Gorgias
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?