That is because you are in love with Demos. But let us have a
little more conversation. You remember the two processes--one which
was directed to pleasure, the other which was directed to making men as
good as possible. And those who have the care of the city should make
the citizens as good as possible. But who would undertake a public
building, if he had never had a teacher of the art of building, and had
never constructed a building before? or who would undertake the duty
of state-physician, if he had never cured either himself or any one
else? Should we not examine him before we entrusted him with the office?
And as Callicles is about to enter public life, should we not examine
him? Whom has he made better? For we have already admitted that this is
the statesman's proper business. And we must ask the same question
about Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles. Whom did they
make better? Nay, did not Pericles make the citizens worse? For he
gave them pay, and at first he was very popular with them, but at last
they condemned him to death. Yet surely he would be a bad tamer of
animals who, having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt,
and man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only made
him wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he could not
have been a good statesman. The same tale might be repeated about
Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades. But the charioteer who keeps his seat
at first is not thrown out when he gains greater experience and skill.
The inference is, that the statesman of a past age were no better
than those of our own. They may have been cleverer constructors of docks
and harbours, but they did not improve the character of the citizens. I
have told you again and again (and I purposely use the same images) that
the soul, like the body, may be treated in two ways--there is the meaner
and the higher art. You seemed to understand what I said at the time,
but when I ask you who were the really good statesmen, you answer--as if
I asked you who were the good trainers, and you answered, Thearion,
the baker, Mithoecus, the author of the Sicilian cookery-book,
Sarambus, the vintner. And you would be affronted if I told you that these
are a parcel of cooks who make men fat only to make them thin. And those
whom they have fattened applaud them, instead of finding fault with them,
and lay the blame of their subsequent disorders on their physicians. In
this respect, Callicles, you are like them; you applaud the statesmen
of old, who pandered to the vices of the citizens, and filled the city
with docks and harbours, but neglected virtue and justice. And when
the fit of illness comes, the citizens who in like manner
applauded Themistocles, Pericles, and others, will lay hold of you and my
friend Alcibiades, and you will suffer for the misdeeds of your
predecessors. The old story is always being repeated--'after all his
services, the ungrateful city banished him, or condemned him to death.' As if
the statesman should not have taught the city better! He surely cannot
blame the state for having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or
teacher can find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist and
orator are in the same case; although you admire rhetoric and despise
sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the higher of the two. The teacher of
the arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or politics takes no money,
because this is the only kind of service which makes the disciple desirous of
requiting his teacher.
Socrates concludes by finally asking, to which of
the two modes of serving the state Callicles invites him:--'to the inferior
and ministerial one,' is the ingenuous reply. That is the only way
of avoiding death, replies Socrates; and he has heard often enough,
and would rather not hear again, that the bad man will kill the good.
But he thinks that such a fate is very likely reserved for him, because
he remarks that he is the only person who teaches the true art of
politics. And very probably, as in the case which he described to Polus, he
may be the physician who is tried by a jury of children. He cannot say that
he has procured the citizens any pleasure, and if any one charges him
with perplexing them, or with reviling their elders, he will not be
able to make them understand that he has only been actuated by a desire
for their good. And therefore there is no saying what his fate may
be. 'And do you think that a man who is unable to help himself is in a
good condition?' Yes, Callicles, if he have the true self-help, which
is never to have said or done any wrong to himself or others. If I had
not this kind of self-help, I should be ashamed; but if I die for want
of your flattering rhetoric, I shall die in peace. For death is no
evil, but to go to the world below laden with offences is the worst of
evils. In proof of which I will tell you a tale:--
Under the rule of
Cronos, men were judged on the day of their death, and when judgment had been
given upon them they departed--the good to the islands of the blest, the bad
to the house of vengeance. But as they were still living, and had their
clothes on at the time when they were being judged, there was favouritism,
and Zeus, when he came to the throne, was obliged to alter the mode of
procedure, and try them after death, having first sent down Prometheus to
take away from them the foreknowledge of death. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and
Aeacus were appointed to be the judges; Rhadamanthus for Asia, Aeacus for
Europe, and Minos was to hold the court of appeal. Now death is the
separation of soul and body, but after death soul and body alike retain their
characteristics; the fat man, the dandy, the branded slave, are all
distinguishable. Some prince or potentate, perhaps even the great king
himself, appears before Rhadamanthus, and he instantly detects him, though he
knows not who he is; he sees the scars of perjury and iniquity, and sends him
away to the house of torment.
For there are two classes of souls who
undergo punishment--the curable and the incurable. The curable are those who
are benefited by their punishment; the incurable are such as Archelaus, who
benefit others by becoming a warning to them. The latter class are generally
kings and potentates; meaner persons, happily for themselves, have not the
same power of doing injustice. Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites,
are supposed by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not
that there is anything to prevent a great man from being a good one, as
is shown by the famous example of Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But
to Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as good or bad; they are
stripped of their dignities and preferments; he despatches the bad to
Tartarus, labelled either as curable or incurable, and looks with love
and admiration on the soul of some just one, whom he sends to the islands
of the blest. Similar is the practice of Aeacus; and Minos overlooks
them, holding a golden sceptre, as Odysseus in Homer saw him
'Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.'
My wish for
myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls undefiled to the
judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to meet death. And I
exhort you, and retort upon you the reproach which you cast upon me,--that
you will stand before the judge, gaping, and with dizzy brain, and any one
may box you on the ear, and do you all manner of evil.
Perhaps you
think that this is an old wives' fable. But you, who are the three wisest men
in Hellas, have nothing better to say, and no one will ever show that to do
is better than to suffer evil. A man should study to be, and not merely to
seem. If he is bad, he should become good, and avoid all flattery, whether of
the many or of the few.
Follow me, then; and if you are looked down upon,
that will do you no harm. And when we have practised virtue, we will betake
ourselves to politics, but not until we are delivered from the shameful state
of ignorance and uncertainty in which we are at present. Let us follow in
the way of virtue and justice, and not in the way to which you, Callicles,
invite us; for that way is nothing worth.
We will now consider in order
some of the principal points of the dialogue. Having regard (1) to the age of
Plato and the ironical character of his writings, we may compare him with
himself, and with other great teachers, and we may note in passing the
objections of his critics. And then (2) casting one eye upon him, we may cast
another upon ourselves, and endeavour to draw out the great lessons which
he teaches for all time, stripped of the accidental form in which they
are enveloped.
(1) In the Gorgias, as in nearly all the other
dialogues of Plato, we are made aware that formal logic has as yet no
existence. The old difficulty of framing a definition recurs. The illusive
analogy of the arts and the virtues also continues. The ambiguity of several
words, such as nature, custom, the honourable, the good, is not cleared
up. The Sophists are still floundering about the distinction of the
real and seeming. Figures of speech are made the basis of arguments.
The possibility of conceiving a universal art or science, which admits of
application to a particular subject-matter, is a difficulty which remains
unsolved, and has not altogether ceased to haunt the world at the present day
(compare Charmides). The defect of clearness is also apparent in Socrates
himself, unless we suppose him to be practising on the simplicity of his
opponent, or rather perhaps trying an experiment in dialectics. Nothing can
be more fallacious than the contradiction which he pretends to have
discovered in the answers of Gorgias (see above). The advantages which he
gains over Polus are also due to a false antithesis of pleasure and good, and
to an erroneous assertion that an agent and a patient may be described by
similar predicates;--a mistake which Aristotle partly shares and partly
corrects in the Nicomachean Ethics. Traces of a 'robust sophistry' are
likewise discernible in his argument with Callicles.
(2) Although
Socrates professes to be convinced by reason only, yet the argument is often
a sort of dialectical fiction, by which he conducts himself and others to his
own ideal of life and action. And we may sometimes wish that we could have
suggested answers to his antagonists, or pointed out to them the rocks which
lay concealed under the ambiguous terms good, pleasure, and the like. But it
would be as useless to examine his arguments by the requirements of modern
logic, as to criticise this ideal from a merely utilitarian point of view. If
we say that the ideal is generally regarded as unattainable, and that
mankind will by no means agree in thinking that the criminal is happier
when punished than when unpunished, any more than they would agree to
the stoical paradox that a man may be happy on the rack, Plato has
already admitted that the world is against him. Neither does he mean to
say that Archelaus is tormented by the stings of conscience; or that
the sensations of the impaled criminal are more agreeable than those of
the tyrant drowned in luxurious enjoyment. Neither is he speaking, as in
the Protagoras, of virtue as a calculation of pleasure, an opinion
which he afterwards repudiates in the Phaedo. What then is his meaning?
His meaning we shall be able to illustrate best by parallel notions,
which, whether justifiable by logic or not, have always existed among
mankind. We must remind the reader that Socrates himself implies that he will
be understood or appreciated by very few.
He is speaking not of the
consciousness of happiness, but of the idea of happiness. When a martyr dies
in a good cause, when a soldier falls in battle, we do not suppose that death
or wounds are without pain, or that their physical suffering is always
compensated by a mental satisfaction. Still we regard them as happy, and we
would a thousand times rather have their death than a shameful life. Nor is
this only because we believe that they will obtain an immortality of fame, or
that they will have crowns of glory in another world, when their enemies and
persecutors will be proportionably tormented. Men are found in a few
instances to do what is right, without reference to public opinion or to
consequences. And we regard them as happy on this ground only, much as
Socrates' friends in the opening of the Phaedo are described as regarding
him; or as was said of another, 'they looked upon his face as upon the face
of an angel.' We are not concerned to justify this idealism by the
standard of utility or public opinion, but merely to point out the existence
of such a sentiment in the better part of human nature.
The idealism
of Plato is founded upon this sentiment. He would maintain that in some sense
or other truth and right are alone to be sought, and that all other goods are
only desirable as means towards these. He is thought to have erred in
'considering the agent only, and making no reference to the happiness of
others, as affected by him.' But the happiness of others or of mankind, if
regarded as an end, is really quite as ideal and almost as paradoxical to the
common understanding as Plato's conception of happiness. For the greatest
happiness of the greatest number may mean also the greatest pain of the
individual which will procure the greatest pleasure of the greatest number.
Ideas of utility, like those of duty and right, may be pushed to
unpleasant consequences. Nor can Plato in the Gorgias be deemed
purely self-regarding, considering that Socrates expressly mentions the duty
of imparting the truth when discovered to others. Nor must we forget
that the side of ethics which regards others is by the ancients merged
in politics. Both in Plato and Aristotle, as well as in the Stoics, the
social principle, though taking another form, is really far more prominent
than in most modern treatises on ethics.
The idealizing of suffering is
one of the conceptions which have exercised the greatest influence on
mankind. Into the theological import of this, or into the consideration of
the errors to which the idea may have given rise, we need not now enter. All
will agree that the ideal of the Divine Sufferer, whose words the world would
not receive, the man of sorrows of whom the Hebrew prophets spoke, has sunk
deep into the heart of the human race. It is a similar picture of suffering
goodness which Plato desires to pourtray, not without an allusion to the fate
of his master Socrates. He is convinced that, somehow or other, such an
one must be happy in life or after death. In the Republic, he endeavours
to show that his happiness would be assured here in a well-ordered
state. But in the actual condition of human things the wise and good are
weak and miserable; such an one is like a man fallen among wild
beasts, exposed to every sort of wrong and obloquy.
Plato, like other
philosophers, is thus led on to the conclusion, that if 'the ways of God' to
man are to be 'justified,' the hopes of another life must be included. If the
question could have been put to him, whether a man dying in torments was
happy still, even if, as he suggests in the Apology, 'death be only a long
sleep,' we can hardly tell what would have been his answer. There have been a
few, who, quite independently of rewards and punishments or of posthumous
reputation, or any other influence of public opinion, have been willing to
sacrifice their lives for the good of others. It is difficult to say how far
in such cases an unconscious hope of a future life, or a general faith
in the victory of good in the world, may have supported the sufferers.
But this extreme idealism is not in accordance with the spirit of Plato.
He supposes a day of retribution, in which the good are to be rewarded
and the wicked punished. Though, as he says in the Phaedo, no man of
sense will maintain that the details of the stories about another world
are true, he will insist that something of the kind is true, and will
frame his life with a view to this unknown future. Even in the Republic
he introduces a future life as an afterthought, when the superior
happiness of the just has been established on what is thought to be an
immutable foundation. At the same time he makes a point of determining his
main thesis independently of remoter consequences.
(3) Plato's theory
of punishment is partly vindictive, partly corrective. In the Gorgias, as
well as in the Phaedo and Republic, a few great criminals, chiefly tyrants,
are reserved as examples. But most men have never had the opportunity of
attaining this pre-eminence of evil. They are not incurable, and their
punishment is intended for their improvement. They are to suffer because they
have sinned; like sick men, they must go to the physician and be healed. On
this representation of Plato's the criticism has been made, that the analogy
of disease and injustice is partial only, and that suffering, instead of
improving men, may have just the opposite effect.
Like the general
analogy of the arts and the virtues, the analogy of disease and injustice, or
of medicine and justice, is certainly imperfect. But ideas must be given
through something; the nature of the mind which is unseen can only be
represented under figures derived from visible objects. If these figures are
suggestive of some new aspect under which the mind may be considered, we
cannot find fault with them for not exactly coinciding with the ideas
represented. They partake of the imperfect nature of language, and must not
be construed in too strict a manner. That Plato sometimes reasons from them
as if they were not figures but realities, is due to the defective logical
analysis of his age.
Nor does he distinguish between the suffering
which improves and the suffering which only punishes and deters. He applies
to the sphere of ethics a conception of punishment which is really derived
from criminal law. He does not see that such punishment is only negative, and
supplies no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off
the higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and
to be continued in other stages of existence, which is further
developed in the Republic. And Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of
the beaten track in their meditations on the 'last things,' have found a
ray of light in his writings. But he has not explained how or in what
way punishment is to contribute to the improvement of mankind. He has
not followed out the principle which he affirms in the Republic, that
'God is the author of evil only with a view to good,' and that 'they
were the better for being punished.' Still his doctrine of a future state
of rewards and punishments may be compared favourably with that
perversion of Christian doctrine which makes the everlasting punishment of
human beings depend on a brief moment of time, or even on the accident
of an accident. And he has escaped the difficulty which has often
beset divines, respecting the future destiny of the meaner sort of
men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good nor very bad, by
not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.
We do Plato violence in
pressing his figures of speech or chains of argument; and not less so in
asking questions which were beyond the horizon of his vision, or did not come
within the scope of his design. The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to
answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true
and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with
judgment according to the truth. Plato may be accused of representing a
superhuman or transcendental virtue in the description of the just man in the
Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of the philosopher in the Theaetetus;
and at the same time may be thought to be condemning a state of the
world which always has existed and always will exist among men. But such
ideals act powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And such condemnations
are not mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the natural rebellion of the
higher sense of right in man against the ordinary conditions of human life.
The greatest statesmen have fallen very far short of the political ideal, and
are therefore justly involved in the general condemnation.
Subordinate
to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other questions, which may be
briefly considered:--
a. The antithesis of good and pleasure, which as in
other dialogues is supposed to consist in the permanent nature of the one
compared with the transient and relative nature of the other. Good and
pleasure, knowledge and sense, truth and opinion, essence and generation,
virtue and pleasure, the real and the apparent, the infinite and finite,
harmony or beauty and discord, dialectic and rhetoric or poetry, are so many
pairs of opposites, which in Plato easily pass into one another, and
are seldom kept perfectly distinct. And we must not forget that
Plato's conception of pleasure is the Heracleitean flux transferred to
the sphere of human conduct. There is some degree of unfairness in
opposing the principle of good, which is objective, to the principle of
pleasure, which is subjective. For the assertion of the permanence of good is
only based on the assumption of its objective character. Had Plato
fixed his mind, not on the ideal nature of good, but on the
subjective consciousness of happiness, that would have been found to be
as transient and precarious as pleasure.
b. The arts or sciences, when
pursued without any view to truth, or the improvement of human life, are
called flatteries. They are all alike dependent upon the opinion of mankind,
from which they are derived. To Plato the whole world appears to be sunk in
error, based on self-interest. To this is opposed the one wise man hardly
professing to have found truth, yet strong in the conviction that a virtuous
life is the only good, whether regarded with reference to this world or
to another. Statesmen, Sophists, rhetoricians, poets, are alike brought
up for judgment. They are the parodies of wise men, and their arts are
the parodies of true arts and sciences. All that they call science is
merely the result of that study of the tempers of the Great Beast, which
he describes in the Republic.
c. Various other points of contact
naturally suggest themselves between the Gorgias and other dialogues,
especially the Republic, the Philebus, and the Protagoras. There are closer
resemblances both of spirit and language in the Republic than in any other
dialogue, the verbal similarity tending to show that they were written at the
same period of Plato's life. For the Republic supplies that education and
training of which the Gorgias suggests the necessity. The theory of the many
weak combining against the few strong in the formation of society (which
is indeed a partial truth), is similar in both of them, and is expressed
in nearly the same language. The sufferings and fate of the just man,
the powerlessness of evil, and the reversal of the situation in
another life, are also points of similarity. The poets, like the
rhetoricians, are condemned because they aim at pleasure only, as in the
Republic they are expelled the State, because they are imitators, and
minister to the weaker side of human nature. That poetry is akin to rhetoric
may be compared with the analogous notion, which occurs in the Protagoras,
that the ancient poets were the Sophists of their day. In some other
respects the Protagoras rather offers a contrast than a parallel. The
character of Protagoras may be compared with that of Gorgias, but the
conception of happiness is different in the two dialogues; being described in
the former, according to the old Socratic notion, as deferred or
accumulated pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and in the Phaedo, pleasure and
good are distinctly opposed.
This opposition is carried out from a
speculative point of view in the Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom
are allowed to be the chief good, but pleasure and good are not so completely
opposed as in the Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no
antecedent pains, are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to
Gorgias' definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.), as the art
of persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit, not by
compulsion, but of their own free will--marks a close and perhaps designed
connection between the two dialogues. In both the ideas of measure, order,
harmony, are the connecting links between the beautiful and the
good.
In general spirit and character, that is, in irony and antagonism
to public opinion, the Gorgias most nearly resembles the Apology,
Crito, and portions of the Republic, and like the Philebus, though from
another point of view, may be thought to stand in the same relation to
Plato's theory of morals which the Theaetetus bears to his theory of
knowledge.
d. A few minor points still remain to be summed up: (1) The
extravagant irony in the reason which is assigned for the pilot's modest
charge; and in the proposed use of rhetoric as an instrument of
self-condemnation; and in the mighty power of geometrical equality in both
worlds. (2) The reference of the mythus to the previous discussion should not
be overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable criminals such as
Archelaus; the retaliation of the box on the ears; the nakedness of the souls
and of the judges who are stript of the clothes or disguises which
rhetoric and public opinion have hitherto provided for them (compare
Swift's notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub).
The fiction seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing
that the soul retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death. (3)
The appeal of the authority of Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos
in his court 'holding a golden sceptre,' which gives verisimilitude to
the tale.
It is scarcely necessary to repeat that Plato is playing
'both sides of the game,' and that in criticising the characters of Gorgias
and Polus, we are not passing any judgment on historical individuals, but
only attempting to analyze the 'dramatis personae' as they were conceived
by him. Neither is it necessary to enlarge upon the obvious fact that
Plato is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be assumed to
be those which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any other speaker
who appears to have the best of the argument; or to repeat the
observation that he is a poet as well as a philosopher; or to remark that he
is not to be tried by a modern standard, but interpreted with reference to
his place in the history of thought and the opinion of his time.
It
has been said that the most characteristic feature of the Gorgias is the
assertion of the right of dissent, or private judgment. But this mode of
stating the question is really opposed both to the spirit of Plato and of
ancient philosophy generally. For Plato is not asserting any abstract right
or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived from freedom of thought;
indeed, in some other parts of his writings (e.g. Laws), he has fairly laid
himself open to the charge of intolerance. No speculations had as yet arisen
respecting the 'liberty of prophesying;' and Plato is not affirming any
abstract right of this nature: but he is asserting the duty and right of the
one wise and true man to dissent from the folly and falsehood of the many. At
the same time he acknowledges the natural result, which he hardly seeks to
avert, that he who speaks the truth to a multitude, regardless of
consequences, will probably share the fate of
Socrates.
*****
The irony of Plato sometimes veils from us the
height of idealism to which he soars. When declaring truths which the many
will not receive, he puts on an armour which cannot be pierced by them. The
weapons of ridicule are taken out of their hands and the laugh is turned
against themselves. The disguises which Socrates assumes are like the
parables of the New Testament, or the oracles of the Delphian God; they
half conceal, half reveal, his meaning. The more he is in earnest, the
more ironical he becomes; and he is never more in earnest or more
ironical than in the Gorgias. He hardly troubles himself to answer seriously
the objections of Gorgias and Polus, and therefore he sometimes appears
to be careless of the ordinary requirements of logic. Yet in the
highest sense he is always logical and consistent with himself. The form of
the argument may be paradoxical; the substance is an appeal to the
higher reason. He is uttering truths before they can be understood, as in
all ages the words of philosophers, when they are first uttered, have
found the world unprepared for them. A further misunderstanding arises out
of the wildness of his humour; he is supposed not only by Callicles,
but by the rest of mankind, to be jesting when he is profoundly serious.
At length he makes even Polus in earnest. Finally, he drops the
argument, and heedless any longer of the forms of dialectic, he loses himself
in a sort of triumph, while at the same time he retaliates upon
his adversaries. From this confusion of jest and earnest, we may now
return to the ideal truth, and draw out in a simple form the main theses of
the dialogue.
First Thesis:--
It is a greater evil to do than
to suffer injustice.
Compare the New Testament--
'It is better to
suffer for well doing than for evil doing.'--1 Pet.
And the Sermon on the
Mount--
'Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness'
sake.'--Matt.
The words of Socrates are more abstract than the words of
Christ, but they equally imply that the only real evil is moral evil. The
righteous may suffer or die, but they have their reward; and even if they
had no reward, would be happier than the wicked. The world, represented
by Polus, is ready, when they are asked, to acknowledge that injustice
is dishonourable, and for their own sakes men are willing to punish the
offender (compare Republic). But they are not equally willing to acknowledge
that injustice, even if successful, is essentially evil, and has the nature
of disease and death. Especially when crimes are committed on the great
scale--the crimes of tyrants, ancient or modern--after a while, seeing that
they cannot be undone, and have become a part of history, mankind are
disposed to forgive them, not from any magnanimity or charity, but because
their feelings are blunted by time, and 'to forgive is convenient to them.'
The tangle of good and evil can no longer be unravelled; and although they
know that the end cannot justify the means, they feel also that good has
often come out of evil. But Socrates would have us pass the same judgment on
the tyrant now and always; though he is surrounded by his satellites, and
has the applauses of Europe and Asia ringing in his ears; though he is
the civilizer or liberator of half a continent, he is, and always will
be, the most miserable of men. The greatest consequences for good or
for evil cannot alter a hair's breadth the morality of actions which
are right or wrong in themselves. This is the standard which Socrates
holds up to us. Because politics, and perhaps human life generally, are of
a mixed nature we must not allow our principles to sink to the level
of our practice.
And so of private individuals--to them, too, the
world occasionally speaks of the consequences of their actions:--if they are
lovers of pleasure, they will ruin their health; if they are false or
dishonest, they will lose their character. But Socrates would speak to them,
not of what will be, but of what is--of the present consequence of
lowering and degrading the soul. And all higher natures, or perhaps all
men everywhere, if they were not tempted by interest or passion, would
agree with him--they would rather be the victims than the perpetrators
of an act of treachery or of tyranny. Reason tells them that death
comes sooner or later to all, and is not so great an evil as an unworthy
life, or rather, if rightly regarded, not an evil at all, but to a good
man the greatest good. For in all of us there are slumbering ideals of
truth and right, which may at any time awaken and develop a new life in
us.
Second Thesis:--
It is better to suffer for wrong doing than
not to suffer.
There might have been a condition of human life in which
the penalty followed at once, and was proportioned to the offence. Moral evil
would then be scarcely distinguishable from physical; mankind would avoid
vice as they avoid pain or death. But nature, with a view of deepening
and enlarging our characters, has for the most part hidden from us
the consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee them by an
effort of reflection. To awaken in us this habit of reflection is the
business of early education, which is continued in maturer years by
observation and experience. The spoilt child is in later life said to
be unfortunate--he had better have suffered when he was young, and
been saved from suffering afterwards. But is not the sovereign
equally unfortunate whose education and manner of life are always
concealing from him the consequences of his own actions, until at length they
are revealed to him in some terrible downfall, which may, perhaps, have
been caused not by his own fault? Another illustration is afforded by
the pauper and criminal classes, who scarcely reflect at all, except on
the means by which they can compass their immediate ends. We pity them,
and make allowances for them; but we do not consider that the same
principle applies to human actions generally. Not to have been found out in
some dishonesty or folly, regarded from a moral or religious point of
view, is the greatest of misfortunes. The success of our evil doings is
a proof that the gods have ceased to strive with us, and have given us
over to ourselves. There is nothing to remind us of our sins, and therefore
nothing to correct them. Like our sorrows, they are healed
by time;
'While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.'
The 'accustomed irony' of Socrates adds a corollary to
the argument:--'Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to
escape unpunished'--this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse
of Proverbs, 'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,' etc., quoted
in Romans.)
Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side of
their own lives: they do not easily see themselves as others see them. They
are very kind and very blind to their own faults; the rhetoric of
self-love is always pleading with them on their own behalf. Adopting a
similar figure of speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in
defence but in accusation of themselves. As they are guided by feeling
rather than by reason, to their feelings the appeal must be made. They
must speak to themselves; they must argue with themselves; they must paint
in eloquent words the character of their own evil deeds. To any
suffering which they have deserved, they must persuade themselves to submit.
Under the figure there lurks a real thought, which, expressed in another
form, admits of an easy application to ourselves. For do not we too accuse
as well as excuse ourselves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of
prayer and preaching, which the mind silently employs while the
struggle between the better and the worse is going on within us. And
sometimes we are too hard upon ourselves, because we want to restore the
balance which self-love has overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may
hear a voice as of a parent consoling us. In religious diaries a sort
of drama is often enacted by the consciences of men 'accusing or else
excusing them.' For all our life long we are talking with ourselves:--What is
thought but speech? What is feeling but rhetoric? And if rhetoric is used on
one side only we shall be always in danger of being deceived. And so the
words of Socrates, which at first sounded paradoxical, come home to the
experience of all of us.
Third Thesis:--
We do not what we will,
but what we wish.
Socrates would teach us a lesson which we are slow to
learn--that good intentions, and even benevolent actions, when they are not
prompted by wisdom, are of no value. We believe something to be for our good
which we afterwards find out not to be for our good. The consequences may
be inevitable, for they may follow an invariable law, yet they may often
be the very opposite of what is expected by us. When we increase
pauperism by almsgiving; when we tie up property without regard to changes
of circumstances; when we say hastily what we deliberately disapprove;
when we do in a moment of passion what upon reflection we regret; when
from any want of self-control we give another an advantage over us--we
are doing not what we will, but what we wish. All actions of which
the consequences are not weighed and foreseen, are of this impotent
and paralytic sort; and the author of them has 'the least possible
power' while seeming to have the greatest. For he is actually bringing
about the reverse of what he intended. And yet the book of nature is
open to him, in which he who runs may read if he will exercise
ordinary attention; every day offers him experiences of his own and of
other men's characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The contemplation
of the consequences of actions, and the ignorance of men in regard to
them, seems to have led Socrates to his famous thesis:--'Virtue is
knowledge;' which is not so much an error or paradox as a half truth, seen
first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but also the half of the truth
which is especially needed in the present age. For as the world has
grown older men have been too apt to imagine a right and wrong apart
from consequences; while a few, on the other hand, have sought to
resolve them wholly into their consequences. But Socrates, or Plato for
him, neither divides nor identifies them; though the time has not yet
arrived either for utilitarian or transcendental systems of moral philosophy,
he recognizes the two elements which seem to lie at the basis of
morality. (Compare the following: 'Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenize
and to praise knowing; for we have Hebraized too much and have
overvalued doing. But the habits and discipline received from Hebraism remain
for our race an eternal possession. And as humanity is constituted, one
must never assign the second rank to-day without being ready to restore
them to the first to-morrow.' Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to
Orissa.)
Fourth Thesis:--
To be and not to seem is the end of
life.
The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one of the
chief incentives to moral virtue, and to most men the opinion of their
fellows is a leading principle of action. Hence a certain element of
seeming enters into all things; all or almost all desire to appear better
than they are, that they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A man
of ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and there is
an unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy which, according to Socrates,
is the worst of the two. Again, there is the sophistry of classes and
professions. There are the different opinions about themselves and one
another which prevail in different ranks of society. There is the bias given
to the mind by the study of one department of human knowledge to the
exclusion of the rest; and stronger far the prejudice engendered by a
pecuniary or party interest in certain tenets. There is the sophistry of law,
the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of
theology. All of these disguises wear the appearance of the truth; some of
them are very ancient, and we do not easily disengage ourselves from them;
for we have inherited them, and they have become a part of us. The sophistry
of an ancient Greek sophist is nothing compared with the sophistry of a
religious order, or of a church in which during many ages falsehood has been
accumulating, and everything has been said on one side, and nothing on the
other. The conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and
the opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another
('the buyer saith, it is nought--it is nought,' etc.), are always
obscuring our sense of truth and right. The sophistry of human nature is far
more subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely
from their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for himself:
most of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us,
which we partly help to make. A man who would shake himself loose from
them, requires great force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in
the search after truth. On every side he is met by the world, which is
not an abstraction of theologians, but the most real of all things,
being another name for ourselves when regarded collectively and subjected
to the influences of society.
Then comes Socrates, impressed as no
other man ever was, with the unreality and untruthfulness of popular opinion,
and tells mankind that they must be and not seem. How are they to be? At any
rate they must have the spirit and desire to be. If they are ignorant, they
must acknowledge their ignorance to themselves; if they are conscious
of doing evil, they must learn to do well; if they are weak, and
have nothing in them which they can call themselves, they must
acquire firmness and consistency; if they are indifferent, they must begin
to take an interest in the great questions which surround them. They
must try to be what they would fain appear in the eyes of their
fellow-men. A single individual cannot easily change public opinion; but he
can be true and innocent, simple and independent; he can know what he does,
and what he does not know; and though not without an effort, he can form a
judgment of his own, at least in common matters. In his most secret actions
he can show the same high principle (compare Republic) which he shows when
supported and watched by public opinion. And on some fitting occasion, on
some question of humanity or truth or right, even an ordinary man, from the
natural rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up arms against a
whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too much for them.
Who
is the true and who the false statesman?--
The true statesman is he who
brings order out of disorder; who first organizes and then administers the
government of his own country; and having made a nation, seeks to reconcile
the national interests with those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere
theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow
together in his mind; while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing.
Although obliged to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His
thoughts are fixed not on power or riches or extension of territory, but on
an ideal state, in which all the citizens have an equal chance of health and
life, and the highest education is within the reach of all, and the moral
and intellectual qualities of every individual are freely developed,
and 'the idea of good' is the animating principle of the whole. Not
the attainment of freedom alone, or of order alone, but how to unite
freedom with order is the problem which he has to solve.
The statesman
who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a task which will
call forth all his powers. He must control himself before he can control
others; he must know mankind before he can manage them. He has no private
likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal enmity under the disguise of
moral or political principle: such meannesses, into which men too often fall
unintentionally, are absorbed in the consciousness of his mission, and in his
love for his country and for mankind. He will sometimes ask himself what the
next generation will say of him; not because he is careful of posthumous
fame, but because he knows that the result of his life as a whole will then
be more fairly judged. He will take time for the execution of his plans; not
hurrying them on when the mind of a nation is unprepared for them; but like
the Ruler of the Universe Himself, working in the appointed time, for he
knows that human life, 'if not long in comparison with eternity' (Republic),
is sufficient for the fulfilment of many great purposes. He knows, too, that
the work will be still going on when he is no longer here; and he will
sometimes, especially when his powers are failing, think of that other 'city
of which the pattern is in heaven' (Republic).
The false politician is
the serving-man of the state. In order to govern men he becomes like them;
their 'minds are married in conjunction;' they 'bear themselves' like vulgar
and tyrannical masters, and he is their obedient servant. The true
politician, if he would rule men, must make them like himself; he must
'educate his party' until they cease to be a party; he must breathe into them
the spirit which will hereafter give form to their institutions. Politics
with him are not a mechanism for seeming what he is not, or for carrying out
the will of the majority. Himself a representative man, he is the
representative not of the lower but of the higher elements of the nation.
There is a better (as well as a worse) public opinion of which he seeks to
lay hold; as there is also a deeper current of human affairs in which he is
borne up when the waves nearer the shore are threatening him. He acknowledges
that he cannot take the world by force--two or three moves on the political
chess board are all that he can fore see--two or three weeks moves on the
political chessboard are all that he can foresee--two or three weeks or
months are granted to him in which he can provide against a coming struggle.
But he knows also that there are permanent principles of politics
which are always tending to the well-being of states--better
administration, better education, the reconciliation of conflicting elements,
increased security against external enemies. These are not 'of to-day
or yesterday,' but are the same in all times, and under all forms
of government. Then when the storm descends and the winds blow, though
he knows not beforehand the hour of danger, the pilot, not like
Plato's captain in the Republic, half-blind and deaf, but with penetrating
eye and quick ear, is ready to take command of the ship and guide her
into port.
The false politician asks not what is true, but what is the
opinion of the world--not what is right, but what is expedient. The only
measures of which he approves are the measures which will pass. He has
no intention of fighting an uphill battle; he keeps the roadway
of politics. He is unwilling to incur the persecution and enmity
which political convictions would entail upon him. He begins with
popularity, and in fair weather sails gallantly along. But unpopularity
soon follows him. For men expect their leaders to be better and wiser
than themselves: to be their guides in danger, their saviours in
extremity; they do not really desire them to obey all the ignorant impulses
of the popular mind; and if they fail them in a crisis they are
disappointed. Then, as Socrates says, the cry of ingratitude is heard, which
is most unreasonable; for the people, who have been taught no better,
have done what might be expected of them, and their statesmen have
received justice at their hands.
The true statesman is aware that he
must adapt himself to times and circumstances. He must have allies if he is
to fight against the world; he must enlighten public opinion; he must
accustom his followers to act together. Although he is not the mere executor
of the will of the majority, he must win over the majority to himself. He is
their leader and not their follower, but in order to lead he must also
follow. He will neither exaggerate nor undervalue the power of a statesman,
neither adopting the 'laissez faire' nor the 'paternal government'
principle; but he will, whether he is dealing with children in politics, or
with full-grown men, seek to do for the people what the government can
do for them, and what, from imperfect education or deficient powers
of combination, they cannot do for themselves. He knows that if he does
too much for them they will do nothing; and that if he does nothing for
them they will in some states of society be utterly helpless. For the
many cannot exist without the few, if the material force of a country is
from below, wisdom and experience are from above. It is not a small part
of human evils which kings and governments make or cure. The statesman
is well aware that a great purpose carried out consistently during
many years will at last be executed. He is playing for a stake which may
be partly determined by some accident, and therefore he will allow
largely for the unknown element of politics. But the game being one in
which chance and skill are combined, if he plays long enough he is certain
of victory. He will not be always consistent, for the world is
changing; and though he depends upon the support of a party, he will remember
that he is the minister of the whole. He lives not for the present, but
for the future, and he is not at all sure that he will be appreciated
either now or then. For he may have the existing order of society against
him, and may not be remembered by a distant posterity.
There are
always discontented idealists in politics who, like Socrates in the Gorgias,
find fault with all statesmen past as well as present, not excepting the
greatest names of history. Mankind have an uneasy feeling that they ought to
be better governed than they are. Just as the actual philosopher falls short
of the one wise man, so does the actual statesman fall short of the ideal.
And so partly from vanity and egotism, but partly also from a true sense of
the faults of eminent men, a temper of dissatisfaction and criticism springs
up among those who are ready enough to acknowledge the inferiority of their
own powers. No matter whether a statesman makes high professions or none at
all--they are reduced sooner or later to the same level. And sometimes the
more unscrupulous man is better esteemed than the more conscientious,
because he has not equally deceived expectations. Such sentiments may be
unjust, but they are widely spread; we constantly find them recurring in
reviews and newspapers, and still oftener in private conversation.
We
may further observe that the art of government, while in some respects
tending to improve, has in others a tendency to degenerate, as institutions
become more popular. Governing for the people cannot easily be combined with
governing by the people: the interests of classes are too strong for the
ideas of the statesman who takes a comprehensive view of the whole. According
to Socrates the true governor will find ruin or death staring him in the
face, and will only be induced to govern from the fear of being governed by a
worse man than himself (Republic). And in modern times, though the world has
grown milder, and the terrible consequences which Plato foretells no longer
await an English statesman, any one who is not actuated by a blind ambition
will only undertake from a sense of duty a work in which he is most likely to
fail; and even if he succeed, will rarely be rewarded by the gratitude of his
own generation. |
|
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기