also the best?

    _Hip._ To be sure, Socrates, I am the best.

    _Soc._ And therefore you would be the most able to tell the
    truth about these matters, would you not?

    _Hip._ Yes, I should.

[Sidenote: They must truly know that about which they falsely speak or
they will fall into the error of speaking the truth by mistake.]

    _Soc._ And could you speak falsehoods about them equally
    well? I must beg, Hippias, that you will answer me with
    the same frankness and magnanimity which has hitherto
    characterized you. If a person were to ask you what is the
    sum of 3 multiplied by 700, would not you be the best and
    most consistent teller of a falsehood, having always the
    power of speaking falsely as you have of speaking truly,
    about these same matters, if you wanted to tell a falsehood,
    and not to answer truly? Would the ignorant man be                 367
    better able to tell a falsehood in matters of calculation than
    you would be, if you chose? Might he not sometimes
    stumble upon the truth, when he wanted to tell a lie, because
    he did not know, whereas you who are the wise man, if you
    wanted to tell a lie would always and consistently lie?

[Sidenote: _True is false and false is true._]

    _Hip._ Yes; there you are quite right.

    _Soc._ Does the false man tell lies about other things, but
    not about number, or when he is making a calculation?

    _Hip._ To be sure; he would tell as many lies about number
    as about other things.

    _Soc._ Then may we further assume, Hippias, that there are
    men who are false about calculation and number?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Who can they be? For you have already admitted
    that he who is false must have the ability to be false: you
    said, as you will remember, that he who is unable to be false
    will not be false?

    _Hip._ Yes, I remember; it was so said.

    _Soc._ And were you not yourself just now shown to be best
    able to speak falsely about calculation?

    _Hip._ Yes; that was another thing which was said.

    _Soc._ And are you not likewise said to speak truly about
    calculation?

    _Hip._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then the same person is able to speak both falsely
    and truly about calculation? And that person is he who is
    good at calculation—the arithmetician?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Who, then, Hippias, is discovered to be false at calculation?
    Is he not the good man? For the good man is
    the able man, and he is the true man.

    _Hip._ That is evident.

[Sidenote: Therefore the same man must be true if he is to be truly
false, in astronomy, in geometry, and in all the sciences.]

    _Soc._ Do you not see, then, that the same man is false and
    also true about the same matters? And the true man is
    not a whit better than the false; for indeed he is the same
    with him and not the very opposite, as you were just now
    imagining.

    _Hip._ Not in that instance, clearly.

    _Soc._ Shall we examine other instances?

    _Hip._ Certainly, if you are disposed.

    _Soc._ Are you not also skilled in geometry?

    _Hip._ I am.

    _Soc._ Well, and does not the same hold in that science
    also? Is not the same person best able to speak falsely or
    to sneak truly about diagrams; and he is—the geometrician?

[Sidenote: _The admirable versatility of Hippias._]

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ He and no one else is good at it?

    _Hip._ Yes, he and no one else.

    _Soc._ Then the good and wise geometer has this double
    power in the highest degree; and if there be a man who is
    false about diagrams the good man will be he, for he is able
    to be false; whereas the bad is unable, and for this reason is
    not false, as has been admitted.

    _Hip._ True.

    _Soc._ Once more—let us examine a third case; that of the
    astronomer, in whose art, again, you, Hippias, profess to be
    a still greater proficient than in the preceding—do you not?

    _Hip._ Yes, I am.                                                  368

    _Soc._ And does not the same hold of astronomy?

    _Hip._ True, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And in astronomy, too, if any man be able to speak
    falsely he will be the good astronomer, but he who is not
    able will not speak falsely, for he has no knowledge.

    _Hip._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ Then in astronomy also, the same man will be true
    and false?

    _Hip._ It would seem so.

[Sidenote: _Socrates is always weaving the meshes of an argument._]

[Sidenote: Socrates compliments Hippias on his skill in engraving gems,
in making clothes and shoes and the finest fabrics, in writing poetry
and prose of the most varied kind, and on the art of memory which he has
invented.]

    _Soc._ And now, Hippias, consider the question at large
    about all the sciences, and see whether the same principle
    does not always hold. I know that in most arts you are the
    wisest of men, as I have heard you boasting in the agora at
    the tables of the money-changers, when you were setting
    forth the great and enviable stores of your wisdom; and you
    said that upon one occasion, when you went to the Olympic
    games, all that you had on your person was made by yourself.
    You began with your ring, which was of your own
    workmanship, and you said that you could engrave rings;
    and you had another seal which was also of your own workmanship,
    and a strigil and an oil flask, which you had made
    yourself; you said also that you had made the shoes which
    you had on your feet, and the cloak and the short tunic; but
    what appeared to us all most extraordinary and a proof of
    singular art, was the girdle of your tunic, which, you said,
    was as fine as the most costly Persian fabric, and of your
    own weaving; moreover, you told us that you had brought
    with you poems, epic, tragic, and dithyrambic, as well as
    prose writings of the most various kinds; and you said that
    your skill was also pre-eminent in the arts which I was just
    now mentioning, and in the true principles of rhythm and
    harmony and of orthography; and if I remember rightly,
    there were a great many other accomplishments in which you
    excelled. I have forgotten to mention your art of memory,
    which you regard as your special glory, and I dare say that I
    have forgotten many other things; but, as I was saying, only
    look to your own arts—and there are plenty of them—and to
    those of others; and tell me, having regard to the admissions
    which you and I have made, whether you discover any
    department of art or any description of wisdom or cunning,
    whichever name you use, in which the true and false are
    different and not the same: tell me, if you can, of any. But       369
    you cannot.

    _Hip._ Not without consideration, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Nor will consideration help you, Hippias, as I
    believe; but then if I am right, remember what the consequence
    will be.

[Sidenote: Yet he who knows and remembers all things can call to mind no
instance in which the false is not also true, although he was saying just
now that Achilles is true and Odysseus false.]

    _Hip._ I do not know what you mean, Socrates.

    _Soc._ I suppose that you are not using your art of memory,
    doubtless because you think that such an accomplishment is
    not needed on the present occasion. I will therefore remind
    you of what you were saying: were you not saying that
    Achilles was a true man, and Odysseus false and wily?

    _Hip._ I was.

    _Soc._ And now do you perceive that the same person has
    turned out to be false as well as true? If Odysseus is false
    he is also true, and if Achilles is true he is also false, and so
    the two men are not opposed to one another, but they are
    alike.

[Sidenote: _The perverted ingenuity of Socrates._]

    _Hip._ O Socrates, you are always weaving the meshes of an
    argument, selecting the most difficult point, and fastening
    upon details instead of grappling with the matter in hand as a
    whole. Come now, and I will demonstrate to you, if you will
    allow me, by many satisfactory proofs, that Homer has made
    Achilles a better man than Odysseus, and a truthful man too;
    and that he has made the other crafty, and a teller of many
    untruths, and inferior to Achilles. And then, if you please,
    you shall make a speech on the other side, in order to prove
    that Odysseus is the better man; and this may be compared
    to mine, and then the company will know which of us is the
    better speaker.

[Sidenote: Socrates pays Hippias the compliment which he always pays to
a wise man, of attending to him. He proves by example that Achilles, the
true man, is always uttering falsehoods, Odysseus, the false man, never.]

    _Soc._ O Hippias, I do not doubt that you are wiser than I
    am. But I have a way, when anybody else says anything, of
    giving close attention to him, especially if the speaker appears
    to me to be a wise man. Having a desire to understand, I
    question him, and I examine and analyse and put together
    what he says, in order that I may understand; but if the
    speaker appears to me to be a poor hand, I do not interrogate
    him, or trouble myself about him, and you may know by this
    who they are whom I deem to be wise men, for you will see
    that when I am talking with a wise man, I am very attentive
    to what he says; and I ask questions of him, in order that I
    may learn, and be improved by him. And I could not help
    remarking while you were speaking, that when you recited
    the verses in which Achilles, as you argued, attacks Odysseus
    as a deceiver, that you must be strangely mistaken, because
    Odysseus, the man of wiles, is never found to tell a lie; but
    Achilles is found to be wily on your own showing. At any           370
    rate he speaks falsely; for first he utters these words, which
    you just now repeated,—

      ‘He is hateful to me even as the gates of death who
      thinks one thing and says another:’—

    And then he says, a little while afterwards, he will not be
    persuaded by Odysseus and Agamemnon, neither will he
    remain at Troy; but, says he,—

      ‘To-morrow, when I have offered sacrifices to Zeus and
      all the Gods, having loaded my ships well, I will drag
      them down into the deep; and then you shall see, if you
      have a mind, and if such things are a care to you, early
      in the morning my ships sailing over the fishy Hellespont,
      and my men eagerly plying the oar; and, if the illustrious
      shaker of the earth gives me a good voyage, on the third
      day I shall reach the fertile Phthia.’

    And before that, when he was reviling Agamemnon, he
    said,—

      ‘And now to Phthia I will go, since to return home in the
      beaked ships is far better, nor am I inclined to stay here
      in dishonour and amass wealth and riches for you.’

    But although on that occasion, in the presence of the whole
    army, he spoke after this fashion, and on the other occasion
    to his companions, he appears never to have made any preparation
    or attempt to draw down the ships, as if he had the
    least intention of sailing home; so nobly regardless was he
    of the truth. Now I, Hippias, originally asked you the
    question, because I was in doubt as to which of the two
    heroes was intended by the poet to be the best, and because
    I thought that both of them were the best, and that it would
    be difficult to decide which was the better of them, not only
    in respect of truth and falsehood, but of virtue generally, for
    even in this matter of speaking the truth they are much upon
    a par.

[Sidenote: Aye, but the falsehood of Achilles is accidental; that of
Odysseus intentional.]

[Sidenote: _To err intentionally is better than_]

    _Hip._ There you are wrong, Socrates; for in so far as
    Achilles speaks falsely, the falsehood is obviously unintentional.
    He is compelled against his will to remain and
    rescue the army in their misfortune. But when Odysseus
    speaks falsely he is voluntarily and intentionally false.

    _Soc._ You, sweet Hippias, like Odysseus, are a deceiver
    yourself.

    _Hip._ Certainly not, Socrates; what makes you say so?             371

    _Soc._ Because you say that Achilles does not speak falsely
    from design, when he is not only a deceiver, but besides
    being a braggart, in Homer’s description of him is so cunning,
    and so far superior to Odysseus in lying and pretending,
    that he dares to contradict himself, and Odysseus does not
    find him out; at any rate he does not appear to say anything
    to him which would imply that he perceived his falsehood.

    _Hip._ What do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ Did you not observe that afterwards, when he is
    speaking to Odysseus, he says that he will sail away with the
    early dawn; but to Ajax he tells quite a different story?

    _Hip._ Where is that?

    _Soc._ Where he says,—

      ‘I will not think about bloody war until the son of warlike
      Priam, illustrious Hector, comes to the tents and ships of
      the Myrmidons, slaughtering the Argives, and burning the
      ships with fire; and about my tent and dark ship, I suspect
      that Hector, although eager for the battle, will nevertheless
      stay his hand.’

    Now, do you really think, Hippias, that the son of Thetis,
    who had been the pupil of the sage Cheiron, had such a bad
    memory, or would have carried the art of lying to such an extent
    (when he had been assailing liars in the most violent
    terms only the instant before) as to say to Odysseus that he
    would sail away, and to Ajax that he would remain, and that he
    was not rather practising upon the simplicity of Odysseus,
    whom he regarded as an ancient, and thinking that he would
    get the better of him by his own cunning and falsehood?

[Sidenote: _to err voluntarily._]

    _Hip._ No, I do not agree with you, Socrates; but I believe
    that Achilles is induced to say one thing to Ajax, and another
    to Odysseus in the innocence of his heart, whereas Odysseus,
    whether he speaks falsely or truly, speaks always with a
    purpose.

[Sidenote: That proves Odysseus to be better than Achilles.]

    _Soc._ Then Odysseus would appear after all to be better
    than Achilles?

    _Hip._ Certainly not, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Why, were not the voluntary liars only just now
    shown to be better than the involuntary?

    _Hip._ And how, Socrates, can those who intentionally err,
    and voluntarily and designedly commit iniquities, be better
    than those who err and do wrong involuntarily? Surely              372
    there is a great excuse to be made for a man telling a falsehood,
    or doing an injury or any sort of harm to another in
    ignorance. And the laws are obviously far more severe on
    those who lie or do evil, voluntarily, than on those who do
    evil involuntarily.

[Sidenote: _Hippias grows impatient._]

[Sidenote: Socrates is convinced of his own ignorance because he never
agrees with wise men. But he is willing to learn, and he desires to be
cured by Hippias of his ignorance in as few words as possible.]

    _Soc._ You see, Hippias, as I have already told you, how
    pertinacious I am in asking questions of wise men. And I
    think that this is the only good point about me, for I am full
    of defects, and always getting wrong in some way or other.
    My deficiency is proved to me by the fact that when I meet
    one of you who are famous for wisdom, and to whose wisdom
    all the Hellenes are witnesses, I am found out to know
    nothing. For speaking generally, I hardly ever have the
    same opinion about anything which you have, and what proof
    of ignorance can be greater than to differ from wise men?
    But I have one singular good quality, which is my salvation;
    I am not ashamed to learn, and I ask and enquire, and
    am very grateful to those who answer me, and never fail to
    give them my grateful thanks; and when I learn a thing I
    never deny my teacher, or pretend that the lesson is a discovery
    of my own; but I praise his wisdom, and proclaim
    what I have learned from him. And now I cannot agree in
    what you are saying, but I strongly disagree. Well, I know
    that this is my own fault, and is a defect in my character,
    but I will not pretend to be more than I am; and my opinion,
    Hippias, is the very contrary of what you are saying. For I
    maintain that those who hurt or injure mankind, and speak
    falsely and deceive, and err voluntarily, are better far than
    those who do wrong involuntarily. Sometimes, however, I
    am of the opposite opinion; for I am all abroad in my
    ideas about this matter, a condition obviously occasioned by
    ignorance. And just now I happen to be in a crisis of my
    disorder at which those who err voluntarily appear to me
    better than those who err involuntarily. My present state of
    mind is due to our previous argument, which inclines me to
    believe that in general those who do wrong involuntarily are
    worse than those who do wrong voluntarily, and therefore I
    hope that you will be good to me, and not refuse to heal me;
    for you will do me a much greater benefit if you cure my soul
    of ignorance, than you would if you were to cure my body of
    disease. I must, however, tell you beforehand, that if you         373
    make a long oration to me you will not cure me, for I shall
    not be able to follow you; but if you will answer me, as you
    did just now, you will do me a great deal of good, and I do
    not think that you will be any the worse yourself. And I
    have some claim upon you also, O son of Apemantus, for
    you incited me to converse with Hippias; and now, if Hippias
    will not answer me, you must entreat him on my behalf.

    _Eud._ But I do not think, Socrates, that Hippias will
    require any entreaty of mine; for he has already said that he
    will refuse to answer no man.—Did you not say so, Hippias?

    _Hip._ Yes, I did; but then, Eudicus, Socrates is always
    troublesome in an argument, and appears to be dishonest[54].

    _Soc._ Excellent Hippias, I do not do so intentionally (if I
    did, it would show me to be a wise man and a master of wiles,
    as you would argue), but unintentionally, and therefore you
    must pardon me; for, as you say, he who is unintentionally
    dishonest should be pardoned.

[Sidenote: _The analogy of bodily exercises._]

    _Eud._ Yes, Hippias, do as he says; and for our sake, and
    also that you may not belie your profession, answer whatever
    Socrates asks you.

    _Hip._ I will answer, as you request me; and do you ask
    whatever you like.

[Sidenote: Socrates by citation of instances not ‘in pari materia’
proves that it is better to do evil intentionally: e. g. in running, in
wrestling, in the action of the body, in singing, in the use of the feet,
eyes, ears, of instruments.]

    _Soc._ I am very desirous, Hippias, of examining this question,
    as to which are the better—those who err voluntarily or
    involuntarily? And if you will answer me, I think that I can
    put you in the way of approaching the subject: You would
    admit, would you not, that there are good runners?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And there are bad runners?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he who runs well is a good runner, and he who
    runs ill is a bad runner?

    _Hip._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And he who runs slowly runs ill, and he who runs
    quickly runs well?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then in a race, and in running, swiftness is a good,
    and slowness is an evil quality?

    _Hip._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ Which of the two then is a better runner? He who
    runs slowly voluntarily, or he who runs slowly involuntarily?

    _Hip._ He who runs slowly voluntarily.

    _Soc._ And is not running a species of doing?

    _Hip._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And if a species of doing, a species of action?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then he who runs badly does a bad and dishonourable
    action in a race?

    _Hip._ Yes; a bad action, certainly.

    _Soc._ And he who runs slowly runs badly?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then the good runner does this bad and disgraceful
    action voluntarily, and the bad involuntarily?

    _Hip._ That is to be inferred.

    _Soc._ Then he who involuntarily does evil actions, is worse
    in a race than he who does them voluntarily?

    _Hip._ Yes, in a race.

[Sidenote: _The analogy of the human faculties,_]

    _Soc._ Well; but at a wrestling match—which is the better          374
    wrestler, he who falls voluntarily or involuntarily?

    _Hip._ He who falls voluntarily, doubtless.

    _Soc._ And is it worse or more dishonourable at a wrestling
    match, to fall, or to throw another?

    _Hip._ To fall.

    _Soc._ Then, at a wrestling match, he who voluntarily does
    base and dishonourable actions is a better wrestler than he
    who does them involuntarily?

    _Hip._ That appears to be the truth.

    _Soc._ And what would you say of any other bodily exercise—is
    not he who is better made able to do both that which is
    strong and that which is weak—that which is fair and that
    which is foul?—so that when he does bad actions with the
    body, he who is better made does them voluntarily, and he
    who is worse made does them involuntarily.

    _Hip._ Yes, that appears to be true about strength.

    _Soc._ And what do you say about grace, Hippias? Is not
    he who is better made able to assume evil and disgraceful
    figures and postures voluntarily, as he who is worse made
    assumes them involuntarily?

    _Hip._ True.

    _Soc._ Then voluntary ungracefulness comes from excellence
    of the bodily frame, and involuntary from the defect of the
    bodily frame?

    _Hip._ True.

    _Soc._ And what would you say of an unmusical voice;
    would you prefer the voice which is voluntarily or involuntarily
    out of tune?

    _Hip._ That which is voluntarily out of tune.

    _Soc._ The involuntary is the worse of the two?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And would you choose to possess goods or evils?

    _Hip._ Goods.

    _Soc._ And would you rather have feet which are voluntarily
    or involuntarily lame?

    _Hip._ Feet which are voluntarily lame.

    _Soc._ But is not lameness a defect or deformity?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And is not blinking a defect in the eyes?

[Sidenote: _of implements, arts, etc., confirms the view of Socrates._]

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And would you rather always have eyes with which
    you might voluntarily blink and not see, or with which you
    might involuntarily blink?

    _Hip._ I would rather have eyes which voluntarily blink.

    _Soc._ Then in your own case you deem that which voluntarily
    acts ill, better than that which involuntarily acts
    ill?

    _Hip._ Yes, certainly, in cases such as you mention.

    _Soc._ And does not the same hold of ears, nostrils,
    mouth, and of all the senses—those which involuntarily
    act ill are not to be desired, as being defective; and those
    which voluntarily act ill are to be desired as being good?

    _Hip._ I agree.

    _Soc._ And what would you say of instruments;—which are
    the better sort of instruments to have to do with?—those
    with which a man acts ill voluntarily or involuntarily? For
    example, had a man better have a rudder with which he will
    steer ill, voluntarily or involuntarily?

    _Hip._ He had better have a rudder with which he will
    steer ill voluntarily.

    _Soc._ And does not the same hold of the bow and the lyre,
    the flute and all other things?

    _Hip._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And would you rather have a horse of such a temper
    that you may ride him ill voluntarily or involuntarily?

[Sidenote: It is true also of animals, in the practice of archery, of
medicine, in the characters of slaves.]

    _Hip._ I would rather have a horse which I could ride ill          375
    voluntarily.

    _Soc._ That would be the better horse?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then with a horse of better temper, vicious actions
    would be produced voluntarily; and with a horse of bad
    temper involuntarily?

    _Hip._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And that would be true of a dog, or of any other
    animal?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And is it better to possess the mind of an archer who
    voluntarily or involuntarily misses the mark?

    _Hip._ Of him who voluntarily misses.

[Sidenote: _Hippias cannot agree with Socrates,_]

    _Soc._ This would be the better mind for the purposes of
    archery?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then the mind which involuntarily errs is worse than
    the mind which errs voluntarily?

    _Hip._ Yes, certainly, in the use of the bow.

    _Soc._ And what would you say of the art of medicine;—has
    not the mind which voluntarily works harm to the body,
    more of the healing art?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then in the art of medicine the voluntary is better
    than the involuntary?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Well, and in lute-playing and in flute-playing, and in
    all arts and sciences, is not that mind the better which
    voluntarily does what is evil and dishonourable, and goes
    wrong, and is not the worse that which does so involuntarily?

    _Hip._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ And what would you say of the characters of slaves?
    Should we not prefer to have those who voluntarily do
    wrong and make mistakes, and are they not better in their
    mistakes than those who commit them involuntarily?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And should we not desire to have our own minds in
    the best state possible?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And will our minds be better if they do wrong and
    make mistakes voluntarily or involuntarily?

[Sidenote: Hippias revolts at the conclusion.]

    _Hip._ O, Socrates, it would be a monstrous thing to say
    that those who do wrong voluntarily are better than those
    who do wrong involuntarily!

    _Soc._ And yet that appears to be the only inference.

    _Hip._ I do not think so.

[Sidenote: Socrates recapitulates the argument.]

    _Soc._ But I imagined, Hippias, that you did. Please to
    answer once more: Is not justice a power, or knowledge, or
    both? Must not justice, at all events, be one of these?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But if justice is a power of the soul, then the soul
    which has the greater power is also the more just; for that
    which has the greater power, my good friend, has been
    proved by us to be the better.

[Sidenote: _nor Socrates with himself._]

    _Hip._ Yes, that has been proved.

    _Soc._ And if justice is knowledge, then the wiser will be
    the juster soul, and the more ignorant the more unjust?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But if justice be power as well as knowledge—then
    will not the soul which has both knowledge and power be
    the more just, and that which is the more ignorant be the
    more unjust? Must it not be so?

    _Hip._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And is not the soul which has the greater power and
    wisdom also better, and better able to do both good and evil
    in every action?

    _Hip._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ The soul, then, which acts ill, acts voluntarily by         376
    power and art—and these either one or both of them are
    elements of justice?

    _Hip._ That seems to be true.

    _Soc._ And to do injustice is to do ill, and not to do injustice
    is to do well?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And will not the better and abler soul when it
    does wrong, do wrong voluntarily, and the bad soul involuntarily?

    _Hip._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And the good man is he who has the good soul, and
    the bad man is he who has the bad?

    _Hip._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then the good man will voluntarily do wrong, and
    the bad man involuntarily, if the good man is he who has the
    good soul?

    _Hip._ Which he certainly has.

[Sidenote: Hippias, who has admitted the previous deductions, rebels at
the final one. Socrates is himself dissatisfied. What remains if Socrates
and a wiser than Socrates are alike in doubt?]

    _Soc._ Then, Hippias, he who voluntarily does wrong and
    disgraceful things, if there be such a man, will be the good
    man?

    _Hip._ There I cannot agree with you.

[Sidenote: _Socrates thinks the matter serious._]

    _Soc._ Nor can I agree with myself, Hippias; and yet that
    seems to be the conclusion which, as far as we can see at
    present, must follow from our argument. As I was saying
    before, I am all abroad, and being in perplexity am always
    changing my opinion. Now, that I or any ordinary man
    should wander in perplexity is not surprising; but if you
    wise men also wander, and we cannot come to you and rest
    from our wandering, the matter begins to be serious both to
    us and to you.


FOOTNOTES

[53] Cp. Gorgias 448 A.

[54] Cp. Gorgias 499, 505; Rep. vi. 487.




ALCIBIADES I.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Alcibiades I._]

The First Alcibiades is a conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades.
Socrates is represented in the character which he attributes to himself
in the Apology of a know-nothing who detects the conceit of knowledge in
others. The two have met already in the Protagoras and in the Symposium;
in the latter dialogue, as in this, the relation between them is that
of a lover and his beloved. But the narrative of their loves is told
differently in different places; for in the Symposium Alcibiades is
depicted as the impassioned but rejected lover; here, as coldly receiving
the advances of Socrates, who, for the best of purposes, lies in wait for
the aspiring and ambitious youth.

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

    Alcibiades, who is described as a very young man, is      =Steph.= 103
    about to enter on public life, having an inordinate opinion of
    himself, and an extravagant ambition. Socrates, ‘who knows what is
    in man,’ astonishes him by a revelation of his designs. But has   -106
    he the knowledge which is necessary for carrying them out? He is
    going to persuade the Athenians—about what? Not about any          107
    particular art, but about politics—when to fight and when to make
    peace. Now, men should fight and make peace on just grounds,
    and therefore the question of justice and injustice must enter into
    peace and war; and he who advises the Athenians must know         -109
    the difference between them. Does Alcibiades know? If he
    does, he must either have been taught by some master, or he
    must have discovered the nature of them himself. If he has had
    a master, Socrates would like to be informed who he is, that he
    may go and learn of him also. Alcibiades admits that he has        110
    never learned. Then has he enquired for himself? He may
    have, if he was ever aware of a time when he was ignorant. But
    he never was ignorant; for when he played with other boys at dice,
    he charged them with cheating, and this implied a knowledge of
    just and unjust. According to his own explanation, he had learned
    of the multitude. Why, he asks, should he not learn of them the
    nature of justice, as he has learned the Greek language of them?
    To this Socrates answers, that they can teach Greek, but they      111
    cannot teach justice; for they are agreed about the one, but they
    are not agreed about the other: and therefore Alcibiades, who      112
    has admitted that if he knows he must either have learned from
    a master or have discovered for himself the nature of justice, is
    convicted out of his own mouth.                                    113

[Sidenote: _Analysis 110-126._]

    Alcibiades rejoins, that the Athenians debate not about what is
    just, but about what is expedient; and he asserts that the two
    principles of justice and expediency are opposed. Socrates, by a   114
    series of questions, compels him to admit that the just and the
    expedient coincide. Alcibiades is thus reduced to the humiliating -117
    conclusion that he knows nothing of politics, even if, as he says,
    they are concerned with the expedient.

    However, he is no worse than other Athenian statesmen; and
    he will not need training, for others are as ignorant as he is.
    He is reminded that he has to contend, not only with his own
    countrymen, but with their enemies—with the Spartan kings and     -120
    with the great king of Persia; and he can only attain this higher
    aim of ambition by the assistance of Socrates. Not that Socrates
    himself professes to have attained the truth, but the questions
    which he asks bring others to a knowledge of themselves, and
    this is the first step in the practice of virtue.

    The dialogue continues:—We wish to become as good as              -124
    possible. But to be good in what? Alcibiades replies—‘Good in
    transacting business.’ But what business? ‘The business of the     125
    most intelligent men at Athens.’ The cobbler is intelligent in
    shoemaking, and is therefore good in that; he is not intelligent,
    and therefore not good, in weaving. Is he good in the sense
    which Alcibiades means, who is also bad? ‘I mean,’ replies
    Alcibiades, ‘the man who is able to command in the city.’ But to
    command what—horses or men? and if men, under what circumstances?
    ‘I mean to say, that he is able to command men living
    in social and political relations.’ And what is their aim? ‘The
    better preservation of the city.’ But when is a city better?       126
    ‘When there is unanimity, such as exists between husband and
    wife.’ Then, when husbands and wives perform their own             127
    special duties, there can be no unanimity between them; nor can
    a city be well ordered when each citizen does his own work only.
    Alcibiades, having stated first that goodness consists in the
    unanimity of the citizens, and then in each of them doing his
    own separate work, is brought to the required point of
    self-contradiction, leading him to confess his own ignorance.      128

[Sidenote: _Analysis 127-135._]

    But he is not too old to learn, and may still arrive at the truth,
    if he is willing to be cross-examined by Socrates. He must know    129
    himself; that is to say, not his body, or the things of the body,
    but his mind, or truer self. The physician knows the body, and
    the tradesman knows his own business, but they do not necessarily
    know themselves. Self-knowledge can be obtained only
    by looking into the mind and virtue of the soul, which is the     -132
    diviner part of a man, as we see our own image in another’s eye.
    And if we do not know ourselves, we cannot know what belongs
    to ourselves or belongs to others, and are unfit to take a part in
    political affairs. Both for the sake of the individual and of the -134
    state, we ought to aim at justice and temperance, not at wealth or
    power. The evil and unjust should have no power,—they should
    be the slaves of better men than themselves. None but the          135
    virtuous are deserving of freedom.

    And are you, Alcibiades, a freeman? ‘I feel that I am not; but
    I hope, Socrates, that by your aid I may become free, and from
    this day forward I will never leave you.’

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

The Alcibiades has several points of resemblance to the undoubted
dialogues of Plato. The process of interrogation is of the same kind
with that which Socrates practises upon the youthful Cleinias in the
Euthydemus; and he characteristically attributes to Alcibiades the
answers which he has elicited from him. The definition of good is
narrowed by successive questions, and virtue is shown to be identical
with knowledge. Here, as elsewhere, Socrates awakens the consciousness
not of sin but of ignorance. Self-humiliation is the first step to
knowledge, even of the commonest things. No man knows how ignorant he
is, and no man can arrive at virtue and wisdom who has not once in his
life, at least, been convicted of error. The process by which the soul is
elevated is not unlike that which religious writers describe under the
name of ‘conversion,’ if we substitute the sense of ignorance for the
consciousness of sin.

[Sidenote: _Genuineness of the dialogue._]

In some respects the dialogue differs from any other Platonic
composition. The aim is more directly ethical and hortatory; the process
by which the antagonist is undermined is simpler than in other Platonic
writings, and the conclusion more decided. There is a good deal of
humour in the manner in which the pride of Alcibiades, and of the Greeks
generally, is supposed to be taken down by the Spartan and Persian
queens; and the dialogue has considerable dialectical merit. But we have
a difficulty in supposing that the same writer, who has given so profound
and complex a notion of the characters both of Alcibiades and Socrates
in the Symposium, should have treated them in so thin and superficial a
manner in the Alcibiades, or that he would have ascribed to the ironical
Socrates the rather unmeaning boast that Alcibiades could not attain the
objects of his ambition without his help (105 D foll.); or that he should
have imagined that a mighty nature like his could have been reformed by
a few not very conclusive words of Socrates. For the arguments by which
Alcibiades is reformed are not convincing; the writer of the dialogue,
whoever he was, arrives at his idealism by crooked and tortuous paths, in
which many pitfalls are concealed. The anachronism of making Alcibiades
about twenty years old during the life of his uncle, Pericles, may be
noted; and the repetition of the favourite observation, which occurs
also in the Laches and Protagoras, that great Athenian statesmen, like
Pericles, failed in the education of their sons. There is none of the
undoubted dialogues of Plato in which there is so little dramatic
verisimilitude.


ALCIBIADES I.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

ALCIBIADES, SOCRATES.

[Sidenote: _Alcibiades I._]

[Sidenote: The pride of Alcibiades has been too much for his lovers.]

    _Socrates._ I dare say that you may be surprised to find, =Steph.= 103
    O son of Cleinias, that I, who am your first lover, not having
    spoken to you for many years, when the rest of the world
    were wearying you with their attentions, am the last of your
    lovers who still speaks to you. The cause of my silence has
    been that I was hindered by a power more than human, of
    which I will some day explain to you the nature; this impediment
    has now been removed; I therefore here present
    myself before you, and I greatly hope that no similar
    hindrance will again occur. Meanwhile, I have observed
    that your pride has been too much for the pride of your
    admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited, but they
    have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of
    character; not one of them remains. And I want you to              104
    understand the reason why you have been too much for
    them. You think that you have no need of them or of any
    other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing,
    beginning with the body, and ending with the soul. In the
    first place, you say to yourself that you are the fairest and
    tallest of the citizens, and this every one who has eyes may
    see to be true; in the second place, that you are among the
    noblest of them, highly connected both on the father’s and
    the mother’s side, and sprung from one of the most distinguished
    families in your own state, which is the greatest in
    Hellas, and having many friends and kinsmen of the best
    sort, who can assist you when in need; and there is one
    potent relative, who is more to you than all the rest, Pericles
    the son of Xanthippus, whom your father left guardian of
    you, and of your brother, and who can do as he pleases
    not only in this city, but in all Hellas, and among many and
    mighty barbarous nations. Moreover, you are rich; but I
    must say that you value yourself least of all upon your
    possessions. And all these things have lifted you up; you
    have overcome your lovers, and they have acknowledged that
    you were too much for them. Have you not remarked their
    absence? And now I know that you wonder why I, unlike
    the rest of them, have not gone away, and what can be my
    motive in remaining.

[Sidenote: _The extravagant aspiration_]

    _Alcibiades._ Perhaps, Socrates, you are not aware that I was
    just going to ask you the very same question—What do you
    want? And what is your motive in annoying me, and
    always, wherever I am, making a point of coming[55]? I do
    really wonder what you mean, and should greatly like to
    know.

    _Soc._ Then if, as you say, you desire to know, I suppose that
    you will be willing to hear, and I may consider myself to be
    speaking to an auditor who will remain, and will not run
    away?

    _Al._ Certainly, let me hear.

    _Soc._ You had better be careful, for I may very likely be as
    unwilling to end as I have hitherto been to begin.

    _Al._ Proceed, my good man, and I will listen.

[Sidenote: Alcibiades a lover, not of pleasure, but of ambition; and he
requires the help of Socrates for the accomplishment of his designs.]

[Sidenote: And this is the reason why Socrates has clung to him; he is
hoping when Alcibiades has become the ruler of Athens to rule over him.]

[Sidenote: _in which Alcibiades indulges._]

    _Soc._ I will proceed; and, although no lover likes to speak
    with one who has no feeling of love in him[56], I will make an
    effort, and tell you what I meant: My love, Alcibiades, which      105
    I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as
    I flatter myself, if I saw you loving your good things, or
    thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them.
    But I shall reveal other thoughts of yours, which you keep to
    yourself; whereby you will know that I have always had my
    eye on you. Suppose that at this moment some God came
    to you and said: Alcibiades, will you live as you are, or die
    in an instant if you are forbidden to make any further acquisition?—I
    verily believe that you would choose death.
    And I will tell you the hope in which you are at present
    living: Before many days have elapsed, you think that you
    will come before the Athenian assembly, and will prove to
    them that you are more worthy of honour than Pericles, or
    any other man that ever lived, and having proved this, you
    will have the greatest power in the state. When you have
    gained the greatest power among us, you will go on to other
    Hellenic states, and not only to Hellenes, but to all the barbarians
    who inhabit the same continent with us. And if the
    God were then to say to you again: Here in Europe is to be
    your seat of empire, and you must not cross over into Asia or
    meddle with Asiatic affairs, I do not believe that you would
    choose to live upon these terms; but the world, as I may say,
    must be filled with your power and name—no man less than
    Cyrus and Xerxes is of any account with you. Such I know
    to be your hopes—I am not guessing only—and very likely
    you, who know that I am speaking the truth, will reply, Well,
    Socrates, but what have my hopes to do with the explanation
    which you promised of your unwillingness to leave me?
    And that is what I am now going to tell you, sweet son
    of Cleinias and Dinomachè. The explanation is, that all
    these designs of yours cannot be accomplished by you
    without my help; so great is the power which I believe
    myself to have over you and your concerns; and this
    I conceive to be the reason why the God has hitherto forbidden
    me to converse with you, and I have been long
    expecting his permission. For, as you hope to prove your
    own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain
    at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall
    have the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my
    own great value to you, and to show you that neither
    guardian, nor kinsman, nor any one is able to deliver into
    your hands the power which you desire, but I only, God
    being my helper. When you were young[57] and your hopes
    were not yet matured, I should have wasted my time, and
    therefore, as I conceive, the God forbade me to converse with      106
    you; but now, having his permission, I will speak, for now
    you will listen to me.

[Sidenote: Alcibiades does not deny the impeachment.]

[Sidenote: _The qualifications of Alcibiades for statesmanship_]

    _Al._ Your silence, Socrates, was always a surprise to me.
    I never could understand why you followed me about, and
    now that you have begun to speak again, I am still more
    amazed. Whether I think all this or not, is a matter about
    which you seem to have already made up your mind, and
    therefore my denial will have no effect upon you. But
    granting, if I must, that you have perfectly divined my purposes,
    why is your assistance necessary to the attainment of
    them? Can you tell me why?

    _Soc._ You want to know whether I can make a long speech,
    such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my
    way. I think, however, that I can prove to you the truth of
    what I am saying, if you will grant me one little favour.

    _Al._ Yes, if the favour which you mean be not a troublesome
    one.

    _Soc._ Will you be troubled at having questions to answer?

[Sidenote: Alcibiades is willing to answer questions.]

    _Al._ Not at all.

    _Soc._ Then please to answer.

    _Al._ Ask me.

    _Soc._ Have you not the intention which I attribute to
    you?

    _Al._ I will grant anything you like, in the hope of hearing
    what more you have to say.

    _Soc._ You do, then, mean, as I was saying, to come forward
    in a little while in the character of an adviser of the
    Athenians? And suppose that when you are ascending the
    bema, I pull you by the sleeve and say, Alcibiades, you are
    getting up to advise the Athenians—do you know the matter
    about which they are going to deliberate, better than they?—How
    would you answer?

[Sidenote: He is going to advise the Athenians about matters which he
knows better than they.]

    _Al._ I should reply, that I was going to advise them about a
    matter which I do know better than they.

    _Soc._ Then you are a good adviser about the things which
    you know?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And do you know anything but what you have learned
    of others, or found out yourself?

    _Al._ That is all.

    _Soc._ And would you have ever learned or discovered anything,
    if you had not been willing either to learn of others or
    to examine yourself?

    _Al._ I should not.

[Sidenote: _are tested by Socrates._]

    _Soc._ And would you have been willing to learn or to
    examine what you supposed that you knew?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Then there was a time when you thought that you did
    not know what you are now supposed to know?

    _Al._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: But when did he ever learn about these matters?]

    _Soc._ I think that I know tolerably well the extent of your
    acquirements; and you must tell me if I forget any of them:
    according to my recollection, you learned the arts of writing,
    of playing on the lyre, and of wrestling; the flute you never
    would learn; this is the sum of your accomplishments, unless
    there were some which you acquired in secret; and I think
    that secrecy was hardly possible, as you could not have come
    out of your door, either by day or night, without my seeing
    you.

    _Al._ Yes, that was the whole of my schooling.

    _Soc._ And are you going to get up in the Athenian assembly,       107
    and give them advice about writing?

    _Al._ No, indeed.

    _Soc._ Or about the touch of the lyre?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And they are not in the habit of deliberating about
    wrestling, in the assembly?

    _Al._ Hardly.

    _Soc._ Then what are the deliberations in which you propose
    to advise them? Surely not about building?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ For the builder will advise better than you will about
    that?

    _Al._ He will.

    _Soc._ Nor about divination?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ About that again the diviner will advise better than
    you will?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Whether he be little or great, good or ill-looking,
    noble or ignoble—makes no difference.

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ A man is a good adviser about anything, not because
    he has riches, but because he has knowledge?

[Sidenote: _The cross-examination of_]

    _Al._ Assuredly.

    _Soc._ Whether their counsellor is rich or poor, is not a
    matter which will make any difference to the Athenians when
    they are deliberating about the health of the citizens; they
    only require that he should be a physician.

    _Al._ Of course.

    _Soc._ Then what will be the subject of deliberation about
    which you will be justified in getting up and advising them?

    _Al._ About their own concerns, Socrates.

    _Soc._ You mean about shipbuilding, for example, when the
    question is what sort of ships they ought to build?

    _Al._ No, I should not advise them about that.

    _Soc._ I suppose, because you do not understand shipbuilding:—is
    that the reason?

    _Al._ It is.

    _Soc._ Then about what concerns of theirs will you advise
    them?

[Sidenote: He will advise them about war and peace, and with whom they
had better go to war, and when and how long.]

    _Al._ About war, Socrates, or about peace, or about any
    other concerns of the state.

    _Soc._ You mean, when they deliberate with whom they
    ought to make peace, and with whom they ought to go to
    war, and in what manner?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And they ought to go to war with those against whom
    it is better to go to war?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And when it is better?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And for as long a time as is better?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But suppose the Athenians to deliberate with whom
    they ought to close in wrestling, and whom they should
    grasp by the hand, would you, or the master of gymnastics,
    be a better adviser of them?

    _Al._ Clearly, the master of gymnastics.

    _Soc._ And can you tell me on what grounds the master of
    gymnastics would decide, with whom they ought or ought not
    to close, and when and how? To take an instance: Would
    he not say that they should wrestle with those against whom
    it is best to wrestle?

[Sidenote: _Alcibiades is continued._]

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And as much as is best?                                     108

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And at such times as are best?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Again; you sometimes accompany the lyre with the
    song and dance?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ When it is well to do so?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And as much as is well?

    _Al._ Just so.

    _Soc._ And as you speak of an excellence or art of the best
    in wrestling, and of an excellence in playing the lyre, I wish
    you would tell me what this latter is;—the excellence of
    wrestling I call gymnastic, and I want to know what you call
    the other.

    _Al._ I do not understand you.

    _Soc._ Then try to do as I do; for the answer which I gave
    is universally right, and when I say right, I mean according
    to rule.

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And was not the art of which I spoke gymnastic?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And I called the excellence in wrestling gymnastic?

    _Al._ You did.

    _Soc._ And I was right?

    _Al._ I think that you were.

[Sidenote: Alcibiades should learn to argue nicely.]

    _Soc._ Well, now,—for you should learn to argue prettily—let
    me ask you in return to tell me, first, what is that art of
    which playing and singing, and stepping properly in the dance,
    are parts,—what is the name of the whole? I think that by
    this time you must be able to tell.

    _Al._ Indeed I cannot.

    _Soc._ Then let me put the matter in another way: what
    do you call the Goddesses who are the patronesses of
    art?

    _Al._ The Muses do you mean, Socrates?

    _Soc._ Yes, I do; and what is the name of the art which is
    called after them?

[Sidenote: _What is the better?_]

    _Al._ I suppose that you mean music.

[Sidenote: What is the meaning of ‘the better,’ ‘the more excellent.’]

    _Soc._ Yes, that is my meaning; and what is the excellence
    of the art of music, as I told you truly that the excellence of
    wrestling was gymnastic—what is the excellence of music—to
    be what?

    _Al._ To be musical, I suppose.

    _Soc._ Very good; and now please to tell me what is the
    excellence of war and peace; as the more musical was the
    more excellent, or the more gymnastical was the more excellent,
    tell me, what name do you give to the more excellent in
    war and peace?

    _Al._ But I really cannot tell you.

[Sidenote: The term better, when applied to food, means more wholesome.]

    _Soc._ But if you were offering advice to another and said
    to him—This food is better than that, at this time and in this
    quantity, and he said to you—What do you mean, Alcibiades,
    by the word ‘better’? you would have no difficulty in replying
    that you meant ‘more wholesome,’ although you do not
    profess to be a physician: and when the subject is one of
    which you profess to have knowledge, and about which you
    are ready to get up and advise as if you knew, are you not
    ashamed, when you are asked, not to be able to answer the
    question? Is it not disgraceful?                                   109

    _Al._ Very.

    _Soc._ Well, then, consider and try to explain what is the
    meaning of ‘better,’ in the matter of making peace and going
    to war with those against whom you ought to go to war? To
    what does the word refer?

    _Al._ I am thinking, and I cannot tell.

    _Soc._ But you surely know what are the charges which we
    bring against one another, when we arrive at the point of
    making war, and what name we give them?

    _Al._ Yes, certainly; we say that deceit or violence has been
    employed, or that we have been defrauded.

    _Soc._ And how does this happen? Will you tell me how?
    For there may be a difference in the manner.

    _Al._ Do you mean by ‘how,’ Socrates, whether we suffered
    these things justly or unjustly?

    _Soc._ Exactly.

    _Al._ There can be no greater difference than between just
    and unjust.

[Sidenote: _What is the better?_]

    _Soc._ And would you advise the Athenians to go to war with
    the just or with the unjust?

    _Al._ That is an awkward question; for certainly, even if a
    person did intend to go to war with the just, he would not
    admit that they were just.

    _Soc._ He would not go to war, because it would be
    unlawful?

    _Al._ Neither lawful nor honourable.

    _Soc._ Then you, too, would address them on principles of
    justice?

    _Al._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: In going to war or not going to war, the better is the more
just.]

    _Soc._ What, then, is justice but that better, of which I spoke,
    in going to war or not going to war with those against whom
    we ought or ought not, and when we ought or ought not to
    go to war?

    _Al._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ But how is this, friend Alcibiades? Have you forgotten
    that you do not know this, or have you been to the
    schoolmaster without my knowledge, and has he taught you
    to discern the just from the unjust? Who is he? I wish
    you would tell me, that I may go and learn of him—you shall
    introduce me.

    _Al._ You are mocking, Socrates.

[Sidenote: But where did Alcibiades acquire this notion of just and
unjust?]

    _Soc._ No, indeed; I most solemnly declare to you by Zeus,
    who is the God of our common friendship, and whom I never
    will forswear, that I am not; tell me, then, who this instructor
    is, if he exists.

    _Al._ But, perhaps, he does not exist; may I not have
    acquired the knowledge of just and unjust in some other way?

    _Soc._ Yes; if you have discovered them.

    _Al._ But do you not think that I could discover them?

    _Soc._ I am sure that you might, if you enquired about
    them.

    _Al._ And do you not think that I would enquire?

    _Soc._ Yes; if you thought that you did not know them.

    _Al._ And was there not a time when I did so think?

    _Soc._ Very good; and can you tell me how long it is
    since you thought that you did not know the nature of the          110
    just and the unjust? What do you say to a year ago?
    Were you then in a state of conscious ignorance and enquiry?
    or did you think that you knew? And please to answer
    truly, that our discussion may not be in vain.

[Sidenote: _The nature of just and unjust._]

    _Al._ Well, I thought that I knew.

    _Soc._ And two years ago, and three years ago, and four
    years ago, you knew all the same?

    _Al._ I did.

    _Soc._ And more than four years ago you were a child—were
    you not?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And then I am quite sure that you thought you knew.

    _Al._ Why are you so sure?

[Sidenote: He always had them.]

    _Soc._ Because I often heard you when a child, in your
    teacher’s house, or elsewhere, playing at dice or some other
    game with the boys, not hesitating at all about the nature of
    the just and unjust; but very confident—crying and shouting
    that one of the boys was a rogue and a cheat, and had been
    cheating. Is it not true?

    _Al._ But what was I to do, Socrates, when anybody cheated
    me?

    _Soc._ And how can you say, ‘What was I to do’? if at the
    time you did not know whether you were wronged or not?

    _Al._ To be sure I knew; I was quite aware that I was being
    cheated.

    _Soc._ Then you suppose yourself even when a child to have
    known the nature of just and unjust?

    _Al._ Certainly; and I did know then.

    _Soc._ And when did you discover them—not, surely, at the
    time when you thought that you knew them?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And when did you think that you were ignorant—if
    you consider, you will find that there never was such a time?

    _Al._ Really, Socrates, I cannot say.

    _Soc._ Then you did not learn them by discovering them?

    _Al._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ But just before you said that you did not know them by
    learning; now, if you have neither discovered nor learned
    them, how and whence do you come to know them?

    _Al._ I suppose that I was mistaken in saying that I knew
    them through my own discovery of them; whereas, in truth,
    I learned them in the same way that other people learn.

[Sidenote: _Could the many have taught the principles of justice?_]

    _Soc._ So you said before, and I must again ask, of whom?
    Do tell me.

    _Al._ Of the many.

[Sidenote: He learned them of the many, as he learned Greek;—of those who
knew it.]

    _Soc._ Do you take refuge in them? I cannot say much for
    your teachers.

    _Al._ Why, are they not able to teach?

    _Soc._ They could not teach you how to play at draughts,
    which you would acknowledge (would you not) to be a much
    smaller matter than justice?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And can they teach the better who are unable to teach
    the worse?

    _Al._ I think that they can; at any rate, they can teach many
    far better things than to play at draughts.

    _Soc._ What things?                                                111

    _Al._ Why, for example, I learned to speak Greek of them,
    and I cannot say who was my teacher, or to whom I am to
    attribute my knowledge of Greek, if not to those good-for-nothing
    teachers, as you call them.

    _Soc._ Why, yes, my friend; and the many are good enough
    teachers of Greek, and some of their instructions in that line
    may be justly praised.

    _Al._ Why is that?

    _Soc._ Why, because they have the qualities which good
    teachers ought to have.

    _Al._ What qualities?

    _Soc._ Why, you know that knowledge is the first qualification
    of any teacher?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And if they know, they must agree together and not
    differ?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And would you say that they knew the things about
    which they differ?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ Then how can they teach them?

    _Al._ They cannot.

[Sidenote: Yes: the many can teach things about which they are agreed.]

    _Soc._ Well, but do you imagine that the many would differ
    about the nature of wood and stone? are they not agreed if
    you ask them what they are? and do they not run to fetch
    the same thing, when they want a piece of wood or a stone?
    And so in similar cases, which I suspect to be pretty nearly
    all that you mean by speaking Greek.

[Sidenote: _That wars are caused by differences about just_]

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ These, as we were saying, are matters about which
    they are agreed with one another and with themselves; both
    individuals and states use the same words about them; they
    do not use some one word and some another.

    _Al._ They do not.

    _Soc._ Then they may be expected to be good teachers of
    these things?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if we want to instruct any one in them, we shall
    be right in sending him to be taught by our friends the
    many?

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ But if we wanted further to know not only which
    are men and which are horses, but which men or horses
    have powers of running, would the many still be able to
    inform us?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And you have a sufficient proof that they do not know
    these things and are not the best teachers of them, inasmuch
    as they are never agreed about them?

    _Al._ Yes.

[Sidenote: But could the many teach things about which they are
disagreed?]

    _Soc._ And suppose that we wanted to know not only what
    men are like, but what healthy or diseased men are like—would
    the many be able to teach us?

    _Al._ They would not.

    _Soc._ And you would have a proof that they were bad
    teachers of these matters, if you saw them at variance?

    _Al._ I should.

[Sidenote: And one of these things is justice.]

    _Soc._ Well, but are the many agreed with themselves, or
    with one another, about the justice or injustice of men and        112
    things?

    _Al._ Assuredly not, Socrates.

    _Soc._ There is no subject about which they are more at
    variance?

    _Al._ None.

[Sidenote: _and unjust proved out of Homer._]

    _Soc._ I do not suppose that you ever saw or heard of men
    quarrelling over the principles of health and disease to such
    an extent as to go to war and kill one another for the sake of
    them?

[Sidenote: Did not a question of justice cause the war between the
Trojans and Achaeans, and between the Athenians Lacedaemonians?]

    _Al._ No indeed.

    _Soc._ But of the quarrels about justice and injustice, even
    if you have never seen them, you have certainly heard from
    many people, including Homer; for you have heard of the
    Iliad and Odyssey?

    _Al._ To be sure, Socrates.

    _Soc._ A difference of just and unjust is the argument of and
    those poems?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Which difference caused all the wars and deaths of
    Trojans and Achaeans, and the deaths of the suitors of
    Penelope in their quarrel with Odysseus.

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians and
    Boeotians fell at Tanagra, and afterwards in the battle of
    Coronea, at which your father Cleinias met his end, the
    question was one of justice—this was the sole cause of the
    battles, and of their deaths.

    _Al._ Very true.

[Sidenote: And yet they did not know what they were fighting about?]

    _Soc._ But can they be said to understand that about which
    they are quarrelling to the death?

    _Al._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ And yet those whom you thus allow to be ignorant
    are the teachers to whom you are appealing.

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ But how are you ever likely to know the nature of
    justice and injustice, about which you are so perplexed, if
    you have neither learned them of others nor discovered them
    yourself?

    _Al._ From what you say, I suppose not.

    _Soc._ See, again, how inaccurately you speak, Alcibiades!

    _Al._ In what respect?

    _Soc._ In saying that I say so.

    _Al._ Why, did you not say that I know nothing of the just
    and unjust?

    _Soc._ No; I did not.

    _Al._ Did I, then?

[Sidenote: _Is it Socrates or Alcibiades_]

    _Soc._ Yes.

    _Al._ How was that?

    _Soc._ Let me explain. Suppose I were to ask you which
    is the greater number, two or one; you would reply ‘two’?

    _Al._ I should.

    _Soc._ And by how much greater?

    _Al._ By one.

    _Soc._ Which of us now says that two is more than one?

    _Al._ I do.

    _Soc._ Did not I ask, and you answer the question?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then who is speaking? I who put the question, or            113
    you who answer me?

    _Al._ I am.

[Sidenote: The answerer, not the questioner, has been drawing these
inferences.]

    _Soc._ Or suppose that I ask and you tell me the letters
    which make up the name Socrates, which of us is the
    speaker?

    _Al._ I am.

    _Soc._ Now let us put the case generally: whenever there is
    a question and answer, who is the speaker,—the questioner
    or the answerer?

    _Al._ I should say, Socrates, that the answerer was the
    speaker.

    _Soc._ And have I not been the questioner all through?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And you the answerer?

    _Al._ Just so.

    _Soc._ Which of us, then, was the speaker?

    _Al._ The inference is, Socrates, that I was the speaker.

    _Soc._ Did not some one say that Alcibiades, the fair son of
    Cleinias, not understanding about just and unjust, but thinking
    that he did understand, was going to the assembly to
    advise the Athenians about what he did not know? Was
    not that said?

    _Al._ Very true.

[Sidenote: How can you teach what you do not know?]

    _Soc._ Then, Alcibiades, the result may be expressed in the
    language of Euripides. I think that you have heard all this
    ‘from yourself, and not from me’; nor did I say this, which
    you erroneously attribute to me, but you yourself, and what
    you said was very true. For indeed, my dear fellow, the
    design which you meditate of teaching what you do not
    know, and have not taken any pains to learn, is downright
    insanity.

[Sidenote: _who is the real speaker?_]

[Sidenote: But the expedient, not the just, is the subject about which
men commonly debate.]

    _Al._ But, Socrates, I think that the Athenians and the rest
    of the Hellenes do not often advise as to the more just or
    unjust; for they see no difficulty in them, and therefore they
    leave them, and consider which course of action will be
    most expedient; for there is a difference between justice
    and expediency. Many persons have done great wrong and
    profited by their injustice; others have done rightly and
    come to no good.

    _Soc._ Well, but granting that the just and the expedient are
    ever so much opposed, you surely do not imagine that you
    know what is expedient for mankind, or why a thing is
    expedient?

[Sidenote: Alcibiades insists that he will not have the old argument over
again.]

    _Al._ Why not, Socrates?—But I am not going to be
    asked again from whom I learned, or when I made the
    discovery.

    _Soc._ What a way you have! When you make a mistake
    which might be refuted by a previous argument, you insist on
    having a new and different refutation; the old argument is a
    worn-out garment which you will no longer put on, but some
    one must produce another which is clean and new. Now I             114
    shall disregard this move of yours, and shall ask over
    again,—Where did you learn and how do you know the nature of
    the expedient, and who is your teacher? All this I comprehend
    in a single question, and now you will manifestly be
    in the old difficulty, and will not be able to show that you
    know the expedient, either because you learned or because
    you discovered it yourself. But, as I perceive that you are
    dainty, and dislike the taste of a stale argument, I will
    enquire no further into your knowledge of what is expedient
    or what is not expedient for the Athenian people, and simply
    request you to say why you do not explain whether justice
    and expediency are the same or different? And if you like
    you may examine me as I have examined you, or, if you
    would rather, you may carry on the discussion by yourself.

    _Al._ But I am not certain, Socrates, whether I shall be
    able to discuss the matter with you.

    _Soc._ Then imagine, my dear fellow, that I am the demus
    and the ecclesia; for in the ecclesia, too, you will have to
    persuade men individually.

[Sidenote: _Is the just the same_]

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And is not the same person able to persuade one individual
    singly and many individuals of the things which he
    knows? The grammarian, for example, can persuade one
    and he can persuade many about letters.

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And about number, will not the same person persuade
    one and persuade many?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And this will be he who knows number, or the arithmetician?

    _Al._ Quite true.

[Sidenote: He who can persuade many can persuade one. Alcibiades should
therefore be able to persuade Socrates.]

    _Soc._ And cannot you persuade one man about that of which
    you can persuade many?

    _Al._ I suppose so.

    _Soc._ And that of which you can persuade either is clearly
    what you know?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the only difference between one who argues as
    we are doing, and the orator who is addressing an assembly,
    is that the one seeks to persuade a number, and the other an
    individual, of the same things.

    _Al._ I suppose so.

    _Soc._ Well, then, since the same person who can persuade
    a multitude can persuade individuals, try conclusions upon
    me, and prove to me that the just is not always expedient.

    _Al._ You take liberties, Socrates.

    _Soc._ I shall take the liberty of proving to you the opposite
    of that which you will not prove to me.

    _Al._ Proceed.

    _Soc._ Answer my questions—that is all.

    _Al._ Nay, I should like you to be the speaker.

    _Soc._ What, do you not wish to be persuaded?

    _Al._ Certainly I do.

    _Soc._ And can you be persuaded better than out of your
    own mouth?

    _Al._ I think not.

    _Soc._ Then you shall answer; and if you do not hear the
    words, that the just is the expedient, coming from your own
    lips, never believe another man again.

[Sidenote: _as the expedient or not?_]

    _Al._ I won’t; but answer I will, for I do not see how I can
    come to any harm.

[Sidenote: A man may do what is expedient and not just, but he cannot do
what is honourable and not just and good.]

    _Soc._ A true prophecy! Let me begin then by enquiring of          115
    you whether you allow that the just is sometimes expedient
    and sometimes not?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And sometimes honourable and sometimes not?

    _Al._ What do you mean?

    _Soc._ I am asking if you ever knew any one who did what
    was dishonourable and yet just?

    _Al._ Never.

    _Soc._ All just things are honourable?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And are honourable things sometimes good and sometimes
    not good, or are they always good?

    _Al._ I rather think, Socrates, that some honourable things
    are evil.

    _Soc._ And are some dishonourable things good?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ You mean in such a case as the following:—In time
    of war, men have been wounded or have died in rescuing a
    companion or kinsman, when others who have neglected the
    duty of rescuing them have escaped in safety?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And to rescue another under such circumstances is
    honourable, in respect of the attempt to save those whom we
    ought to save; and this is courage?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But evil in respect of death and wounds?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the courage which is shown in the rescue is one
    thing, and the death another?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then the rescue of one’s friends is honourable in one
    point of view, but evil in another?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And if honourable, then also good: Will you consider
    now whether I may not be right, for you were acknowledging
    that the courage which is shown in the rescue is honourable?
    Now is this courage good or evil? Look at the matter
    thus: which would you rather choose, good or evil?

[Sidenote: _The comparative eligibility of goods._]

    _Al._ Good.

    _Soc._ And the greatest goods you would be most ready to
    choose, and would least like to be deprived of them?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ What would you say of courage? At what price
    would you be willing to be deprived of courage?

    _Al._ I would rather die than be a coward.

    _Soc._ Then you think that cowardice is the worst of evils?

    _Al._ I do.

    _Soc._ As bad as death, I suppose?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And life and courage are the extreme opposites of
    death and cowardice?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And they are what you would most desire to have,
    and their opposites you would least desire?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Is this because you think life and courage the best,
    and death and cowardice the worst?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And you would term the rescue of a friend in battle
    honourable, in as much as courage does a good work?

    _Al._ I should.

[Sidenote: But good may contain an element of evil. Good and evil are to
be judged of by their consequences.]

    _Soc._ But evil because of the death which ensues?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Might we not describe their different effects as follows:—You
    may call either of them evil in respect of the evil
    which is the result, and good in respect of the good which is
    the result of either of them?                                      116

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And they are honourable in so far as they are good,
    and dishonourable in so far as they are evil?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Then when you say that the rescue of a friend in
    battle is honourable and yet evil, that is equivalent to saying
    that the rescue is good and yet evil?

    _Al._ I believe that you are right, Socrates.

[Sidenote: _The honourable, the good, the expedient, all one._]

    _Soc._ Nothing honourable, regarded as honourable, is evil;
    nor anything base, regarded as base, good.

    _Al._ Clearly not.

[Sidenote: The honourable is identified with the good, and the good is
the expedient, and therefore the just which is the honourable is also the
expedient. All this has been proved by Alcibiades himself.]

    _Soc._ Look at the matter yet once more in a further light:
    he who acts honourably acts well?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And he who acts well is happy?

    _Al._ Of course.

    _Soc._ And the happy are those who obtain good?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And they obtain good by acting well and honourably?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then acting well is a good?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And happiness is a good?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then the good and the honourable are again identified.

    _Al._ Manifestly.

    _Soc._ Then, if the argument holds, what we find to be
    honourable we shall also find to be good?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And is the good expedient or not?

    _Al._ Expedient.

    _Soc._ Do you remember our admissions about the just?

    _Al._ Yes; if I am not mistaken, we said that those who
    acted justly must also act honourably.

    _Soc._ And the honourable is the good?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the good is expedient?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then, Alcibiades, the just is expedient?

    _Al._ I should infer so.

    _Soc._ And all this I prove out of your own mouth, for I ask
    and you answer?

    _Al._ I must acknowledge it to be true.

    _Soc._ And having acknowledged that the just is the same
    as the expedient, are you not (let me ask) prepared to
    ridicule any one who, pretending to understand the principles
    of justice and injustice, gets up to advise the noble
    Athenians or the ignoble Peparethians, that the just may be
    the evil?

[Sidenote: _The conceit of knowledge_]

[Sidenote: Yet he still finds himself in a perplexity, and this is because
he thinks that he knows, but if he knew that he were ignorant he would be
in no perplexity.]

    _Al._ I solemnly declare, Socrates, that I do not know what I
    am saying. Verily, I am in a strange state, for when you
    put questions to me I am of different minds in successive
    instants.

    _Soc._ And are you not aware of the nature of this perplexity,
    my friend?

    _Al._ Indeed I am not.

    _Soc._ Do you suppose that if some one were to ask you
    whether you have two eyes or three, or two hands or four,
    or anything of that sort, you would then be of different
    minds in successive instants?

    _Al._ I begin to distrust myself, but still I do not suppose       117
    that I should.

    _Soc._ You would feel no doubt; and for this reason—because
    you would know?

    _Al._ I suppose so.

    _Soc._ And the reason why you involuntarily contradict
    yourself is clearly that you are ignorant?

    _Al._ Very likely.

    _Soc._ And if you are perplexed in answering about just
    and unjust, honourable and dishonourable, good and evil,
    expedient and inexpedient, the reason is that you are
    ignorant of them, and therefore in perplexity. Is not that
    clear?

    _Al._ I agree.

    _Soc._ But is this always the case, and is a man necessarily
    perplexed about that of which he has no knowledge?

    _Al._ Certainly he is.

    _Soc._ And do you know how to ascend into heaven?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And in this case, too, is your judgment perplexed?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ Do you see the reason why, or shall I tell you?

    _Al._ Tell me.

    _Soc._ The reason is, that you not only do not know, my
    friend, but you do not think that you know.

    _Al._ There again; what do you mean?

[Sidenote: _and the consciousness of ignorance._]

    _Soc._ Ask yourself; are you in any perplexity about things
    of which you are ignorant? You know, for example, that
    you know nothing about the preparation of food.

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And do you think and perplex yourself about the
    preparation of food: or do you leave that to some one who
    understands the art?

    _Al._ The latter.

    _Soc._ Or if you were on a voyage, would you bewilder
    yourself by considering whether the rudder is to be drawn
    inwards or outwards, or do you leave that to the pilot, and
    do nothing?

    _Al._ It would be the concern of the pilot.

    _Soc._ Then you are not perplexed about what you do not
    know, if you know that you do not know it?

    _Al._ I imagine not.

[Sidenote: The people who make mistakes are neither those who know, nor
those who do not know, but those who think that they know and do not
know.]

    _Soc._ Do you not see, then, that mistakes in life and
    practice are likewise to be attributed to the ignorance which
    has conceit of knowledge?

    _Al._ Once more, what do you mean?

    _Soc._ I suppose that we begin to act when we think that we
    know what we are doing?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But when people think that they do not know, they
    entrust their business to others?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And so there is a class of ignorant persons who do
    not make mistakes in life, because they trust others about
    things of which they are ignorant?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Who, then, are the persons who make mistakes?
    They cannot, of course, be those who know?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ But if neither those who know, nor those who know
    that they do not know, make mistakes, there remain those           118
    only who do not know and think that they know.

    _Al._ Yes, only those.

    _Soc._ Then this is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is
    mischievous?

    _Al._ Yes.

[Sidenote: _Pericles and the philosophers._]

    _Soc._ And most mischievous and most disgraceful when
    having to do with the greatest matters?

    _Al._ By far.

    _Soc._ And can there be any matters greater than the just,
    the honourable, the good, and the expedient?

    _Al._ There cannot be.

    _Soc._ And these, as you were saying, are what perplex you?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But if you are perplexed, then, as the previous argument
    has shown, you are not only ignorant of the greatest
    matters, but being ignorant you fancy that you know
    them?

    _Al._ I fear that you are right.

[Sidenote: And you, like other statesmen, rush into politics without
being trained. Pericles, alone of them all, associated with the
philosophers.]

    _Soc._ And now see what has happened to you, Alcibiades!
    I hardly like to speak of your evil case, but as we are alone
    I will: My good friend, you are wedded to ignorance of the
    most disgraceful kind, and of this you are convicted, not by
    me, but out of your own mouth and by your own argument;
    wherefore also you rush into politics before you are educated.
    Neither is your case to be deemed singular. For I might say
    the same of almost all our statesmen, with the exception,
    perhaps, of your guardian, Pericles.

    _Al._ Yes, Socrates; and Pericles is said not to have got
    his wisdom by the light of nature, but to have associated
    with several of the philosophers; with Pythocleides, for
    example, and with Anaxagoras, and now in advanced life
    with Damon, in the hope of gaining wisdom.

    _Soc._ Very good; but did you ever know a man wise in
    anything who was unable to impart his particular wisdom?
    For example, he who taught you letters was not only wise,
    but he made you and any others whom he liked wise.

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And you, whom he taught, can do the same?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And in like manner the harper and gymnastic-master?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ When a person is enabled to impart knowledge to
    another, he thereby gives an excellent proof of his own
    understanding of any matter.

    _Al._ I agree.

[Sidenote: _The higher standard._]

    _Soc._ Well, and did Pericles make any one wise; did he
    begin by making his sons wise?

    _Al._ But, Socrates, if the two sons of Pericles were simpletons,
    what has that to do with the matter?

[Sidenote: And even he could not teach his own sons, or your brother
Cleinias, nor did any one ever grow wiser in his society.]

    _Soc._ Well, but did he make your brother, Cleinias, wise?

    _Al._ Cleinias is a madman; there is no use in talking of
    him.

    _Soc._ But if Cleinias is a madman and the two sons of
    Pericles were simpletons, what reason can be given why he
    neglects you, and lets you be as you are?

    _Al._ I believe that I am to blame for not listening to him.

    _Soc._ But did you ever hear of any other Athenian or
    foreigner, bond or free, who was deemed to have grown
    wiser in the society of Pericles,—as I might cite Pythodorus,      119
    the son of Isolochus, and Callias, the son of Calliades, who
    have grown wiser in the society of Zeno, for which privilege
    they have each of them paid him the sum of a hundred
    minae[58] to the increase of their wisdom and fame.

    _Al._ I certainly never did hear of any one.

    _Soc._ Well, and in reference to your own case, do you
    mean to remain as you are, or will you take some pains
    about yourself?

[Sidenote: But if other statesmen are uneducated, what need has
Alcibiades of education?]

    _Al._ With your aid, Socrates, I will. And indeed, when I
    hear you speak, the truth of what you are saying strikes
    home to me, and I agree with you, for our statesmen, all but
    a few, do appear to be quite uneducated.

    _Soc._ What is the inference?

    _Al._ Why, that if they were educated they would be trained
    athletes, and he who means to rival them ought to have
    knowledge and experience when he attacks them; but now,
    as they have become politicians without any special training,
    why should I have the trouble of learning and practising?
    For I know well that by the light of nature I shall get the
    better of them.

[Sidenote: The lover is pained at hearing from the lips of Alcibiades]

    _Soc._ My dear friend, what a sentiment! And how unworthy
    of your noble form and your high estate!

    _Al._ What do you mean, Socrates; why do you say so?

    _Soc._ I am grieved when I think of our mutual love.

    _Al._ At what?

[Sidenote: _The Spartan kings._]

[Sidenote: so unworthy a sentiment. He should have a higher ambition than
this.]

    _Soc._ At your fancying that the contest on which you are
    entering is with people here.

    _Al._ Why, what others are there?

    _Soc._ Is that a question which a magnanimous soul should
    ask?

    _Al._ Do you mean to say that the contest is not with these?

    _Soc._ And suppose that you were going to steer a ship into
    action, would you only aim at being the best pilot on board?
    Would you not, while acknowledging that you must possess
    this degree of excellence, rather look to your antagonists,
    and not, as you are now doing, to your fellow combatants?
    You ought to be so far above these latter, that they will not
    even dare to be your rivals; and, being regarded by you as
    inferiors, will do battle for you against the enemy; this is
    the kind of superiority which you must establish over them, if
    you mean to accomplish any noble action really worthy of
    yourself and of the state.

    _Al._ That would certainly be my aim.

    _Soc._ Verily, then, you have good reason to be satisfied, if
    you are better than the soldiers; and you need not, when
    you are their superior and have your thoughts and actions
    fixed upon them, look away to the generals of the enemy.

    _Al._ Of whom are you speaking, Socrates?

[Sidenote: His rivals should be the Spartan and Persian kings, not any
chance persons.]

    _Soc._ Why, you surely know that our city goes to war              120
    now and then with the Lacedaemonians and with the great
    king?

    _Al._ True enough.

    _Soc._ And if you meant to be the ruler of this city, would
    you not be right in considering that the Lacedaemonian and
    Persian king were your true rivals?

    _Al._ I believe that you are right.

[Sidenote: _The greatness of the royal family of Persia._]

    _Soc._ Oh no, my friend, I am quite wrong, and I think that
    you ought rather to turn your attention to Midias the quail-breeder
    and others like him, who manage our politics; in
    whom, as the women would remark, you may still see the
    slaves’ cut of hair, cropping out in their minds as well as
    on their pates; and they come with their barbarous lingo to
    flatter us and not to rule us. To these, I say, you should
    look, and then you need not trouble yourself about your own
    fitness to contend in such a noble arena: there is no reason
    why you should either learn what has to be learned, or
    practise what has to be practised, and only when thoroughly
    prepared enter on a political career.

    _Al._ There, I think, Socrates, that you are right; I do not
    suppose, however, that the Spartan generals or the great
    king are really different from anybody else.

    _Soc._ But, my dear friend, do consider what you are saying.

    _Al._ What am I to consider?

    _Soc._ In the first place, will you be more likely to take care
    of yourself, if you are in a wholesome fear and dread of them,
    or if you are not?

    _Al._ Clearly, if I have such a fear of them.

    _Soc._ And do you think that you will sustain any injury if
    you take care of yourself?

    _Al._ No, I shall be greatly benefited.

    _Soc._ And this is one very important respect in which that
    notion of yours is bad.

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ In the next place, consider that what you say is
    probably false.

    _Al._ How so?

    _Soc._ Let me ask you whether better natures are likely to
    be found in noble races or not in noble races?

    _Al._ Clearly in noble races.

    _Soc._ Are not those who are well born and well bred most
    likely to be perfect in virtue?

    _Al._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: We too have our pride of birth, but how inferior are we to
those who are descended from Zeus through a line of kings!]

    _Soc._ Then let us compare our antecedents with those of
    the Lacedaemonian and Persian kings; are they inferior to
    us in descent? Have we not heard that the former are
    sprung from Heracles, and the latter from Achaemenes, and
    that the race of Heracles and the race of Achaemenes go
    back to Perseus, son of Zeus?

    _Al._ Why, so does mine go back to Eurysaces, and he to            121
    Zeus!

[Sidenote: _The education of the Persian princes._]

[Sidenote: The wealth and dignity of the Spartan kings is great, but it
is as nothing compared with that of the Persians.]

    _Soc._ And mine, noble Alcibiades, to Daedalus, and he
    to Hephaestus, son of Zeus. But, for all that, we are far
    inferior to them. For they are descended ‘from Zeus,’
    through a line of kings—either kings of Argos and Lacedaemon,
    or kings of Persia, a country which the descendants
    of Achaemenes have always possessed, besides being at
    various times sovereigns of Asia, as they now are; whereas,
    we and our fathers were but private persons. How ridiculous
    would you be thought if you were to make a display of your
    ancestors and of Salamis the island of Eurysaces, or of
    Aegina, the habitation of the still more ancient Aeacus,
    before Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes. You should consider
    how inferior we are to them both in the derivation of our
    birth and in other particulars. Did you never observe how
    great is the property of the Spartan kings? And their
    wives are under the guardianship of the Ephori, who are
    public officers and watch over them, in order to preserve as
    far as possible the purity of the Heracleid blood. Still
    greater is the difference among the Persians; for no one
    entertains a suspicion that the father of a prince of Persia
    can be any one but the king. Such is the awe which invests
    the person of the queen, that any other guard is needless.
    And when the heir of the kingdom is born, all the subjects
    of the king feast; and the day of his birth is for ever afterwards
    kept as a holiday and time of sacrifice by all Asia;
    whereas, when you and I were born, Alcibiades, as the
    comic poet says, the neighbours hardly knew of the important
    event. After the birth of the royal child, he is
    tended, not by a good-for-nothing woman-nurse, but by the
    best of the royal eunuchs, who are charged with the care of
    him, and especially with the fashioning and right formation
    of his limbs, in order that he may be as shapely as possible;
    which being their calling, they are held in great honour.

[Sidenote: The birth of the Persian princes is a world-famous event, and
the utmost pains is taken with their education, which is entrusted to
great and noble persons.]

[Sidenote: _The wealth of the Spartans._]

[Sidenote: When Alcibiades was born nobody knew or cared, and his
education was handed over to a worn-out slave of his guardian’s.]

[Sidenote: _The great inferiority of Alcibiades._]

[Sidenote: The country called the ‘queen’s girdle,’ the ‘queen’s veil,’
and the like.]

[Sidenote: The queen of Persia or of Sparta, if they heard that a youth
of twenty, without resources and without education, was going to attack
their son or husband, would deem him mad.]

    And when the young prince is seven years old he is put
    upon a horse and taken to the riding-masters, and begins to
    go out hunting. And at fourteen years of age he is handed
    over to the royal schoolmasters, as they are termed: these
    are four chosen men, reputed to be the best among the
    Persians of a certain age; and one of them is the wisest,
    another the justest, a third the most temperate, and a fourth
    the most valiant. The first instructs him in the magianism
    of Zoroaster, the son of Oromasus, which is the worship of         122
    the Gods, and teaches him also the duties of his royal office;
    the second, who is the justest, teaches him always to speak
    the truth; the third, or most temperate, forbids him to allow
    any pleasure to be lord over him, that he may be accustomed
    to be a freeman and king indeed,—lord of himself first, and
    not a slave; the most valiant trains him to be bold and
    fearless, telling him that if he fears he is to deem himself a
    slave; whereas Pericles gave you, Alcibiades, for a tutor
    Zopyrus the Thracian, a slave of his who was past all other
    work. I might enlarge on the nurture and education of
    your rivals, but that would be tedious; and what I have said
    is a sufficient sample of what remains to be said. I have
    only to remark, by way of contrast, that no one cares about
    your birth or nurture or education, or, I may say, about that
    of any other Athenian, unless he has a lover who looks after
    him. And if you cast an eye on the wealth, the luxury, the
    garments with their flowing trains, the anointings with
    myrrh, the multitudes of attendants, and all the other
    bravery of the Persians, you will be ashamed when you
    discern your own inferiority; or if you look at the temperance
    and orderliness and ease and grace and magnanimity
    and courage and endurance and love of toil and desire of
    glory and ambition of the Lacedaemonians—in all these
    respects you will see that you are but a child in comparison
    of them. Even in the matter of wealth, if you value yourself
    upon that, I must reveal to you how you stand; for if you
    form an estimate of the wealth of the Lacedaemonians, you
    will see that our possessions fall far short of theirs. For no
    one here can compete with them either in the extent and
    fertility of their own and the Messenian territory, or in the
    number of their slaves, and especially of the Helots, or of
    their horses, or of the animals which feed on the Messenian
    pastures. But I have said enough of this: and as to gold
    and silver, there is more of them in Lacedaemon than in all
    the rest of Hellas, for during many generations gold has
    been always flowing in to them from the whole Hellenic
    world, and often from the barbarian also, and never going
    out, as in the fable of Aesop the fox, said to the lion, ‘The      123
    prints of the feet of those going in are distinct enough;’ but
    who ever saw the trace of money going out of Lacedaemon?
    and therefore you may safely infer that the inhabitants are
    the richest of the Hellenes in gold and silver, and that their
    kings are the richest of them, for they have a larger share of
    these things, and they have also a tribute paid to them which
    is very considerable. Yet the Spartan wealth, though great
    in comparison of the wealth of the other Hellenes, is as
    nothing in comparison of that of the Persians and their
    kings. Why, I have been informed by a credible person
    who went up to the king [at Susa], that he passed through a
    large tract of excellent land, extending for nearly a day’s
    journey, which the people of the country called the queen’s
    girdle, and another, which they called her veil; and several
    other fair and fertile districts, which were reserved for the
    adornment of the queen, and are named after her several
    habiliments. Now, I cannot help thinking to myself, What
    if some one were to go to Amestris, the wife of Xerxes and
    mother of Artaxerxes, and say to her, There is a certain
    Dinomachè, whose whole wardrobe is not worth fifty minae—and
    that will be more than the value—and she has a son
    who is possessed of a three-hundred acre patch at Erchiae,
    and he has a mind to go to war with your son—would she
    not wonder to what this Alcibiades trusts for success in the
    conflict? ‘He must rely,’ she would say to herself, ‘upon
    his training and wisdom—these are the things which
    Hellenes value.’ And if she heard that this Alcibiades who
    is making the attempt is not as yet twenty years old, and is
    wholly uneducated, and when his lover tells him that he
    ought to get education and training first, and then go and
    fight the king, he refuses, and says that he is well enough as
    he is, would she not be amazed, and ask, ‘On what, then,
    does the youth rely?’ And if we replied: He relies on his
    beauty, and stature, and birth, and mental endowments, she
    would think that we were mad, Alcibiades, when she compared
    the advantages which you possess with those of her
    own people. And I believe that even Lampido, the daughter          124
    of Leotychides, the wife of Archidamus and mother of Agis,
    all of whom were kings, would have the same feeling; if, in
    your present uneducated state, you were to turn your thoughts
    against her son, she too would be equally astonished. But
    how disgraceful, that we should not have as high a notion of
    what is required in us as our enemies’ wives and mothers
    have of the qualities which are required in their assailants!
    O my friend, be persuaded by me, and hear the Delphian
    inscription, ‘Know thyself’—not the men whom you think,
    but these kings are our rivals, and we can only overcome
    them by pains and skill. And if you fail in the required
    qualities, you will fail also in becoming renowned among
    Hellenes and Barbarians, which you seem to desire more
    than any other man ever desired anything.

[Sidenote: _The necessity of education._]

    _Al._ I entirely believe you; but what are the sort of pains
    which are required, Socrates,—can you tell me?

[Sidenote: I too need education; and God, who is my guardian, inspires me
with the belief that I shall bring you to honour.]

    _Soc._ Yes, I can; but we must take counsel together concerning
    the manner in which both of us may be most
    improved. For what I am telling you of the necessity of
    education applies to myself as well as to you; and there
    is only one point in which I have an advantage over you.

    _Al._ What is that?

    _Soc._ I have a guardian who is better and wiser than your
    guardian, Pericles.

    _Al._ Who is he, Socrates?

    _Soc._ God, Alcibiades, who up to this day has not allowed
    me to converse with you; and he inspires in me the faith
    that I am especially designed to bring you to honour.

    _Al._ You are jesting, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Perhaps; at any rate, I am right in saying that all
    men greatly need pains and care, and you and I above all
    men.

    _Al._ You are not far wrong about me.

    _Soc._ And certainly not about myself.

    _Al._ But what can we do?

    _Soc._ There must be no hesitation or cowardice, my
    friend.

    _Al._ That would not become us, Socrates.

[Sidenote: We must take counsel together, (not about equestrian or naval
affairs), but]

    _Soc._ No, indeed, and we ought to take counsel together:
    for do we not wish to be as good as possible?

    _Al._ We do.

    _Soc._ In what sort of virtue?

    _Al._ Plainly, in the virtue of good men.

    _Soc._ Who are good in what?

    _Al._ Those, clearly, who are good in the management of
    affairs.

    _Soc._ What sort of affairs? Equestrian affairs?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

[Sidenote: _Goodness and wisdom identified._]

    _Soc._ You mean that about them we should have recourse
    to horsemen?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Well; naval affairs?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ You mean that we should have recourse to sailors
    about them?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then what affairs? And who do them?

[Sidenote: about the things which occupy the minds of wise men.]

    _Al._ The affairs which occupy Athenian gentlemen.                 125

    _Soc._ And when you speak of gentlemen, do you mean the
    wise or the unwise?

    _Al._ The wise.

    _Soc._ And a man is good in respect of that in which he is
    wise?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And evil in respect of that in which he is unwise?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ The shoemaker, for example, is wise in respect of the
    making of shoes?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then he is good in that?

    _Al._ He is.

    _Soc._ But in respect of the making of garments he is unwise?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then in that he is bad?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then upon this view of the matter the same man is
    good and also bad?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But would you say that the good are the same as the
    bad?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Then whom do you call the good?

[Sidenote: And the wise are those who take counsel for the better order
and]

    _Al._ I mean by the good those who are able to rule in the
    city.

    _Soc._ Not, surely, over horses?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ But over men?

[Sidenote: improvement of the city.]

[Sidenote: _The analogy of other employments._]

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ When they are sick?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ Or on a voyage?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ Or reaping the harvest?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ When they are doing something or nothing?

    _Al._ When they are doing something, I should say.

    _Soc._ I wish that you would explain to me what this something
    is.

    _Al._ When they are having dealings with one another, and
    using one another’s services, as we citizens do in our daily
    life.

[Sidenote: Illustrations.]

    _Soc._ Those of whom you speak are ruling over men who
    are using the services of other men?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Are they ruling over the signal-men who give the
    time to the rowers?

    _Al._ No; they are not.

    _Soc._ That would be the office of the pilot?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But, perhaps you mean that they rule over flute-players
    who lead the singers and use the services of the
    dancers?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ That would be the business of the teacher of the
    chorus?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then what is the meaning of being able to rule over
    men who use other men?

    _Al._ I mean that they rule over men who have common
    rights of citizenship, and dealings with one another.

    _Soc._ And what sort of an art is this? Suppose that I ask
    you again, as I did just now, What art makes men know
    how to rule over their fellow-sailors,—how would you
    answer?

    _Al._ The art of the pilot.

    _Soc._ And, if I may recur to another old instance, what art
    enables them to rule over their fellow-singers?

[Sidenote: _How is a state improved?_]

    _Al._ The art of the teacher of the chorus, which you were
    just now mentioning.

    _Soc._ And what do you call the art of fellow-citizens?

    _Al._ I should say, good counsel, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And is the art of the pilot evil counsel?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ But good counsel?

    _Al._ Yes, that is what I should say,—good counsel, of which       126
    the aim is the preservation of the voyagers.

    _Soc._ True. And what is the aim of that other good counsel
    of which you speak?

    _Al._ The aim is the better order and preservation of the city.

    _Soc._ And what is that of which the absence or presence
    improves and preserves the order of the city? Suppose you
    were to ask me, what is that of which the presence or absence
    improves or preserves the order of the body? I should
    reply, the presence of health and the absence of disease.
    You would say the same?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if you were to ask me the same question about
    the eyes, I should reply in the same way, ‘the presence of
    sight and the absence of blindness;’ or about the ears, I
    should reply, that they were improved and were in better
    case, when deafness was absent, and hearing was present in
    them.

    _Al._ True.

[Sidenote: And this improvement is given by friendship and agreement,
such as exists between the members of a family, however they may differ
in their qualities and accomplishments.]

    _Soc._ And what would you say of a state? What is that by
    the presence or absence of which the state is improved and
    better managed and ordered?

    _Al._ I should say, Socrates:—the presence of friendship and
    the absence of hatred and division.

    _Soc._ And do you mean by friendship agreement or disagreement?

    _Al._ Agreement.

    _Soc._ What art makes cities agree about numbers?

    _Al._ Arithmetic.

    _Soc._ And private individuals?

    _Al._ The same.

    _Soc._ And what art makes each individual agree with
    himself?

[Sidenote: _The art of measure._]

    _Al._ The same.

    _Soc._ And what art makes each of us agree with himself
    about the comparative length of the span and of the cubit?
    Does not the art of measure?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Individuals are agreed with one another about this;
    and states, equally?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the same holds of the balance?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But what is the other agreement of which you speak,
    and about what? what art can give that agreement? And
    does that which gives it to the state give it also to the individual,
    so as to make him consistent with himself and with
    another?

    _Al._ I should suppose so.

    _Soc._ But what is the nature of the agreement?—answer,
    and faint not.

    _Al._ I mean to say that there should be such friendship and
    agreement as exists between an affectionate father and mother
    and their son, or between brothers, or between husband and
    wife.

    _Soc._ But can a man, Alcibiades, agree with a woman about
    the spinning of wool, which she understands and he does not?

    _Al._ No, truly.

    _Soc._ Nor has he any need, for spinning is a female
    accomplishment.

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And would a woman agree with a man about the                127
    science of arms, which she has never learned?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ I suppose that the use of arms would be regarded by
    you as a male accomplishment?

    _Al._ It would.

    _Soc._ Then, upon your view, women and men have two sorts
    of knowledge?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then in their knowledge there is no agreement of
    women and men?

    _Al._ There is not.

[Sidenote: _Apparent antagonism of friendship and justice._]

    _Soc._ Nor can there be friendship, if friendship is agreement?

    _Al._ Plainly not.

    _Soc._ Then women are not loved by men when they do their
    own work?

    _Al._ I suppose not.

    _Soc._ Nor men by women when they do their own work?

    _Al._ No.

[Sidenote: If everybody is doing his own business, how can this promote
friendship? And yet when individuals are doing each his own work, they
are doing what is just.]

    _Soc._ Nor are states well administered, when individuals do
    their own work?

    _Al._ I should rather think, Socrates, that the reverse is the
    truth[59].

    _Soc._ What! do you mean to say that states are well administered
    when friendship is absent, the presence of which,
    as we were saying, alone secures their good order?

    _Al._ But I should say that there is friendship among them,
    for this very reason, that the two parties respectively do their
    own work.

    _Soc._ That was not what you were saying before; and what
    do you mean now by affirming that friendship exists when
    there is no agreement? How can there be agreement about
    matters which the one party knows, and of which the other is
    in ignorance?

    _Al._ Impossible.

    _Soc._ And when individuals are doing their own work, are
    they doing what is just or unjust?

    _Al._ What is just, certainly.

    _Soc._ And when individuals do what is just in the state, is
    there no friendship among them?

    _Al._ I suppose that there must be, Socrates.

    _Soc._ Then what do you mean by this friendship or agreement
    about which we must be wise and discreet in order that
    we may be good men? I cannot make out where it exists or
    among whom; according to you, the same persons may sometimes
    have it, and sometimes not.

    _Al._ But, indeed, Socrates, I do not know what I am saying;
    and I have long been, unconsciously to myself, in a most
    disgraceful state.

    _Soc._ Nevertheless, cheer up; at fifty, if you had discovered
    your deficiency, you would have been too old, and the time
    for taking care of yourself would have passed away, but yours
    is just the age at which the discovery should be made.

[Sidenote: _Alcibiades is puzzled._]

    _Al._ And what should he do, Socrates, who would make the
    discovery?

[Sidenote: The way to clear up difficulties is to answer questions.
Alcibiades is willing to have recourse to this method of improvement.]

    _Soc._ Answer questions, Alcibiades; and that is a process
    which, by the grace of God, if I may put any faith in my
    oracle, will be very improving to both of us.

    _Al._ If I can be improved by answering, I will answer.

    _Soc._ And first of all, that we may not peradventure be           128
    deceived by appearances, fancying, perhaps, that we are
    taking care of ourselves when we are not, what is the meaning
    of a man taking care of himself? and when does he take
    care? Does he take care of himself when he takes care of
    what belongs to him?

    _Al._ I should think so.

    _Soc._ When does a man take care of his feet? Does he
    not take care of them when he takes care of that which
    belongs to his feet?

    _Al._ I do not understand.

    _Soc._ Let me take the hand as an illustration; does not a
    ring belong to the finger, and to the finger only?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the shoe in like manner to the foot?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And when we take care of our shoes, do we not take
    care of our feet?

    _Al._ I do not comprehend, Socrates.

    _Soc._ But you would admit, Alcibiades, that to take proper
    care of a thing is a correct expression?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And taking proper care means improving?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And what is the art which improves our shoes?

    _Al._ Shoemaking.

    _Soc._ Then by shoemaking we take care of our shoes?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And do we by shoemaking take care of our feet, or by
    some other art which improves the feet?

    _Al._ By some other art.

[Sidenote: _He is learning by examples._]

    _Soc._ And the same art improves the feet which improves
    the rest of the body?

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Which is gymnastic?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then by gymnastic we take care of our feet, and by
    shoemaking of that which belongs to our feet?

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And by gymnastic we take care of our hands, and by
    the art of graving rings of that which belongs to our hands?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And by gymnastic we take care of the body, and by
    the art of weaving and the other arts we take care of the
    things of the body?

    _Al._ Clearly.

[Sidenote: It has been shown by examples that a man does not take care of
himself, when he only takes care of what belongs to him.]

    _Soc._ Then the art which takes care of each thing is different
    from that which takes care of the belongings of each
    thing?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Then in taking care of what belongs to you, you do
    not take care of yourself?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ For the art which takes care of our belongings appears
    not to be the same as that which takes care of ourselves?

    _Al._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ And now let me ask you what is the art with which we
    take care of ourselves?

    _Al._ I cannot say.

    _Soc._ At any rate, thus much has been admitted, that the art
    is not one which makes any of our possessions, but which
    makes ourselves better?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But should we ever have known what art makes a shoe
    better, if we did not know a shoe?

    _Al._ Impossible.

    _Soc._ Nor should we know what art makes a ring better, if
    we did not know a ring?

    _Al._ That is true.

[Sidenote: A man must know himself before he can improve himself or know
what belongs to him.]

    _Soc._ And can we ever know what art makes a man better,           129
    if we do not know what we are ourselves?

[Sidenote: _The knowledge of self._]

    _Al._ Impossible.

    _Soc._ And is self-knowledge such an easy thing, and was he
    to be lightly esteemed who inscribed the text on the temple at
    Delphi? Or is self-knowledge a difficult thing, which few
    are able to attain?

    _Al._ At times I fancy, Socrates, that anybody can know
    himself; at other times the task appears to be very difficult.

    _Soc._ But whether easy or difficult, Alcibiades, still there is
    no other way; knowing what we are, we shall know how to
    take care of ourselves, and if we are ignorant we shall not
    know.

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ Well, then, let us see in what way the self-existent
    can be discovered by us; that will give us a chance of discovering
    our own existence, which otherwise we can never
    know.

    _Al._ You say truly.

    _Soc._ Come, now, I beseech you, tell me with whom you
    are conversing?—with whom but with me?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ As I am, with you?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ That is to say, I, Socrates, am talking?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And Alcibiades is my hearer?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And I in talking use words?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And talking and using words have, I suppose, the
    same meaning?

    _Al._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And the user is not the same as the thing which he
    uses?

    _Al._ What do you mean?

    _Soc._ I will explain; the shoemaker, for example, uses a
    square tool, and a circular tool, and other tools for cutting?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But the tool is not the same as the cutter and user of
    the tool?

    _Al._ Of course not.

[Sidenote: _More analogies and examples._]

    _Soc._ And in the same way the instrument of the harper is
    to be distinguished from the harper himself?

    _Al._ It is.

    _Soc._ Now the question which I asked was whether you
    conceive the user to be always different from that which he
    uses?

    _Al._ I do.

    _Soc._ Then what shall we say of the shoemaker? Does he
    cut with his tools only or with his hands?

    _Al._ With his hands as well.

    _Soc._ He uses his hands too?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And does he use his eyes in cutting leather?

    _Al._ He does.

[Sidenote: He is distinct from what he uses; and therefore distinct from
his own body.]

    _Soc._ And we admit that the user is not the same with the
    things which he uses?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then the shoemaker and the harper are to be distinguished
    from the hands and feet which they use?

    _Al._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And does not a man use the whole body?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And that which uses is different from that which is
    used?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Then a man is not the same as his own body?

    _Al._ That is the inference.

    _Soc._ What is he, then?

    _Al._ I cannot say.

    _Soc._ Nay, you can say that he is the user of the body.

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And the user of the body is the soul?                       130

    _Al._ Yes, the soul.

    _Soc._ And the soul rules?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Let me make an assertion which will, I think, be universally
    admitted.

    _Al._ What is it?

[Sidenote: But he must be one of three things:—Soul, body, or the union of
the two. What is the ruling principle in him? Clearly the soul.]

    _Soc._ That man is one of three things.

    _Al._ What are they?

[Sidenote: _The true self or being of a man._]

    _Soc._ Soul, body, or both together forming a whole.

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ But did we not say that the actual ruling principle of
    the body is man?

    _Al._ Yes, we did.

    _Soc._ And does the body rule over itself?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ It is subject, as we were saying?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then that is not the principle which we are seeking?

    _Al._ It would seem not.

    _Soc._ But may we say that the union of the two rules over
    the body, and consequently that this is man?

    _Al._ Very likely.

    _Soc._ The most unlikely of all things; for if one of the
    members is subject, the two united cannot possibly rule.

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But since neither the body, nor the union of the two,
    is man, either man has no real existence, or the soul is man?

    _Al._ Just so.

    _Soc._ Is anything more required to prove that the soul is
    man?

    _Al._ Certainly not; the proof is, I think, quite sufficient.

[Sidenote: There remains a question of absolute existence, which has not
been considered by us, or rather is being considered by us when we speak
of the soul.]

    _Soc._ And if the proof, although not perfect, be sufficient,
    we shall be satisfied;—more precise proof will be supplied
    when we have discovered that which we were led to omit,
    from a fear that the enquiry would be too much protracted.

    _Al._ What was that?

    _Soc._ What I meant, when I said that absolute existence
    must be first considered; but now, instead of absolute existence,
    we have been considering the nature of individual
    existence, and this may, perhaps, be sufficient; for surely
    there is nothing which may be called more properly ourselves
    than the soul?

    _Al._ There is nothing.

[Sidenote: You and I are talking soul to soul.]

    _Soc._ Then we may truly conceive that you and I are conversing
    with one another, soul to soul?

    _Al._ Very true.

[Sidenote: _The man and his belongings._]

    _Soc._ And that is just what I was saying before—that
    I, Socrates, am not arguing or talking with the face of
    Alcibiades, but with the real Alcibiades; or in other words,
    with his soul.

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Then he who bids a man know himself, would have
    him know his soul?

    _Al._ That appears to be true.

[Sidenote: But if the soul is the man, he who knows only the arts which
concern man does not know himself.]

    _Soc._ He whose knowledge only extends to the body,                131
    knows the things of a man, and not the man himself?

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ Then neither the physician regarded as a physician,
    nor the trainer regarded as a trainer, knows himself?

    _Al._ He does not.

    _Soc._ The husbandmen and the other craftsmen are very
    far from knowing themselves, for they would seem not
    even to know their own belongings? When regarded in
    relation to the arts which they practise they are even further
    removed from self-knowledge, for they only know the belongings
    of the body, which minister to the body.

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ Then if temperance is the knowledge of self, in respect
    of his art none of them is temperate?

    _Al._ I agree.

    _Soc._ And this is the reason why their arts are accounted
    vulgar, and are not such as a good man would practise?

    _Al._ Quite true.

    _Soc._ Again, he who cherishes his body cherishes not himself,
    but what belongs to him?

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ But he who cherishes his money, cherishes neither himself
    nor his belongings, but is in a stage yet further removed
    from himself?

    _Al._ I agree.

    _Soc._ Then the money-maker has really ceased to be occupied
    with his own concerns?

    _Al._ True.

[Sidenote: The lover of the soul is the true lover.]

    _Soc._ And if any one has fallen in love with the person of
    Alcibiades, he loves not Alcibiades, but the belongings of
    Alcibiades?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But he who loves your soul is the true lover?

[Sidenote: _Socrates, the only true lover of Alcibiades._]

    _Al._ That is the necessary inference.

    _Soc._ The lover of the body goes away when the flower of
    youth fades?

    _Al._ True.

[Sidenote: He only remains and goes not away, so long as the soul of his
beloved follows after virtue.]

    _Soc._ But he who loves the soul goes not away, as long as
    the soul follows after virtue?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And I am the lover who goes not away, but remains
    with you, when you are no longer young and the rest are gone?

    _Al._ Yes, Socrates; and therein you do well, and I hope
    that you will remain.

    _Soc._ Then you must try to look your best.

    _Al._ I will.

    _Soc._ The fact is, that there is only one lover of Alcibiades
    the son of Cleinias; there neither is nor ever has been seemingly
    any other; and he is his darling,—Socrates, the son of
    Sophroniscus and Phaenarete.

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And did you not say, that if I had not spoken first,
    you were on the point of coming to me, and enquiring why I
    only remained?

    _Al._ That is true.

[Sidenote: And Socrates will never desert Alcibiades so long as he is not
spoiled by the Athenian people.]

    _Soc._ The reason was that I loved you for your own sake,
    whereas other men love what belongs to you; and your
    beauty, which is not you, is fading away, just as your true        132
    self is beginning to bloom. And I will never desert you, if
    you are not spoiled and deformed by the Athenian people;
    for the danger which I most fear is that you will become a
    lover of the people and will be spoiled by them. Many a
    noble Athenian has been ruined in this way. For the demus
    of the great-hearted Erechtheus is of a fair countenance, but
    you should see him naked; wherefore observe the caution
    which I give you.

    _Al._ What caution?

    _Soc._ Practise yourself, sweet friend, in learning what you
    ought to know, before you enter on politics; and then you
    will have an antidote which will keep you out of harm’s way.

    _Al._ Good advice, Socrates, but I wish that you would explain
    to me in what way I am to take care of myself.

    _Soc._ Have we not made an advance? for we are at any
    rate tolerably well agreed as to what we are, and there is no
    longer any danger, as we once feared, that we might be
    taking care not of ourselves, but of something which is not
    ourselves.

[Sidenote: _How is a man to take care of himself?_]

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ And the next step will be to take care of the soul, and
    look to that?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Leaving the care of our bodies and of our properties
    to others?

    _Al._ Very good.

[Sidenote: He who would take care of himself must first of all know
himself.]

    _Soc._ But how can we have a perfect knowledge of the
    things of the soul?—For if we know them, then I suppose
    we shall know ourselves. Can we really be ignorant of the
    excellent meaning of the Delphian inscription, of which we
    were just now speaking?

    _Al._ What have you in your thoughts, Socrates?

    _Soc._ I will tell you what I suspect to be the meaning and
    lesson of that inscription. Let me take an illustration from
    sight, which I imagine to be the only one suitable to my
    purpose.

    _Al._ What do you mean?

[Sidenote: The eye which would see itself must look into the pupil of
another, which is the divinest part of the eye, and will then behold
itself.]

    _Soc._ Consider; if some one were to say to the eye, ‘See
    thyself,’ as you might say to a man, ‘Know thyself,’ what is
    the nature and meaning of this precept? Would not his
    meaning be:—That the eye should look at that in which it
    would see itself?

    _Al._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And what are the objects in looking at which we see
    ourselves?

    _Al._ Clearly, Socrates, in looking at mirrors and the like.

    _Soc._ Very true; and is there not something of the nature
    of a mirror in our own eyes?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Did you ever observe that the face of the person
    looking into the eye of another is reflected as in a mirror;
    and in the visual organ which is over against him, and which       133
    is called the pupil, there is a sort of image of the person
    looking?

    _Al._ That is quite true.

[Sidenote: _The argument recapitulated with some corrections._]

    _Soc._ Then the eye, looking at another eye, and at that in
    the eye which is most perfect, and which is the instrument of
    vision, will there see itself?

    _Al._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ But looking at anything else either in man or in the
    world, and not to what resembles this, it will not see itself?

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ Then if the eye is to see itself, it must look at the eye,
    and at that part of the eye where sight which is the virtue of
    the eye resides?

    _Al._ True.

[Sidenote: And the soul which would know herself must look especially at
that part of herself in which she resembles the divine.]

    _Soc._ And if the soul, my dear Alcibiades, is ever to know
    herself, must she not look at the soul; and especially at that
    part of the soul in which her virtue resides, and to any other
    which is like this?

    _Al._ I agree, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And do we know of any part of our souls more divine
    than that which has to do with wisdom and knowledge?

    _Al._ There is none.

    _Soc._ Then this is that part of the soul which resembles the
    divine; and he who looks at this and at the whole class of
    things divine, will be most likely to know himself?

    _Al._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And self-knowledge we agree to be wisdom?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But if we have no self-knowledge and no wisdom, can
    we ever know our own good and evil?

    _Al._ How can we, Socrates?

    _Soc._ You mean, that if you did not know Alcibiades, there
    would be no possibility of your knowing that what belonged
    to Alcibiades was really his?

    _Al._ It would be quite impossible.

[Sidenote: He who knows not himself and his belongings, will not know
others and their belongings, and therefore he will not know the affairs
of states.]

    _Soc._ Nor should we know that we were the persons to
    whom anything belonged, if we did not know ourselves?

    _Al._ How could we?

    _Soc._ And if we did not know our own belongings, neither
    should we know the belongings of our belongings?

    _Al._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ Then we were not altogether right in acknowledging
    just now that a man may know what belongs to him and yet
    not know himself; nay, rather he cannot even know the belongings
    of his belongings; for the discernment of the things
    of self, and of the things which belong to the things of self,
    appear all to be the business of the same man, and of the
    same art.

[Sidenote: _Happiness without virtue impossible._]

    _Al._ So much may be supposed.

    _Soc._ And he who knows not the things which belong to
    himself, will in like manner be ignorant of the things which
    belong to others?

    _Al._ Very true.

    _Soc._ And if he knows not the affairs of others, he will not
    know the affairs of states?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Then such a man can never be a statesman?

    _Al._ He cannot.

    _Soc._ Nor an economist?

    _Al._ He cannot.

    _Soc._ He will not know what he is doing?                          134

    _Al._ He will not.

    _Soc._ And will not he who is ignorant fall into error?

    _Al._ Assuredly.

[Sidenote: And, if he knows not what he is doing, he will be miserable
and will make others miserable.]

    _Soc._ And if he falls into error will he not fail both in his
    public and private capacity?

    _Al._ Yes, indeed.

    _Soc._ And failing, will he not be miserable?

    _Al._ Very.

    _Soc._ And what will become of those for whom he is
    acting?

    _Al._ They will be miserable also.

    _Soc._ Then he who is not wise and good cannot be happy?

    _Al._ He cannot.

    _Soc._ The bad, then, are miserable?

    _Al._ Yes, very.

    _Soc._ And if so, not he who has riches, but he who has
    wisdom, is delivered from his misery?

    _Al._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ Cities, then, if they are to be happy, do not want
    walls, or triremes, or docks, or numbers, or size, Alcibiades,
    without virtue[60]?

[Sidenote: _The divine mirror._]

    _Al._ Indeed they do not.

[Sidenote: He must give the citizens wisdom and justice, and he cannot
give what he has not got.]

    _Soc._ And you must give the citizens virtue, if you mean to
    administer their affairs rightly or nobly?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ But can a man give that which he has not?

    _Al._ Impossible.

    _Soc._ Then you or any one who means to govern and
    superintend, not only himself and the things of himself, but
    the state and the things of the state, must in the first place
    acquire virtue.

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ You have not therefore to obtain power or authority,
    in order to enable you to do what you wish for yourself and
    the state, but justice and wisdom.

    _Al._ Clearly.

[Sidenote: If he acts wisely and justly he will act according to the will
of God.]

    _Soc._ You and the state, if you act wisely and justly, will
    act according to the will of God?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ As I was saying before, you will look only at what is
    bright and divine, and act with a view to them?

    _Al._ Yes.

[Sidenote: In the mirror of the divine he will see his own good and will
act rightly and be happy.]

    _Soc._ In that mirror you will see and know yourselves and
    your own good?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And so you will act rightly and well?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ In which case, I will be security for your happiness.

    _Al._ I accept the security.

    _Soc._ But if you act unrighteously, your eye will turn to
    the dark and godless, and being in darkness and ignorance
    of yourselves, you will probably do deeds of darkness.

    _Al._ Very possibly.

    _Soc._ For if a man, my dear Alcibiades, has the power to
    do what he likes, but has no understanding, what is likely to
    be the result, either to him as an individual or to the state—for  135
    example, if he be sick and is able to do what he likes,
    not having the mind of a physician—having moreover tyrannical
    power, and no one daring to reprove him, what will
    happen to him? Will he not be likely to have his constitution
    ruined?

[Sidenote: _The conversion of Alcibiades._]

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ Or again, in a ship, if a man having the power to do
    what he likes, has no intelligence or skill in navigation, do
    you see what will happen to him and to his fellow-sailors?

    _Al._ Yes; I see that they will all perish.

    _Soc._ And in like manner, in a state, and where there is
    any power and authority which is wanting in virtue, will not
    misfortune, in like manner, ensue?

    _Al._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Not power, but virtue, should be the aim both of individuals
and of states: and he only is a freeman who has virtue.]

    _Soc._ Not tyrannical power, then, my good Alcibiades,
    should be the aim either of individuals or states, if they
    would be happy, but virtue.

    _Al._ That is true.

    _Soc._ And before they have virtue, to be commanded by a
    superior is better for men as well as for children[61]?

    _Al._ That is evident.

    _Soc._ And that which is better is also nobler?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And what is nobler is more becoming?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ Then to the bad man slavery is more becoming,
    because better?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Then vice is only suited to a slave?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And virtue to a freeman?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And, O my friend, is not the condition of a slave to
    be avoided?

    _Al._ Certainly, Socrates.

    _Soc._ And are you now conscious of your own state? And
    do you know whether you are a freeman or not?

    _Al._ I think that I am very conscious indeed of my own
    state.

    _Soc._ And do you know how to escape out of a state which
    I do not even like to name to my beauty?

    _Al._ Yes, I do.

    _Soc._ How?

    _Al._ By your help, Socrates.

[Sidenote: _The power of the state may be too much for us._]

    _Soc._ That is not well said, Alcibiades.

    _Al._ What ought I to have said?

    _Soc._ By the help of God.

    _Al._ I agree; and I further say, that our relations are
    likely to be reversed. From this day forward, I must and
    will follow you as you have followed me; I will be the
    disciple, and you shall be my master.

    _Soc._ O that is rare! My love breeds another love: and
    so like the stork I shall be cherished by the bird whom I
    have hatched.

    _Al._ Strange, but true; and henceforward I shall begin to
    think about justice.

    _Soc._ And I hope that you will persist; although I have
    fears, not because I doubt you; but I see the power of the
    state, which may be too much for both of us.


FOOTNOTES

[55] Cp. Symp. 213 C.

[56] Cp. Symp. 217 E ff.

[57] Cp. Symp. 181 E.

[58] About £406.

[59] Cp. Rep. i. 332 foll.

[60] Cp. Arist. Pol. vii. 1. § 5.

[61] Cp. Arist. Pol. i. 5. § 7.




MENEXENUS.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Menexenus._]

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

The Menexenus has more the character of a rhetorical exercise than any
other of the Platonic works. The writer seems to have wished to emulate
Thucydides, and the far slighter work of Lysias. In his rivalry with the
latter, to whom in the Phaedrus Plato shows a strong antipathy, he is
entirely successful, but he is not equal to Thucydides. The Menexenus,
though not without real Hellenic interest, falls very far short of the
rugged grandeur and political insight of the great historian. The fiction
of the speech having been invented by Aspasia is well sustained, and is
in the manner of Plato, notwithstanding the anachronism which puts into
her mouth an allusion to the peace of Antalcidas, an event occurring
forty years after the date of the supposed oration. But Plato, like
Shakespeare, is careless of such anachronisms, which are not supposed to
strike the mind of the reader. The effect produced by these grandiloquent
orations on Socrates, who does not recover after having heard one of them
for three days and more, is truly Platonic.

Such discourses, if we may form a judgment from the three which are
extant (for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and
spurious imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular
type. They began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of
Athens, to which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later
times. The Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the
age of Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the
glories of Marathon and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the
weak places of Athenian history. The war of Athens and Boeotia is a war
of liberation; the Athenians gave back the Spartans taken at Sphacteria
out of kindness—indeed, the only fault of the city was too great kindness
to their enemies, who were more honoured than the friends of others
(cp. Thucyd. ii. 41, which seems to contain the germ of the idea); we
democrats are the aristocracy of virtue, and the like. These are the
platitudes and falsehoods in which history is disguised. The taking of
Athens is hardly mentioned.

[Sidenote: _The authenticity of the Dialogue._]

The author of the Menexenus, whether Plato or not, is evidently intending
to ridicule the practice, and at the same time to show that he can beat
the rhetoricians in their own line, as in the Phaedrus he may be supposed
to offer an example of what Lysias might have said, and of how much
better he might have written in his own style. The orators had recourse
to their favourite _loci communes_, one of which, as we find in Lysias,
was the shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates
points out that they had them always ready for delivery, and that there
was no difficulty in improvising any number of such orations. To praise
the Athenians among the Athenians was easy,—to praise them among the
Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task. Socrates
himself has turned rhetorician, having learned of a woman, Aspasia, the
mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to
his own—say, one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian—would be
quite equal to the task of praising men to themselves. When we remember
that Antiphon is described by Thucydides as the best pleader of his day,
the satire on him and on the whole tribe of rhetoricians is transparent.

The ironical assumption of Socrates, that he must be a good orator
because he had learnt of Aspasia, is not coarse, as Schleiermacher
supposes, but is rather to be regarded as fanciful. Nor can we say that
the offer of Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any
more un-Platonic than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses
towards Socrates (286 C). Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear
which Socrates expresses that he will get a beating from his mistress,
Aspasia: this is the natural exaggeration of what might be expected from
an imperious woman. Socrates is not to be taken seriously in all that
he says, and Plato, both in the Symposium and elsewhere, is not slow to
admit a sort of Aristophanic humour. How a great original genius like
Plato might or might not have written, what was his conception of humour,
or what limits he would have prescribed to himself, if any, in drawing
the picture of the Silenus Socrates, are problems which no critical
instinct can determine.

[Sidenote: _The authenticity of the Dialogue._]

On the other hand, the dialogue has several Platonic traits, whether
original or imitated may be uncertain. Socrates, when he departs from
his character of a ‘know nothing’ and delivers a speech, generally
pretends that what he is speaking is not his own composition. Thus in
the Cratylus he is run away with (410 E); in the Phaedrus he has heard
somebody say something (235 C)—is inspired by the _genius loci_ (238 D);
in the Symposium he derives his wisdom from Diotima of Mantinea, and the
like. But he does not impose on Menexenus by his dissimulation. Without
violating the character of Socrates, Plato, who knows so well how to give
a hint, or some one writing in his name, intimates clearly enough that
the speech in the Menexenus like that in the Phaedrus is to be attributed
to Socrates. The address of the dead to the living at the end of the
oration may also be compared to the numerous addresses of the same kind
which occur in Plato, in whom the dramatic element is always tending to
prevail over the rhetorical. The remark has been often made, that in the
Funeral Oration of Thucydides there is no allusion to the existence of
the dead. But in the Menexenus a future state is clearly, although not
strongly, asserted.

Whether the Menexenus is a genuine writing of Plato, or an imitation
only, remains uncertain. In either case, the thoughts are partly borrowed
from the Funeral Oration of Thucydides; and the fact that they are so, is
not in favour of the genuineness of the work. Internal evidence seems to
leave the question of authorship in doubt. There are merits and there are
defects which might lead to either conclusion. The form of the greater
part of the work makes the enquiry difficult; the introduction and the
finale certainly wear the look either of Plato or of an extremely skilful
imitator. The excellence of the forgery may be fairly adduced as an
argument that it is not a forgery at all. In this uncertainty the express
testimony of Aristotle, who quotes, in the Rhetoric,[62] the well-known
words, ‘It is easy to praise the Athenians among the Athenians,’ from the
Funeral Oration, may perhaps turn the balance in its favour. It must be
remembered also that the work was famous in antiquity, and is included in
the Alexandrian catalogues of Platonic writings.


MENEXENUS.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

SOCRATES and MENEXENUS.

[Sidenote: _Menexenus._]

    _Socrates._ Whence come you, Menexenus? Are you from
    the Agora?                                                =Steph.= 234

    _Menexenus._ Yes, Socrates; I have been at the Council.

    _Soc._ And what might you be doing at the Council? And
    yet I need hardly ask, for I see that you, believing yourself
    to have arrived at the end of education and of philosophy,
    and to have had enough of them, are mounting upwards
    to things higher still, and, though rather young for the post,
    are intending to govern us elder men, like the rest of your
    family, which has always provided some one who kindly
    took care of us.

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates, I shall be ready to hold office, if you
    allow and advise that I should, but not if you think otherwise.
    I went to the council chamber because I heard that
    the Council was about to choose some one who was to speak
    over the dead. For you know that there is to be a public
    funeral?

    _Soc._ Yes, I know. And whom did they choose?

    _Men._ No one; they delayed the election until to-morrow,
    but I believe that either Archinus or Dion will be chosen.

[Sidenote: The gain of dying in battle.]

[Sidenote: The effect upon Socrates of panegyrical oratory.]

[Sidenote: _Easy to praise Athenians among Peloponnesians._]

    _Soc._ O Menexenus! death in battle is certainly in many
    respects a noble thing. The dead man gets a fine and costly
    funeral, although he may have been poor, and an elaborate
    speech is made over him by a wise man who has long ago
    prepared what he has to say, although he who is praised may
    not have been good for much. The speakers praise him for
    what he has done and for what he has not done—that is the
    beauty of them—and they steal away our souls with their
    embellished words; in every conceivable form they praise           235
    the city; and they praise those who died in war, and all our
    ancestors who went before us; and they praise ourselves
    also who are still alive, until I feel quite elevated by their
    laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus,
    and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I
    imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and
    finer man than I was before. And if, as often happens, there
    are any foreigners who accompany me to the speech, I
    become suddenly conscious of having a sort of triumph over
    them, and they seem to experience a corresponding feeling
    of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which
    appears to them, when they are under the influence of the
    speaker, more wonderful than ever. This consciousness of
    dignity lasts me more than three days, and not until the fourth
    or fifth day do I come to my senses and know where I am;
    in the meantime I have been living in the Islands of the Blest.
    Such is the art of our rhetoricians, and in such manner does
    the sound of their words keep ringing in my ears.

[Sidenote: Socrates always making fun of the rhetoricians.]

    _Men._ You are always making fun of the rhetoricians,
    Socrates; this time, however, I am inclined to think that the
    speaker who is chosen will not have much to say, for he has
    been called upon to speak at a moment’s notice, and he will
    be compelled almost to improvise.

    _Soc._ But why, my friend, should he not have plenty to
    say? Every rhetorician has speeches ready made; nor is
    there any difficulty in improvising that sort of stuff. Had
    the orator to praise Athenians among Peloponnesians, or
    Peloponnesians among Athenians, he would be a good
    rhetorician who could succeed and gain credit. But there is
    no difficulty in a man’s winning applause when he is contending
    for fame among the persons whom he is praising.

    _Men._ Do you think not, Socrates?

    _Soc._ Certainly ‘not.’

[Sidenote: Could Socrates himself make a funeral oration?]

    _Men._ Do you think that you could speak yourself if there
    should be a necessity, and if the Council were to choose you?

    _Soc._ That I should be able to speak is no great wonder,
    Menexenus, considering that I have an excellent mistress in
    the art of rhetoric,—she who has made so many good
    speakers, and one who was the best among all the Hellenes—Pericles,
    the son of Xanthippus.

[Sidenote: _Aspasia the teacher both of Pericles and of Socrates._]

    _Men._ And who is she? I suppose that you mean Aspasia.

[Sidenote: Yes; for he is a pupil of Aspasia.]

    _Soc._ Yes, I do; and besides her I had Connus, the son of
    Metrobius, as a master, and he was my master in music, as          236
    she was in rhetoric. No wonder that a man who has
    received such an education should be a finished speaker;
    even the pupil of very inferior masters, say, for example, one
    who had learned music of Lamprus, and rhetoric of Antiphon
    the Rhamnusian, might make a figure if he were to praise
    the Athenians among the Athenians.

    _Men._ And what would you be able to say if you had to
    speak?

[Sidenote: The funeral oration composed by Aspasia.]

    _Soc._ Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday
    I heard Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these
    very dead. For she had been told, as you were saying, that
    the Athenians were going to choose a speaker, and she
    repeated to me the sort of speech which he should deliver,
    partly improvising and partly from previous thought, putting
    together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles
    spoke, but which, as I believe, she composed.

    _Men._ And can you remember what Aspasia said?

    _Soc._ I ought to be able, for she taught me, and she was
    ready to strike me because I was always forgetting.

    _Men._ Then why will you not rehearse what she said?

    _Soc._ Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry
    with me if I publish her speech.

    _Men._ Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether
    Aspasia’s or any one else’s, no matter. I hope that you will
    oblige me.

    _Soc._ But I am afraid that you will laugh at me if I continue
    the games of youth in old age.

    _Men._ Far otherwise, Socrates; let us by all means have
    the speech.

    _Soc._ Truly I have such a disposition to oblige you, that if
    you bid me dance naked I should not like to refuse, since we
    are alone. Listen then: If I remember rightly, she began
    as follows, with the mention of the dead[63]:—

[Sidenote: _The panegyric on the dead._]

    There is a tribute of deeds and of words. The departed
    have already had the first, when going forth on their destined
    journey they were attended on their way by the state and by
    their friends; the tribute of words remains to be given to
    them, as is meet and by law ordained. For noble words are
    a memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given to
    the doers of them by the hearers. A word is needed which
    will duly praise the dead and gently admonish the living,
    exhorting the brethren and descendants of the departed to
    imitate their virtue, and consoling their fathers and mothers
    and the survivors, if any, who may chance to be alive of the       237
    previous generation. What sort of a word will this be, and
    how shall we rightly begin the praises of these brave men?
    In their life they rejoiced their own friends with their
    valour, and their death they gave in exchange for the
    salvation of the living. And I think that we should praise
    them in the order in which nature made them good, for they
    were good because they were sprung from good fathers.
    Wherefore let us first of all praise the goodness of their
    birth; secondly, their nurture and education; and then let
    us set forth how noble their actions were, and how worthy
    of the education which they had received.

[Sidenote: The departed were the children of the soil; and their country
is dear to the Gods, who contended for the possession of her.]

    And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not
    strangers, nor are these their descendants sojourners only,
    whose fathers have come from another country; but they are
    the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own
    land. And the country which brought them up is not like
    other countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own
    true mother; she bore them and nourished them and received
    them, and in her bosom they now repose. It is meet
    and right, therefore, that we should begin by praising the
    land which is their mother, and that will be a way of praising
    their noble birth.

[Sidenote: _The pre-eminence of Attica._]

[Sidenote: She first brought forth man, and proved her true motherhood by
providing food for her own offspring.]

[Sidenote: The Gods were the rulers of primitive men, and gave them arts.]

    The country is worthy to be praised, not only by us, but
    by all mankind; first, and above all, as being dear to the
    Gods. This is proved by the strife and contention of the
    Gods respecting her. And ought not the country which the
    Gods praise to be praised by all mankind? The second
    praise which may be fairly claimed by her, is that at the
    time when the whole earth was sending forth and creating
    diverse animals, tame and wild, she our mother was free and
    pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected
    and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding,
    and alone has justice and religion. And a great
    proof that she brought forth the common ancestors of us and
    of the departed, is that she provided the means of support
    for her offspring. For as a woman proves her motherhood
    by giving milk to her young ones (and she who has no
    fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this our land prove
    that she was the mother of men, for in those days she alone
    and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for human
    food, which is the best and noblest sustenance for man,            238
    whom she regarded as her true offspring. And these are
    truer proofs of motherhood in a country than in a woman,
    for the woman in her conception and generation is but the
    imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the woman. And
    of the fruit of the earth she gave a plenteous supply, not
    only to her own, but to others also; and afterwards she made
    the olive to spring up to be a boon to her children, and to
    help them in their toils. And when she had herself nursed
    them and brought them up to manhood, she gave them Gods
    to be their rulers and teachers, whose names are well known,
    and need not now be repeated. They are the Gods who first
    ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for the supply
    of our daily needs, and taught us the acquisition and use of
    arms for the defence of the country.

[Sidenote: We have a good government, which is sometimes called a
democracy, but is really an aristocracy, for the best rule with the
consent of the many.]

[Sidenote: _The mythical glories of Athens._]

[Sidenote: The principle of our government is equality; the only
superiority is that of virtue and wisdom.]

    Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors
    of the departed lived and made themselves a government,
    which I ought briefly to commemorate. For government is
    the nurture of man, and the government of good men is good,
    and of bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors
    were trained under a good government, and for this reason
    they were good, and our contemporaries are also good, among
    whom our departed friends are to be reckoned. Then as
    now, and indeed always, from that time to this, speaking
    generally, our government was an aristocracy—a form of
    government which receives various names, according to the
    fancies of men, and is sometimes called democracy, but is
    really an aristocracy or government of the best which has the
    approval of the many. For kings we have always had, first
    hereditary and then elected, and authority is mostly in the
    hands of the people, who dispense offices and power to those
    who appear to be most deserving of them. Neither is a man
    rejected from weakness or poverty or obscurity of origin, nor
    honoured by reason of the opposite, as in other states, but
    there is one principle—he who appears to be wise and good
    is a governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is
    equality of birth; for other states are made up of all sorts and
    unequal conditions of men, and therefore their governments
    are unequal; there are tyrannies and there are oligarchies,
    in which the one party are slaves and the other masters.
    But we and our citizens are brethren, the children all of one      239
    mother, and we do not think it right to be one another’s
    masters or servants; but the natural equality of birth compels
    us to seek for legal equality, and to recognize no superiority
    except in the reputation of virtue and wisdom.

[Sidenote: The greatness of Persia.]

[Sidenote: _The battle of Marathon._]

[Sidenote: Yet at Marathon the army of Darius was overcome by the
Athenians almost single-handed.]

[Sidenote: _Salamis, Artemisium, and Plataea._]

[Sidenote: The men of Marathon should have the first place: those who
followed in the war were their disciples, except the men who defeated the
Persians at Salamis and first made proof of them at sea; these have the
second place.]

[Sidenote: And the third place is to be assigned to those who fought at
Plataea.]

[Sidenote: Eurymedon; Cyprus; Egypt.]

    And so their and our fathers, and these, too, our brethren,
    being nobly born and having been brought up in all freedom,
    did both in their public and private capacity many noble deeds
    famous over the whole world. They were the deeds of men
    who thought that they ought to fight both against Hellenes
    for the sake of Hellenes on behalf of freedom, and against
    barbarians in the common interest of Hellas. Time would
    fail me to tell of their defence of their country against the
    invasion of Eumolpus and the Amazons, or of their defence
    of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of the Heracleids
    against the Argives; besides, the poets have already declared
    in song to all mankind their glory, and therefore any commemoration
    of their deeds in prose which we might attempt
    would hold a second place. They already have their reward,
    and I say no more of them; but there are other worthy deeds
    of which no poet has worthily sung, and which are still wooing
    the poet’s muse. Of these I am bound to make honourable
    mention, and shall invoke others to sing of them also in lyric
    and other strains, in a manner becoming the actors. And
    first I will tell how the Persians, lords of Asia, were enslaving
    Europe, and how the children of this land, who were our
    fathers, held them back. Of these I will speak first, and
    praise their valour, as is meet and fitting. He who would
    rightly estimate them should place himself in thought at that
    time, when the whole of Asia was subject to the third king of
    Persia. The first king, Cyrus, by his valour freed the
    Persians, who were his countrymen, and subjected the Medes,
    who were their lords, and he ruled over the rest of Asia, as
    far as Egypt; and after him came his son, who ruled all the
    accessible part of Egypt and Libya; the third king was
    Darius, who extended the land boundaries of the empire to
    Scythia, and with his fleet held the sea and the islands. None     240
    presumed to be his equal; the minds of all men were enthralled
    by him—so many and mighty and warlike nations
    had the power of Persia subdued. Now Darius had a quarrel
    against us and the Eretrians, because, as he said, we had
    conspired against Sardis, and he sent 500,000 men in transports
    and vessels of war, and 300 ships, and Datis as commander,
    telling him to bring the Eretrians and Athenians to
    the king, if he wished to keep his head on his shoulders. He
    sailed against the Eretrians, who were reputed to be amongst
    the noblest and most warlike of the Hellenes of that day, and
    they were numerous, but he conquered them all in three days;
    and when he had conquered them, in order that no one might
    escape, he searched the whole country after this manner: his
    soldiers, coming to the borders of Eretria and spreading from
    sea to sea, joined hands and passed through the whole country,
    in order that they might be able to tell the king that no one
    had escaped them. And from Eretria they went to Marathon
    with a like intention, expecting to bind the Athenians in the
    same yoke of necessity in which they had bound the Eretrians.
    Having effected one-half of their purpose, they were in the
    act of attempting the other, and none of the Hellenes dared
    to assist either the Eretrians or the Athenians, except the
    Lacedaemonians, and they arrived a day too late for the
    battle; but the rest were panic-stricken and kept quiet, too
    happy in having escaped for a time. He who has present to
    his mind that conflict will know what manner of men they
    were who received the onset of the barbarians at Marathon,
    and chastened the pride of the whole of Asia, and by the
    victory which they gained over the barbarians first taught
    other men that the power of the Persians was not invincible,
    but that hosts of men and the multitude of riches alike yield
    to valour. And I assert that those men are the fathers not
    only of ourselves, but of our liberties and of the liberties of
    all who are on the continent, for that was the action to which
    the Hellenes looked back when they ventured to fight for
    their own safety in the battles which ensued: they became
    disciples of the men of Marathon. To them, therefore, I
    assign in my speech the first place, and the second to those       241
    who fought and conquered in the sea fights at Salamis and
    Artemisium; for of them, too, one might have many things to
    say—of the assaults which they endured by sea and land, and
    how they repelled them. I will mention only that act of
    theirs which appears to me to be the noblest, and which
    followed that of Marathon and came nearest to it; for the
    men of Marathon only showed the Hellenes that it was
    possible to ward off the barbarians by land, the many by the
    few; but there was no proof that they could be defeated by
    ships, and at sea the Persians retained the reputation of being
    invincible in numbers and wealth and skill and strength.
    This is the glory of the men who fought at sea, that they
    dispelled the second terror which had hitherto possessed the
    Hellenes, and so made the fear of numbers, whether of ships
    or men, to cease among them. And so the soldiers of Marathon
    and the sailors of Salamis became the schoolmasters of
    Hellas; the one teaching and habituating the Hellenes not
    to fear the barbarians at sea, and the others not to fear them
    by land. Third in order, for the number and valour of the
    combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas, I place the
    battle of Plataea. And now the Lacedaemonians as well as
    the Athenians took part in the struggle; they were all united
    in this greatest and most terrible conflict of all; wherefore
    their virtues will be celebrated in times to come, as they are
    now celebrated by us. But at a later period many Hellenic
    tribes were still on the side of the barbarians, and there was
    a report that the great king was going to make a new attempt
    upon the Hellenes, and therefore justice requires that we
    should also make mention of those who crowned the previous
    work of our salvation, and drove and purged away all barbarians
    from the sea. These were the men who fought
    by sea at the river Eurymedon, and who went on the expedition
    to Cyprus, and who sailed to Egypt and divers
    other places; and they should be gratefully remembered by
    us, because they compelled the king in fear for himself to
    look to his own safety instead of plotting the destruction of
    Hellas.

[Sidenote: _Wars and expeditions of the Athenians._]

[Sidenote: Tanagra; Oenophyta.]

[Sidenote: Sphacteria.]

[Sidenote: The Sicilian expedition.]

[Sidenote: _Victories and reverses of the Athenians._]

[Sidenote: Cyzicus.]

[Sidenote: Hellas betrayed to the Persian.]

[Sidenote: Arginusae.]

[Sidenote: The taking of the city is obscurely intimated.]

    And so the war against the barbarians was fought out to            242
    the end by the whole city on their own behalf, and on behalf
    of their countrymen. There was peace, and our city was held
    in honour; and then, as prosperity makes men jealous, there
    succeeded a jealousy of her, and jealousy begat envy, and so
    she became engaged against her will in a war with the
    Hellenes. On the breaking out of war, our citizens met the
    Lacedaemonians at Tanagra, and fought for the freedom of
    the Boeotians; the issue was doubtful, and was decided by
    the engagement which followed. For when the Lacedaemonians
    had gone on their way, leaving the Boeotians, whom
    they were aiding, on the third day after the battle of Tanagra,
    our countrymen conquered at Oenophyta, and righteously
    restored those who had been unrighteously exiled. And they
    were the first after the Persian war who fought on behalf of
    liberty in aid of Hellenes against Hellenes; they were brave
    men, and freed those whom they aided, and were the first too
    who were honourably interred in this sepulchre by the state.
    Afterwards there was a mighty war, in which all the Hellenes
    joined, and devastated our country, which was very ungrateful
    of them; and our countrymen, after defeating them in a naval
    engagement and taking their leaders, the Spartans, at Sphagia,
    when they might have destroyed them, spared their lives, and
    gave them back, and made peace, considering that they should
    war with their fellow-countrymen only until they gained a
    victory over them, and not because of the private anger of the
    state destroy the common interest of Hellas; but that with
    barbarians they should war to the death. Worthy of praise
    are they also who waged this war, and are here interred; for
    they proved, if any one doubted the superior prowess of the
    Athenians in the former war with the barbarians, that their
    doubts had no foundation—showing by their victory in the
    civil war with Hellas, in which they subdued the other chief
    state of the Hellenes, that they could conquer single-handed
    those with whom they had been allied in the war against the
    barbarians. After the peace there followed a third war, which
    was of a terrible and desperate nature, and in this many brave
    men who are here interred lost their lives—many of them had
    won victories in Sicily, whither they had gone over the seas       243
    to fight for the liberties of the Leontines, to whom they were
    bound by oaths; but, owing to the distance, the city was
    unable to help them, and they lost heart and came to misfortune;
    of whom their very enemies give a higher praise for temperance
    and valour than friends do of most other men. Many
    also fell in naval engagements at the Hellespont, after having
    in one day taken all the ships of the enemy, and defeated
    them in other naval engagements. And what I call the
    terrible and desperate nature of the war, is that the other
    Hellenes, in their extreme animosity towards the city, should
    have entered into negotiations with their bitterest enemy, the
    king of Persia, whom they, together with us, had expelled;—him,
    without us, they again brought back, barbarian against
    Hellenes, and all the hosts, both of Hellenes and barbarians,
    were united against Athens. And then shone forth the power
    and valour of our city. Her enemies had supposed that she
    was exhausted by the war, and our ships were blockaded at
    Mitylene. But the citizens themselves embarked, and came
    to the rescue with sixty other ships, and their valour was
    confessed of all men, for they conquered their enemies and
    delivered their friends. And yet by some evil fortune they
    were left to perish at sea, and therefore are[64] not interred here.
    Ever to be remembered and honoured are they, for by their
    valour not only that sea-fight was won for us, but the entire
    war was decided by them, and through them the city gained
    the reputation of being invincible, even though attacked by
    all mankind. And that reputation was a true one, for the
    defeat which came upon us was our own doing. We were
    never conquered by others, and to this day we are still
    unconquered by them; but we were our own conquerors, and
    received defeat at our own hands. Afterwards there was
    quiet and peace abroad, but there sprang up war at home;
    and, if men are destined to have civil war, no one could have
    desired that his city should take the disorder in a milder form.

[Sidenote: The great reconciliation of kindred.]

[Sidenote: _An Athenian version of the history of Hellas._]

[Sidenote: Change in the relation of the Athenians (1) to the other
Hellenes; (2) to the Persian king.]

    How joyful and natural was the reconciliation of those who
    came from the Piraeus and those who came from the city;
    with what moderation did they order the war against the
    tyrants in Eleusis, and in a manner how unlike what the other
    Hellenes expected! And the reason of this gentleness was           244
    the veritable tie of blood, which created among them a friendship
    as of kinsmen, faithful not in word only, but in deed.
    And we ought also to remember those who then fell by one
    another’s hands, and on such occasions as these to reconcile
    them with sacrifices and prayers, praying to those who have
    power over them, that they may be reconciled even as we are
    reconciled. For they did not attack one another out of
    malice or enmity, but they were unfortunate. And that such
    was the fact we ourselves are witnesses, who are of the same
    race with them, and have mutually received and granted forgiveness
    of what we have done and suffered. After this there
    was perfect peace, and the city had rest; and her feeling was
    that she forgave the barbarians, who had severely suffered at
    her hands and severely retaliated, but that she was indignant
    at the ingratitude of the Hellenes, when she remembered how
    they had received good from her and returned evil, having
    made common cause with the barbarians, depriving her of the
    ships which had once been their salvation, and dismantling
    our walls, which had preserved their own from falling. She
    thought that she would no longer defend the Hellenes, when
    enslaved either by one another or by the barbarians, and did
    accordingly. This was our feeling, while the Lacedaemonians
    were thinking that we who were the champions of liberty had
    fallen, and that their business was to subject the remaining
    Hellenes. And why should I say more? for the events of
    which I am speaking happened not long ago and we can all
    of us remember how the chief peoples of Hellas, Argives and
    Boeotians and Corinthians, came to feel the need of us, and,
    what is the greatest miracle of all, the Persian king himself
    was driven to such extremity as to come round to the opinion,
    that from this city, of which he was the destroyer, and from
    no other, his salvation would proceed.

[Sidenote: _The end of the war._]

    And if a person desired to bring a deserved accusation
    against our city, he would find only one charge which he
    could justly urge—that she was too compassionate and too
    favourable to the weaker side. And in this instance she was
    not able to hold out or keep her resolution of refusing aid to
    her injurers when they were being enslaved, but she was            245
    softened, and did in fact send out aid, and delivered the
    Hellenes from slavery, and they were free until they afterwards
    enslaved themselves. Whereas, to the great king she
    refused to give the assistance of the state, for she could not
    forget the trophies of Marathon and Salamis and Plataea;
    but she allowed exiles and volunteers to assist him, and they
    were his salvation. And she herself, when she was compelled,
    entered into the war, and built walls and ships, and
    fought with the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the Parians.
    Now the king fearing this city and wanting to stand aloof,
    when he saw the Lacedaemonians growing weary of the war
    at sea, asked of us, as the price of his alliance with us and
    the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in Asia, whom
    the Lacedaemonians had previously handed over to him, he
    thinking that we should refuse, and that then he might have
    a pretence for withdrawing from us. About the other allies he
    was mistaken, for the Corinthians and Argives and Boeotians,
    and the other states, were quite willing to let them go, and
    swore and covenanted, that, if he would pay them money,
    they would make over to him the Hellenes of the continent,
    and we alone refused to give them up and swear. Such was
    the natural nobility of this city, so sound and healthy was
    the spirit of freedom among us, and the instinctive dislike of
    the barbarian, because we are pure Hellenes, having no
    admixture of barbarism in us. For we are not like many
    others, descendants of Pelops or Cadmus or Egyptus or
    Danaus, who are by nature barbarians, and yet pass for
    Hellenes, and dwell in the midst of us; but we are pure
    Hellenes, uncontaminated by any foreign element, and
    therefore the hatred of the foreigner has passed unadulterated
    into the life-blood of the city. And so, notwithstanding
    our noble sentiments, we were again isolated, because we
    were unwilling to be guilty of the base and unholy act of
    giving up Hellenes to barbarians. And we were in the
    same case as when we were subdued before; but, by the
    favour of Heaven, we managed better, for we ended the war
    without the loss of our ships or walls or colonies; the
    enemy was only too glad to be quit of us. Yet in this war
    we lost many brave men, such as were those who fell owing
    to the ruggedness of the ground at the battle of Corinth, or
    by treason at Lechaeum. Brave men, too, were those who
    delivered the Persian king, and drove the Lacedaemonians
    from the sea. I remind you of them, and you must                   246
    celebrate them together with me, and do honour to their
    memories.

[Sidenote: _Address of the departed to their sons._]

    Such were the actions of the men who are here interred,
    and of others who have died on behalf of their country;
    many and glorious things I have spoken of them, and there
    are yet many more and more glorious things remaining to
    be told—many days and nights would not suffice to tell of
    them. Let them not be forgotten, and let every man remind
    their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not
    desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall
    behind. Even as I exhort you this day, and in all future
    time, whenever I meet with any of you, shall continue to
    remind and exhort you, O ye sons of heroes, that you strive
    to be the bravest of men. And I think that I ought now to
    repeat what your fathers desired to have said to you who
    are their survivors, when they went out to battle, in case
    anything happened to them. I will tell you what I heard
    them say, and what, if they had only speech, they would
    fain be saying, judging from what they then said. And you
    must imagine that you hear them saying what I now repeat
    to you:—

    ‘Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men;
    for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred
    to die honourably rather than bring you and your children
    into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers
    and forefathers; considering that life is not life to one who
    is a dishonour to his race, and that to such a one neither
    men nor Gods are friendly, either while he is on the earth
    or after death in the world below. Remember our words,
    then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of
    the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all
    possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil. For
    neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a
    coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and
    not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body,
    when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely,
    but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous,
    and manifesting forth his cowardice. And all
    knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen
    to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your
    first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed,      247
    if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and
    know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but
    that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us.
    And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most
    likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order
    your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your
    ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect,
    nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not
    for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his
    ancestors. The honour of parents is a fair and noble
    treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure
    of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors,
    because you have neither money nor reputation of your own,
    is alike base and dishonourable. And if you follow our
    precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the
    hour of destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our
    words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome
    or receive you. This is the message which is to be delivered
    to our children.

[Sidenote: _Consolation of parents._]

    ‘Some of us have fathers and mothers still living, and we
    would urge them, if, as is likely, we shall die, to bear the
    calamity as lightly as possible, and not to condole with one
    another; for they have sorrows enough, and will not need
    any one to stir them up. While we gently heal their
    wounds, let us remind them that the Gods have heard the
    chief part of their prayers; for they prayed, not that their
    children might live for ever, but that they might be brave
    and renowned. And this, which is the greatest good, they
    have attained. A mortal man cannot expect to have everything
    in his own life turning out according to his will; and
    they, if they bear their misfortunes bravely, will be truly
    deemed brave fathers of the brave. But if they give way to
    their sorrows, either they will be suspected of not being our
    parents, or we of not being such as our panegyrists declare.
    Let not either of the two alternatives happen, but rather let
    them be our chief and true panegyrists, who show in their
    lives that they are true men, and had men for their sons.

[Sidenote: _The state the protector both of parents and orphans._]

    Of old the saying, “Nothing too much,” appeared to be, and
    really was, well said. For he whose happiness rests with himself,
    if possible, wholly, and if not, as far as is possible,—who        248
    is not hanging in suspense on other men, or changing
    with the vicissitude of their fortune,—has his life ordered for
    the best. He is the temperate and valiant and wise; and
    when his riches come and go, when his children are given
    and taken away, he will remember the proverb—“Neither
    rejoicing overmuch nor grieving overmuch,” for he relies
    upon himself. And such we would have our parents to be—that
    is our word and wish, and as such we now offer ourselves,
    neither lamenting overmuch, nor fearing overmuch, if
    we are to die at this time. And we entreat our fathers and
    mothers to retain these feelings throughout their future life,
    and to be assured that they will not please us by sorrowing
    and lamenting over us. But, if the dead have any knowledge
    of the living, they will displease us most by making
    themselves miserable and by taking their misfortunes too
    much to heart, and they will please us best if they bear their
    loss lightly and temperately. For our life will have the
    noblest end which is vouchsafed to man, and should be
    glorified rather than lamented. And if they will direct their
    minds to the care and nurture of our wives and children,
    they will soonest forget their misfortunes, and live in a better
    and nobler way, and be dearer to us.

    ‘This is all that we have to say to our families: and to the
    state we would say—Take care of our parents and of our
    sons: let her worthily cherish the old age of our parents, and
    bring up our sons in the right way. But we know that she
    will of her own accord take care of them, and does not need
    any exhortation of ours.’

    This, O ye children and parents of the dead, is the message
    which they bid us deliver to you, and which I do deliver
    with the utmost seriousness. And in their name I beseech
    you, the children, to imitate your fathers, and you, parents,
    to be of good cheer about yourselves; for we will nourish
    your age, and take care of you both publicly and privately in
    any place in which one of us may meet one of you who are
    the parents of the dead. And the care of you which the city
    shows, you know yourselves; for she has made provision by
    law concerning the parents and children of those who die in
    war; the highest authority is specially entrusted with the         249
    duty of watching over them above all other citizens, and they
    will see that your fathers and mothers have no wrong done
    to them. The city herself shares in the education of the
    children, desiring as far as it is possible that their orphanhood
    may not be felt by them; while they are children she is
    a parent to them, and when they have arrived at man’s estate
    she sends them to their several duties, in full armour clad;
    and bringing freshly to their minds the ways of their fathers,
    she places in their hands the instruments of their fathers’
    virtues; for the sake of the omen, she would have them
    from the first begin to rule over their own houses arrayed in
    the strength and arms of their fathers. And as for the dead,
    she never ceases honouring them, celebrating in common for
    all rites which become the property of each; and in addition
    to this, holding gymnastic and equestrian contests, and
    musical festivals of every sort. She is to the dead in the
    place of a son and heir, and to their sons in the place of a
    father, and to their parents and elder kindred in the place of
    a guardian—ever and always caring for them. Considering
    this, you ought to bear your calamity the more gently; for
    thus you will be most endeared to the dead and to the living,
    and your sorrows will heal and be healed. And now do you
    and all, having lamented the dead in common according to
    the law, go your ways.

[Sidenote: _‘Aspasia must not be told of this speech.’_]

    You have heard, Menexenus, the oration of Aspasia the
    Milesian.

[Sidenote: This speech, Socrates, was not composed by Aspasia, but by
yourself.]

    _Men._ Truly, Socrates, I marvel that Aspasia, who is only
    a woman, should be able to compose such a speech; she
    must be a rare one.

    _Soc._ Well, if you are incredulous, you may come with me
    and hear her.

    _Men._ I have often met Aspasia, Socrates, and know what
    she is like.

    _Soc._ Well, and do you not admire her, and are you not
    grateful for her speech?

    _Men._ Yes, Socrates, I am very grateful to her or to
    him who told you, and still more to you who have told
    me.

[Sidenote: _Menexenus promises to keep the secret._]

    _Soc._ Very good. But you must take care not to tell of me,
    and then at some future time I will repeat to you many other
    excellent political speeches of hers.

    _Men._ Fear not; only let me hear them, and I will keep
    the secret.

    _Soc._ Then I will keep my promise.


FOOTNOTES

[62] i. 9, 30; iii. 14, 11.

[63] Thucyd. ii. 35-46.

[64] Reading οὐ κεῖνται, or taking οὐκ before ἀναιρεθέντες with κεῖνται.




APPENDIX II.


[Sidenote: APPENDIX II.]

The two dialogues which are translated in the second appendix are not
mentioned by Aristotle, or by any early authority, and have no claim
to be ascribed to Plato. They are examples of Platonic dialogues to
be assigned probably to the second or third generation after Plato,
when his writings were well known at Athens and Alexandria. They
exhibit considerable originality, and are remarkable for containing
several thoughts of the sort which we suppose to be modern rather than
ancient, and which therefore have a peculiar interest for us. The Second
Alcibiades shows that the difficulties about prayer which have perplexed
Christian theologians were not unknown among the followers of Plato. The
Eryxias was doubted by the ancients themselves: yet it may claim the
distinction of being, among all Greek or Roman writings, the one which
anticipates in the most striking manner the modern science of political
economy and gives an abstract form to some of its principal doctrines.

For the translation of these two dialogues I am indebted to my friend and
secretary, Mr. Knight.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _Characteristics, &c._]

That the Dialogue which goes by the name of the Second Alcibiades is a
genuine writing of Plato will not be maintained by any modern critic,
and was hardly believed by the ancients themselves. The dialectic is
poor and weak. There is no power over language, or beauty of style; and
there is a certain abruptness and ἀγροικία in the conversation, which
is very un-Platonic. The best passage is probably that about the poets,
p. 147:—the remark that the poet, who is of a reserved disposition, is
uncommonly difficult to understand, and the ridiculous interpretation
of Homer, are entirely in the spirit of Plato (cp. Protag. 339 foll.;
Ion 534; Apol. 22 D). The characters are ill-drawn. Socrates assumes
the ‘superior person’ and preaches too much, while Alcibiades is stupid
and heavy-in-hand. There are traces of Stoic influence in the general
tone and phraseology of the Dialogue (cp. 138 B, ὅπως μὴ λήσει τις ...
κακά: 139 C, ὅτι πᾶς ἄφρων μαίνεται) and the writer seems to have been
acquainted with the ‘Laws’ of Plato (cp. Laws 3. 687, 688; 7. 801;
11. 931 B). An incident from the Symposium (213 E) is rather clumsily
introduced (151 A), and two somewhat hackneyed quotations (Symp. 174 D,
Gorg. 484 E) recur at 140 A and 146 A. The reference to the death of
Archelaus as having occurred ‘quite lately’ (141 D) is only a fiction,
probably suggested by the Gorgias, 470 D, where the story of Archelaus
is told, and a similar phrase occurs,—τὰ γὰρ ἐχθὲς καὶ πρώην γεγονότα
ταῦτα, κ.τ.λ. There are several passages which are either corrupt or
extremely ill-expressed (see pp. 144, 145, 146, 147, 150). But there is a
modern interest in the subject of the dialogue; and it is a good example
of a short spurious work, which may be attributed to the second or third
century before Christ.




ALCIBIADES II.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

SOCRATES and ALCIBIADES.

[Sidenote: _Alcibiades II._]

    _Soc._ Are you going, Alcibiades, to offer prayer to
    Zeus?                                                     =Steph.= 138

    _Al._ Yes, Socrates, I am.

    _Soc._ You seem to be troubled and to cast your eyes on the
    ground, as though you were thinking about something.

    _Al._ Of what do you suppose that I am thinking?

    _Soc._ Of the greatest of all things, as I believe. Tell me,
    do you not suppose that the Gods sometimes partly grant
    and partly reject the requests which we make in public and
    private, and favour some persons and not others?

    _Al._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: The danger of a prayer which is ill-advised.]

    _Soc._ Do you not imagine, then, that a man ought to be
    very careful, lest perchance without knowing it he implore
    great evils for himself, deeming that he is asking for good,
    especially if the Gods are in the mood to grant whatever he
    may request? There is the story of Oedipus, for instance,
    who prayed that his children might divide their inheritance
    between them by the sword: he did not, as he might have
    done, beg that his present evils might be averted, but called
    down new ones. And was not his prayer accomplished, and
    did not many and terrible evils thence arise, upon which
    I need not dilate?

    _Al._ Yes, Socrates, but you are speaking of a madman:
    surely you do not think that any one in his senses would
    venture to make such a prayer?

    _Soc._ Madness, then, you consider to be the opposite of
    discretion?

    _Al._ Of course.

[Sidenote: _Do opposites admit of intermediates?_]

    _Soc._ And some men seem to you to be discreet, and others
    the contrary?

    _Al._ They do.

    _Soc._ Well, then, let us discuss who these are. We acknowledge
    that some are discreet, some foolish, and that
    some are mad?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And again, there are some who are in health?

    _Al._ There are.

    _Soc._ While others are ailing?

    _Al._ Yes.                                                         139

    _Soc._ And they are not the same?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Nor are there any who are in neither state?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ A man must either be sick or be well?

    _Al._ That is my opinion.

[Sidenote: Alcibiades first denies and afterwards admits]

    _Soc._ Very good: and do you think the same about discretion
    and want of discretion?

    _Al._ How do you mean?

    _Soc._ Do you believe that a man must be either in or out of
    his senses; or is there some third or intermediate condition,
    in which he is neither one nor the other?

    _Al._ Decidedly not.

    _Soc._ He must be either sane or insane?

    _Al._ So I suppose.

    _Soc._ Did you not acknowledge that madness was the
    opposite of discretion?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And that there is no third or middle term between
    discretion and indiscretion?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And there cannot be two opposites to one thing?

    _Al._ There cannot.

    _Soc._ Then madness and want of sense are the same?

    _Al._ That appears to be the case.

[Sidenote: _Some elementary questions of logic._]

    _Soc._ We shall be in the right, therefore, Alcibiades, if we
    say that all who are senseless are mad. For example, if
    among persons of your own age or older than yourself there
    are some who are senseless,—as there certainly are,—they are
    mad. For tell me, by heaven, do you not think that in the
    city the wise are few, while the foolish, whom you call mad,
    are many?

    _Al._ I do.

[Sidenote: that differences of kind do not exclude differences of degree.]

    _Soc._ But how could we live in safety with so many crazy
    people? Should we not long since have paid the penalty at
    their hands, and have been struck and beaten and endured
    every other form of ill-usage which madmen are wont to
    inflict? Consider, my dear friend: may it not be quite
    otherwise?

    _Al._ Why, Socrates, how is that possible? I must have
    been mistaken.

    _Soc._ So it seems to me. But perhaps we may consider
    the matter thus:—

    _Al._ How?

    _Soc._ I will tell you. We think that some are sick; do we
    not?

    _Al._ Yes.

[Sidenote: The sick may have many kinds of sickness; so there are
different kinds of want of sense.]

    _Soc._ And must every sick person either have the gout, or
    be in a fever, or suffer from ophthalmia? Or do you believe
    that a man may labour under some other disease, even
    although he has none of these complaints? Surely, they are
    not the only maladies which exist?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And is every kind of ophthalmia a disease?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And every disease ophthalmia?

    _Al._ Surely not. But I scarcely understand what I mean
    myself.

    _Soc._ Perhaps, if you give me your best attention, ‘two of        140
    us’ looking together, we may find what we seek.

    _Al._ I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power.

    _Soc._ We are agreed, then, that every form of ophthalmia is
    a disease, but not every disease ophthalmia?

    _Al._ We are.

    _Soc._ And so far we seem to be right. For every one who
    suffers from a fever is sick; but the sick, I conceive, do not
    all have fever or gout or ophthalmia, although each of these is
    a disease, which, according to those whom we call physicians,
    may require a different treatment. They are not all alike,
    nor do they produce the same result, but each has its own
    effect, and yet they are all diseases. May we not take an
    illustration from the artizans?

[Sidenote: _Illustrations of genera and species._]

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ There are cobblers and carpenters and sculptors and
    others of all sorts and kinds, whom we need not stop to
    enumerate. All have their distinct employments and all are
    workmen, although they are not all of them cobblers or carpenters
    or sculptors.

    _Al._ No, indeed.

    _Soc._ And in like manner men differ in regard to want of
    sense. Those who are most out of their wits we call ‘madmen,’
    while we term those who are less far gone ‘stupid’ or
    ‘idiotic,’ or, if we prefer gentler language, describe them as
    ‘romantic’ or ‘simple-minded,’ or, again, as ‘innocent’ or
    ‘inexperienced’ or ‘foolish.’ You may even find other
    names, if you seek for them; but by all of them lack of sense
    is intended. They only differ as one art appeared to us to
    differ from another or one disease from another. Or what is
    your opinion?

    _Al._ I agree with you.

    _Soc._ Then let us return to the point at which we digressed.
    We said at first that we should have to consider
    who were the wise and who the foolish. For we acknowledged
    that there are these two classes? Did we not?

    _Al._ To be sure.

    _Soc._ And you regard those as sensible who know what
    ought to be done or said?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ The senseless are those who do not know this?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ The latter will say or do what they ought not without
    their own knowledge?

    _Al._ Exactly.

[Sidenote: Men often, like Oedipus, pray unadvisedly.]

[Sidenote: _The desire for good is sometimes really evil._]

    _Soc._ Oedipus, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was a person of       141
    this sort. And even now-a-days you will find many who
    [have offered inauspicious prayers], although, unlike him,
    they were not in anger nor thought that they were asking
    evil. He neither sought, nor supposed that he sought for
    good, but others have had quite the contrary notion. I believe
    that if the God whom you are about to consult should
    appear to you, and, in anticipation of your request, enquired
    whether you would be contented to become tyrant of Athens,
    and if this seemed in your eyes a small and mean thing,
    should add to it the dominion of all Hellas; and seeing that
    even then you would not be satisfied unless you were ruler
    of the whole of Europe, should promise, not only that, but, if
    you so desired, should proclaim to all mankind in one and
    the same day that Alcibiades, son of Cleinias, was tyrant:—in
    such a case, I imagine, you would depart full of joy, as one
    who had obtained the greatest of goods.

    _Al._ And not only I, Socrates, but any one else who should
    meet with such luck.

    _Soc._ Yet you would not accept the dominion and lordship
    of all the Hellenes and all the barbarians in exchange for
    your life?

    _Al._ Certainly not: for then what use could I make of
    them?

    _Soc._ And would you accept them if you were likely to use
    them to a bad and mischievous end?

    _Al._ I would not.

[Sidenote: Archelaus and his beloved.]

[Sidenote: Men never refuse the goods of fortune, however great the evils
which may attend them.]

[Sidenote: _The blindness of humanity._]

    _Soc._ You see that it is not safe for a man either rashly to
    accept whatever is offered him, or himself to request a thing,
    if he is likely to suffer thereby or immediately to lose his life.
    And yet we could tell of many who, having long desired and
    diligently laboured to obtain a tyranny, thinking that thus
    they would procure an advantage, have nevertheless fallen
    victims to designing enemies. You must have heard of
    what happened only the other day, how Archelaus of
    Macedonia was slain by his beloved[65], whose love for the
    tyranny was not less than that of Archelaus for him. The
    tyrannicide expected by his crime to become tyrant and
    afterwards to have a happy life; but when he had held the
    tyranny three or four days, he was in his turn conspired
    against and slain. Or look at certain of our own citizens,—and
    of their actions we have been not hearers, but eyewitnesses,—who
    have desired to obtain military command: of
    those who have gained their object, some are even to this day      142
    exiles from the city, while others have lost their lives. And
    even they who seem to have fared best, have not only gone
    through many perils and terrors during their office, but after
    their return home they have been beset by informers worse
    than they once were by their foes, insomuch that several of
    them have wished that they had remained in a private station
    rather than have had the glories of command. If, indeed, such
    perils and terrors were of profit to the commonwealth, there
    would be reason in undergoing them; but the very contrary is
    the case. Again, you will find persons who have prayed for
    offspring, and when their prayers were heard, have fallen
    into the greatest pains and sufferings. For some have
    begotten children who were utterly bad, and have therefore
    passed all their days in misery, while the parents of good
    children have undergone the misfortune of losing them, and
    have been so little happier than the others that they would
    have preferred never to have had children rather than to
    have had them and lost them. And yet, although these and
    the like examples are manifest and known of all, it is rare to
    find any one who has refused what has been offered him, or,
    if he were likely to gain aught by prayer, has refrained from
    making his petition. The mass of mankind would not decline
    to accept a tyranny, or the command of an army, or any
    of the numerous things which cause more harm than good:
    but rather, if they had them not, would have prayed to obtain
    them. And often in a short space of time they change their
    tone, and wish their old prayers unsaid. Wherefore also I
    suspect that men are entirely wrong when they blame the
    gods as the authors of the ills which befall them[66]: ‘their own
    presumption,’ or folly (whichever is the right word)—

      ‘Has brought these unmeasured woes upon them[67].’

    He must have been a wise poet, Alcibiades, who, seeing as I
    believe, his friends foolishly praying for and doing things
    which would not really profit them, offered up a common
    prayer in behalf of them all:—

      ‘King Zeus, grant us good whether prayed for or unsought by us;  143
      But that which we ask amiss, do thou avert[68].’

[Sidenote: _Some ignorance is better than some knowledge._]

    In my opinion, I say, the poet spoke both well and prudently;
    but if you have anything to say in answer to him,
    speak out.

    _Al._ It is difficult, Socrates, to oppose what has been well
    said. And I perceive how many are the ills of which ignorance
    is the cause, since, as would appear, through
    ignorance we not only do, but what is worse, pray for the
    greatest evils. No man would imagine that he would do so;
    he would rather suppose that he was quite capable of praying
    for what was best: to call down evil seems more like a curse
    than a prayer.

    _Soc._ But perhaps, my good friend, some one who is wiser
    than either you or I will say that we have no right to blame
    ignorance thus rashly, unless we can add what ignorance we
    mean and of what, and also to whom and how it is respectively
    a good or an evil?

    _Al._ How do you mean? Can ignorance possibly be better
    than knowledge for any person in any conceivable case?

    _Soc._ So I believe:—you do not think so?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

[Sidenote: Orestes and Alcmaeon.]

    _Soc._ And yet surely I may not suppose that you would
    ever wish to act towards your mother as they say that
    Orestes and Alcmaeon and others have done towards their
    parent.

    _Al._ Good words, Socrates, prithee.

[Sidenote: Ignorance of the best is bad: ignorance of the bad good.]

    _Soc._ You ought not to bid him use auspicious words, who
    says that you would not be willing to commit so horrible a
    deed, but rather him who affirms the contrary, if the act
    appear to you unfit even to be mentioned. Or do you think
    that Orestes, had he been in his senses and knew what was
    best for him to do, would ever have dared to venture on such
    a crime?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ Nor would any one else, I fancy?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ That ignorance is bad then, it would appear, which is
    of the best and does not know what is best?

    _Al._ So I think, at least.

    _Soc._ And both to the person who is ignorant and everybody
    else?

[Sidenote: _Cases in which ignorance may be an advantage._]

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Let us take another case. Suppose that you were
    suddenly to get into your head that it would be a good thing       144
    to kill Pericles, your kinsman and guardian, and were to
    seize a sword and, going to the doors of his house, were to
    enquire if he were at home, meaning to slay only him and no
    one else:—the servants reply, ‘Yes’: (Mind, I do not mean
    that you would really do such a thing; but there is nothing,
    you think, to prevent a man who is ignorant of the best,
    having occasionally the whim that what is worst is best?

    _Al._ No.)

[Sidenote: A man might be prevented from committing murder by ignorance
of the person whom he was going to murder.]

    _Soc._—If, then, you went indoors, and seeing him, did not
    know him, but thought that he was some one else, would you
    venture to slay him?

    _Al._ Most decidedly not [69][it seems to me][69].

    _Soc._ For you designed to kill, not the first who offered,
    but Pericles himself?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And if you made many attempts, and each time failed
    to recognize Pericles, you would never attack him?

    _Al._ Never.

    _Soc._ Well, but if Orestes in like manner had not known
    his mother, do you think that he would ever have laid hands
    upon her?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ He did not intend to slay the first woman he came
    across, nor any one else’s mother, but only his own?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ Ignorance, then, is better for those who are in such
    a frame of mind, and have such ideas?

    _Al._ Obviously.

    _Soc._ You acknowledge that for some persons in certain
    cases the ignorance of some things is a good and not an evil,
    as you formerly supposed?

    _Al._ I do.

    _Soc._ [70]And there is still another case which will also
    perhaps appear strange to you, if you will consider it?[70]

    _Al._ What is that, Socrates?

[Sidenote: _The knowledge of the best._]

[Sidenote: All knowledge if unaccompanied by a knowledge of the best is
hurtful.]

    _Soc._ It may be, in short, that the possession of all the
    sciences, if unaccompanied by the knowledge of the best, will
    more often than not injure the possessor. Consider the
    matter thus:—Must we not, when we intend either to do or
    say anything, suppose that we know or ought to know that
    which we propose so confidently to do or say?

    _Al._ Yes, in my opinion.

    _Soc._ We may take the orators for an example, who from
    time to time advise us about war and peace, or the building        145
    of walls and the construction of harbours, whether they
    understand the business in hand, or only think that they do.
    Whatever the city, in a word, does to another city, or in the
    management of her own affairs, all happens by the counsel
    of the orators.

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But now see what follows, if I can [71][make it clear to
    you][71]. You would distinguish the wise from the foolish?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ The many are foolish, the few wise?

    _Al._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And you use both the terms, ‘wise’ and ‘foolish,’ in
    reference to something?

    _Al._ I do.

[Sidenote: Examples.]

    _Soc._ Would you call a person wise who can give advice,
    but does not know whether or when it is better to carry out
    the advice?

    _Al._ Decidedly not.

    _Soc._ Nor again, I suppose, a person who knows the art of
    war, but does not know whether it is better to go to war or
    for how long?

    _Al._ No.

    _Soc._ Nor, once more, a person who knows how to kill
    another or to take away his property or to drive him from
    his native land, but not when it is better to do so or for
    whom it is better?

    _Al._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ But he who understands anything of the kind and
    has at the same time the knowledge of the best course of
    action:—and the best and the useful are surely the same?—

[Sidenote: _Cleverness in the arts not wisdom._]

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._—Such an one, I say, we should call wise and a useful
    adviser both of himself and of the city. What do you think?

    _Al._ I agree.

    _Soc._ And if any one knows how to ride or to shoot with
    the bow or to box or to wrestle, or to engage in any other
    sort of contest or to do anything whatever which is in the
    nature of an art,—what do you call him who knows what is
    best according to that art? Do you not speak of one who
    knows what is best in riding as a good rider?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And in a similar way you speak of a good boxer or
    a good flute-player or a good performer in any other art?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ But is it necessary that the man who is clever in any
    of these arts should be wise also in general? Or is there
    a difference between the clever artist and the wise man?

    _Al._ All the difference in the world.

[Sidenote: A state would be bad which was composed only of skilful
artists and clever politicians, but where no one had the knowledge of the
best.]

    _Soc._ And what sort of a state do you think that would be
    which was composed of good archers and flute-players and
    athletes and masters in other arts, and besides them of
    those others about whom we spoke, who knew how to go to
    war and how to kill, as well as of orators puffed up with
    political pride but in which not one of them all had this
    knowledge of the best, and there was no one who could tell
    when it was better to apply any of these arts or in regard to      146
    whom?

    _Al._ I should call such a state bad, Socrates.

    _Soc._ You certainly would when you saw each of them
    rivalling the other and esteeming that of the greatest importance
    in the state,

      ‘Wherein he himself most excelled[72].’

    —I mean that which was best in any art, while he was
    entirely ignorant of what was best for himself and for the
    state, because, as I think, he trusts to opinion which is
    devoid of intelligence. In such a case should we not be
    right if we said that the state would be full of anarchy and
    lawlessness?

[Sidenote: _True knowledge a knowledge of the best._]

    _Al._ Decidedly.

    _Soc._ But ought we not then, think you, either to fancy
    that we know or really to know, what we confidently propose
    to do or say?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And if a person does that which he knows or supposes
    that he knows, and the result is beneficial, he will act
    advantageously both for himself and for the state?

    _Al._ True.

    _Soc._ And if he do the contrary, both he and the state will
    suffer?

    _Al._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Well, and are you of the same mind as before?

    _Al._ I am.

    _Soc._ But were you not saying that you would call the
    many unwise and the few wise?

    _Al._ I was.

    _Soc._ And have we not come back to our old assertion that
    the many fail to obtain the best because they trust to opinion
    which is devoid of intelligence?

    _Al._ That is the case.

    _Soc._ It is good, then, for the many, if they particularly
    desire to do that which they know or suppose that they
    know, neither to know nor to suppose that they know, in
    cases where if they carry out their ideas in action they will
    be losers rather than gainers?

    _Al._ What you say is very true.

    _Soc._ Do you not see that I was really speaking the truth
    when I affirmed that the possession of any other kind of
    knowledge was more likely to injure than to benefit the
    possessor, unless he had also the knowledge of the best?

    _Al._ I do now, if I did not before, Socrates.

[Sidenote: The soul requires this knowledge of the best before she sets
sail on the voyage of life.]

[Sidenote: _The meaning of the poets._]

    _Soc._ The state or the soul, therefore, which wishes to have
    a right existence must hold firmly to this knowledge, just as
    the sick man clings to the physician, or the passenger
    depends for safety on the pilot. And if the soul does not set      147
    sail until she have obtained this she will be all the safer in
    the voyage through life. But when she rushes in pursuit of
    wealth or bodily strength or anything else, not having the
    knowledge of the best, so much the more is she likely to
    meet with misfortune. And he who has the love of learning[73],
    and is skilful in many arts, and does not possess the knowledge
    of the best, but is under some other guidance, will
    make, as he deserves, a sorry voyage:—he will, I believe,
    hurry through the brief space of human life, pilotless in
    mid-ocean, and the words will apply to him in which the poet
    blamed his enemy:—

      ‘... Full many a thing he knew;
      But knew them all badly[74].’

    _Al._ How in the world, Socrates, do the words of the poet
    apply to him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the
    point whatever.

[Sidenote: The poets spoke in riddles a hidden truth.]

    _Soc._ Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is
    talking in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all
    poetry has by nature an enigmatical character, and it is by
    no means everybody who can interpret it. And if, moreover,
    the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is of
    a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his
    wisdom but keeps it to himself as far as he can, it does
    indeed require an almost superhuman wisdom to discover
    what the poet would be at. You surely do not suppose that
    Homer, the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of
    the impossibility of knowing a thing badly: for it was no less
    a person than he who said of Margites that ‘he knew many
    things, but knew them all badly.’ The solution of the riddle
    is this, I imagine:—By ‘badly’ Homer meant ‘bad’ and
    ‘knew’ stands for ‘to know.’ Put the words together;—the
    metre will suffer, but the poet’s meaning is clear;—‘Margites
    knew all these things, but it was bad for him to know them.’
    And, obviously, if it was bad for him to know so many
    things, he must have been a good-for-nothing, unless the
    argument has played us false.

    _Al._ But I do not think that it has, Socrates: at least, if
    the argument is fallacious, it would be difficult for me to find
    another which I could trust.

    _Soc._ And you are right in thinking so.

    _Al._ Well, that is my opinion.

[Sidenote: _The prayer of the Lacedaemonians._]

[Sidenote: Alcibiades is too unstable to be able to trust his own
prayers.]

    _Soc._ But tell me, by Heaven:—you must see now the
    nature and greatness of the difficulty in which you, like
    others, have your part. For you change about in all
    directions, and never come to rest anywhere: what you once
    most strongly inclined to suppose, you put aside again and
    quite alter your mind. If the God to whose shrine you are          148
    going should appear at this moment, and ask before you
    made your prayer, ‘Whether you would desire to have one
    of the things which we mentioned at first, or whether he
    should leave you to make your own request:’—what in either
    case, think you, would be the best way to take advantage of
    the opportunity?

    _Al._ Indeed, Socrates, I could not answer you without
    consideration. It seems to me to be a wild thing[75] to make
    such a request; a man must be very careful lest he pray for
    evil under the idea that he is asking for good, when shortly
    after he may have to recall his prayer, and, as you were
    saying, demand the opposite of what he at first requested.

    _Soc._ And was not the poet whose words I originally
    quoted wiser than we are, when he bade us [pray God] to
    defend us from evil even though we asked for it?

    _Al._ I believe that you are right.

    _Soc._ The Lacedaemonians, too, whether from admiration
    of the poet or because they have discovered the idea for
    themselves, are wont to offer the prayer alike in public and
    private, that the Gods will give unto them the beautiful as
    well as the good:—no one is likely to hear them make any
    further petition. And yet up to the present time they have
    not been less fortunate than other men; or if they have
    sometimes met with misfortune, the fault has not been due to
    their prayer. For surely, as I conceive, the Gods have
    power either to grant our requests, or to send us the contrary
    of what we ask.

[Sidenote: The silent prayer of the Lacedaemonians better than all the
offerings of the other Hellenes.]

    And now I will relate to you a story which I have heard
    from certain of our elders. It chanced that when the
    Athenians and Lacedaemonians were at war, our city lost
    every battle by land and sea and never gained a victory.

[Sidenote: _The word of the Oracle_]

    The Athenians being annoyed and perplexed how to find
    a remedy for their troubles, decided to send and enquire at
    the shrine of Ammon. Their envoys were also to ask,
    ‘Why the Gods always granted the victory to the Lacedaemonians?’
    ‘We,’ (they were to say,) ‘offer them more
    and finer sacrifices than any other Hellenic state, and adorn
    their temples with gifts, as nobody else does; moreover, we
    make the most solemn and costly processions to them every
    year, and spend more money in their service than all the
    rest of the Hellenes put together. But the Lacedaemonians          149
    take no thought of such matters, and pay so little respect to
    the Gods that they have a habit of sacrificing blemished
    animals to them, and in various ways are less zealous than
    we are, although their wealth is quite equal to ours.’ When
    they had thus spoken, and had made their request to know
    what remedy they could find against the evils which troubled
    them, the prophet made no direct answer,—clearly because
    he was not allowed by the God to do so;—but he summoned
    them to him and said: ‘Thus saith Ammon to the Athenians:
    “The silent worship of the Lacedaemonians pleaseth me
    better than all the offerings of the other Hellenes.”’ Such
    were the words of the God, and nothing more. He seems
    to have meant by ‘silent worship’ the prayer of the
    Lacedaemonians, which is indeed widely different from the
    usual requests of the Hellenes. For they either bring to
    the altar bulls with gilded horns or make offerings to the
    Gods, and beg at random for what they need, good or bad.
    When, therefore, the Gods hear them using words of ill
    omen they reject these costly processions and sacrifices of
    theirs. And we ought, I think, to be very careful and consider
    well what we should say and what leave unsaid.
    Homer, too, will furnish us with similar stories. For he
    tells us how the Trojans in making their encampment,

      ‘Offered up whole hecatombs to the immortals,’

    and how the ‘sweet savour’ was borne ‘to the heavens by
    the winds;

      ‘But the blessed Gods were averse and received it not.
      For exceedingly did they hate the holy Ilium,
      Both Priam and the people of the spear-skilled king.’

    So that it was in vain for them to sacrifice and offer gifts,
    seeing that they were hateful to the Gods, who are not, like
    vile usurers, to be gained over by bribes. And it is foolish
    for us to boast that we are superior to the Lacedaemonians
    by reason of our much worship. The idea is inconceivable
    that the Gods have regard, not to the justice and purity of        150
    our souls, but to costly processions and sacrifices, which men
    may celebrate year after year, although they have committed
    innumerable crimes against the Gods or against their fellow-men
    or the state. For the Gods, as Ammon and his prophet
    declare, are no receivers of gifts, and they scorn such unworthy
    service. Wherefore also it would seem that wisdom
    and justice are especially honoured both by the Gods and by
    men of sense; and they are the wisest and most just who
    know how to speak and act towards Gods and men. But
    I should like to hear what your opinion is about these
    matters.

[Sidenote: _about the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians._]

    _Al._ I agree, Socrates, with you and with the God, whom,
    indeed, it would be unbecoming for me to oppose.

    _Soc._ Do you not remember saying that you were in great
    perplexity, lest perchance you should ask for evil, supposing
    that you were asking for good?

    _Al._ I do.

[Sidenote: Alcibiades cannot tell whether he is asking for good or evil.
‘Therefore let his words be few.’]

    _Soc._ You see, then, that there is a risk in your approaching
    the God in prayer, lest haply he should refuse
    your sacrifice when he hears the blasphemy which you utter,
    and make you partake of other evils as well. The wisest
    plan, therefore, seems to me that you should keep silence;
    for your ‘highmindedness’—to use the mildest term which
    men apply to folly—will most likely prevent you from using
    the prayer of the Lacedaemonians. You had better wait
    until we find out how we should behave towards the Gods
    and towards men.

    _Al._ And how long must I wait, Socrates, and who will be
    my teacher? I should be very glad to see the man.

    _Soc._ It is he who takes an especial interest in you. But
    first of all, I think, the darkness must be taken away in
    which your soul is now enveloped, just as Athene in Homer
    removes the mist from the eyes of Diomede that

      ‘He may distinguish between God and mortal man.’

    Afterwards the means may be given to you whereby you
    may distinguish between good and evil. At present, I fear,
    this is beyond your power.

[Sidenote: _Alcibiades and his teacher._]

    _Al._ Only let my instructor take away the impediment,
    whether it pleases him to call it mist or anything else! I
    care not who he is; but I am resolved to disobey none of
    his commands, if I am likely to be the better for them.

    _Soc._ And surely he has a wondrous care for you.                  151

    _Al._ It seems to be altogether advisable to put off the
    sacrifice until he is found.

    _Soc._ You are right: that will be safer than running such
    a tremendous risk.

    _Al._ But how shall we manage, Socrates?—At any rate
    I will set this crown of mine upon your head, as you have
    given me such excellent advice, and to the Gods we will
    offer crowns and perform the other customary rites when
    I see that day approaching: nor will it be long hence, if
    they so will.

    _Soc._ I accept your gift, and shall be ready and willing to
    receive whatever else you may proffer. Euripides makes
    Creon say in the play, when he beholds Tiresias with his
    crown and hears that he has gained it by his skill as the
    first-fruits of the spoil:—

      ‘An auspicious omen I deem thy victor’s wreath:
      For well thou knowest that wave and storm oppress us[76].’

    And so I count your gift to be a token of good-fortune; for
    I am in no less stress than Creon, and would fain carry off
    the victory over your lovers.


FOOTNOTES

[65] Cp. Aristotle, Pol. v. 10, § 17.

[66] Cp. Rep. x. 619 C.

[67] Hom. Odyss. i. 32.

[68] The author of these lines, which are probably of Pythagorean origin,
is unknown. They are found also in the Anthology (Anth. Pal. 10. 108).

[69] These words are omitted in several MSS.

[70] The reading is here uncertain.

[71] Some words appear to have dropped out here.

[72] Euripides, Antiope, fr. 20 (Dindorf).

[73] Or, reading πολυμάθειαν, ‘abundant learning.’

[74] A fragment from the pseudo-Homeric poem, ‘Margites.’

[75] The Homeric word μάργος is said to be here employed in allusion to
the quotation from the ‘Margites’ which Socrates has just made; but it is
not used in the sense which it has in Homer.

[76] Phoeniss. 865, 866.




ERYXIAS.


INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Eryxias._]

Much cannot be said in praise of the style or conception of the Eryxias.
It is frequently obscure; like the exercise of a student, it is full of
small imitations of Plato:—Phaeax returning from an expedition to Sicily
(cp. Socrates in the Charmides from the army at Potidaea), the figure of
the game at draughts, 395 B, borrowed from Rep. vi. 487, etc. It has also
in many passages the ring of sophistry. On the other hand, the rather
unhandsome treatment which is exhibited towards Prodicus is quite unlike
the urbanity of Plato.

Yet there are some points in the argument which are deserving of
attention. (1) That wealth depends upon the need of it or demand for
it, is the first anticipation in an abstract form of one of the great
principles of modern political economy, and the nearest approach to it
to be found in an ancient writer. (2) The resolution of wealth into its
simplest implements going on to infinity is a subtle and refined thought.
(3) That wealth is relative to circumstances is a sound conception.
(4) That the arts and sciences which receive payment are likewise to
be comprehended under the notion of wealth, also touches a question of
modern political economy. (5) The distinction of _post hoc_ and _propter
hoc_, often lost sight of in modern as well as in ancient times. These
metaphysical conceptions and distinctions show considerable power of
thought in the writer, whatever we may think of his merits as an imitator
of Plato.


ERYXIAS.

_PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE._

SOCRATES. ERYXIAS. ERASISTRATUS. CRITIAS.

SCENE:—The portico of a temple of Zeus.

[Sidenote: _Eryxias._]

    It happened by chance that Eryxias the Steirian was walking
    with me in the Portico of Zeus the Deliverer, when there  =Steph.= 392
    came up to us Critias and Erasistratus, the latter the son of
    Phaeax, who was the nephew of Erasistratus. Now Erasistratus
    had just arrived from Sicily and that part of the world.
    As they approached, he said, Hail, Socrates!

    _Soc._ The same to you, I said; have you any good news
    from Sicily to tell us?

    _Eras._ Most excellent. But, if you please, let us first sit
    down; for I am tired with my yesterday’s journey from
    Megara.

    _Soc._ Gladly, if that is your desire.

[Sidenote: _The nature of wealth._]

[Sidenote: The troublesome Sicilians.]

    _Eras._ What would you wish to hear first? he said. What
    the Sicilians are doing, or how they are disposed towards our
    city? To my mind, they are very like wasps: so long as
    you only cause them a little annoyance they are quite unmanageable;
    you must destroy their nests if you wish to get
    the better of them. And in a similar way, the Syracusans,
    unless we set to work in earnest, and go against them with a
    great expedition, will never submit to our rule. The petty
    injuries which we at present inflict merely irritate them
    enough to make them utterly intractable. And now they
    have sent ambassadors to Athens, and intend, I suspect, to
    play us some trick.—While we were talking, the Syracusan
    envoys chanced to go by, and Erasistratus, pointing to one
    of them, said to me, That, Socrates, is the richest man in
    all Italy and Sicily. For who has larger estates or more
    land at his disposal to cultivate if he please? And they
    are of a quality, too, finer than any other land in Hellas.
    Moreover, he has all the things which go to make up
    wealth, slaves and horses innumerable, gold and silver
    without end.

    I saw that he was inclined to expatiate on the riches of the
    man; so I asked him, Well, Erasistratus, and what sort of
    character does he bear in Sicily?

[Sidenote: The wicked millionaire.]

    _Eras._ He is esteemed to be, and really is, the wickedest of      393
    all the Sicilians and Italians, and even more wicked than he
    is rich; indeed, if you were to ask any Sicilian whom he
    thought to be the worst and the richest of mankind, you
    would never hear any one else named.

    _Soc._ I reflected that we were speaking, not of trivial matters,
    but about wealth and virtue, which are deemed to be of the
    greatest moment, and I asked Erasistratus whom he considered
    the wealthier,—he who was the possessor of a talent
    of silver or he who had a field worth two talents?

    _Eras._ The owner of the field.

    _Soc._ And on the same principle he who had robes and
    bedding and such things which are of greater value to him
    than to a stranger would be richer than the stranger?

    _Eras._ True.

    _Soc._ And if any one gave you a choice, which of these
    would you prefer?

    _Eras._ That which was most valuable.

[Sidenote: Wealth consists of things which are valuable.]

    _Soc._ In which way do you think you would be the
    richer?

    _Eras._ By choosing as I said.

    _Soc._ And he appears to you to be the richest who has
    goods of the greatest value?

    _Eras._ He does.

[Sidenote: _Is wisdom the most valuable of all things?_]

    _Soc._ And are not the healthy richer than the sick, since
    health is a possession more valuable than riches to the sick?
    Surely there is no one who would not prefer to be poor and
    well, rather than to have all the King of Persia’s wealth and
    to be ill. And this proves that men set health above wealth,
    else they would never choose the one in preference to the
    other.

    _Eras._ True.

    _Soc._ And if anything appeared to be more valuable than
    health, he would be the richest who possessed it?

    _Eras._ He would.

    _Soc._ Suppose that some one came to us at this moment
    and were to ask, Well, Socrates and Eryxias and Erasistratus,
    can you tell me what is of the greatest value to men?
    Is it not that of which the possession will best enable a man
    to advise how his own and his friends’ affairs should be
    administered?—What will be our reply?

    _Eras._ I should say, Socrates, that happiness was the most
    precious of human possessions.

    _Soc._ Not a bad answer. But do we not deem those men
    who are most prosperous to be the happiest?

    _Eras._ That is my opinion.

    _Soc._ And are they not most prosperous who commit the
    fewest errors in respect either of themselves or of other
    men?

    _Eras._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And they who know what is evil and what is
    good; what should be done and what should be left undone;—these
    behave the most wisely and make the fewest                         394
    mistakes?

    Erasistratus agreed to this.

    _Soc._ Then the wisest and those who do best and the most
    fortunate and the richest would appear to be all one and
    the same, if wisdom is really the most valuable of our
    possessions?

[Sidenote: Of what use would wisdom be, if a man had not the necessaries
of life?]

    Yes, said Eryxias, interposing, but what use would it be if
    a man had the wisdom of Nestor and wanted the necessaries
    of life, food and drink and clothes and the like? Where
    would be the advantage of wisdom then? Or how could he
    be the richest of men who might even have to go begging,
    because he had not wherewithal to live?

[Sidenote: _Comparative claims of wisdom and of riches._]

    I thought that what Eryxias was saying had some weight,
    and I replied, Would the wise man really suffer in this way,
    if he were so ill-provided; whereas if he had the house of
    Polytion, and the house were full of gold and silver, he
    would lack nothing?

    _Eryx._ Yes; for then he might dispose of his property and
    obtain in exchange what he needed, or he might sell it for
    money with which he could supply his wants and in a moment
    procure abundance of everything.

[Sidenote: The wisdom of Nestor better and even more saleable than the
house of Polytion.]

[Sidenote: And in the arts is not wisdom better than riches?]

    _Soc._ True, if he could find some one who preferred such a
    house to the wisdom of Nestor. But if there are persons
    who set great store by wisdom like Nestor’s and the advantages
    accruing from it, to sell these, if he were so disposed,
    would be easier still. Or is a house a most useful and
    necessary possession, and does it make a great difference in
    the comfort of life to have a mansion like Polytion’s instead
    of living in a shabby little cottage, whereas wisdom is of small
    use and it is of no importance whether a man is wise or
    ignorant about the highest matters? Or is wisdom despised
    of men and can find no buyers, although cypress wood and
    marble of Pentelicus are eagerly bought by numerous purchasers?
    Surely the prudent pilot or the skilful physician,
    or the artist of any kind who is proficient in his art, is more
    worth than the things which are especially reckoned among
    riches; and he who can advise well and prudently for himself
    and others is able also to sell the product of his art, if he so
    desire.

    Eryxias looked askance, as if he had received some unfair          395
    treatment, and said, I believe, Socrates, that if you were
    forced to speak the truth, you would declare that you were
    richer than Callias the son of Hipponicus. And yet, although
    you claimed to be wiser about things of real importance, you
    would not any the more be richer than he.

[Sidenote: Eryxias is supposed to reply that arguments can prove anything
and convince no one.]

[Sidenote: _The triangular argument of Socrates, Eryxias, Critias._]

    I dare say, Eryxias, I said, that you may regard these arguments
    of ours as a kind of game; you think that they have
    no relation to facts, but are like the pieces in the game of
    draughts which the player can move in such a way that his
    opponents are unable to make any countermove[77]. And perhaps,
    too, as regards riches you are of opinion that while
    facts remain the same, there are arguments, no matter
    whether true or false, which enable the user of them to prove
    that the wisest and the richest are one and the same, although
    he is in the wrong and his opponents are in the right.
    There would be nothing strange in this; it would be as if
    two persons were to dispute about letters, one declaring that
    the word Socrates began with an S, the other that it began with
    an A, and the latter could gain the victory over the former.

[Sidenote: Eryxias disclaims the answer which is attributed to him.]

    Eryxias glanced at the audience, laughing and blushing at
    once, as if he had had nothing to do with what had just been
    said, and replied,—No, indeed, Socrates, I never supposed
    that our arguments should be of a kind which would never
    convince any one of those here present or be of advantage to
     them. For what man of sense could ever be persuaded that
    the wisest and the richest are the same? The truth is that
    we are discussing the subject of riches, and my notion is that
    we should argue respecting the honest and dishonest means
    of acquiring them, and, generally, whether they are a good
    thing or a bad.

[Sidenote: The argument is renewed from a fresh point of view. Eryxias
declares riches to be a good; Critias maintains that they are sometimes
an evil.]

    Very good, I said, and I am obliged to you for the hint:
    in future we will be more careful. But why do not you yourself,
    as you introduced the argument, and do not think that
    the former discussion touched the point at issue, tell us
    whether you consider riches to be a good or an evil?

    I am of opinion, he said, that they are a good. He was
    about to add something more, when Critias interrupted him:—Do
    you really suppose so, Eryxias?

    Certainly, replied Eryxias; I should be mad if I did not:
    and I do not fancy that you would find any one else of a contrary
    opinion.

    And I, retorted Critias, should say that there is no one
    whom I could not compel to admit that riches are bad for
    some men. But surely, if they were a good, they could not          396
    appear bad for any one?

[Sidenote: _The irony of Socrates._]

[Sidenote: Socrates encourages the two disputants to follow up the
argument.]

    Here I interposed and said to them: If you two were
    having an argument about equitation and what was the best
    way of riding, supposing that I knew the art myself, I should
    try to bring you to an agreement. For I should be ashamed
    if I were present and did not do what I could to prevent
    your difference. And I should do the same if you were
    quarrelling about any other art and were likely, unless you
    agreed on the point in dispute, to part as enemies instead of
    as friends. But now, when we are contending about a thing
    of which the usefulness continues during the whole of life,
    and it makes an enormous difference whether we are to
    regard it as beneficial or not,—a thing, too, which is esteemed
    of the highest importance by the Hellenes:—(for parents,
    as soon as their children are, as they think, come to years of
    discretion, urge them to consider how wealth may be acquired,
    since by riches the value of a man is judged):—When,
    I say, we are thus in earnest, and you, who agree in
    other respects, fall to disputing about a matter of such
    moment, that is, about wealth, and not merely whether
    it is black or white, light or heavy, but whether it is a
    good or an evil, whereby, although you are now the dearest
    of friends and kinsmen, the most bitter hatred may arise
    betwixt you, I must hinder your dissension to the best of my
    power. If I could, I would tell you the truth, and so put an
    end to the dispute; but as I cannot do this, and each of you
    supposes that you can bring the other to an agreement, I am
    prepared, as far as my capacity admits, to help you in solving
    the question. Please, therefore, Critias, try to make us
    accept the doctrines which you yourself entertain.

    _Crit._ I should like to follow up the argument, and will ask
    Eryxias whether he thinks that there are just and unjust
    men?

    _Eryx._ Most decidedly.

    _Crit._ And does injustice seem to you an evil or a good?

    _Eryx._ An evil.

    _Crit._ Do you consider that he who bribes his neighbour’s
    wife and commits adultery with her, acts justly or unjustly,
    and this although both the state and the laws forbid?

    _Eryx._ Unjustly.

[Sidenote: Wealth may furnish the opportunity of crime.]

    _Crit._ And if the wicked man has wealth and is willing to         397
    spend it, he will carry out his evil purposes? whereas he
    who is short of means cannot do what he fain would, and
    therefore does not sin? In such a case, surely, it is better
    that a person should not be wealthy, if his poverty prevents
    the accomplishment of his desires, and his desires are evil?
    Or, again, should you call sickness a good or an evil?

    _Eryx._ An evil.

    _Crit._ Well, and do you think that some men are intemperate?

[Sidenote: _The argument of Critias._]

    _Eryx._ Yes.

    _Crit._ Then, if it is better for his health that the intemperate
    man should refrain from meat and drink and other pleasant
    things, but he cannot owing to his intemperance, will it not
    also be better that he should be too poor to gratify his lust
    rather than that he should have a superabundance of means?
    For thus he will not be able to sin, although he desire never
    so much.

[Sidenote: Eryxias takes offence at Critias, whose argument, as Socrates
pretends, is only the repetition of which one had been used by Prodicus
of Ceos on the day before, and had been refuted by an impertinent youth.]

    Critias appeared to be arguing so admirably that Eryxias,
    if he had not been ashamed of the bystanders, would
    probably have got up and struck him. For he thought that
    he had been robbed of a great possession when it became
    obvious to him that he had been wrong in his former opinion
    about wealth. I observed his vexation, and feared that they
    would proceed to abuse and quarrelling: so I said,—I heard
    that very argument used in the Lyceum yesterday by a wise
    man, Prodicus of Ceos; but the audience thought that he
    was talking mere nonsense, and no one could be persuaded
    that he was speaking the truth. And when at last a certain
    talkative young gentleman came in, and, taking his seat,
    began to laugh and jeer at Prodicus, tormenting him and
    demanding an explanation of his argument, he gained the ear
    of the audience far more than Prodicus.

    Can you repeat the discourse to us? said Erasistratus.

    _Soc._ If I can only remember it, I will. The youth began
    by asking Prodicus, In what way did he think that riches
    were a good and in what an evil? Prodicus answered, as
    you did just now, that they were a good to good men and to
    those who knew in what way they should be employed, while
    to the bad and the ignorant they were an evil. The same is
    true, he went on to say, of all other things; men make them
    to be what they are themselves. The saying of Archilochus
    is true:—

      ‘Men’s thoughts correspond to the things which they meet with.’

    Well, then, replied the youth, if any one makes me wise in         398
    that wisdom whereby good men become wise, he must also
    make everything else good to me. Not that he concerns
    himself at all with these other things, but he has converted
    my ignorance into wisdom. If, for example, a person teach
    me grammar or music, he will at the same time teach me all
    that relates to grammar or music, and so when he makes me
    good, he makes things good to me.

[Sidenote: _Prodicus corrected._]

    Prodicus did not altogether agree: still he consented to
    what was said.

    And do you think, said the youth, that doing good things
    is like building a house,—the work of human agency; or do
    things remain what they were at first, good or bad, for all
    time?

    Prodicus began to suspect, I fancy, the direction which the
    argument was likely to take, and did not wish to be put down
    by a mere stripling before all those present:—(if they two
    had been alone, he would not have minded):—so he
    answered, cleverly enough: I think that doing good things
    is a work of human agency.

    And is virtue in your opinion, Prodicus, innate or acquired
    by instruction?

    The latter, said Prodicus.

    Then you would consider him a simpleton who supposed
    that he could obtain by praying to the Gods the knowledge
    of grammar or music or any other art, which he must either
    learn from another or find out for himself?

    Prodicus agreed to this also.

    And when you pray to the Gods that you may do well and
    receive good, you mean by your prayer nothing else than
    that you desire to become good and wise:—if, at least,
    things are good to the good and wise and evil to the evil.
    But in that case, if virtue is acquired by instruction, it would
    appear that you only pray to be taught what you do not
    know.

    Hereupon I said to Prodicus that it was no misfortune to
    him if he had been proved to be in error in supposing that
    the Gods immediately granted to us whatever we asked:—if,
    I added, whenever you go up to the Acropolis you earnestly
    entreat the Gods to grant you good things, although you
    know not whether they can yield your request, it is as though
    you went to the doors of the grammarian and begged him,
    although you had never made a study of the art, to give you
    a knowledge of grammar which would enable you forthwith
    to do the business of a grammarian.

[Sidenote: _What constitutes wealth?_]

[Sidenote: Prodicus is desired to leave the gymnasium because he is
disturbing the minds of youth.]

    While I was speaking, Prodicus was preparing to retaliate
    upon his youthful assailant, intending to employ the argument      399
    of which you have just made use; for he was annoyed
    to have it supposed that he offered a vain prayer to the Gods.
    But the master of the gymnasium came to him and begged
    him to leave because he was teaching the youths doctrines
    which were unsuited to them, and therefore bad for them.

    I have told you this because I want you to understand
    how men are circumstanced in regard to philosophy. Had
    Prodicus been present and said what you have said, the
    audience would have thought him raving, and he would
    have been ejected from the gymnasium. But you have
    argued so excellently well that you have not only persuaded
    your hearers, but have brought your opponent to an agreement.
    For just as in the law courts, if two witnesses testify
    to the same fact, one of whom seems to be an honest fellow
    and the other a rogue, the testimony of the rogue often has
    the contrary effect on the judges’ minds to what he intended,
    while the same evidence if given by the honest man at once
    strikes them as perfectly true. And probably the audience
    have something of the same feeling about yourself and Prodicus;
    they think him a Sophist and a braggart, and regard
    you as a gentleman of courtesy and worth. For they do not
    pay attention to the argument so much as to the character of
    the speaker.

[Sidenote: Socrates jesting professes to be in earnest.]

    But truly, Socrates, said Erasistratus, though you may be
    joking, Critias does seem to me to be saying something
    which is of weight.

    _Soc._ I am in profound earnest, I assure you. But why,
    as you have begun your argument so prettily, do you not go
    on with the rest? There is still something lacking, now
    you have agreed that [wealth] is a good to some and an evil
    to others. It remains to enquire what constitutes wealth;
    for unless you know this, you cannot possibly come to an
    understanding as to whether it is a good or an evil. I am
    ready to assist you in the enquiry to the utmost of my power:
    but first let him who affirms that riches are a good, tell us
    what, in his opinion, is wealth.

    _Eras._ Indeed, Socrates, I have no notion about wealth
    beyond that which men commonly have. I suppose that
    wealth is a quantity of money[78]; and this, I imagine, would
    also be Critias’ definition.

[Sidenote: _Different kinds of money._]

[Sidenote: What is money? It is observed that different kinds of money
pass current in different countries,—Carthage, Lacedaemon, Ethiopia,
Scythia.]

    _Soc._ Then now we have to consider, What is money? Or
    else later on we shall be found to differ about the question.
    For instance, the Carthaginians use money of this sort.
    Something which is about the size of a stater is tied up in a      400
    small piece of leather: what it is, no one knows but the makers.
    A seal is next set upon the leather, which then passes into
    circulation, and he who has the largest number of such
    pieces is esteemed the richest and best off. And yet if any one
    among us had a mass of such coins he would be no wealthier
    than if he had so many pebbles from the mountain. At
    Lacedaemon, again, they use iron by weight which has been
    rendered useless: and he who has the greatest mass of such
    iron is thought to be the richest, although elsewhere it has
    no value. In Ethiopia engraved stones are employed, of
    which a Lacedaemonian could make no use. Once more,
    among the Nomad Scythians a man who owned the house of
    Polytion would not be thought richer than one who possessed
    Mount Lycabettus among ourselves. And clearly those things
    cannot all be regarded as possessions; for in some cases the
    possessors would appear none the richer thereby: but, as I
    was saying, some one of them is thought in one place to be
    money, and the possessors of it are the wealthy, whereas in
    some other place it is not money, and the ownership of it
    does not confer wealth; just as the standard of morals varies,
    and what is honourable to some men is dishonourable to
    others. And if we wish to enquire why a house is valuable to
    us but not to the Scythians, or why the Carthaginians value
    leather which is worthless to us, or the Lacedaemonians find
    wealth in iron and we do not, can we not get an answer in
    some such way as this: Would an Athenian, who had a
    thousand talents weight of the stones which lie about in the
    Agora and which we do not employ for any purpose, be
    thought to be any the richer?

    _Eras._ He certainly would not appear so to me.

    _Soc._ But if he possessed a thousand talents weight of some
    precious stone, we should say that he was very rich?

    _Eras._ Of course.

[Sidenote: _Wealth must be useful._]

    _Soc._ The reason is that the one is useless and the other
    useful?

    _Eras._ Yes.

    _Soc._ And in the same way among the Scythians a house
    has no value because they have no use for a house, nor
    would a Scythian set so much store on the finest house in
    the world as on a leather coat, because he could use the
    one and not the other. Or again, the Carthaginian coinage
    is not wealth in our eyes, for we could not employ it, as we
    can silver, to procure what we need, and therefore it is of no
    use to us.

    _Eras._ True.

[Sidenote: Wealth is useful, but other things are useful besides wealth.]

    _Soc._ What is useful to us, then, is wealth, and what is
    useless to us is not wealth?

    But how do you mean, Socrates? said Eryxias, interrupting.
    Do we not employ in our intercourse with one another               401
    speech and violence (?) and various other things? These
    are useful and yet they are not wealth.

    _Soc._ Clearly we have not yet answered the question,
    What is wealth? That wealth must be useful, to be wealth
    at all,—thus much is acknowledged by every one. But what
    particular thing is wealth, if not all things? Let us pursue
    the argument in another way; and then we may perhaps
    find what we are seeking. What is the use of wealth,
    and for what purpose has the possession of riches been
    invented,—in the sense, I mean, in which drugs have been
    discovered for the cure of disease? Perhaps in this way we
    may throw some light on the question. It appears to be clear
    that whatever constitutes wealth must be useful, and that
    wealth is one class of useful things; and now we have to
    enquire, What is the use of those useful things which constitute
    wealth? For all things probably may be said to be
    useful which we use in production, just as all things which
    have life are animals, but there is a special kind of animal
    which we call ‘man.’ Now if any one were to ask us, What
    is that of which, if we were rid, we should not want medicine
    and the instruments of medicine, we might reply that this
    would be the case if disease were absent from our bodies
    and either never came to them at all or went away again as
    soon as it appeared; and we may therefore conclude that
    medicine is the science which is useful for getting rid of
    disease. But if we are further asked, What is that from
    which, if we were free, we should have no need of wealth?
    can we give an answer? If we have none, suppose that we
    restate the question thus:—If a man could live without food
    or drink, and yet suffer neither hunger nor thirst, would he
    want either money or anything else in order to supply his
    needs?

[Sidenote: _Wealth is what is wanted:_]

    _Eryx._ He would not.

[Sidenote: If the body had no wants or feelings there would be no need of
money.]

    _Soc._ And does not this apply in other cases? If we did
    not want for the service of the body the things of which we
    now stand in need, and heat and cold and the other bodily
    sensations were unperceived by us, there would be no use in
    this so-called wealth, if no one, that is, had any necessity for
    those things which now make us wish for wealth in order
    that we may satisfy the desires and needs of the body in
    respect of our various wants. And therefore if the possession
    of wealth is useful in ministering to our bodily wants, and
    bodily wants were unknown to us, we should not need
    wealth, and possibly there would be no such thing as
    wealth.

    _Eryx._ Clearly not.

    _Soc._ Then our conclusion is, as would appear, that wealth
    is what is useful to this end?

    Eryxias once, more gave his assent, but the small argument
    considerably troubled him.

    _Soc._ And what is your opinion about another question:—Would      402
    you say that the same thing can be at one time useful
    and at another useless for the production of the same result?

    _Eryx._ I cannot say more than that if we require the same
    thing to produce the same result, then it seems to me to be
    useful; if not, not.

    _Soc._ Then if without the aid of fire we could make a brazen
    statue, we should not want fire for that purpose; and if we
    did not want it, it would be useless to us? And the argument
    applies equally in other cases.

    _Eryx._ Clearly.

    _Soc._ And therefore conditions which are not required for
    the existence of a thing are not useful for the production of it?

    _Eryx._ Of course not.

[Sidenote: _and when ceasing to be wanted ceases to be wealth._]

    _Soc._ And if without gold or silver or anything else which
    we do not use directly for the body in the way that we do
    food and drink and bedding and houses,—if without these we
    could satisfy the wants of the body, they would be of no use
    to us for that purpose?

    _Eryx._ They would not.

    _Soc._ They would no longer be regarded as wealth, because
    they are useless, whereas that would be wealth which enabled
    us to obtain what was useful to us?

    _Eryx._ O Socrates, you will never be able to persuade me
    that gold and silver and similar things are not wealth. But
    I am very strongly of opinion that things which are useless
    to us are not wealth, and that the money which is useful for
    this purpose is of the greatest use; not that these things
    are not useful towards life, if by them we can procure
    wealth.

[Sidenote: The arts too are wealth, for by them the needs of life are
satisfied.]

    _Soc._ And how would you answer another question? There
    are persons, are there not, who teach music and grammar
    and other arts for pay, and thus procure those things of
    which they stand in need?

    _Eryx._ There are.

    _Soc._ And these men by the arts which they profess, and in
    exchange for them, obtain the necessities of life just as we do
    by means of gold and silver?

    _Eryx._ True.

    _Soc._ Then if they procure by this means what they want
    for the purposes of life, that art will be useful towards life?
    For do we not say that silver is useful because it enables us
    to supply our bodily needs?

    _Eryx._ We do.

    _Soc._ Then if these arts are reckoned among things useful,
    the arts are wealth for the same reason as gold and silver are,
    for, clearly, the possession of them gives wealth. Yet a little
    while ago we found it difficult to accept the argument which
    proved that the wisest are the wealthiest. But now there           403
    seems no escape from this conclusion. Suppose that we
    are asked, ‘Is a horse useful to everybody?’ will not our
    reply be, ‘No, but only to those who know how to use a
    horse?’

    _Eryx._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: _Wealth is wealth when we know how to use it._]

    _Soc._ And so, too, physic is not useful to every one, but
    only to him who knows how to use it?

    _Eryx._ True.

    _Soc._ And the same is the case with everything else?

    _Eryx._ Yes.

    _Soc._ Then gold and silver and all the other elements
    which are supposed to make up wealth are only useful to the
    person who knows how to use them?

    _Eryx._ Exactly.

    _Soc._ And were we not saving before that it was the business
    of a good man and a gentleman to know where and how
    anything should be used?

    _Eryx._ Yes.

[Sidenote: The good only know how to use things.]

    _Soc._ The good and gentle, therefore, will alone have profit
    from these things, supposing at least that they know how to
    use them. But if so, to them only will they seem to be
    wealth. It appears, however, that where a person is ignorant
    of riding, and has horses which are useless to him, if some
    one teaches him that art, he makes him also richer, for what
    was before useless has now become useful to him, and in
    giving him knowledge he has also conferred riches upon
    him.

    _Eryx._ That is the case.

    _Soc._ Yet I dare be sworn that Critias will not be moved a
    whit by the argument.

    _Crit._ No, by heaven. I should be a madman if I were. But
    why do you not finish the argument which proves that gold
    and silver and other things which seem to be wealth are not
    real wealth? For I have been exceedingly delighted to hear
    the discourses which you have just been holding.

    _Soc._ My argument, Critias (I said), appears to have given
    you the same kind of pleasure which you might have derived
    from some rhapsode’s recitation of Homer; for you do not
    believe a word of what has been said. But come now, give
    me an answer to this question. Are not certain things useful
    to the builder when he is building a house?

    _Crit._ They are.

[Sidenote: _The elements of wealth are infinite._]

    _Soc._ And would you say that those things are useful which
    are employed in house building,—stones and bricks and
    beams and the like, and also the instruments with which the
    builder built the house, the beams and stones which they
    provided, and again the instruments by which these were
    obtained?

    _Crit._ It seems to me that they are all useful for building.

    _Soc._ And is it not true of every art, that not only the
    materials but the instruments by which we procure them and
    without which the work could not go on, are useful for
    that art?

    _Crit._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ And further, the instruments by which the instruments
    are procured, and so on, going back from stage to stage _ad        404
    infinitum_,—are not all these, in your opinion, necessary in
    order to carry out the work?

    _Crit._ We may fairly suppose such to be the case.

[Sidenote: A sophism. Gold and silver would be useless if they were not
needed to obtain food: and things cannot be at one time useless, at
another time useful, in the same actions.]

    _Soc._ And if a man has food and drink and clothes and the
    other things which are useful to the body, would he need
    gold or silver or any other means by which he could procure
    that which he now has?

    _Crit._ I do not think so.

    _Soc._ Then you consider that a man never wants any of
    these things for the use of the body?

    _Crit._ Certainly not.

    _Soc._ And if they appear useless to this end, ought they not
    always to appear useless? For we have already laid down
    the principle that things cannot be at one time useful and
    another time not, in the same process.

    _Crit._ But in that respect your argument and mine are the
    same. For you maintain if they are useful to a certain end,
    they can never become useless; whereas I say that in order
    to accomplish some results bad things are needed, and good
    for others.

    _Soc._ But can a bad thing be used to carry out a good
    purpose?

    _Crit._ I should say not.

    _Soc._ And we call those actions good which a man does for
    the sake of virtue?

    _Crit._ Yes.

    _Soc._ But can a man learn any kind of knowledge which is
    imparted by word of mouth if he is wholly deprived of
    the sense of hearing?

[Sidenote: _Good ends may be attained by bad means._]

    _Crit._ Certainly not, I think.

    _Soc._ And will not hearing be useful for virtue, if virtue is
    taught by hearing and we use the sense of hearing in giving
    instruction?

    _Crit._ Yes.

[Sidenote: There are indirect means towards ends.]

    _Soc._ And since medicine frees the sick man from his
    disease, that art too may sometimes appear useful in the
    acquisition of virtue, e. g. when hearing is procured by the
    aid of medicine.

    _Crit._ Very likely.

    _Soc._ But if, again, we obtain by wealth the aid of medicine,
    shall we not regard wealth as useful for virtue?

    _Crit._ True.

    _Soc._ And also the instruments by which wealth is procured?

    _Crit._ Certainly.

[Sidenote: Wealth may be gained discreditably, but spent in the
acquisition of virtue.]

    _Soc._ Then you think that a man may gain wealth by bad
    and disgraceful means, and, having obtained the aid of medicine
    which enables him to acquire the power of hearing, may
    use that very faculty for the acquisition of virtue?

    _Crit._ Yes, I do.

    _Soc._ But can that which is evil be useful for virtue?

    _Crit._ No.

    _Soc._ It is not therefore necessary that the means by which
    we obtain what is useful for a certain object should always be
    useful for the same object: for it seems that bad actions may
    sometimes serve good purposes? The matter will be still            405
    plainer if we look at it in this way:—If things are useful
    towards the several ends for which they exist, which ends
    would not come into existence without them, how would you
    regard them? Can ignorance, for instance, be useful for
    knowledge, or disease for health, or vice for virtue?

    _Crit._ Never.

    _Soc._ And yet we have already agreed—have we not?—that
    there can be no knowledge where there has not previously
    been ignorance, nor health where there has not been disease,
    nor virtue where there has not been vice?

    _Crit._ I think that we have.

[Sidenote: Difference between causes and antecedents.]

    _Soc._ But then it would seem that the antecedents without
    which a thing cannot exist are not necessarily useful to it.

[Sidenote: _Is he who needs most or who needs least the happier?_]

    Otherwise ignorance would appear useful for knowledge,
    disease for health, and vice for virtue.

    Critias still showed great reluctance to accept any argument
    which went to prove that all these things were useless.
    I saw that it was as difficult to persuade him as (according to
    the proverb) it is to boil a stone, so I said: Let us bid
    ‘good-bye’ to the discussion, since we cannot agree whether
    these things are useful and a part of wealth or not. But
    what shall we say to another question: Which is the
    happier and better man,—he who requires the greatest quantity
    of necessaries for body and diet, or he who requires only
    the fewest and least? The answer will perhaps become more
    obvious if we suppose some one, comparing the man himself
    at different times, to consider whether his condition is better
    when he is sick or when he is well?

    _Crit._ That is not a question which needs much consideration.

[Sidenote: Health is a better condition than disease; and it needs less.]

    _Soc._ Probably, I said, every one can understand that
    health is a better condition than disease. But when have we
    the greatest and the most various needs, when we are sick or
    when we are well?

    _Crit._ When we are sick.

    _Soc._ And when we are in the worst state we have the
    greatest and most especial need and desire of bodily
    pleasures?

    _Crit._ True.

[Sidenote: So he is best off who has fewest desires.]

    _Soc._ And seeing that a man is best off when he is least in
    need of such things, does not the same reasoning apply to
    the case of any two persons, of whom one has many and
    great wants and desires, and the other few and moderate?
    For instance, some men are gamblers, some drunkards, and
    some gluttons: and gambling and the love of drink and
    greediness are all desires?

    _Crit._ Certainly.

    _Soc._ But desires are only the lack of something: and
    those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition
    than those who have none or very slight ones?

    _Crit._ Certainly I consider that those who have such              406
    wants are bad, and that the greater their wants the worse
    they are.

    _Soc._ And do we think it possible that a thing should be
    useful for a purpose unless we have need of it for that
    purpose?

[Sidenote: _The richest are those who are most in want._]

    _Crit._ No.

    _Soc._ Then if these things are useful for supplying the
    needs of the body, we must want them for that purpose?

    _Crit._ That is my opinion.

    _Soc._ And he to whom the greatest number of things are
    useful for his purpose, will also want the greatest number of
    means of accomplishing it, supposing that we necessarily feel
    the want of all useful things?

    _Crit._ It seems so.

    _Soc._ The argument proves then that he who has great
    riches has likewise need of many things for the supply of the
    wants of the body; for wealth appears useful towards that
    end. And the richest must be in the worst condition, since
    they seem to be most in want of such things.


FOOTNOTES

[77] Cp. Rep. vi. 487.

[78] Cp. Arist. Pol. i. 9, §§ 10, 14.




Transcriber’s Notes

  P. 147. ‘opinons’ changed to ‘opinions’.
  P. 240. ‘Odyssee’ changed to ‘Odyssey’.
  P. 256. ‘Simmais’ changed to ‘Simmias’.
  P. 554. ‘Teiresias’ changed to ‘Tiresias’.
  P. 560. ‘Erisastratus’ changed to ‘Erasistratus’.
  P. 560. Added _Soc._ voice to paragraph.
  Corrected various punctuation.
  Several missing Stephanus page numbers added, by comparison with the
     UK printing.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76464 ***