Socrates : But perhaps, my excellent friend, some person who is WISER than either you or I may say we are wrong to be so free with our abuse of ignorance, (143c) unless we can add that it is ignorance of certain things, and is a good to certain persons in certain conditions, as to those others it is an evil. ALCIBIADES II
(132d) Now this one of the two lovers had spent his time on humane studies, whereas the other, whom he was abusing, had spent his on athletics. So I decided that I had best relinquish the other, whom I had been questioning, since he did not even himself set up to be experienced in words, but only in deeds ; and that I should interrogate the one who set up to be WISER, in order that so far as I was able I might get some benefit from him. I said therefore : I addressed my question to both in common ; but if you think you could answer more creditably than he, I put the same question to you as I did to him : do you consider philosophizing to be honorable or not ? LOVERS
(135b) At this the WISER one interjected : The finest and most suitable kinds of learning are those which will bring him the most reputation for philosophy ; and he will get most reputation if he appears well versed in all the arts, or if not in all, in as many of them, and those the most considerable, as he can, by learning so much of them as befits a free man to learn, that is, what belongs to the understanding rather than the handiwork of each. LOVERS
(369d) Socrates : Hippias, I do not doubt that you are WISER than I ; but it is always my custom to pay attention when anyone is speaking, especially when the speaker seems to me to be wise ; and because I desire to learn what he means, I question him thoroughly and examine and compare the things he says, in order that I may learn. But if the speaker seems to me to be worthless, I neither ask questions nor care what he says. And by this you will recognize whom I regard as wise ; for you will find me persistently asking such a man questions about what he says, (369e) in order that I may profit by learning something. And so now I noticed when you were speaking, that in the lines which you repeated just now to show that Achilles speaks to Odysseus as to a deceiver, it seems to me very strange, if what you say is true, (370a) that Odysseus the wily is nowhere found to have spoken falsely, but Achilles is found to be a wily sort of person, according to your argument ; at any rate, he speaks falsely. For he begins by speaking these lines which you just quoted : LESSER HIPPIAS
Socrates : And what if it be knowledge ? Is not the WISER soul more just, and the more ignorant more unjust ? LESSER HIPPIAS
Socrates : This more powerful and WISER soul, then, was found to be better and to have more power to do both good and disgraceful acts in every kind of action was it not ? LESSER HIPPIAS
Soc. And is not the WISER always the fairer, sweet friend ? PROTAGORAS
Prodicus added : That, Critias, seems to me to be well said, for those who are present at such discussions ought to be impartial hearers of both the speakers ; remembering, however, that impartiality is not the same as equality, for both sides should be impartially heard, and yet an equal meed should not be assigned to both of them ; but to the WISER a higher meed should be given, and a lower to the less wise. And I as well as Critias would beg you, Protagoras and Socrates, to grant our request, which is, that you will argue with one another and not wrangle ; for friends argue with friends out of goodwill, but only adversaries and enemies wrangle. And then our meeting will be delightful ; for in this way you, who are the speakers, will be most likely to win esteem, and not praise only, among us who are your audience ; for esteem is a sincere conviction of the hearers’ souls, but praise is often an insincere expression of men uttering falsehoods contrary to their conviction. And thus we who are the hearers will be gratified and not pleased ; for gratification is of the mind when receiving wisdom and knowledge, but pleasure is of the body when eating or experiencing some other bodily delight. Thus spoke Prodicus, and many of the company applauded his words. PROTAGORAS
This proposal was received by the company with universal approval ; Callias said that he would not let me off, and they begged me to choose an arbiter. But I said that to choose an umpire of discourse would be unseemly ; for if the person chosen was inferior, then the inferior or worse ought not to preside over the better ; or if he was equal, neither would that be well ; for he who is our equal will do as we do, and what will be the use of choosing him ? And if you say, “Let us have a better then,” — to that I answer that you cannot have any one who is WISER than Protagoras. And if you choose another who is not really better, and whom you only say is better, to put another over him as though he were an inferior person would be an unworthy reflection on him ; not that, as far as I am concerned, any reflection is of much consequence to me. Let me tell you then what I will do in order that the conversation and discussion may go on as you desire. If Protagoras is not disposed to answer, let him ask and I will answer ; and I will endeavour to show at the same time how, as I maintain, he ought to answer : and when I have answered as many questions as he likes to ask, let him in like manner answer me ; and if he seems to be not very ready at answering the precise question asked of him, you and I will unite in entreating him, as you entreated me, not to spoil the discussion. And this will require no special arbiter — all of you shall be arbiters. PROTAGORAS
I dare say, Athenians, that someone among you will reply, “Why is this, Socrates, and what is the origin of these accusations of you : for there must have been something strange which you have been doing ? All this great fame and talk about you would never have arisen if you had been like other men : tell us, then, why this is, as we should be sorry to judge hastily of you.” Now I regard this as a fair challenge, and I will endeavor to explain to you the origin of this name of “wise,” and of this evil fame. Please to attend then. And although some of you may think 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, such wisdom as is attainable 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, and will tell you about my wisdom — whether I have any, and of what sort — and that witness shall be the god of Delphi. You must have known Chaerephon ; he was early a friend of mine, and also a friend of yours, for he shared in the 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 there was anyone 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 this story. APOLOGY
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 this riddle ? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What 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 a long consideration, I at last 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 to 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 WISER still by himself ; and I went and 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 philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him. APOLOGY
After this 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, 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 some inferior men were really WISER and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the “Herculean” labors, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. When I left the politicians, I went to the poets ; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be 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 speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That showed me in an instant 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. And 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. APOLOGY
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 in this 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 — 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 the oracle that I was better off as I was. APOLOGY
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, I say, 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 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 : then I should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown ; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance ? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself WISER than other men, — 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 dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go now, and reject the counsels of Anytus, who said that if I were not put to death I ought not to have been prosecuted, 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 will let you off, but upon one condition, that are to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this again you shall die ; — if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply : Men of Athens, I honor 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 anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying : O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all ? Are you not ashamed of this ? And if the person with whom I am arguing says : Yes, but I do care ; I do not depart or let him go at once ; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know ; and I believe that to this day 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 and 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 come 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, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone 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 whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. APOLOGY
(119a) Socrates : But tell me of any other Athenian or foreigner, slave or freeman, who is accounted to have become WISER through converse with Pericles ; as I can tell you that Pythodorus son of Isolochus, and Callias, son of Calliades, became through that of Zeno ; each of them has paid Zeno a hundred minae, and has become both wise and distinguished. ALCIBIADES I
Socrates : My guardian is better and WISER than your one, Pericles. ALCIBIADES I
La. Capital, Socrates ; by the gods, that is truly good. And I hope, Nicias, that you will tell us whether these animals, which we all admit to be courageous, are really WISER than mankind ; or whether you will have the boldness, in the face of universal opinion, to deny their courage. LACHES
They assented. I was about to ask which was the juster of the two, and which was the WISER of the two ; but at this moment Menexenus was called away by some one who came and said that the gymnastic-master wanted him. I supposed that he had to offer sacrifice. So he went away, and I asked Lysis some more questions. I dare say, Lysis, I said, that your father and mother love you very much. LYSIS
Yes, my dear youth, I said, the reason is not any deficiency of years, but a deficiency of knowledge ; and whenever your father thinks that you are WISER than he is, he will instantly commit himself and his possessions to you. LYSIS
And everything in which we appear to him to be WISER than himself or his son he will commit to us ? LYSIS
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 — EUTHYPHRO
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 ? GORGIAS
Cal. Most assuredly, I do mean the WISER. GORGIAS
Cal. Yes ; that is what I mean, and that is what I conceive to be natural justice — that the better and WISER should rule have more than the inferior. GORGIAS
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 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 ? GORGIAS
Soc. Well, but do you admit that the WISER is the better ? Answer “Yes” or “No.” GORGIAS
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 ? GORGIAS
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 ? GORGIAS
Euthydemus was proceeding to give the youth a third fall ; but I knew that he was in deep water, and therefore, as I wanted to give him a respite lest he should be disheartened, I said to him consolingly : You must not be surprised, Cleinias, at the singularity of their mode of speech : this I say because you may not understand what the two strangers are doing with you ; they are only initiating you after the manner of the Corybantes in the mysteries ; and this answers to the enthronement, which, if you have ever been initiated, is, as you will know, accompanied by dancing and sport ; and now they are just prancing and dancing about you, and will next proceed to initiate you ; imagine then that you have gone through the first part of the sophistical ritual, which, as Prodicus says, begins with initiation into the correct use of terms. The two foreign gentlemen, perceiving that you did not know, wanted to explain to you that the word “to learn” has two meanings, and is used, first, in the sense of acquiring knowledge of some matter of which you previously have no knowledge, and also, when you have the knowledge, in the sense of reviewing this matter, whether something done or spoken by the light of this newly-acquired knowledge ; the latter is generally called “knowing” rather than “learning,” but the word “learning” is also used ; and you did not see, as they explained to you, that the term is employed of two opposite sorts of men, of those who know, and of those who do not know. There was a similar trick in the second question, when they asked you whether men learn what they know or what they do not know. These parts of learning are not serious, and therefore I say that the gentlemen are not serious, but are only playing with you. For if a man had all that sort of knowledge that ever was, he would not be at all the WISER ; he would only be able to play with men, tripping them up and over setting them with distinctions of words. He would be like a person who pulls away a stool from some one when he is about to sit down, and then laughs and makes merry at the sight of his friend overturned and laid on his back. And you must regard all that has hitherto passed between you and them as merely play. But in what is to follow I am certain that they will exhibit to you their serious purpose, and keep their promise (I will show them how) ; for they promised to give me a sample of the hortatory philosophy, but I suppose that they wanted to have a game with you first. And now, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, I think that we have had enough of this. Will you let me see you explaining to the young man how he is to apply himself to the study of virtue and wisdom ? And I will first show you what I conceive to be the nature of the task, and what sort of a discourse I desire to hear ; and if I do this in a very inartistic and ridiculous manner, do not laugh at me, for I only venture to improvise before you because I am eager to hear your wisdom : and I must therefore ask you and your disciples to refrain from laughing. And now, O son of Axiochus, let me put a question to you : Do not all men desire happiness ? And yet, perhaps, this is one of those ridiculous questions which I am afraid to ask, and which ought not to be asked by a sensible man : for what human being is there who does not desire happiness ? EUTHYDEMUS
Soc. And if, on the other hand, wisdom and folly are really distinguishable, you will allow, I think, that the assertion of Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is true to him, one man cannot in reality be WISER than another. CRATYLUS
Soc. And are the men or the women of a city, taken as a class, the WISER ? CRATYLUS
Soc. And must not Homer have imagined the Trojans to be WISER than their wives ? CRATYLUS
Soc. Your faith is not vain ; for at this very moment a new and ingenious thought strikes me, and, if I am not careful, before tomorrow’s dawn I shall be WISER than I ought to be. Now, attend to me ; and first, remember that we of put in and pull out letters in words, and give names as we please and change the accents. Take, for example, the word Dii Philos ; in order to convert this from a sentence into a noun, we omit one of the iotas and sound the middle syllable grave instead of acute ; as, on the other hand, letters are sometimes inserted in words instead of being omitted, and the acute takes the place of the grave. CRATYLUS
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 ; that 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 anyone 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 the best of the higher ones, until you found a resting-place ; but you would not refuse 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 a philosopher, will, I believe, do as I say. PHAEDO
Soc. Come, O ye Muses, melodious, as ye are called, whether you have received this name from the character of your strains, or because the Melians are a musical race, help, O help me in the tale which my good friend here desires me to rehearse, in order that his friend whom he always deemed wise may seem to him to be WISER than ever. PHAEDRUS
and when he had completed his poem, which is called “the recantation,” immediately his sight returned to him. Now I will be WISER than either Stesichorus or Homer, in that I am going to make my recantation for reviling love before I suffer ; and this I will attempt, not as before, veiled and ashamed, but with forehead bold and bare. PHAEDRUS
Soc. Let us tell him that, before he appeared, you and I were saying that the probability of which he speaks was engendered in the minds of the many by the likeness of the truth, and we had just been affirming that he who knew the truth would always know best how to discover the resemblances of the truth. If he has anything else to say about the art of speaking we should like to hear him ; but if not, we are satisfied with our own view, that unless a man estimates the various characters of his heaters and is able to divide all things into classes and to comprehend them under single ideas he will never be a skilful rhetorician even within the limits of human power. And this skill he will not attain without a great deal of trouble, which a good man ought to undergo, not for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but in order that he may be able to say what is acceptable to God and always to act acceptably to Him as far as in him lies ; for there is a saying of WISER men than ourselves, that a man of sense should not try to please his fellow-servants (at least this should not be his first object) but his good and noble masters ; and therefore if the way is long and circuitous, marvel not at this, for, where the end is great, there we may take the longer road, but not for lesser ends such as yours. Truly, the argument may say, Tisias, that if you do not mind going so far, rhetoric has a fair beginning here. PHAEDRUS
Soc. At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth ; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt ; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of the he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians WISER and give them better memories ; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied : O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have ; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories ; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth ; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing ; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing ; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. PHAEDRUS
Soc. Yes, my boy, and so do I : and my desire is to learn of him, or of anybody who seems to understand these things. And I get on pretty well in general ; but there is a little difficulty which I want you and the company to aid me in investigating. Will you answer me a question : “Is not learning growing WISER about that which you learn ?” THEAETETUS
And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence ; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. And I would beg you not to my words in the letter, but to take the meaning of them as I will explain them. Remember what has been already said, — that to the sick man his food appears to be and is bitter, and to the man in health the opposite of bitter. Now I cannot conceive that one of these men can be or ought to be made WISER than the other : nor can you assert that the sick man because he has one impression is foolish, and the healthy man because he has another is wise ; but the one state requires to be changed into the other, the worse into the better. As in education, a change of state has to be effected, and the sophist accomplishes by words the change which the physician works by the aid of drugs. Not that any one ever made another think truly, who previously thought falsely. For no one can think what is not, or think anything different from that which he feels ; and this is always true. But as the inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive that a good mind causes men to have good thoughts ; and these which the inexperienced call true, I maintain to be only better, and not truer than others. And, O my dear Socrates, I do not call wise men tadpoles : far from it ; I say that they are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants — for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy sensations — aye and true ones ; and the wise and good rhetoricians make the good instead of the evil to seem just to states ; for whatever appears to a state to be just and fair, so long as it is regarded as such, is just and fair to it ; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality. And in like manner the Sophist who is able to train his pupils in this spirit is a wise man, and deserves to be well paid by them. And so one man is WISER than another ; and no one thinks falsely, and you, whether you will or not, must endure to be a measure. On these foundations the argument stands firm, which you, Socrates, may, if you please, overthrow by an opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me — a method to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I must beg you to put fair questions : for there is great inconsistency in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic : the disputer may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun ; but the dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept. If you do so, your adversary will lay the blame of his own confusion and perplexity on himself, and not on you ; will follow and love you, and will hate himself, and escape from himself into philosophy, in order that he may become different from what he was. But the other mode of arguing, which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite effect upon him ; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher, he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion, and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner you will consider whether knowledge and sensation are the same or different, but you will not argue, as you were just now doing, from the customary use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all sorts of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another. THEAETETUS
Soc. And are not we, Protagoras, uttering the opinion of man, or rather of all mankind, when we say that every one thinks himself WISER than other men in some things, and their inferior in others ? In the hour of danger, when they are in perils of war, or of the sea, or of sickness, do they not look up to their commanders as if they were gods, and expect salvation from them, only because they excel them in knowledge ? Is not the world full of men in their several employments, who are looking for teachers and rulers of themselves and of the animals ? and there are plenty who think that they are able to teach and able to rule. Now, in all this is implied that ignorance and wisdom exist among them, least in their own opinion. THEAETETUS
Soc. But do not know that we are going beyond the truth. Doubtless, as he is older, he may be expected to be WISER than we are. And if he could only just get his head out of the world below, he would have overthrown both of us again and again, me for talking nonsense and you for assenting to me, and have been off and underground in a trice. But as he is not within call, we must make the best use of our own faculties, such as they are, and speak out what appears to us to be true. And one thing which no one will deny is, that there are great differences in the understandings of men. THEAETETUS
Soc. Or again, in politics, while affirming that just and unjust, honourable and disgraceful, holy and unholy, are in reality to each state such as the state thinks and makes lawful, and that in determining these matters no individual or state is WISER than another, still the followers of Protagoras will not deny that in determining what is or is not expedient for the community one state is WISER and one counsellor better that another — they will scarcely venture to maintain, that what a city enacts in the belief that it is expedient will always be really expedient. But in the other case, I mean when they speak of justice and injustice, piety and impiety, they are confident that in nature these have no existence or essence of their own — the truth is that which is agreed on at the time of the agreement, and as long as the agreement lasts ; and this is the philosophy of many who do not altogether go along with Protagoras. Here arises a new question, Theodorus, which threatens to be more serious than the last. THEAETETUS
Soc. Then we may fairly argue against your master, that he must admit one man to be WISER than another, and that the WISER is a measure : but I, who know nothing, am not at all obliged to accept the honour which the advocate of Protagoras was just now forcing upon me, whether I would or not, of being a measure of anything. THEAETETUS
Str. How do the Sophists make young men believe in their supreme and universal wisdom ? For if they neither disputed nor were thought to dispute rightly, or being thought to do so were deemed no WISER for their controversial skill, then, to quote your own observation, no one would give them money or be willing to learn their art. SOPHIST
Str. Yet once more, we shall have to enact that if any one is detected enquiring into piloting and navigation, or into health and the true nature of medicine, or about the winds, or other conditions of the atmosphere, contrary to the written rules, and has any ingenious notions about such matters, he is not to be called a pilot or physician, but a cloudy prating sophist ; — further, on the ground that he is a corrupter of the young, who would persuade them. to follow the art of medicine or piloting in an unlawful manner, and to exercise an arbitrary rule over their patients or ships, any one who is qualified by law may inform against him, and indict him in some court, and then if he is found to be persuading any, whether young or old, to act contrary to the written law, he is to be punished with the utmost rigour ; for no one should presume to be WISER than the laws ; and as touching healing and health and piloting and navigation, the nature of them is known to all, for anybody may learn the written laws and the national customs. If such were the mode of procedure, Socrates, about these sciences and about generalship, and any branch of hunting, or about painting or imitation in general, or carpentry, or any sort of handicraft, or husbandry, or planting, or if we were to see an art of rearing horses, or tending herds, or divination, or any ministerial service, or draught-playing, or any science conversant with number, whether simple or square or cube, or comprising motion — I say, if all these things were done in this way according to written regulations, and not according to art, what would be the result ? STATESMAN
Ath. Good ; and what measures ought the legislator to have then taken in order to avert this calamity ? Truly there is no great wisdom in knowing, and no great difficulty in telling, after the evil has happened ; but to have foreseen the remedy at the time would have taken a much WISER head than ours. LAWS BOOK III
Feast away in triumph, and take your fill of the argument ; I will not oppose you, lest I should displease the company. Well, then, proceed with your answers, and let me have the remainder of my repast. For we have already shown that the just are clearly WISER and better and abler than the unjust, and that the unjust are incapable of common action ; nay, more, that to speak as we did of men who are evil acting at any time vigorously together, is not strictly true, for, if they had been perfectly evil, they would have laid hands upon one another ; but it is evident that there must have been some remnant of justice in them, which enabled them to combine ; if there had not been they would have injured one another as well as their victims ; they were but half-villains in their enterprises ; for had they been whole villains, and utterly unjust, they would have been utterly incapable of action. That, as I believe, is the truth of the matter, and not what you said at first. But whether the just have a better and happier life than the unjust is a further question which we also proposed to consider. I think that they have, and for the reasons which I have given ; but still I should like to examine further, for no light matter is at stake, nothing less than the rule of human life. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I
Motion, I said, has many forms, and not one only ; two of them are obvious enough even to wits no better than ours ; and there are others, as I imagine, which may be left to WISER persons. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII