Theaetetus (175-178)

SO. And when people sing the praises of lineage and say someone is of noble birth, because he can show seven wealthy ancestors, he thinks that such praises betray an altogether dull and narrow vision on the part of those who utter them; because of lack of education they cannot keep their eyes fixed upon the whole and are unable to calculate that every man has had countless thousands of ancestors and progenitors, among whom have been in any instance rich and poor, kings and slaves, barbarians and Greeks. And when people pride themselves on a list of twenty-five ancestors and trace their pedigree back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, the pettiness of their ideas seems absurd to him; he laughs at them because they cannot free their silly minds of vanity by calculating that Amphitryon’s twenty-fifth ancestor was such as fortune happened to make him, and the fiftieth for that matter. In all these cases the philosopher is derided by the common herd, partly because he seems to be contemptuous, partly because he is ignorant of common things and is always in perplexity.

THEO. That all happens just as you say, Socrates.

SOC. But when, my friend, he draws a man upwards and the other is willing to rise with him above the level of What wrong have I done you or you me? to the investigation of abstract right and wrong, to inquire what each of them is and wherein they differ from each other and from all other things, or above the level of Is a king happy? or, on the other hand, Has he great wealth? to the investigation of royalty and of human happiness and wretchedness in general, to see what the nature of each is and in what way man is naturally fitted to gain the one and escape the other— when that man of small and sharp and pettifogging mind is compelled in his turn to give an account of all these things, then the tables are turned; dizzied by the new experience of hanging at such a height, he gazes downward from the air in dismay and perplexity; he stammers and becomes ridiculous, not in the eyes of Thracian girls or other uneducated persons, for they have no perception of it, but in those of all men who have been brought up as free men, not as slaves. Such is the character of each of the two classes, Theodorus, of the man who has truly been brought up in freedom and leisure, whom you call a philosopher—who may without censure appear foolish and good for nothing when he is involved in menial services, if, for instance, he does not know how to pack up his bedding, much less to put the proper sweetening into a sauce or a fawning speech—and of the other, who can perform all such services smartly and quickly, but does not know how to wear his cloak as a freeman should, properly draped, [*] still less to acquire the true harmony of speech and hymn aright the praises of the true life of gods and blessed men.

THEO. If, Socrates, you could persuade all men of the truth of what you say as you do me, there would be more peace and fewer evils among mankind.

SOC. But it is impossible that evils should be done away with, Theodorus, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they cannot have their place among the gods, but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like God is to become righteous and holy and wise. But, indeed, my good friend, it is not at all easy to persuade people that the reason generally advanced for the pursuit of virtue and the avoidance of vice—namely, in order that a man may not seem bad and may seem good—is not the reason why the one should be practiced and the other not; that, I think, is merely old wives’ chatter, as the saying is. Let us give the true reason. God is in no wise and in no manner unrighteous, but utterly and perfectly righteous, and there is nothing so like him as that one of us who in turn becomes most nearly perfect in righteousness. It is herein that the true cleverness of a man is found and also his worthlessness and cowardice; for the knowledge of this is wisdom or true virtue, and ignorance of it is folly or manifest wickedness; and all the other kinds of seeming cleverness and wisdom are paltry when they appear in public affairs and vulgar in the arts. Therefore by far the best thing for the unrighteous man and the man whose words or deeds are impious is not to grant that he is clever through knavery; for such men glory in that reproach, and think it means that they are not triflers,

useless burdens upon the earth,

[*] but such as men should be who are to live safely in a state. So we must tell them the truth—that just because they do not think they are such as they are, they are so all the more truly; for they do not know the penalty of unrighteousness, which is the thing they most ought to know. For it is not what they think it is—scourgings and death, which they sometimes escape entirely when they have done wrong—but a penalty which it is impossible to escape.

THEO. What penalty do you mean?

SOC. Two patterns, my friend, are set up in the world, the divine, which is most blessed, and the godless, which is most wretched. But these men do not see that this is the case, and their silliness and extreme foolishness blind them to the fact that through their unrighteous acts they are made like the one and unlike the other. They therefore pay the penalty for this by living a life that conforms to the pattern they resemble; and if we tell them that, unless they depart from their cleverness, the blessed place that is pure of all things evil will not receive them after death, and here on earth they will always live the life like themselves—evil men associating with evil—when they hear this, they will be so confident in their unscrupulous cleverness that they will think our words the talk of fools.

THEO. Very true, Socrates.

SOC. Yes, my friend, I know. However, there is one thing that has happened to them: whenever they have to carry on a personal argument about the doctrines to which they object, if they are willing to stand their ground for a while like men and do not run away like cowards, then, my friend, they at last become strangely dissatisfied with themselves and their arguments; their brilliant rhetoric withers away, so that they seem no better than children. But this is a digression. Let us turn away from these matters—if we do not, they will come on like an ever-rising flood and bury in silt our original argument—and let us, if you please, proceed.

THEO. To me, Socrates, such digressions are quite as agreeable as the argument; for they are easier for a man of my age to follow. However, if you prefer, let us return to our argument.

SOC. Very well. We were at about the point in our argument where we said that those who declare that only motion is reality, and that whatever seems to each man really is to him to whom it seems, are willing to maintain their position in regard to other matters and to maintain especially in regard to justice that whatever laws a state makes, because they seem to it just, are just to the state that made them, as long as they remain in force; but as regards the good, that nobody has the courage to go on and contend that whatever laws a state passes thinking them advantageous to it are really advantageous as long as they remain in force, unless what he means is merely the name advantageous [*]; and that would be making a joke of our argument. Am I right?

THEO. Certainly.

SOC. Yes; for he must not mean merely the name, but the thing named must be the object of his attention.

THEO. True.

SOC. But the state, in making laws, aims, of course, at advantage, whatever the name it gives it, and makes all its laws as advantageous as possible to itself, to the extent of its belief and ability; or has it in making laws anything else in view?

THEO. Certainly not.

SOC. And does it always hit the mark, or does every state often miss it?

THEO. I should say they do often miss it!

SOC. Continuing, then, and proceeding from this point, every one would more readily agree to this assertion, if the question were asked concerning the whole class to which the advantageous belongs; and that whole class, it would seem, pertains to the future. For when we make laws, we make them with the idea that they will be advantageous in after time; and this is rightly called the future.

THEO. Certainly.

SOC. Come then, on this assumption, let us question Protagoras or someone of those who agree with him. Man is the measure of all things, as your school says, Protagoras, of the white, the heavy, the light, everything of that sort without exception; for he possesses within himself the standard by which to judge them, and when his thoughts about them coincide with his sensations, he thinks what to him is true and really is. Is not that what they say?

THEO. Yes.

SOC. Does he, then, also, Protagoras, we shall say, possess within himself the standard by which to judge of the things which are yet to be, and do those things which he thinks will be actually come to pass for him who thought them? Take, for instance, heat; if some ordinary man thinks he is going to take a fever, that is to say, that this particular heat will be, and some other man, who is a physician, thinks the contrary, whose opinion shall we expect the future to prove right? Or perhaps the opinion of both, and the man will become, not hot or feverish to the physician, but to himself both?

THEO. No, that would be ridiculous.

SOC. But, I imagine, in regard to the sweetness or dryness which will be in a wine, the opinion of the husbandman, not that of the lyre-player, will be valid.

THEO. Of course.

SOC. And again, in a matter of discord or tunefulness in music that has never been played, a gymnastic teacher could not judge better than a musician what will, when performed, seem tuneful even to a gymnastic teacher himself.

THEO. Certainly not.

SOC. Then, too, when a banquet is in preparation the opinion of him who is to be a guest, unless he has training in cookery, is of less value concerning the pleasure that will be derived from the viands than that of the cook. For we need not yet argue about that which already is or has been pleasant to each one but concerning that which will in the future seem and be pleasant to each one, is he himself the best judge for himself, or would you, Protagoras—at least as regards the arguments which will be persuasive in court to each of us—be able to give an opinion beforehand better than anyone whatsoever who has no especial training?

THEO. Certainly, Socrates, in this, at any rate, he used to declare emphatically that he himself excelled everyone.