Gorgias, by Plato
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.' |
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