Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the
only real politician of his time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his
words by applying them to the history of our own country. He would
have said that not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the
real politicians of their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith,
Bentham, Ricardo. These during the greater part of their lives occupied
an inconsiderable space in the eyes of the public. They were
private persons; nevertheless they sowed in the minds of men seeds which
in the next generation have become an irresistible power. 'Herein is
that saying true, One soweth and another reapeth.' We may imagine
with Plato an ideal statesman in whom practice and speculation are
perfectly harmonized; for there is no necessary opposition between
them. But experience shows that they are commonly divorced--the
ordinary politician is the interpreter or executor of the thoughts of others,
and hardly ever brings to the birth a new political conception. One or
two only in modern times, like the Italian statesman Cavour, have
created the world in which they moved. The philosopher is naturally unfitted
for political life; his great ideas are not understood by the many; he is
a thousand miles away from the questions of the day. Yet perhaps the
lives of thinkers, as they are stiller and deeper, are also happier than
the lives of those who are more in the public eye. They have the
promise of the future, though they are regarded as dreamers and visionaries
by their own contemporaries. And when they are no longer here, those
who would have been ashamed of them during their lives claim kindred
with them, and are proud to be called by their names. (Compare
Thucyd.)
Who is the true poet?
Plato expels the poets from his
Republic because they are allied to sense; because they stimulate the
emotions; because they are thrice removed from the ideal truth. And in a
similar spirit he declares in the Gorgias that the stately muse of tragedy is
a votary of pleasure and not of truth. In modern times we almost ridicule the
idea of poetry admitting of a moral. The poet and the prophet, or preacher,
in primitive antiquity are one and the same; but in later ages they
seem to fall apart. The great art of novel writing, that peculiar
creation of our own and the last century, which, together with the sister
art of review writing, threatens to absorb all literature, has even less
of seriousness in her composition. Do we not often hear the novel
writer censured for attempting to convey a lesson to the minds of his
readers?
Yet the true office of a poet or writer of fiction is not merely
to give amusement, or to be the expression of the feelings of mankind, good
or bad, or even to increase our knowledge of human nature. There have been
poets in modern times, such as Goethe or Wordsworth, who have not forgotten
their high vocation of teachers; and the two greatest of the Greek dramatists
owe their sublimity to their ethical character. The noblest truths, sung of
in the purest and sweetest language, are still the proper material of poetry.
The poet clothes them with beauty, and has a power of making them enter into
the hearts and memories of men. He has not only to speak of themes above the
level of ordinary life, but to speak of them in a deeper and tenderer way
than they are ordinarily felt, so as to awaken the feeling of them in others.
The old he makes young again; the familiar principle he invests with a new
dignity; he finds a noble expression for the common-places of morality and
politics. He uses the things of sense so as to indicate what is beyond; he
raises us through earth to heaven. He expresses what the better part of
us would fain say, and the half-conscious feeling is strengthened by the
expression. He is his own critic, for the spirit of poetry and of criticism
are not divided in him. His mission is not to disguise men from themselves,
but to reveal to them their own nature, and make them better acquainted with
the world around them. True poetry is the remembrance of youth, of love, the
embodiment in words of the happiest and holiest moments of life, of the
noblest thoughts of man, of the greatest deeds of the past. The poet of the
future may return to his greater calling of the prophet or teacher; indeed,
we hardly know what may not be effected for the human race by a better use of
the poetical and imaginative faculty. The reconciliation of poetry, as of
religion, with truth, may still be possible. Neither is the element of
pleasure to be excluded. For when we substitute a higher pleasure for a lower
we raise men in the scale of existence. Might not the novelist, too,
make an ideal, or rather many ideals of social life, better than a
thousand sermons? Plato, like the Puritans, is too much afraid of poetic
and artistic influences. But he is not without a true sense of the
noble purposes to which art may be applied (Republic).
Modern poetry
is often a sort of plaything, or, in Plato's language, a flattery, a
sophistry, or sham, in which, without any serious purpose, the poet lends
wings to his fancy and exhibits his gifts of language and metre. Such an one
seeks to gratify the taste of his readers; he has the 'savoir faire,' or
trick of writing, but he has not the higher spirit of poetry. He has no
conception that true art should bring order out of disorder; that it should
make provision for the soul's highest interest; that it should be pursued
only with a view to 'the improvement of the citizens.' He ministers to the
weaker side of human nature (Republic); he idealizes the sensual; he sings
the strain of love in the latest fashion; instead of raising men above
themselves he brings them back to the 'tyranny of the many masters,' from
which all his life long a good man has been praying to be delivered. And
often, forgetful of measure and order, he will express not that which is
truest, but that which is strongest. Instead of a great and nobly-executed
subject, perfect in every part, some fancy of a heated brain is worked out
with the strangest incongruity. He is not the master of his words, but
his words--perhaps borrowed from another--the faded reflection of
some French or German or Italian writer, have the better of him. Though we
are not going to banish the poets, how can we suppose that such utterances
have any healing or life-giving influence on the minds of men?
'Let us
hear the conclusion of the whole matter:' Art then must be true, and politics
must be true, and the life of man must be true and not a seeming or sham. In
all of them order has to be brought out of disorder, truth out of error and
falsehood. This is what we mean by the greatest improvement of man. And so,
having considered in what way 'we can best spend the appointed time, we leave
the result with God.' Plato does not say that God will order all things for
the best (compare Phaedo), but he indirectly implies that the evils of this
life will be corrected in another. And as we are very far from the best
imaginable world at present, Plato here, as in the Phaedo and Republic,
supposes a purgatory or place of education for mankind in general, and for a
very few a Tartarus or hell. The myth which terminates the dialogue is not
the revelation, but rather, like all similar descriptions, whether in
the Bible or Plato, the veil of another life. For no visible thing
can reveal the invisible. Of this Plato, unlike some commentators
on Scripture, is fully aware. Neither will he dogmatize about the
manner in which we are 'born again' (Republic). Only he is prepared to
maintain the ultimate triumph of truth and right, and declares that no one,
not even the wisest of the Greeks, can affirm any other doctrine
without being ridiculous.
There is a further paradox of ethics, in
which pleasure and pain are held to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of
action and without regard to consequences is happiness. From this elevation
or exaggeration of feeling Plato seems to shrink: he leaves it to the Stoics
in a later generation to maintain that when impaled or on the rack the
philosopher may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable that in the
Republic he raises this question, but it is not really discussed; the veil of
the ideal state, the shadow of another life, are allowed to descend upon
it and it passes out of sight. The martyr or sufferer in the cause of
right or truth is often supposed to die in raptures, having his eye fixed on
a city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might he not
still be happy in the performance of an action which was attended only by
a painful death? He himself may be ready to thank God that he was
thought worthy to do Him the least service, without looking for a reward;
the joys of another life may not have been present to his mind at all.
Do we suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St. Francis,
St. Catharine of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who lately devoted
himself to death by a lingering disease that he might solace and help
others, was thinking of the 'sweets' of heaven? No; the work was already
heaven to him and enough. Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming
of the praises of man or of an immortality of fame: the sense of duty,
of right, and trust in God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind
can reach, in that hour. If he were certain that there were no life to
come, he would not have wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in
the cause of truth or of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will
he suppose that God has forsaken him or that the future is to be a
mere blank to him. The greatest act of faith, the only faith which
cannot pass away, is his who has not known, but yet has believed. A very
few among the sons of men have made themselves independent of
circumstances, past, present, or to come. He who has attained to such a
temper of mind has already present with him eternal life; he needs no
arguments to convince him of immortality; he has in him already a principle
stronger than death. He who serves man without the thought of reward is
deemed to be a more faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not
the service of God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the
higher? And although only a very few in the course of the
world's history--Christ himself being one of them--have attained to such a
noble conception of God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may
be present to us, and the remembrance of them be an example to us,
and their lives may shed a light on many dark places both of philosophy
and theology.
THE MYTHS OF PLATO.
The myths of Plato are a
phenomenon unique in literature. There are four longer ones: these occur in
the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic. That in the Republic is the most
elaborate and finished of them. Three of these greater myths, namely those
contained in the Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic, relate to the destiny
of human souls in a future life. The magnificent myth in the Phaedrus treats
of the immortality, or rather the eternity of the soul, in which is
included a former as well as a future state of existence. To these may be
added, (1) the myth, or rather fable, occurring in the Statesman, in which
the life of innocence is contrasted with the ordinary life of man and
the consciousness of evil: (2) the legend of the Island of Atlantis,
an imaginary history, which is a fragment only, commenced in the
Timaeus and continued in the Critias: (3) the much less artistic fiction of
the foundation of the Cretan colony which is introduced in the preface
to the Laws, but soon falls into the background: (4) the beautiful
but rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in
his rhetorical manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called after him:
(5) the speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus, which is a parody of
the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of
it. To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers, and (7) the
tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus: (8) the parable of
the Cave (Republic), in which the previous argument is recapitulated,
and the nature and degrees of knowledge having been previously set
forth in the abstract are represented in a picture: (9) the fiction of
the earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the adaptation
of an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10)
the myth of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym.:
(11) the parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous
sailors (Republic), in which is represented the relation of the better part
of the world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians: (12)
the ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina
charging only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being
that he is uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gor.): (13)
the treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves by their
apprentices,--a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to illustrate the
two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws). There also occur in
Plato continuous images; some of them extend over several pages, appearing
and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees stinging and stingless
(paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the Republic, who are generated
in the transition from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the
visible world what the idea of good is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book
of the Republic: the composite animal, having the form of a man, but
containing under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster (Republic):
the great beast, i.e. the populace: and the wild beast within us, meaning the
passions which are always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of
the degradation of philosophy by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of
the tyrant to the parricide, who 'beats his father, having first taken away
his arms': the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and
rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head
(Laws), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the
argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase,
as breaking upon us in a first, second and third wave:--on these
figures of speech the changes are rung many times over. It is
observable that nearly all these parables or continuous images are found in
the Republic; that which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the midwifery
of Socrates, is perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete, the
mathematical figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the numerical
interval which separates king from tyrant, should not
be forgotten.
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of
another life which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain
reminiscences of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments
which await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to
continue and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes
a Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the
Phaedo and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals
only. The argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the
meaning breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and
consistency of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the
chief point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there
is no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power
of foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and
their judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed
to view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them
from seeing into or being seen by one another.
The myth of the Phaedo
is of the same type, but it is more cosmological, and also more poetical. The
beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato that the upper atmosphere is an
earth and heaven in one, a glorified earth, fairer and purer than that in
which we dwell. As the fishes live in the ocean, mankind are living in a
lower sphere, out of which they put their heads for a moment or two and
behold a world beyond. The earth which we inhabit is a sediment of the
coarser particles which drop from the world above, and is to that heavenly
earth what the desert and the shores of the ocean are to us. A part of
the myth consists of description of the interior of the earth, which gives
the opportunity of introducing several mythological names and of providing
places of torment for the wicked. There is no clear distinction of soul and
body; the spirits beneath the earth are spoken of as souls only, yet they
retain a sort of shadowy form when they cry for mercy on the shores of the
lake; and the philosopher alone is said to have got rid of the body. All the
three myths in Plato which relate to the world below have a place for
repentant sinners, as well as other homes or places for the very good and
very bad. It is a natural reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that
the two extremes of human character are rarely met with, and that the
generality of mankind are between them. Hence a place must be found for them.
In the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the
Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds,
and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable
sinners, who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of
atrocious crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class
of hardly-curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to
approach the shores of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims
for mercy; which if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease
from their torments.
Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths
of Plato, nor perhaps any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world,
is consistent with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of
mythology; abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech
into realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim's Progress
of Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the
incidents of travel, and mythological personages are associated with human
beings: they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer,
and with other fragments of Greek tradition.
The myth of the Republic
is more subtle and also more consistent than either of the two others. It has
a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall
the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that
the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide
with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious
observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed
city (shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more
likely to make mistakes in their choice of life than those who have had
more experience of the world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark
that we constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame;
and the philosopher must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is
an element of chance in human life with which it is sometimes
impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of the waters of
forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar
truth. We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of
ambition and have only desired rest. We should like to know what became of
the infants 'dying almost as soon as they were born,' but Plato only
raises, without satisfying, our curiosity. The two companies of souls,
ascending and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and
conversing when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the
judges sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of
the great allegory which have an indescribable grandeur and power.
The remark already made respecting the inconsistency of the two other
myths must be extended also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of
the heavens, and a picture of the Day of Judgment.
The three myths are
unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental, or rather an Egyptian
element in them, and they have an affinity to the mysteries and to the Orphic
modes of worship. To a certain extent they are un-Greek; at any rate there is
hardly anything like them in other Greek writings which have a serious
purpose; in spirit they are mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed
the underground religion in all ages and countries. They are presented in the
most lively and graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as true; it is
only affirmed that nothing better can be said about a future life.
Plato seems to make use of them when he has reached the limits of
human knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is
standing on the outside of the intellectual world. They are very simple in
style; a few touches bring the picture home to the mind, and make it
present to us. They have also a kind of authority gained by the
employment of sacred and familiar names, just as mere fragments of the words
of Scripture, put together in any form and applied to any subject, have
a power of their own. They are a substitute for poetry and mythology;
and they are also a reform of mythology. The moral of them may be summed
up in a word or two: After death the Judgment; and 'there is some
better thing remaining for the good than for the evil.'
All literature
gathers into itself many elements of the past: for example, the tale of the
earth-born men in the Republic appears at first sight to be an extravagant
fancy, but it is restored to propriety when we remember that it is based on a
legendary belief. The art of making stories of ghosts and apparitions
credible is said to consist in the manner of telling them. The effect is
gained by many literary and conversational devices, such as the previous
raising of curiosity, the mention of little circumstances, simplicity,
picturesqueness, the naturalness of the occasion, and the like. This art is
possessed by Plato in a degree which has never been equalled.
The myth
in the Phaedrus is even greater than the myths which have been already
described, but is of a different character. It treats of a former rather than
of a future life. It represents the conflict of reason aided by passion or
righteous indignation on the one hand, and of the animal lusts and instincts
on the other. The soul of man has followed the company of some god, and seen
truth in the form of the universal before it was born in this world. Our
present life is the result of the struggle which was then carried on. This
world is relative to a former world, as it is often projected into a future.
We ask the question, Where were men before birth? As we likewise enquire,
What will become of them after death? The first question is unfamiliar to us,
and therefore seems to be unnatural; but if we survey the whole human
race, it has been as influential and as widely spread as the other. In
the Phaedrus it is really a figure of speech in which the
'spiritual combat' of this life is represented. The majesty and power of the
whole passage--especially of what may be called the theme or proem
(beginning 'The mind through all her being is immortal')--can only be
rendered very inadequately in another language.
The myth in the
Statesman relates to a former cycle of existence, in which men were born of
the earth, and by the reversal of the earth's motion had their lives reversed
and were restored to youth and beauty: the dead came to life, the old grew
middle-aged, and the middle-aged young; the youth became a child, the child
an infant, the infant vanished into the earth. The connection between the
reversal of the earth's motion and the reversal of human life is of course
verbal only, yet Plato, like theologians in other ages, argues from the
consistency of the tale to its truth. The new order of the world was
immediately under the government of God; it was a state of innocence in which
men had neither wants nor cares, in which the earth brought forth all
things spontaneously, and God was to man what man now is to the animals.
There were no great estates, or families, or private possessions, nor
any traditions of the past, because men were all born out of the
earth. This is what Plato calls the 'reign of Cronos;' and in like manner
he connects the reversal of the earth's motion with some legend of which
he himself was probably the inventor.
The question is then asked,
under which of these two cycles of existence was man the happier,--under that
of Cronos, which was a state of innocence, or that of Zeus, which is our
ordinary life? For a while Plato balances the two sides of the serious
controversy, which he has suggested in a figure. The answer depends on
another question: What use did the children of Cronos make of their time?
They had boundless leisure and the faculty of discoursing, not only with one
another, but with the animals. Did they employ these advantages with a view
to philosophy, gathering from every nature some addition to their store of
knowledge? or, Did they pass their time in eating and drinking and telling
stories to one another and to the beasts?--in either case there would be no
difficulty in answering. But then, as Plato rather mischievously adds,
'Nobody knows what they did,' and therefore the doubt must remain
undetermined.
To the first there succeeds a second epoch. After another
natural convulsion, in which the order of the world and of human life is
once more reversed, God withdraws his guiding hand, and man is left to
the government of himself. The world begins again, and arts and laws
are slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a
theocratical. In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost dropped, the
garb of mythology. He suggests several curious and important thoughts,
such as the possibility of a state of innocence, the existence of a
world without traditions, and the difference between human and
divine government. He has also carried a step further his
speculations concerning the abolition of the family and of property, which
he supposes to have no place among the children of Cronos any more than
in the ideal state.
It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to
pass from the abstract to the concrete, from poetry to reality. Language is
the expression of the seen, and also of the unseen, and moves in a region
between them. A great writer knows how to strike both these chords, sometimes
remaining within the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a
wider range and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the
same sentence he may employ both modes of speech not improperly
or inharmoniously. It is useless to criticise the broken metaphors
of Plato, if the effect of the whole is to create a picture not such
as can be painted on canvas, but which is full of life and meaning to
the reader. A poem may be contained in a word or two, which may call up
not one but many latent images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash
the thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to
another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of speech if
too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes prosy and
monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include both 'the moral
law within and the starry heaven above,' and pass from one to the other
(compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language
is puerile or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or speaker, and the
familiarity of the associations employed.
In the myths and parables of
Plato the ease and grace of conversation is not forgotten: they are spoken,
not written words, stories which are told to a living audience, and so well
told that we are more than half-inclined to believe them (compare Phaedrus).
As in conversation too, the striking image or figure of speech is not
forgotten, but is quickly caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it
would still be in our own day in a genial and sympathetic society. The
descriptions of Plato have a greater life and reality than is to be found in
any modern writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato can
do with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed 'more plastic
than wax' (Republic). We are in the habit of opposing speech and
writing, poetry and prose. But he has discovered a use of language in which
they are united; which gives a fitting expression to the highest truths;
and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities of daily life
are not overlooked.
*****
GORGIAS
By
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
Callicles, Socrates, Chaerephon, Gorgias, Polus.
SCENE: The house of
Callicles.
CALLICLES: The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for
a fray, but not for a feast.
SOCRATES: And are we late for a
feast?
CALLICLES: Yes, and a delightful feast; for Gorgias has just
been exhibiting to us many fine things.
SOCRATES: It is not my fault,
Callicles; our friend Chaerephon is to blame; for he would keep us loitering
in the Agora.
CHAEREPHON: Never mind, Socrates; the misfortune of which I
have been the cause I will also repair; for Gorgias is a friend of mine, and
I will make him give the exhibition again either now, or, if you
prefer, at some other time.
CALLICLES: What is the matter,
Chaerephon--does Socrates want to hear Gorgias?
CHAEREPHON: Yes, that
was our intention in coming.
CALLICLES: Come into my house, then; for
Gorgias is staying with me, and he shall exhibit to you.
SOCRATES:
Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions? for I want to hear
from him what is the nature of his art, and what it is which he professes and
teaches; he may, as you (Chaerephon) suggest, defer the exhibition to some
other time.
CALLICLES: There is nothing like asking him, Socrates; and
indeed to answer questions is a part of his exhibition, for he was saying
only just now, that any one in my house might put any question to him,
and that he would answer.
SOCRATES: How fortunate! will you ask him,
Chaerephon--?
CHAEREPHON: What shall I ask him?
SOCRATES: Ask him
who he is.
CHAEREPHON: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean such a
question as would elicit from him, if he had been a maker of shoes, the
answer that he is a cobbler. Do you understand?
CHAEREPHON: I
understand, and will ask him: Tell me, Gorgias, is our friend Callicles right
in saying that you undertake to answer any questions which you are
asked?
GORGIAS: Quite right, Chaerephon: I was saying as much only just
now; and I may add, that many years have elapsed since any one has asked me
a new one.
CHAEREPHON: Then you must be very ready,
Gorgias.
GORGIAS: Of that, Chaerephon, you can make trial.
POLUS:
Yes, indeed, and if you like, Chaerephon, you may make trial of me too, for I
think that Gorgias, who has been talking a long time,
is tired.
CHAEREPHON: And do you, Polus, think that you can answer
better than Gorgias?
POLUS: What does that matter if I answer well
enough for you?
CHAEREPHON: Not at all:--and you shall answer if you
like.
POLUS: Ask:--
CHAEREPHON: My question is this: If Gorgias
had the skill of his brother Herodicus, what ought we to call him? Ought he
not to have the name which is given to his brother?
POLUS:
Certainly.
CHAEREPHON: Then we should be right in calling him a
physician?
POLUS: Yes.
CHAEREPHON: And if he had the skill of
Aristophon the son of Aglaophon, or of his brother Polygnotus, what ought we
to call him?
POLUS: Clearly, a painter.
CHAEREPHON: But now what
shall we call him--what is the art in which he is skilled.
POLUS: O
Chaerephon, there are many arts among mankind which are experimental, and
have their origin in experience, for experience makes the days of men to
proceed according to art, and inexperience according to chance, and different
persons in different ways are proficient in different arts, and the best
persons in the best arts. And our friend Gorgias is one of the best, and the
art in which he is a proficient is the noblest.
SOCRATES: Polus has
been taught how to make a capital speech, Gorgias; but he is not fulfilling
the promise which he made to Chaerephon.
GORGIAS: What do you mean,
Socrates?
SOCRATES: I mean that he has not exactly answered the question
which he was asked.
GORGIAS: Then why not ask him
yourself?
SOCRATES: But I would much rather ask you, if you are disposed
to answer: for I see, from the few words which Polus has uttered, that
he has attended more to the art which is called rhetoric than to
dialectic.
POLUS: What makes you say so, Socrates?
SOCRATES:
Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asked you what was the art which Gorgias
knows, you praised it as if you were answering some one who found fault with
it, but you never said what the art was.
POLUS: Why, did I not say that
it was the noblest of arts?
SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, but that was no answer
to the question: nobody asked what was the quality, but what was the nature,
of the art, and by what name we were to describe Gorgias. And I would still
beg you briefly and clearly, as you answered Chaerephon when he asked you at
first, to say what this art is, and what we ought to call Gorgias: Or
rather, Gorgias, let me turn to you, and ask the same question,--what are we
to call you, and what is the art which you profess?
GORGIAS: Rhetoric,
Socrates, is my art.
SOCRATES: Then I am to call you a
rhetorician?
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would
call me that which, in Homeric language, 'I boast myself to
be.'
SOCRATES: I should wish to do so.
GORGIAS: Then pray
do.
SOCRATES: And are we to say that you are able to make other
men rhetoricians?
GORGIAS: Yes, that is exactly what I profess to make
them, not only at Athens, but in all places.
SOCRATES: And will you
continue to ask and answer questions, Gorgias, as we are at present doing,
and reserve for another occasion the longer mode of speech which Polus was
attempting? Will you keep your promise, and answer shortly the questions
which are asked of you?
GORGIAS: Some answers, Socrates, are of necessity
longer; but I will do my best to make them as short as possible; for a part
of my profession is that I can be as short as any one.
SOCRATES: That
is what is wanted, Gorgias; exhibit the shorter method now, and the longer
one at some other time.
GORGIAS: Well, I will; and you will certainly
say, that you never heard a man use fewer words.
SOCRATES: Very good
then; as you profess to be a rhetorician, and a maker of rhetoricians, let me
ask you, with what is rhetoric concerned: I might ask with what is weaving
concerned, and you would reply (would you not?), with the making of
garments?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And music is concerned with the
composition of melodies?
GORGIAS: It is.
SOCRATES: By Here,
Gorgias, I admire the surpassing brevity of your answers.
GORGIAS:
Yes, Socrates, I do think myself good at that.
SOCRATES: I am glad to
hear it; answer me in like manner about rhetoric: with what is rhetoric
concerned?
GORGIAS: With discourse.
SOCRATES: What sort of
discourse, Gorgias?--such discourse as would teach the sick under what
treatment they might get well?
GORGIAS: No.
SOCRATES: Then
rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?
GORGIAS: Certainly
not.
SOCRATES: And yet rhetoric makes men able to speak?
GORGIAS:
Yes.
SOCRATES: And to understand that about which they
speak?
GORGIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: But does not the art of
medicine, which we were just now mentioning, also make men able to understand
and speak about the sick?
GORGIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then
medicine also treats of discourse?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Of
discourse concerning diseases?
GORGIAS: Just so.
SOCRATES: And
does not gymnastic also treat of discourse concerning the good or evil
condition of the body?
GORGIAS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the same,
Gorgias, is true of the other arts:--all of them treat of discourse
concerning the subjects with which they severally have to do.
GORGIAS:
Clearly.
SOCRATES: Then why, if you call rhetoric the art which treats
of discourse, and all the other arts treat of discourse, do you not
call them arts of rhetoric?
GORGIAS: Because, Socrates, the knowledge
of the other arts has only to do with some sort of external action, as of the
hand; but there is no such action of the hand in rhetoric which works and
takes effect only through the medium of discourse. And therefore I am
justified in saying that rhetoric treats of discourse.
SOCRATES: I am
not sure whether I entirely understand you, but I dare say I shall soon know
better; please to answer me a question:--you would allow that there are
arts?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: As to the arts generally, they are
for the most part concerned with doing, and require little or no speaking; in
painting, and statuary, and many other arts, the work may proceed in silence;
and of such arts I suppose you would say that they do not come within
the province of rhetoric.
GORGIAS: You perfectly conceive my meaning,
Socrates.
SOCRATES: But there are other arts which work wholly through
the medium of language, and require either no action or very little, as,
for example, the arts of arithmetic, of calculation, of geometry, and
of playing draughts; in some of these speech is pretty nearly
co-extensive with action, but in most of them the verbal element is
greater--they depend wholly on words for their efficacy and power: and I take
your meaning to be that rhetoric is an art of this latter
sort?
GORGIAS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: And yet I do not believe that
you really mean to call any of these arts rhetoric; although the precise
expression which you used was, that rhetoric is an art which works and takes
effect only through the medium of discourse; and an adversary who wished to
be captious might say, 'And so, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric.' But I
do not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry
would be so called by you.
GORGIAS: You are quite right, Socrates, in
your apprehension of my meaning.
SOCRATES: Well, then, let me now have
the rest of my answer:--seeing that rhetoric is one of those arts which works
mainly by the use of words, and there are other arts which also use words,
tell me what is that quality in words with which rhetoric is
concerned:--Suppose that a person asks me about some of the arts which I was
mentioning just now; he might say, 'Socrates, what is arithmetic?' and I
should reply to him, as you replied to me, that arithmetic is one of those
arts which take effect through words. And then he would proceed to ask:
'Words about what?' and I should reply, Words about odd and even numbers, and
how many there are of each. And if he asked again: 'What is the art
of calculation?' I should say, That also is one of the arts which
is concerned wholly with words. And if he further said, 'Concerned
with what?' I should say, like the clerks in the assembly, 'as aforesaid'
of arithmetic, but with a difference, the difference being that the art
of calculation considers not only the quantities of odd and even
numbers, but also their numerical relations to themselves and to one
another. And suppose, again, I were to say that astronomy is only words--he
would ask, 'Words about what, Socrates?' and I should answer, that
astronomy tells us about the motions of the stars and sun and moon, and
their relative swiftness.
GORGIAS: You would be quite right,
Socrates.
SOCRATES: And now let us have from you, Gorgias, the truth
about rhetoric: which you would admit (would you not?) to be one of those
arts which act always and fulfil all their ends through the medium of
words?
GORGIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Words which do what? I should ask.
To what class of things do the words which rhetoric uses
relate?
GORGIAS: To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of human
things.
SOCRATES: That again, Gorgias is ambiguous; I am still in the
dark: for which are the greatest and best of human things? I dare say that
you have heard men singing at feasts the old drinking song, in which
the singers enumerate the goods of life, first health, beauty next,
thirdly, as the writer of the song says, wealth honestly
obtained.
GORGIAS: Yes, I know the song; but what is your
drift?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that the producers of those things which
the author of the song praises, that is to say, the physician, the
trainer, the money-maker, will at once come to you, and first the physician
will say: 'O Socrates, Gorgias is deceiving you, for my art is concerned
with the greatest good of men and not his.' And when I ask, Who are you?
he will reply, 'I am a physician.' What do you mean? I shall say. Do
you mean that your art produces the greatest good? 'Certainly,' he
will answer, 'for is not health the greatest good? What greater good can
men have, Socrates?' And after him the trainer will come and say, 'I
too, Socrates, shall be greatly surprised if Gorgias can show more good
of his art than I can show of mine.' To him again I shall say, Who
are you, honest friend, and what is your business? 'I am a trainer,' he
will reply, 'and my business is to make men beautiful and strong in
body.' When I have done with the trainer, there arrives the money-maker,
and he, as I expect, will utterly despise them all. 'Consider Socrates,'
he will say, 'whether Gorgias or any one else can produce any greater good
than wealth.' Well, you and I say to him, and are you a creator of wealth?
'Yes,' he replies. And who are you? 'A money-maker.' And do you consider
wealth to be the greatest good of man? 'Of course,' will be his reply. And we
shall rejoin: Yes; but our friend Gorgias contends that his art produces a
greater good than yours. And then he will be sure to go on and ask, 'What
good? Let Gorgias answer.' Now I want you, Gorgias, to imagine that this
question is asked of you by them and by me; What is that which, as you say,
is the greatest good of man, and of which you are the creator? Answer
us.
GORGIAS: That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being
that which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals
the power of ruling over others in their several states.
SOCRATES: And
what would you consider this to be?
GORGIAS: What is there greater than
the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the
council, or the citizens in the assembly, or at any other political
meeting?--if you have the power of uttering this word, you will have the
physician your slave, and the trainer your slave, and the money-maker of whom
you talk will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you who are
able to speak and to persuade the multitude. |
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