Theaetetus
SOCRATES: Or again, in politics, while affirming that just and unjust,
honourable and disgraceful, holy and unholy, are in reality to each
state such as the state thinks and makes lawful, and that in determining
these matters no individual or state is wiser than another, still the
followers of Protagoras will not deny that in determining what is or is
not expedient for the community one state is wiser and one counsellor
better than another--they will scarcely venture to maintain, that what
a city enacts in the belief that it is expedient will always be really
expedient. But in the other case, I mean when they speak of justice and
injustice, piety and impiety, they are confident that in nature these
have no existence or essence of their own--the truth is that which is
agreed on at the time of the agreement, and as long as the agreement
lasts; and this is the philosophy of many who do not altogether go along
with Protagoras. Here arises a new question, Theodorus, which threatens
to be more serious than the last.
THEODORUS: Well, Socrates, we have plenty of leisure.
SOCRATES: That is true, and your remark recalls to my mind an
observation which I have often made, that those who have passed their
days in the pursuit of philosophy are ridiculously at fault when they
have to appear and speak in court. How natural is this!
THEODORUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that those who have been trained in philosophy
and liberal pursuits are as unlike those who from their youth upwards
have been knocking about in the courts and such places, as a freeman is
in breeding unlike a slave.
THEODORUS: In what is the difference seen?
SOCRATES: In the leisure spoken of by you, which a freeman can always
command: he has his talk out in peace, and, like ourselves, he wanders
at will from one subject to another, and from a second to a third,--if
the fancy takes him, he begins again, as we are doing now, caring not
whether his words are many or few; his only aim is to attain the truth.
But the lawyer is always in a hurry; there is the water of the clepsydra
driving him on, and not allowing him to expatiate at will: and there is
his adversary standing over him, enforcing his rights; the indictment,
which in their phraseology is termed the affidavit, is recited at
the time: and from this he must not deviate. He is a servant, and is
continually disputing about a fellow-servant before his master, who is
seated, and has the cause in his hands; the trial is never about some
indifferent matter, but always concerns himself; and often the race
is for his life. The consequence has been, that he has become keen and
shrewd; he has learned how to flatter his master in word and indulge him
in deed; but his soul is small and unrighteous. His condition, which has
been that of a slave from his youth upwards, has deprived him of growth
and uprightness and independence; dangers and fears, which were too
much for his truth and honesty, came upon him in early years, when the
tenderness of youth was unequal to them, and he has been driven into
crooked ways; from the first he has practised deception and retaliation,
and has become stunted and warped. And so he has passed out of youth
into manhood, having no soundness in him; and is now, as he thinks,
a master in wisdom. Such is the lawyer, Theodorus. Will you have the
companion picture of the philosopher, who is of our brotherhood; or
shall we return to the argument? Do not let us abuse the freedom of
digression which we claim.
THEODORUS: Nay, Socrates, not until we have finished what we are about;
for you truly said that we belong to a brotherhood which is free, and
are not the servants of the argument; but the argument is our servant,
and must wait our leisure. Who is our judge? Or where is the spectator
having any right to censure or control us, as he might the poets?
SOCRATES: Then, as this is your wish, I will describe the leaders; for
there is no use in talking about the inferior sort. In the first place,
the lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known
their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other
political assembly; they neither see nor hear the laws or decrees,
as they are called, of the state written or recited; the eagerness of
political societies in the attainment of offices--clubs, and banquets,
and revels, and singing-maidens,--do not enter even into their dreams.
Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace
may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are
matters of which the philosopher no more knows than he can tell, as they
say, how many pints are contained in the ocean. Neither is he conscious
of his ignorance. For he does not hold aloof in order that he may gain a
reputation; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the
city: his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human
things, is 'flying all abroad' as Pindar says, measuring earth and
heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above
the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their
entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach.
THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will illustrate my meaning, Theodorus, by the jest which the
clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when
he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said, that he
was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see
what was before his feet. This is a jest which is equally applicable to
all philosophers. For the philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his
next-door neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing, but
he hardly knows whether he is a man or an animal; he is searching into
the essence of man, and busy in enquiring what belongs to such a nature
to do or suffer different from any other;--I think that you understand
me, Theodorus?
THEODORUS: I do, and what you say is true.
SOCRATES: And thus, my friend, on every occasion, private as well as
public, as I said at first, when he appears in a law-court, or in any
place in which he has to speak of things which are at his feet and
before his eyes, he is the jest, not only of Thracian handmaids but of
the general herd, tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through
his inexperience. His awkwardness is fearful, and gives the impression
of imbecility. When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in
answer to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals
of any one, and they do not interest him; and therefore he is laughed at
for his sheepishness; and when others are being praised and glorified,
in the simplicity of his heart he cannot help going into fits of
laughter, so that he seems to be a downright idiot. When he hears a
tyrant or king eulogized, he fancies that he is listening to the
praises of some keeper of cattle--a swineherd, or shepherd, or perhaps a
cowherd, who is congratulated on the quantity of milk which he squeezes
from them; and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of
whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less tractable and more insidious
nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man is of necessity as
ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd--for he has no leisure,
and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing
of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our
philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to
think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and
say that some one is a gentleman because he can show seven generations
of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a
dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated
enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had
thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been
rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable.
And when people pride themselves on having a pedigree of twenty-five
ancestors, which goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot
understand their poverty of ideas. Why are they unable to calculate that
Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody,
and was such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth, and so on? He
amuses himself with the notion that they cannot count, and thinks that a
little arithmetic would have got rid of their senseless vanity. Now, in
all these cases our philosopher is derided by the vulgar, partly because
he is thought to despise them, and also because he is ignorant of what
is before him, and always at a loss.
THEODORUS: That is very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But, O my friend, when he draws the other into upper air,
and gets him out of his pleas and rejoinders into the contemplation of
justice and injustice in their own nature and in their difference from
one another and from all other things; or from the commonplaces about
the happiness of a king or of a rich man to the consideration of
government, and of human happiness and misery in general--what they
are, and how a man is to attain the one and avoid the other--when that
narrow, keen, little legal mind is called to account about all this, he
gives the philosopher his revenge; for dizzied by the height at which
he is hanging, whence he looks down into space, which is a strange
experience to him, he being dismayed, and lost, and stammering
broken words, is laughed at, not by Thracian handmaidens or any other
uneducated persons, for they have no eye for the situation, but by every
man who has not been brought up a slave. Such are the two characters,
Theodorus: the one of the freeman, who has been trained in liberty and
leisure, whom you call the philosopher,--him we cannot blame because
he appears simple and of no account when he has to perform some menial
task, such as packing up bed-clothes, or flavouring a sauce or fawning
speech; the other character is that of the man who is able to do all
this kind of service smartly and neatly, but knows not how to wear his
cloak like a gentleman; still less with the music of discourse can he
hymn the true life aright which is lived by immortals or men blessed of
heaven.
THEODORUS: If you could only persuade everybody, Socrates, as you do me,
of the truth of your words, there would be more peace and fewer evils
among men.
SOCRATES: Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always
remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among
the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal nature,
and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to
heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God,
as far as this is possible; and to become like him, is to become holy,
just, and wise. But, O my friend, you cannot easily convince mankind
that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not merely in order that a
man may seem to be good, which is the reason given by the world, and in
my judgment is only a repetition of an old wives' fable. Whereas,
the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous--he is perfect
righteousness; and he of us who is the most righteous is most like him.
Herein is seen the true cleverness of a man, and also his nothingness
and want of manhood. For to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and
ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice. All other kinds of wisdom
or cleverness, which seem only, such as the wisdom of politicians, or
the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or
the sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better not be encouraged
in the illusion that his roguery is clever; for men glory in their