Gorgias
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