Sophist
youth abide. On land you may hunt tame animals, or you may hunt wild
animals. And man is a tame animal, and he may be hunted either by force
or persuasion;--either by the pirate, man-stealer, soldier, or by the
lawyer, orator, talker. The latter use persuasion, and persuasion is
either private or public. Of the private practitioners of the art, some
bring gifts to those whom they hunt: these are lovers. And others take
hire; and some of these flatter, and in return are fed; others profess
to teach virtue and receive a round sum. And who are these last? Tell me
who? Have we not unearthed the Sophist?
But he is a many-sided creature, and may still be traced in another line
of descent. The acquisitive art had a branch of exchange as well as of
hunting, and exchange is either giving or selling; and the seller is
either a manufacturer or a merchant; and the merchant either retails or
exports; and the exporter may export either food for the body or food
for the mind. And of this trading in food for the mind, one kind may be
termed the art of display, and another the art of selling learning; and
learning may be a learning of the arts or of virtue. The seller of the
arts may be called an art-seller; the seller of virtue, a Sophist.
Again, there is a third line, in which a Sophist may be traced. For
is he less a Sophist when, instead of exporting his wares to another
country, he stays at home, and retails goods, which he not only buys of
others, but manufactures himself?
Or he may be descended from the acquisitive art in the combative line,
through the pugnacious, the controversial, the disputatious arts; and he
will be found at last in the eristic section of the latter, and in that
division of it which disputes in private for gain about the general
principles of right and wrong.
And still there is a track of him which has not yet been followed out by
us. Do not our household servants talk of sifting, straining, winnowing?
And they also speak of carding, spinning, and the like. All these are
processes of division; and of division there are two kinds,--one in
which like is divided from like, and another in which the good is
separated from the bad. The latter of the two is termed purification;
and again, of purification, there are two sorts,--of animate bodies
(which may be internal or external), and of inanimate. Medicine and
gymnastic are the internal purifications of the animate, and bathing the
external; and of the inanimate, fulling and cleaning and other humble
processes, some of which have ludicrous names. Not that dialectic is a
respecter of names or persons, or a despiser of humble occupations; nor
does she think much of the greater or less benefits conferred by them.
For her aim is knowledge; she wants to know how the arts are related to
one another, and would quite as soon learn the nature of hunting from
the vermin-destroyer as from the general. And she only desires to have
a general name, which shall distinguish purifications of the soul from
purifications of the body.
Now purification is the taking away of evil; and there are two kinds
of evil in the soul,--the one answering to disease in the body, and the
other to deformity. Disease is the discord or war of opposite principles
in the soul; and deformity is the want of symmetry, or failure in the
attainment of a mark or measure. The latter arises from ignorance, and
no one is voluntarily ignorant; ignorance is only the aberration of the
soul moving towards knowledge. And as medicine cures the diseases and
gymnastic the deformity of the body, so correction cures the injustice,
and education (which differs among the Hellenes from mere instruction in
the arts) cures the ignorance of the soul. Again, ignorance is twofold,
simple ignorance, and ignorance having the conceit of knowledge. And
education is also twofold: there is the old-fashioned moral training of
our forefathers, which was very troublesome and not very successful; and
another, of a more subtle nature, which proceeds upon a notion that
all ignorance is involuntary. The latter convicts a man out of his own
mouth, by pointing out to him his inconsistencies and contradictions;
and the consequence is that he quarrels with himself, instead of
quarrelling with his neighbours, and is cured of prejudices and
obstructions by a mode of treatment which is equally entertaining and
effectual. The physician of the soul is aware that his patient will
receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned out; and the soul of
the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this purification, is
unclean and impure.
And who are the ministers of the purification? Sophists I may not call
them. Yet they bear about the same likeness to Sophists as the dog,
who is the gentlest of animals, does to the wolf, who is the fiercest.
Comparisons are slippery things; but for the present let us assume the
resemblance of the two, which may probably be disallowed hereafter.
And so, from division comes purification; and from this, mental
purification; and from mental purification, instruction; and from
instruction, education; and from education, the nobly-descended art
of Sophistry, which is engaged in the detection of conceit. I do not
however think that we have yet found the Sophist, or that his will
ultimately prove to be the desired art of education; but neither do I
think that he can long escape me, for every way is blocked. Before we
make the final assault, let us take breath, and reckon up the many forms
which he has assumed: (1) he was the paid hunter of wealth and birth;
(2) he was the trader in the goods of the soul; (3) he was the retailer
of them; (4) he was the manufacturer of his own learned wares; (5)
he was the disputant; and (6) he was the purger away of
prejudices--although this latter point is admitted to be doubtful.
Now, there must surely be something wrong in the professor of any art
having so many names and kinds of knowledge. Does not the very number of
them imply that the nature of his art is not understood? And that we
may not be involved in the misunderstanding, let us observe which of
his characteristics is the most prominent. Above all things he is a
disputant. He will dispute and teach others to dispute about things
visible and invisible--about man, about the gods, about politics, about
law, about wrestling, about all things. But can he know all things? 'He
cannot.' How then can he dispute satisfactorily with any one who knows?
'Impossible.' Then what is the trick of his art, and why does he receive
money from his admirers? 'Because he is believed by them to know all
things.' You mean to say that he seems to have a knowledge of them?
'Yes.'
Suppose a person were to say, not that he would dispute about all
things, but that he would make all things, you and me, and all other
creatures, the earth and the heavens and the gods, and would sell them
all for a few pence--this would be a great jest; but not greater than if
he said that he knew all things, and could teach them in a short time,
and at a small cost. For all imitation is a jest, and the most graceful
form of jest. Now the painter is a man who professes to make all things,
and children, who see his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them
for realities: and the Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too,
can deceive young men, who are still at a distance from the truth, not
through their eyes, but through their ears, by the mummery of words,
and induce them to believe him. But as they grow older, and come into
contact with realities, they learn by experience the futility of his
pretensions. The Sophist, then, has not real knowledge; he is only an
imitator, or image-maker.
And now, having got him in a corner of the dialectical net, let us
divide and subdivide until we catch him. Of image-making there are two
kinds,--the art of making likenesses, and the art of making appearances.
The latter may be illustrated by sculpture and painting, which often use
illusions, and alter the proportions of figures, in order to adapt
their works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses illusions, and
his imitations are apparent and not real. But how can anything be an
appearance only? Here arises a difficulty which has always beset the
subject of appearances. For the argument is asserting the existence
of not-being. And this is what the great Parmenides was all his life
denying in prose and also in verse. 'You will never find,' he says,
'that not-being is.' And the words prove themselves! Not-being cannot be
attributed to any being; for how can any being be wholly abstracted from
being? Again, in every predication there is an attribution of singular
or plural. But number is the most real of all things, and cannot be
attributed to not-being. Therefore not-being cannot be predicated or
expressed; for how can we say 'is,' 'are not,' without number?
And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If not-being is
inconceivable, how can not-being be refuted? And am I not contradicting
myself at this moment, in speaking either in the singular or the plural
of that to which I deny both plurality and unity? You, Theaetetus, have
the might of youth, and I conjure you to exert yourself, and, if you
can, to find an expression for not-being which does not imply being and
number. 'But I cannot.' Then the Sophist must be left in his hole. We
may call him an image-maker if we please, but he will only say, 'And
pray, what is an image?' And we shall reply, 'A reflection in the water,
or in a mirror'; and he will say, 'Let us shut our eyes and open our
minds; what is the common notion of all images?' 'I should answer, Such
another, made in the likeness of the true.' Real or not real? 'Not real;
at least, not in a true sense.' And the real 'is,' and the not-real 'is
not'? 'Yes.' Then a likeness is really unreal, and essentially not.
Here is a pretty complication of being and not-being, in which the
many-headed Sophist has entangled us. He will at once point out that
he is compelling us to contradict ourselves, by affirming being of
not-being. I think that we must cease to look for him in the class of
imitators.
But ought we to give him up? 'I should say, certainly not.' Then I fear
that I must lay hands on my father Parmenides; but do not call me a
parricide; for there is no way out of the difficulty except to show
that in some sense not-being is; and if this is not admitted, no one can
speak of falsehood, or false opinion, or imitation, without falling into
a contradiction. You observe how unwilling I am to undertake the task;
for I know that I am exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency in
asserting the being of not-being. But if I am to make the attempt, I
think that I had better begin at the beginning.
Lightly in the days of our youth, Parmenides and others told us tales
about the origin of the universe: one spoke of three principles warring
and at peace again, marrying and begetting children; another of
two principles, hot and cold, dry and moist, which also formed
relationships. There were the Eleatics in our part of the world, saying
that all things are one; whose doctrine begins with Xenophanes, and is
even older. Ionian, and, more recently, Sicilian muses speak of a one
and many which are held together by enmity and friendship, ever parting,
ever meeting. Some of them do not insist on the perpetual strife, but
adopt a gentler strain, and speak of alternation only. Whether they are
right or not, who can say? But one thing we can say--that they went on
their way without much caring whether we understood them or not. For
tell me, Theaetetus, do you understand what they mean by their assertion
of unity, or by their combinations and separations of two or more
principles? I used to think, when I was young, that I knew all about