Alcibiades 2 (146-147)

Alc. A paltry one, I should call it, Socrates.

Soc. Yes, you would, I expect, when you saw each one of them vying with the other and assigning the largest part in the conduct of the state to that

Wherein himself is found most excellent,

Eur. Antiope, Fr. [*] I mean, what is done best by rule of his particular art—while he is entirely off the track of what is best for the state and for himself, because, I conceive, he has put his trust in opinion apart from intelligence. In these circumstances, should we not be right in saying that such a state is one great mass of turmoil and lawlessness?

Alc. We should, upon my word.

Soc. And we took it to be necessary that we should first think we know, or really know, anything that we confidently intend either to do or to say?

Alc. We did.

Soc. And if a man does what he knows or thinks he knows, and is assisted by knowing how to make it beneficial, we shall find him profitable both to the city and to himself?

Alc. Certainly.

Soc. But if, I suppose, he does the contrary, he will not be so either to the city or to himself?

Alc. No, indeed.

Soc. Well then, do you still take the same view now as before, or do you think differently?

Alc. No, I take the same view.

Soc. And you said you called the many unwise, and the few wise?

Alc. I did.

Soc. So now we repeat our statement that the many have missed getting the best because in most cases, I conceive, they have put their trust in opinion apart from intelligence.

Alc. Yes.

Soc. Then it is an advantage to the many neither to know nor to think they know anything, if they are going to be specially eager to do what they know or think they know, but are likely on the whole, in doing it, to be injured rather than benefited.

Alc. That is very true.

Soc. So you see that when I said it looked as though the possession of the sciences as a whole, where it did not include the science of the best, in a few cases helped, but in most harmed the owner, I was evidently right in very truth, was I not?

Alc. Though I did not then, I think so now, Socrates.

Soc. Hence the state or soul that is to live aright must hold fast to this knowledge, exactly as a sick man does to a doctor, or as he who would voyage safely does to a pilot. For without this, the more briskly it is wafted by fortune either to the acquisition of wealth or to bodily strength or aught else of the sort, the greater will be the mistakes in which these things, it would seem, must needs involve it. And he who has acquired the so-called mastery of learning and arts, but is destitute of this knowledge and impelled by this or that one among those others, is sure to meet with much rough weather, as he truly deserves; since, I imagine, he must continue without a pilot on the high seas, and has only the brief span of his life in which to run his course. So that his case aptly fits the saying of the poet, in which he complains of somebody or other that

Full many crafts he knew: but still

He knew them all so very ill.

Margites, Fr. [*]

Alc. Why, how on earth is the poet’s saying apposite, Socrates? For to my mind it has nothing to do with the point.

Soc. It is very much to the point: but he, good sir, like almost every other poet, speaks in riddles. For poetry as a whole is by nature inclined to riddling, and it is not every man who can apprehend it. And furthermore, besides having this natural tendency, when it gets hold of a grudging person who wishes not to show forth to us his own wisdom but to conceal it as much as possible, we find it an extraordinarily difficult matter to make out whatever this or that one of them may mean. For surely you do not suppose that Homer, divinest and wisest of poets, did not know it was impossible to know ill; for it is he who says of Margites that he knew many things, but knew them all ill: but it is a riddle, I think, in which he has made ill stand for evil, and knew for to know. So if we put it together, letting the meter go, indeed, but grasping his meaning, we get this: Full many crafts he knew, but it was evil for him to know them all. [*] Then clearly, if it was evil for him to know many things, he was in fact a paltry fellow, assuming we are to believe what we have previously argued.

Alc. But I think we may, Socrates: at least, if I cannot believe those arguments of ours, I shall find it hard to trust any others.

Soc. And you are right in so thinking.

Alc. I repeat that I think so.