GORGIAS
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
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, 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. (Compare 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 hardly admit that the moral
antithesis of good and pleasure, or the intellectual
antithesis of knowledge and opinion, being and 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.
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.
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.
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, and is again mentioned in the Phaedrus, as the
inventor of balanced or double forms of speech (compare
Gorg.; Symp.). 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,
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 (compare Republic). 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.
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.), is
introduced. 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' (compare Protag.). Callicles exhibits great
ability in defending himself and attacking Socrates, whom
he accuses of trifling and word-splitting; he is
scandalized 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 Republic, and the
similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and the
philosopher in the Theaetetus).
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.
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; and still less with the 'recent' death of
Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429
B.C.) and is afterwards reckoned among the statesmen of a
past age; or with the mention of Nicias, who died in 413,
and is nevertheless spoken of as a living witness. 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).
The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable, (1) for the
truly characteristic declaration of Socrates 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.' 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.' 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. And yet there is an
inconsistency: for should not Socrates too have taught the
citizens better than to put him to death?
And now, as he himself says, we will 'resume the argument
from the beginning.'
Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple,
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.
SOCRATES: Put the question to him, Chaerephon.
CHAEREPHON: What question?
SOCRATES: 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 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:--
Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and
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 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 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 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 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 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?
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 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, 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, 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 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 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?
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 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 (compare Protag.), that Polus shall
ask and Socrates answer.
'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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 then his cousin and 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 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.
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. 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 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.
There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better
off when he is punished or when he is unpunished? Socrates
replies, 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 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 the fairest of these
is justice. Happy is he who has never committed injustice,
and happy in the second degree he who has been healed by
punishment. And therefore the criminal should himself go to
the judge as he would to the physician, and purge away his
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 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.
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 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
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
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.'
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.
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 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; 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 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 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 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,
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, 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.'
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 dead,
and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) 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 fils his jars, and has no more
trouble with them; the second is always filling 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 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 coexist,
but must alternate with one another--to be well and ill
together is 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
simultaneously, and therefore pleasure cannot be the same
as good.
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 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 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.
Callicles assents to this, and Socrates, finding that they
are agreed in distinguishing pleasure from good, returns to
his old division of empirical habits, or shams, or
flatteries, which study 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 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 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 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 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 same time, he hopes that
Callicles will correct him, if he falls into error. He
recapitulates the advantages which he has already won:--
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 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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?
'There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not
entirely believe you.'
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 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 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, 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 gains greater experience and skill. The inference
is, that the statesman 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 perjury and iniquity,
and sends him away to the house of torment.
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.
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 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.
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 (compare Charmides). 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 above). 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. Traces of a
'robust sophistry' are likewise discernible in his argument
with Callicles.
(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.
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.
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, '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. 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.
(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.
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, 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.
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.
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; compare Gorg.),
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.
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; and in the proposed use of rhetoric
as an instrument of self-condemnation; and in the mighty
power of geometrical equality in both worlds. (2) The
reference of the mythus to the previous discussion should
not be overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable
criminals such as Archelaus; the retaliation of the box on
the ears; 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 (compare
Swift's notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale
of a Tub). The fiction seems to have involved Plato in the
necessity of supposing that the soul retained a sort of
corporeal likeness after death. (3) The appeal of the
authority of Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos in his
court 'holding a golden sceptre,' which gives
verisimilitude to the tale.
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.
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), 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 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.
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.
And the Sermon on the Mount--
'Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness'
sake.'--Matt.
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 (compare Republic). 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.
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, 'Therefore if thine
enemy hunger, feed him,' etc., quoted in Romans.)
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? 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.
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. (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 the second rank
to-day without being ready to restore them to the first
to-morrow.' Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)
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.
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
(compare Republic) 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.
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' (Republic), 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'
(Republic).
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 chess board are all that he can fore see--two or
three weeks 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.
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.
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 (Republic). 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.
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. (Compare Thucyd.)
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 common- places 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 (Republic).
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; that it should make
provision for the soul's highest interest; that it should
be pursued only with a view to 'the improvement of the
citizens.' He ministers to the weaker side of human nature
(Republic); 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?
'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.' Plato does not say that God will order all
things for the best (compare Phaedo), 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' (Republic). 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.
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 (compare Republic). 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.
The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature.
There are four longer ones: these occur in the Phaedrus,
Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic. 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, 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 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, 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: (5) the speech at the beginning
of the Phaedrus, which is a parody of the orator Lysias;
the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of it. To
these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers, and
(7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus:
(8) the parable of the Cave (Republic), 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 (Republic; compare Laws), 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.: (11) the
parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous
sailors (Republic), 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
(Gor.): (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). 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, 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: the composite animal, having the form of a man,
but containing under a human skin a lion and a many-headed
monster (Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and
the wild beast within us, meaning the passions which are
always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of the
degradation of philosophy by the arts to the dishonoured
maiden, and of the tyrant to the parricide, who 'beats his
father, having first taken away his arms': the dog, who is
your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry
image of the argument wandering about without a head
(Laws), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias:
the argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as
engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us in a first, second
and third wave:--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, of the
midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only exception. To
make the list complete, the mathematical figure of the
number of the state (Republic), or the numerical interval
which separates king from tyrant, should not be forgotten.
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.
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.
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,' 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.
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.
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.
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 (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.).
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.
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 (compare Phaedrus). 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' (Republic). 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
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Callicles, Socrates, Chaerephon,
Gorgias, Polus.
SCENE: The house of Callicles.
CALLICLES: The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a
fray, but not for a feast.
SOCRATES: And are we late for a feast?
CALLICLES: Yes, and a delightful feast; for Gorgias has
just been exhibiting to us many fine things.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: What is the matter, Chaerephon--does Socrates
want to hear Gorgias?
CHAEREPHON: Yes, that was our intention in coming.
CALLICLES: Come into my house, then; for Gorgias is staying
with me, and he shall exhibit to you.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: How fortunate! will you ask him, Chaerephon--?
CHAEREPHON: What shall I ask him?
SOCRATES: Ask him who he is.
CHAEREPHON: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: 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?
CHAEREPHON: 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 since
any one has asked me a new one.
CHAEREPHON: Then you must be very ready, Gorgias.
GORGIAS: Of that, Chaerephon, you can make trial.
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.
CHAEREPHON: And do you, Polus, think that you can answer
better than Gorgias?
POLUS: What does that matter if I answer well enough for
you?
CHAEREPHON: Not at all:--and you shall answer if you like.
POLUS: Ask:--
CHAEREPHON: 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?
POLUS: Certainly.
CHAEREPHON: Then we should be right in calling him a
physician?
POLUS: Yes.
CHAEREPHON: And if he had the skill of Aristophon the son
of Aglaophon, or of his brother Polygnotus, what ought we
to call him?
POLUS: Clearly, a painter.
CHAEREPHON: But now what shall we call him--what is the art
in which he is skilled.
POLUS: 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.
SOCRATES: Polus has been taught how to make a capital
speech, Gorgias; but he is not fulfilling the promise which
he made to Chaerephon.
GORGIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean that he has not exactly answered the
question which he was asked.
GORGIAS: Then why not ask him yourself?
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: What makes you say so, Socrates?
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Why, did I not say that it was the noblest of arts?
SOCRATES: 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 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?
GORGIAS: Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.
SOCRATES: Then I am to call you a rhetorician?
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would
call me that which, in Homeric language, 'I boast myself to
be.'
SOCRATES: I should wish to do so.
GORGIAS: Then pray do.
SOCRATES: And are we to say that you are able to make other
men rhetoricians?
GORGIAS: Yes, that is exactly what I profess to make them,
not only at Athens, but in all places.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: That is what is wanted, Gorgias; exhibit the
shorter method now, and the longer one at some other time.
GORGIAS: Well, I will; and you will certainly say, that you
never heard a man use fewer words.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And music is concerned with the composition of
melodies?
GORGIAS: It is.
SOCRATES: By Here, Gorgias, I admire the surpassing brevity
of your answers.
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, I do think myself good at that.
SOCRATES: I am glad to hear it; answer me in like manner
about rhetoric: with what is rhetoric concerned?
GORGIAS: With discourse.
SOCRATES: What sort of discourse, Gorgias?--such discourse
as would teach the sick under what treatment they might get
well?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of
discourse?
GORGIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And yet rhetoric makes men able to speak?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And to understand that about which they speak?
GORGIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: But does not the art of medicine, which we were
just now mentioning, also make men able to understand and
speak about the sick?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then medicine also treats of discourse?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Of discourse concerning diseases?
GORGIAS: Just so.
SOCRATES: And does not gymnastic also treat of discourse
concerning the good or evil condition of the body?
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: You perfectly conceive my meaning, Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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
co-extensive 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?
GORGIAS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: You are quite right, Socrates, in your
apprehension of my meaning.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: You would be quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Words which do what? I should ask. To what class
of things do the words which rhetoric uses relate?
GORGIAS: To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of human
things.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: Yes, I know the song; but what is your drift?
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: And what would you consider this to be?
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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 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?
GORGIAS: No: the definition seems to me very fair,
Socrates; for persuasion is the chief end of rhetoric.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: What is coming, Socrates?
SOCRATES: 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?'
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And the reason for asking this second question
would be, that there are other painters besides, who paint
many other figures?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: But if there had been no one but Zeuxis who
painted them, then you would have answered very well?
GORGIAS: Quite so.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: He persuades, Socrates,--there can be no mistake
about that.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And therefore persuade us of them?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then arithmetic as well as rhetoric is an
artificer of persuasion?
GORGIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: 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 artificers of persuasion, and of what sort, and about
what.
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric is not the only artificer of
persuasion?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: I think so.
SOCRATES: Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, what
is the answer?
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: I think that you are quite right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then let me raise another question; there is such
a thing as 'having learned'?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there is also 'having believed'?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is the 'having learned' the same as 'having
believed,' and are learning and belief the same things?
GORGIAS: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a
true?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge
and belief differ.
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And yet those who have learned as well as those
who have believed are persuaded?
GORGIAS: Just so.
SOCRATES: Shall we then assume two sorts of
persuasion,--one which is the source of belief without
knowledge, as the other is of knowledge?
GORGIAS: By all means.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Clearly, Socrates, that which only gives belief.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: Such is the tradition, Gorgias, about
Themistocles; and I myself heard the speech of Pericles
when he advised us about the middle wall.
GORGIAS: And you will observe, Socrates, that when a
decision has to be given in such matters the rhetoricians
are the advisers; they are the men who win their point.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: 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 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.
SOCRATES: 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? 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.
GORGIAS: 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.
CHAEREPHON: 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.
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: I may truly say, Callicles, that I am willing, if
Gorgias is.
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Quite so.
SOCRATES: You were saying, in fact, that the rhetorician
will have greater powers of persuasion than the physician
even in a matter of health?
GORGIAS: Yes, with the multitude,--that is.
SOCRATES: You mean to say, with the ignorant; for with
those who know he cannot be supposed to have greater powers
of persuasion.
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: But if he is to have more power of persuasion
than the physician, he will have greater power than he who
knows?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Although he is not a physician:--is he?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: And he who is not a physician must, obviously, be
ignorant of what the physician knows.
GORGIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: In the case supposed:--yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: 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?
SOCRATES: Whether the rhetorician is or 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 at all, unless he knows the truth of these
things first? What is to be said about all this? By
heavens, Gorgias, I wish that you would reveal to me the
power of rhetoric, as you were saying that you would.
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well, and is not he who has learned carpentering
a carpenter?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who has learned music a musician?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And in the same way, he who has learned what is
just is just?
GORGIAS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And he who is just may be supposed to do what is
just?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And must not the just man always desire to do
what is just?
GORGIAS: That is clearly the inference.
SOCRATES: Surely, then, the just man will never consent to
do injustice?
GORGIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And according to the argument the rhetorician
must be a just man?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And will therefore never be willing to do
injustice?
GORGIAS: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Yes, it was.
SOCRATES: But now we are affirming that the aforesaid
rhetorician will never have done injustice at all?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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 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.
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 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.
SOCRATES: 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:
POLUS: What condition?
SOCRATES: That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech
in which you indulged at first.
POLUS: What! do you mean that I may not use as many words
as I please?
SOCRATES: 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 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?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you, like him, invite any one to ask you
about anything which he pleases, and you will know how to
answer him?
POLUS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And now, which will you do, ask or answer?
POLUS: I will ask; and do you answer me, Socrates, the same
question which Gorgias, as you suppose, is unable to
answer: What is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: Do you mean what sort of an art?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: To say the truth, Polus, it is not an art at all,
in my opinion.
POLUS: Then what, in your opinion, is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: A thing which, as I was lately reading in a book
of yours, you say that you have made an art.
POLUS: What thing?
SOCRATES: I should say a sort of experience.
POLUS: Does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience?
SOCRATES: That is my view, but you may be of another mind.
POLUS: An experience in what?
SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and
gratification.
POLUS: And if able to gratify others, must not rhetoric be
a fine thing?
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of
experience?
SOCRATES: Will you, who are so desirous to gratify others,
afford a slight gratification to me?
POLUS: I will.
SOCRATES: Will you ask me, what sort of an art is cookery?
POLUS: What sort of an art is cookery?
SOCRATES: Not an art at all, Polus.
POLUS: What then?
SOCRATES: I should say an experience.
POLUS: In what? I wish that you would explain to me.
SOCRATES: An experience in producing a sort of delight and
gratification, Polus.
POLUS: Then are cookery and rhetoric the same?
SOCRATES: No, they are only different parts of the same
profession.
POLUS: Of what profession?
SOCRATES: 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
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.
GORGIAS: A part of what, Socrates? Say what you mean, and
never mind me.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: I will ask and do you answer? What part of flattery
is rhetoric?
SOCRATES: Will you understand my answer? Rhetoric,
according to my view, is the ghost or counterfeit of a part
of politics.
POLUS: And noble or ignoble?
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: Indeed, Socrates, I cannot say that I understand
myself.
SOCRATES: 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. (This is an
untranslatable play on the name 'Polus,' which means 'a
colt.')
GORGIAS: Never mind him, but explain to me what you mean by
saying that rhetoric is the counterfeit of a part of
politics.
SOCRATES: I will try, then, to explain my notion of
rhetoric, and if I am mistaken, my friend Polus shall
refute me. We may assume the existence of bodies and of
souls?
GORGIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: You would further admit that there is a good
condition of either of them?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
GORGIAS: Yes, certainly.
SOCRATES: 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 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.
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 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.
POLUS: What do you mean? do you think that rhetoric is
flattery?
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: And are the good rhetoricians meanly regarded in
states, under the idea that they are flatterers?
SOCRATES: Is that a question or the beginning of a speech?
POLUS: I am asking a question.
SOCRATES: Then my answer is, that they are not regarded at
all.
POLUS: How not regarded? Have they not very great power in
states?
SOCRATES: Not if you mean to say that power is a good to
the possessor.
POLUS: And that is what I do mean to say.
SOCRATES: Then, if so, I think that they have the least
power of all the citizens.
POLUS: What! are they not like tyrants? They kill and
despoil and exile any one whom they please.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: I am asking a question of you.
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, but you ask two questions at
once.
POLUS: How two questions?
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: I did.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: And is not that a great power?
SOCRATES: Polus has already said the reverse.
POLUS: Said the reverse! nay, that is what I assert.
SOCRATES: No, by the great--what do you call him?--not you,
for you say that power is a good to him who has the power.
POLUS: I do.
SOCRATES: And would you maintain that if a fool does what
he thinks best, this is a good, and would you call this
great power?
POLUS: I should not.
SOCRATES: Then you must prove that the rhetorician is not a
fool, and that rhetoric is an art and not a flattery--and
so 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.
POLUS: Yes; I admit that.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: This fellow--
SOCRATES: I say that they do not do as they will;--now
refute me.
POLUS: Why, have you not already said that they do as they
think best?
SOCRATES: And I say so still.
POLUS: Then surely they do as they will?
SOCRATES: I deny it.
POLUS: But they do what they think best?
SOCRATES: Aye.
POLUS: That, Socrates, is monstrous and absurd.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Very well, I am willing to answer that I may know
what you mean.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Clearly, the health.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are not all things either good or evil, or
intermediate and indifferent?
POLUS: To be sure, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Wisdom and health and wealth and the like you
would call goods, and their opposites evils?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: And the things which are neither good nor evil,
and 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?
POLUS: Exactly so.
SOCRATES: Are these indifferent things done for the sake of
the good, or the good for the sake of the indifferent?
POLUS: Clearly, the indifferent for the sake of the good.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Men who do any of these things do them for the
sake of the good?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Most true.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: You are right.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But does he do what he wills if he does what is
evil? Why do you not answer?
POLUS: Well, I suppose not.
SOCRATES: Then if great power is a good as you allow, will
such a one have great power in a state?
POLUS: He will not.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: 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!
SOCRATES: Justly or unjustly, do you mean?
POLUS: In either case is he not equally to be envied?
SOCRATES: Forbear, Polus!
POLUS: Why 'forbear'?
SOCRATES: Because you ought not to envy wretches who are
not to be envied, but only to pity them.
POLUS: And are those of whom I spoke wretches?
SOCRATES: Yes, certainly they are.
POLUS: And so you think that he who slays any one whom he
pleases, and justly slays him, is pitiable and wretched?
SOCRATES: No, I do not say that of him: but neither do I
think that he is to be envied.
POLUS: Were you not saying just now that he is wretched?
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: At any rate you will allow that he who is unjustly
put to death is wretched, and to be pitied?
SOCRATES: Not so much, Polus, as he who kills him, and not
so much as he who is justly killed.
POLUS: How can that be, Socrates?
SOCRATES: That may very well be, inasmuch as doing
injustice is the greatest of evils.
POLUS: But is it the greatest? Is not suffering injustice a
greater evil?
SOCRATES: Certainly not.
POLUS: Then would you rather suffer than do injustice?
SOCRATES: I should not like either, but if I must choose
between them, I would rather suffer than do.
POLUS: Then you would not wish to be a tyrant?
SOCRATES: Not if you mean by tyranny what I mean.
POLUS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Certainly not such doing as this.
SOCRATES: But can you tell me why you disapprove of such a
power?
POLUS: I can.
SOCRATES: Why then?
POLUS: Why, because he who did as you say would be certain
to be punished.
SOCRATES: And punishment is an evil?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: About that you and I may be supposed to agree?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, when do you say that they are good
and when that they are evil--what principle do you lay
down?
POLUS: I would rather, Socrates, that you should answer as
well as ask that question.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: You are hard of refutation, Socrates, but might not
a child refute that statement?
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: 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.
SOCRATES: What events?
POLUS: You see, I presume, that Archelaus the son of
Perdiccas is now the ruler of Macedonia?
SOCRATES: At any rate I hear that he is.
POLUS: And do you think that he is happy or miserable?
SOCRATES: I cannot say, Polus, for I have never had any
acquaintance with him.
POLUS: And cannot you tell at once, and without having an
acquaintance with him, whether a man is happy?
SOCRATES: Most certainly not.
POLUS: Then clearly, Socrates, you would say that you did
not even know whether the great king was a happy man?
SOCRATES: And I should speak the truth; for I do not know
how he stands in the matter of education and justice.
POLUS: What! and does all happiness consist in this?
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Then, according to your doctrine, the said Archelaus
is miserable?
SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, if he is wicked.
POLUS: 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 has
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!
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: That is because you will not; for you surely must
think as I do.
SOCRATES: 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 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?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Certainly not; in that case he will be most
miserable.
SOCRATES: On the other hand, if the unjust be not punished,
then, according to you, he will be happy?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: You are maintaining a strange doctrine, Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Exactly so.
SOCRATES: And you said the opposite?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: I said also that the wicked are miserable, and
you refuted me?
POLUS: By Zeus, I did.
SOCRATES: In your own opinion, Polus.
POLUS: Yes, and I rather suspect that I was in the right.
SOCRATES: You further said that the wrong-doer is happy if
he be unpunished?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: A proposition which is harder of refutation than the
other, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Say rather, Polus, impossible; for who can refute
the truth?
POLUS: 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?
SOCRATES: 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'?
POLUS: Yes, I did.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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 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.
POLUS: And I should say neither I, nor any man: would you
yourself, for example, suffer rather than do injustice?
SOCRATES: Yes, and you, too; I or any man would.
POLUS: Quite the reverse; neither you, nor I, nor any man.
SOCRATES: But will you answer?
POLUS: To be sure, I will; for I am curious to hear what
you can have to say.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: I should say that suffering was worst.
SOCRATES: And which is the greater disgrace?--Answer.
POLUS: To do.
SOCRATES: And the greater disgrace is the greater evil?
POLUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: I cannot.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Yes, I should.
SOCRATES: And you would call sounds and music beautiful for
the same reason?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: Laws and institutions also have no beauty in them
except in so far as they are useful or pleasant or both?
POLUS: I think not.
SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of the beauty of
knowledge?
POLUS: To be sure, Socrates; and I very much approve of
your measuring beauty by the standard of pleasure and
utility.
SOCRATES: And deformity or disgrace may be equally measured
by the opposite standard of pain and evil?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in
deformity or disgrace, exceeds either in pain or evil--must
it not be so?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: I did.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: No, Socrates; certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then they do not exceed in pain?
POLUS: No.
SOCRATES: But if not in pain, then not in both?
POLUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then they can only exceed in the other?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: That is to say, in evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: Then doing injustice will have an excess of evil,
and will therefore be a greater evil than suffering
injustice?
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But have not you and the world already agreed
that to do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And that is now discovered to be more evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: I should say 'No.'
SOCRATES: Would any other man prefer a greater to a less
evil?
POLUS: No, not according to this way of putting the case,
Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: That is the conclusion.
SOCRATES: 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 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?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Yes, Socrates, I think that they are.
SOCRATES: Consider again:--Where there is an agent, must
there not also be a patient?
POLUS: I should say so.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if the striker strikes violently or quickly,
that which is struck will he struck violently or quickly?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And the suffering to him who is stricken is of
the same nature as the act of him who strikes?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a man burns, there is something which is
burned?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And if he burns in excess or so as to cause pain,
the thing burned will be burned in the same way?
POLUS: Truly.
SOCRATES: And if he cuts, the same argument holds--there
will be something cut?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if the cutting be great or deep or such as
will cause pain, the cut will be of the same nature?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Then you would agree generally to the universal
proposition which I was just now asserting: that the
affection of the patient answers to the affection of the
agent?
POLUS: I agree.
SOCRATES: Then, as this is admitted, let me ask whether
being punished is suffering or acting?
POLUS: Suffering, Socrates; there can be no doubt of that.
SOCRATES: And suffering implies an agent?
POLUS: Certainly, Socrates; and he is the punisher.
SOCRATES: And he who punishes rightly, punishes justly?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And therefore he acts justly?
POLUS: Justly.
SOCRATES: Then he who is punished and suffers retribution,
suffers justly?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: And that which is just has been admitted to be
honourable?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the punisher does what is honourable, and
the punished suffers what is honourable?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if what is honourable, then what is good, for
the honourable is either pleasant or useful?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then he who is punished suffers what is good?
POLUS: That is true.
SOCRATES: Then he is benefited?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Surely.
SOCRATES: Then he who is punished is delivered from the
evil of his soul?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: There is no greater evil.
SOCRATES: Again, in a man's bodily frame, you would say
that the evil is weakness and disease and deformity?
POLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: And do you not imagine that the soul likewise has
some evil of her own?
POLUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And this you would call injustice and ignorance
and cowardice, and the like?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: So then, in mind, body, and estate, which are
three, you have pointed out three corresponding
evils--injustice, disease, poverty?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: By far the most.
SOCRATES: And if the most disgraceful, then also the worst?
POLUS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that is most disgraceful has been
already admitted to be most painful or hurtful, or both.
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And now injustice and all evil in the soul has
been admitted by us to be most disgraceful?
POLUS: It has been admitted.
SOCRATES: And most disgraceful either because most painful
and causing excessive pain, or most hurtful, or both?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And therefore to be unjust and intemperate, and
cowardly and ignorant, is more painful than to be poor and
sick?
POLUS: Nay, Socrates; the painfulness does not appear to me
to follow from your premises.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And that which exceeds most in hurtfulness will
be the greatest of evils?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then injustice and intemperance, and in general
the depravity of the soul, are the greatest of evils?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Now, what art is there which delivers us from
poverty? Does not the art of making money?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And what art frees us from disease? Does not the
art of medicine?
POLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And what from vice and injustice? If you are not
able to answer at once, ask yourself whither we go with the
sick, and to whom we take them.
POLUS: To the physicians, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And to whom do we go with the unjust and
intemperate?
POLUS: To the judges, you mean.
SOCRATES: --Who are to punish them?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And do not those who rightly punish others,
punish them in accordance with a certain rule of justice?
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then the art of money-making frees a man from
poverty; medicine from disease; and justice from
intemperance and injustice?
POLUS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Which, then, is the best of these three?
POLUS: Will you enumerate them?
SOCRATES: Money-making, medicine, and justice.
POLUS: Justice, Socrates, far excels the two others.
SOCRATES: And justice, if the best, gives the greatest
pleasure or advantage or both?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But is the being healed a pleasant thing, and are
those who are being healed pleased?
POLUS: I think not.
SOCRATES: A useful thing, then?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Yes, because the patient is delivered from a
great evil; and this is the advantage of enduring the
pain--that you get well?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And would he be the happier man in his bodily
condition, who is healed, or who never was out of health?
POLUS: Clearly he who was never out of health.
SOCRATES: Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in
being delivered from evils, but in never having had them.
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Clearly he who is not healed.
SOCRATES: And was not punishment said by us to be a
deliverance from the greatest of evils, which is vice?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And justice punishes us, and makes us more just,
and is the medicine of our vice?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: 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.
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And he has the second place, who is delivered
from vice?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: That is to say, he who receives admonition and
rebuke and punishment?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then he lives worst, who, having been unjust, has
no deliverance from injustice?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: That is, he lives worst who commits the greatest
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? (Compare
Republic.)
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Yes, truly.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: If you please.
SOCRATES: Is it not a fact that injustice, and the doing of
injustice, is the greatest of evils?
POLUS: That is quite clear.
SOCRATES: And further, that to suffer punishment is the way
to be released from this evil?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And not to suffer, is to perpetuate the evil?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: That is true.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And it has been proved to be true?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the
great use 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?
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
POLUS: To that, Socrates, there can be but one answer.
SOCRATES: Then rhetoric is of no use to us, Polus, in
helping a man to excuse his own injustice, 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?
POLUS: To me, Socrates, what you are saying appears very
strange, though probably in agreement with your premises.
SOCRATES: Is not this the conclusion, if the premises are
not disproven?
POLUS: Yes; it certainly is.
SOCRATES: 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
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.
CALLICLES: Tell me, Chaerephon, is Socrates in earnest, or
is he joking?
CHAEREPHON: I should say, Callicles, that he is in most
profound earnest; but you may well ask him.
CALLICLES: 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?
SOCRATES: 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 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.
CALLICLES: 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
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
(compare Republic), 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 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
'Law is the king of all, of mortals as well as of
immortals;'
this, as he says,
'Makes might to be right, doing violence with highest hand;
as I infer from the deeds of Heracles, for without buying
them--' (Fragm. Incert. 151 (Bockh).)
--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,
'Every man shines in that and pursues that, and devotes the
greatest portion of the day to that in which he most
excels,' (Antiope, fragm. 20 (Dindorf).)
but anything in which he is inferior, he avoids and
depreciates, 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 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
'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
'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.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: What is your meaning, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will tell you; I think that I have found in you
the desired touchstone.
CALLICLES: Why?
SOCRATES: 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 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, 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?
CALLICLES: Yes; that is what I was saying, and so I still
aver.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I say unequivocally that they are the same.
SOCRATES: Then the many are by nature superior to the one,
against whom, as you were saying, they make the laws?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the laws of the many are the laws of the
superior?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then they are the laws of the better; for the
superior class are far better, as you were saying?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And since they are superior, the laws which are
made by them are by nature good?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are not the many of opinion, as you were
lately saying, that justice is equality, and that to do is
more disgraceful than to suffer injustice?--is that so or
not? Answer, Callicles, and let no modesty be found to come
in the way; 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.
CALLICLES: Yes; the opinion of the many is what you say.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: 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?
SOCRATES: Ho! my philosopher, is that your line?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: You are ironical.
SOCRATES: No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose aid
you were just now saying many ironical things against me, I
am not:--tell me, then, whom you mean, by the better?
CALLICLES: I mean the more excellent.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Most assuredly, I do mean the wiser.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: You talk about meats and drinks and physicians
and other nonsense; I am not speaking of them.
SOCRATES: Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the
better? Answer 'Yes' or 'No.'
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And ought not the better to have a larger share?
CALLICLES: Not of meats and drinks.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Fudge about coats!
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Fudge about shoes! What nonsense are you
talking?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: How you go on, always talking in the same way,
Socrates!
SOCRATES: Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things.
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: But whether rulers or subjects will they or will
they not have more than themselves, my friend?
CALLICLES: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: What do you mean by his 'ruling over himself'?
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: What innocence! you mean those fools,--the
temperate?
SOCRATES: Certainly:--any one may know that to be my
meaning.
CALLICLES: 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 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. (Compare Republic.)
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes; I do.
SOCRATES: Then those who want nothing are not truly said to
be happy?
CALLICLES: No indeed, for then stones and dead men would be
the happiest of all.
SOCRATES: 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 say that at this moment we are actually dead,
and that the body (soma) is our tomb (sema (compare
Phaedr.)), 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 (An untranslatable
pun,--dia to pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), 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 (aeides), 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?
CALLICLES: The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.
SOCRATES: 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 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?
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: But the more you pour in, the greater the waste;
and the holes must be large for the liquid to escape.
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he is to be thirsting and drinking?
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: What a strange being you are, Socrates! a
regular mob-orator.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: I answer, that even the scratcher would live
pleasantly.
SOCRATES: And if pleasantly, then also happily?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of introducing
such topics into the argument?
SOCRATES: 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 would still ask, whether you say that pleasure and
good are the same, or whether there is some pleasure which
is not a good?
CALLICLES: Well, then, for the sake of consistency, I will
say that they are the same.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Why, that is what you are doing too, Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: That, Socrates, is only your opinion.
SOCRATES: And do you, Callicles, seriously maintain what
you are saying?
CALLICLES: Indeed I do.
SOCRATES: Then, as you are in earnest, shall we proceed
with the argument?
CALLICLES: By all means. (Or, 'I am in profound earnest.')
SOCRATES: Well, if you are willing to proceed, determine
this question for me:--There is something, I presume, which
you would call knowledge?
CALLICLES: There is.
SOCRATES: And were you not saying just now, that some
courage implied knowledge?
CALLICLES: I was.
SOCRATES: And you were speaking of courage and knowledge as
two things different from one another?
CALLICLES: Certainly I was.
SOCRATES: And would you say that pleasure and knowledge are
the same, or not the same?
CALLICLES: Not the same, O man of wisdom.
SOCRATES: And would you say that courage differed from
pleasure?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: And what does our friend Socrates, of Foxton,
say--does he assent to this, or not?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: Take the case of any bodily affection:--a man may
have the complaint in his eyes which is called ophthalmia?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But he surely cannot have the same eyes well and
sound at the same time?
CALLICLES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: That would surely be marvellous and absurd?
CALLICLES: Very.
SOCRATES: I suppose that he is affected by them, and gets
rid of them in turns?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he may have strength and weakness in the same
way, by fits?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Or swiftness and slowness?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And does he have and not have good and happiness,
and their opposites, evil and misery, in a similar
alternation? (Compare Republic.)
CALLICLES: Certainly he has.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: I entirely agree.
SOCRATES: Go back now to our former admissions.--Did you
say that to hunger, I mean the mere state of hunger, was
pleasant or painful?
CALLICLES: I said painful, but that to eat when you are
hungry is pleasant.
SOCRATES: I know; but still the actual hunger is painful:
am I not right?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And thirst, too, is painful?
CALLICLES: Yes, very.
SOCRATES: Need I adduce any more instances, or would you
agree that all wants or desires are painful?
CALLICLES: I agree, and therefore you need not adduce any
more instances.
SOCRATES: Very good. And you would admit that to drink,
when you are thirsty, is pleasant?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And in the sentence which you have just uttered,
the word 'thirsty' implies pain?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the word 'drinking' is expressive of
pleasure, and of the satisfaction of the want?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: There is pleasure in drinking?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: When you are thirsty?
SOCRATES: And in pain?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: It is.
SOCRATES: You said also, that no man could have good and
evil fortune at the same time?
CALLICLES: Yes, I did.
SOCRATES: But you admitted, that when in pain a man might
also have pleasure?
CALLICLES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I wish I knew, Socrates, what your quibbling
means.
SOCRATES: You know, Callicles, but you affect not to know.
CALLICLES: Well, get on, and don't keep fooling: then you
will know what a wiseacre you are in your admonition of me.
SOCRATES: Does not a man cease from his thirst and from his
pleasure in drinking at the same time?
CALLICLES: I do not understand what you are saying.
GORGIAS: Nay, Callicles, answer, if only for our sakes;--we
should like to hear the argument out.
CALLICLES: Yes, Gorgias, but I must complain of the
habitual trifling of Socrates; he is always arguing about
little and unworthy questions.
GORGIAS: What matter? Your reputation, Callicles, is not at
stake. Let Socrates argue in his own fashion.
CALLICLES: Well, then, Socrates, you shall ask these little
peddling questions, since Gorgias wishes to have them.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: And if he is hungry, or has any other desire,
does he not cease from the desire and the pleasure at the
same moment?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then he ceases from pain and pleasure at the same
moment?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, I do; but what is the inference?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And did you never see a foolish child rejoicing?
CALLICLES: Yes, I have.
SOCRATES: And a foolish man too?
CALLICLES: Yes, certainly; but what is your drift?
SOCRATES: Nothing particular, if you will only answer.
CALLICLES: Yes, I have.
SOCRATES: And did you ever see a sensible man rejoicing or
sorrowing?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Which rejoice and sorrow most--the wise or the
foolish?
CALLICLES: They are much upon a par, I think, in that
respect.
SOCRATES: Enough: And did you ever see a coward in battle?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And which rejoiced most at the departure of the
enemy, the coward or the brave?
CALLICLES: I should say 'most' of both; or at any rate,
they rejoiced about equally.
SOCRATES: No matter; then the cowards, and not only the
brave, rejoice?
CALLICLES: Greatly.
SOCRATES: And the foolish; so it would seem?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are only the cowards pained at the approach
of their enemies, or are the brave also pained?
CALLICLES: Both are pained.
SOCRATES: And are they equally pained?
CALLICLES: I should imagine that the cowards are more
pained.
SOCRATES: And are they not better pleased at the enemy's
departure?
CALLICLES: I dare say.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: But surely the wise and brave are the good, and
the foolish and the cowardly are the bad?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the good and the bad are pleased and pained
in a nearly equal degree?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.)
CALLICLES: I really do not know what you mean.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: And are not these pleasures or goods present to
those who rejoice--if they do rejoice?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then those who rejoice are good when goods are
present with them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And those who are in pain have evil or sorrow
present with them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you still say that the evil are evil by
reason of the presence of evil?
CALLICLES: I should.
SOCRATES: Then those who rejoice are good, and those who
are in pain evil?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The degrees of good and evil vary with the
degrees of pleasure and of pain?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I should say that he has.
SOCRATES: 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.
Both the wise man and the brave man we allow to be good?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the foolish man and the coward to be evil?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And he who has joy is good?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And he who is in pain is evil?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: The good and evil both have joy and pain, but,
perhaps, the evil has more of them?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: 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?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The beneficial are good, and the hurtful are
evil?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And the beneficial are those which do some good,
and the hurtful are those which do some evil?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And in the same way there are good pains and
there are evil pains?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And ought we not to choose and use the good
pleasures and pains?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But not the evil?
CALLICLES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: 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 them?--will you add a third vote to our two?
CALLICLES: I will.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But can every man choose what pleasures are good
and what are evil, or must he have art or knowledge of them
in detail?
CALLICLES: He must have art.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: No, I do not.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I do.
SOCRATES: Then I will proceed, and ask whether you also
agree with me, and whether you think that I spoke the truth
when 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.
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: And is this notion true of one soul, or of two or
more?
CALLICLES: Equally true of two or more.
SOCRATES: Then a man may delight a whole assembly, and yet
have no regard for their true interests?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I assent.
SOCRATES: And is not the same true of all similar arts, as,
for example, the art of playing the lyre at festivals?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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
what will give pleasure to the multitude?
CALLICLES: There can be no mistake about Cinesias,
Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: That is my notion of them.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: There can be no doubt, Socrates, that Tragedy
has her face turned towards pleasure and the gratification
of the audience.
SOCRATES: And is not that the sort of thing, Callicles,
which we were just now describing as flattery?
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Well now, suppose that we strip all poetry of
song and rhythm and metre, there will remain speech?
(Compare Republic.)
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And this speech is addressed to a crowd of
people?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then poetry is a sort of rhetoric?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: And do not the poets in the theatres seem to you
to be rhetoricians?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I must distinguish. There are some who have a
real care of the public in what they say, while others are
such as you describe.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: But, indeed, I am afraid that I cannot tell you
of any such among the orators who are at present living.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: 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?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: No, indeed, I cannot.
SOCRATES: 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 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?
CALLICLES: No; I am ready to admit it.
SOCRATES: Then the house in which order and regularity
prevail is good; that in which there is disorder, evil?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the same is true of a ship?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the human body?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: The latter follows from our previous admissions.
SOCRATES: What is the name which is given to the effect of
harmony and order in the body?
CALLICLES: I suppose that you mean health and strength?
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Why not give the name yourself, Socrates?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Granted.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I agree.
SOCRATES: 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 nothing, or even worse if rightly estimated.
Is not that true?
CALLICLES: I will not say No to it.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Such treatment will be better for the soul
herself?
CALLICLES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And to restrain her from her appetites is to
chastise her?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then restraint or chastisement is better for the
soul than intemperance or the absence of control, which you
were just now preferring?
CALLICLES: I do not understand you, Socrates, and I wish
that you would ask some one who does.
SOCRATES: Here is a gentleman who cannot endure to be
improved or to subject himself to that very chastisement of
which the argument speaks!
CALLICLES: I do not heed a word of what you are saying, and
have only answered hitherto out of civility to Gorgias.
SOCRATES: What are we to do, then? Shall we break off in
the middle?
CALLICLES: You shall judge for yourself.
SOCRATES: 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
(compare Laws); please then to go on a little longer, and
put the head on.
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: But who else is willing?--I want to finish the
argument.
CALLICLES: Cannot you finish without my help, either
talking straight on, or questioning and answering yourself?
SOCRATES: 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 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.
GORGIAS: 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.
SOCRATES: 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'; 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.
CALLICLES: My good fellow, never mind me, but get on.
SOCRATES: 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 temperate soul is good? No other answer
can I give, Callicles dear; have you any?
CALLICLES: Go on, my good fellow.
SOCRATES: 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.
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
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 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.
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 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 (compare Republic), 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, quite right.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: He must have provided himself with the power;
that is clear.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Granted, Socrates, if you will only have done.
SOCRATES: Then, as would appear, power and art have to be
provided in order that we may do no injustice?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Well said, Socrates; and please to observe how
ready I am to praise you when you talk sense.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I should.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: That is true.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: That again is true.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: 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 rather contrive to do as much wrong as
possible, and not be punished?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: 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?
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: And is not that just the provoking thing?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, truly, and very good advice too.
SOCRATES: Well, my friend, but what do you think of
swimming; is that an art of any great pretensions?
CALLICLES: No, indeed.
SOCRATES: And yet surely swimming saves a man from death,
and there are occasions on which he must know how to swim.
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, 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. (Compare Republic.)
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 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, Callides; 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?
CALLICLES: 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. (Compare
Symp.: 1 Alcib.)
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the one which had pleasure in view was just a
vulgar flattery:--was not that another of our conclusions?
CALLICLES: Be it so, if you will have it.
SOCRATES: And the other had in view the greatest
improvement of that which was ministered to, whether body
or soul?
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: 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 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, certainly, if you like.
SOCRATES: Well, then, if you and I, Callicles, were
intending 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?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: You are contentious, Socrates.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: I do.
SOCRATES: But if they were good, then clearly each of them
must have made the citizens better instead of worse?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And, therefore, when Pericles first began to
speak in the assembly, the Athenians were not so good as
when he spoke last?
CALLICLES: Very likely.
SOCRATES: Nay, my friend, 'likely' is not the word; for if
he was a good citizen, the inference is certain.
CALLICLES: And what difference does that make?
SOCRATES: 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 money.
CALLICLES: You heard that, Socrates, from the laconising
set who bruise their ears.
SOCRATES: 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
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.
CALLICLES: Well, but how does that prove Pericles' badness?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I will do you the favour of saying 'yes.'
SOCRATES: And will you also do me the favour of saying
whether man is an animal?
CALLICLES: Certainly he is.
SOCRATES: And was not Pericles a shepherd of men?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And are not just men gentle, as Homer says?--or
are you of another mind?
CALLICLES: I agree.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Do you want me to agree with you?
SOCRATES: Yes, if I seem to you to speak the truth.
CALLICLES: Granted then.
SOCRATES: And if they were more savage, must they not have
been more unjust and inferior?
CALLICLES: Granted again.
SOCRATES: Then upon this view, Pericles was not a good
statesman?
CALLICLES: That is, upon your view.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: I should think not.
SOCRATES: Well, but if so, the truth is as I have said
already, 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.
CALLICLES: But surely, Socrates, no living man ever came
near any one of them in his performances.
SOCRATES: 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 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, 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 friends, than this? You, Callicles, compel
me to be a mob-orator, because you will not answer.
CALLICLES: And you are the man who cannot speak unless
there is some one to answer?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, it appears so to me.
SOCRATES: Do you never hear our professors of education
speaking in this inconsistent manner?
CALLICLES: Yes, but why talk of men who are good for
nothing?
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Certainly it is.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Very true.
SOCRATES: 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? (Compare Protag.)
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: Yes, we have found the reason.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: True.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: It is.
SOCRATES: Then to which service of the State do you invite
me? determine for me. Am I to be the physician of the 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.
CALLICLES: I say then that you should be the servant of the
State.
SOCRATES: The flatterer? well, sir, that is a noble
invitation.
CALLICLES: The Mysian, Socrates, or what you please. For if
you refuse, the consequences will be--
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: 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.
SOCRATES: 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?
CALLICLES: By all means.
SOCRATES: 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
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!
CALLICLES: I dare say.
SOCRATES: Would he not be utterly at a loss for a reply?
CALLICLES: He certainly would.
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: And do you think, Socrates, that a man who is
thus defenceless is in a good position?
SOCRATES: 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.
CALLICLES: Very well, proceed; and then we shall have done.
SOCRATES: Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very
pretty 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 (Il.),
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 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.'
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 misshapen 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, 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.
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 class
of those who have power (compare Republic). 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.
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 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 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.
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.