Soc. Alcibiades, are you on your way to offer a prayer to the god?

Alc. I am, certainly, Socrates.

Soc. You seem, let me say, to have a gloomy look, and to keep your eyes on the ground, as though you were pondering something.

Alc. And what might one ponder, Socrates?

Soc. The greatest of questions, Alcibiades, as I believe. For tell me, in Heaven’s name, do you not think that the gods sometimes grant in part, but in part refuse, what we ask of them in our private and public prayers, and gratify some people, but not others?

Alc. I do, certainly.

Soc. Then you would agree that one should take great precautions against falling unawares into the error of praying for great evils in the belief that they are good, while the gods happen to be disposed to grant freely what one is praying for? Just as Oedipus, they say, suddenly prayed that his sons might divide their patrimony with the sword: it was open to him to pray that his present evils might by some means be averted, but he invoked others in addition to those which he had already. Wherefore not only were those words of his accomplished, but many other dread results therefrom, which I think there is no need to recount in detail.

Alc. But you have instanced a madman, Socrates: why, do you suppose that anyone could bring himself, while he was in a sound state, to utter such a prayer?

Soc. Do you regard madness as the opposite of wisdom?

Alc. Certainly I do.

Alc. Quite so.

Soc. And they are not the same?

Alc. No, indeed.

Soc. And are there any others besides, who are found to be in neither state?

Alc. No, to be sure.

Soc. For a human being must needs be either sick or not sick.

Alc. I agree.

Soc. Well then, do you hold the same view about wisdom and unwisdom?

Alc. How do you mean?

Soc. Tell me, do you think it is only possible to be either wise or unwise, or is there some third condition between these, which makes a man neither wise nor unwise?

Alc. No, there is not.

Soc. So he must needs be in one or the other of these two conditions.

Alc. I agree.

Soc. And you remember that you admitted that madness is the opposite of wisdom?

Alc. I do.

Soc. And further, that there is no third condition between these, which makes a man neither wise nor unwise?

Alc. Yes, I admitted that.

Soc. Well now, can there possibly be two opposites of one thing?

Soc. Well, if you will attend to me, two together Cf. Hom. Il. 10.224 σύν τε δύ’ ἐρχομένω, καί τε πρὸ ὃ τοῦ ἐνόησεν ὅππως κέρδος ἔῃ, if two go along together, then one marks before the other how advantage may be had. will be searching, and so mayhap we shall find what we seek.

Alc. Nay, but I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power.

Soc. Then we have admitted that while every ophthalmia is a disease, every disease, on the other hand, is not ophthalmia?

Alc. We have.

Soc. And our admission seems to me quite right. For everyone in a fever is sick, but yet not everyone who is sick has a fever or the gout or ophthalmia, I take it; though everything of the sort is a disease, but differs—to quote those whom we call doctors— in its manifestation. ἀπεργασία here seems to be used for effect produced instead of its usual meaning, fully effecting, completion. For they are not all alike, nor of like effect, but each works according to its own faculty, and yet all are diseases. In the same way, we conceive of some men as artisans, do we not?

Alc. Certainly.

Soc. That is, cobblers and carpenters and statuaries and a host of others, whom we need not mention in particular; but any way, they have their several departments of craft, and all of them are craftsmen; yet they are not all carpenters or cobblers or statuaries, though these taken together are craftsmen.

Alc. No, indeed.

Soc. In the same way, then, have men divided unwisdom also among them, and those who have the largest share of it we call mad, and those who have a little less, dolts and idiots; though people who prefer to use the mildest language term them sometimes romantic, μεγαλόψυχος has here declined from high-souled or magnanimous to something like Quixotic. sometimes simpleminded, εὐήθης, even in Plato’s time, varied between good-hearted and silly. or again innocent, inexperienced, or obtuse; and many another name will you find if you look for more. But all these things are unwisdom, though they differ, as we observed that one art or one disease differs from another. Or how does it strike you?

Alc. That is my view.

Soc. Then let us turn at this point and retrace our steps. For we said, you know, at the beginning that we must consider who the unwise can be, and who the wise: for we had admitted that there are such persons, had we not?

Alc. Yes, we have admitted it.