Plato

Shorter
Dialogues
Volume Three
 Plato

Contents

Sophist .................................... 4

Statesman............................ 160

Philebus .............................. 291

Timaeus .............................. 447

Critias ................................. 523

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Sophist

SOPHIST
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS

THE DRAMATIC POWER of the dialogues of Plato appears to dimin-

ish as the metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd.
to the Philebus). There are no descriptions of time, place or per-
sons, in the Sophist and Statesman, but we are plunged at once
into philosophical discussions; the poetical charm has disappeared,
and those who have no taste for abstruse metaphysics will greatly
prefer the earlier dialogues to the later ones. Plato is conscious of
the change, and in the Statesman expressly accuses himself of a
tediousness in the two dialogues, which he ascribes to his desire of
developing the dialectical method. On the other hand, the kin-
dred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in the Sophist the crown and
summit of the Platonic philosophy—here is the place at which
Plato most nearly approaches to the Hegelian identity of Being
and Not-being. Nor will the great importance of the two dialogues
be doubted by any one who forms a conception of the state of
mind and opinion which they are intended to meet. The soph-
isms of the day were undermining philosophy; the denial of the
existence of Not-being, and of the connexion of ideas, was mak-
ing truth and falsehood equally impossible. It has been said that
Plato would have written differently, if he had been acquainted
with the Organon of Aristotle. But could the Organon of Aristotle
ever have been written unless the Sophist and Statesman had pre-

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 Plato

ceded? The swarm of fallacies which arose in the infancy of men-

tal science, and which was born and bred in the decay of the pre-
Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by Aristotle, but by
Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the nature of
the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis and
analysis, of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and
the processes of induction and deduction are constantly employed
in the dialogues of Plato. The ‘slippery’ nature of comparison, the
danger of putting words in the place of things, the fallacy of argu-
ing ‘a dicto secundum,’ and in a circle, are frequently indicated by
him. To all these processes of truth and error, Aristotle, in the next
generation, gave distinctness; he brought them together in a sepa-
rate science. But he is not to be regarded as the original inventor
of any of the great logical forms, with the exception of the syllo-
gism.
There is little worthy of remark in the characters of the Sophist.
The most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from
the field of argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic
stranger, who is described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is
supposed to have descended from a higher world in order to convict
the Socratic circle of error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to inti-
mate by the withdrawal of Socrates that he is passing beyond the
limits of his teaching; and in the Sophist and Statesman, as well as
in the Parmenides, he probably means to imply that he is making a
closer approach to the schools of Elea and Megara. He had much in
common with them, but he must first submit their ideas to criti-
cism and revision. He had once thought as he says, speaking by the
mouth of the Eleatic, that he understood their doctrine of Not-
being; but now he does not even comprehend the nature of Being.
The friends of ideas (Soph.) are alluded to by him as distant ac-
quaintances, whom he criticizes ab extra; we do not recognize at
first sight that he is criticizing himself. The character of the Eleatic
stranger is colourless; he is to a certain extent the reflection of his
father and master, Parmenides, who is the protagonist in the dia-
logue which is called by his name. Theaetetus himself is not distin-
guished by the remarkable traits which are attributed to him in the
preceding dialogue. He is no longer under the spell of Socrates, or

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Sophist

subject to the operation of his midwifery, though the fiction of ques-

tion and answer is still maintained, and the necessity of taking
Theaetetus along with him is several times insisted upon by his part-
ner in the discussion. There is a reminiscence of the old Theaetetus
in his remark that he will not tire of the argument, and in his con-
viction, which the Eleatic thinks likely to be permanent, that the
course of events is governed by the will of God. Throughout the
two dialogues Socrates continues a silent auditor, in the Statesman
just reminding us of his presence, at the commencement, by a charac-
teristic jest about the statesman and the philosopher, and by an allusion
to his namesake, with whom on that ground he claims relationship, as
he had already claimed an affinity with Theaetetus, grounded on the
likeness of his ugly face. But in neither dialogue, any more than in the
Timaeus, does he offer any criticism on the views which are propounded
by another.
The style, though wanting in dramatic power,—in this respect
resembling the Philebus and the Laws,—is very clear and accurate,
and has several touches of humour and satire. The language is less
fanciful and imaginative than that of the earlier dialogues; and there
is more of bitterness, as in the Laws, though traces of a similar tem-
per may also be observed in the description of the ‘great brute’ in
the Republic, and in the contrast of the lawyer and philosopher in
the Theaetetus. The following are characteristic passages: ‘The an-
cient philosophers, of whom we may say, without offence, that they
went on their way rather regardless of whether we understood them
or not;’ the picture of the materialists, or earth-born giants, ‘who
grasped oaks and rocks in their hands,’ and who must be improved
before they can be reasoned with; and the equally humourous de-
lineation of the friends of ideas, who defend themselves from a fast-
ness in the invisible world; or the comparison of the Sophist to a
painter or maker (compare Republic), and the hunt after him in the
rich meadow-lands of youth and wealth; or, again, the light and
graceful touch with which the older philosophies are painted (‘Ionian
and Sicilian muses’), the comparison of them to mythological tales,
and the fear of the Eleatic that he will be counted a parricide if he
ventures to lay hands on his father Parmenides; or, once more, the
likening of the Eleatic stranger to a god from heaven.—All these

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 Plato

passages, notwithstanding the decline of the style, retain the im-

press of the great master of language. But the equably diffused grace
is gone; instead of the endless variety of the early dialogues, traces of
the rhythmical monotonous cadence of the Laws begin to appear;
and already an approach is made to the technical language of
Aristotle, in the frequent use of the words ‘essence,’ ‘power,’ ‘gen-
eration,’ ‘motion,’ ‘rest,’ ‘action,’ ‘passion,’ and the like.
The Sophist, like the Phaedrus, has a double character, and unites
two enquirers, which are only in a somewhat forced manner con-
nected with each other. The first is the search after the Sophist, the
second is the enquiry into the nature of Not-being, which occupies
the middle part of the work. For ‘Not-being’ is the hole or division
of the dialectical net in which the Sophist has hidden himself. He is
the imaginary impersonation of false opinion. Yet he denies the pos-
sibility of false opinion; for falsehood is that which is not, and there-
fore has no existence. At length the difficulty is solved; the answer,
in the language of the Republic, appears ‘tumbling out at our feet.’
Acknowledging that there is a communion of kinds with kinds, and
not merely one Being or Good having different names, or several
isolated ideas or classes incapable of communion, we discover ‘Not-
being’ to be the other of ‘Being.’Transferring this to language and
thought, we have no difficulty in apprehending that a proposition
may be false as well as true. The Sophist, drawn out of the shelter
which Cynic and Megarian paradoxes have temporarily afforded
him, is proved to be a dissembler and juggler with words.
The chief points of interest in the dialogue are: (I) the character
attributed to the Sophist: (II) the dialectical method: (III) the na-
ture of the puzzle about ‘Not-being:’ (IV) the battle of the philoso-
phers: (V) the relation of the Sophist to other dialogues.
I. The Sophist in Plato is the master of the art of illusion; the
charlatan, the foreigner, the prince of esprits-faux, the hireling who
is not a teacher, and who, from whatever point of view he is re-
garded, is the opposite of the true teacher. He is the ‘evil one,’ the
ideal representative of all that Plato most disliked in the moral and
intellectual tendencies of his own age; the adversary of the almost
equally ideal Socrates. He seems to be always growing in the fancy
of Plato, now boastful, now eristic, now clothing himself in rags of

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Sophist

philosophy, now more akin to the rhetorician or lawyer, now ha-

ranguing, now questioning, until the final appearance in the Politicus
of his departing shadow in the disguise of a statesman. We are not
to suppose that Plato intended by such a description to depict
Protagoras or Gorgias, or even Thrasymachus, who all turn out to
be ‘very good sort of people when we know them,’ and all of them
part on good terms with Socrates. But he is speaking of a being as
imaginary as the wise man of the Stoics, and whose character varies
in different dialogues. Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a ten-
dency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of
rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of
Plato’s in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected.
A milder tone is adopted towards the Sophists in a well-known
passage of the Republic, where they are described as the followers
rather than the leaders of the rest of mankind. Plato ridicules the
notion that any individuals can corrupt youth to a degree worth
speaking of in comparison with the greater influence of public opin-
ion. But there is no real inconsistency between this and other de-
scriptions of the Sophist which occur in the Platonic writings. For
Plato is not justifying the Sophists in the passage just quoted, but
only representing their power to be contemptible; they are to be
despised rather than feared, and are no worse than the rest of man-
kind. But a teacher or statesman may be justly condemned, who is
on a level with mankind when he ought to be above them. There is
another point of view in which this passage should also be consid-
ered. The great enemy of Plato is the world, not exactly in the theo-
logical sense, yet in one not wholly different—the world as the hater
of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of gain
and pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the
few good and wise men, and devoid of true education. This creature
has many heads: rhetoricians, lawyers, statesmen, poets, sophists.
But the Sophist is the Proteus who takes the likeness of all of them;
all other deceivers have a piece of him in them. And sometimes he is
represented as the corrupter of the world; and sometimes the world
as the corrupter of him and of itself.
Of late years the Sophists have found an enthusiastic defender in
the distinguished historian of Greece. He appears to maintain (1)

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that the term ‘Sophist’ is not the name of a particular class, and
would have been applied indifferently to Socrates and Plato, as well
as to Gorgias and Protagoras; (2) that the bad sense was imprinted
on the word by the genius of Plato; (3) that the principal Sophists
were not the corrupters of youth (for the Athenian youth were no
more corrupted in the age of Demosthenes than in the age of
Pericles), but honourable and estimable persons, who supplied a
training in literature which was generally wanted at the time. We
will briefly consider how far these statements appear to be justified
by facts: and, 1, about the meaning of the word there arises an in-
teresting question:—
Many words are used both in a general and a specific sense, and the
two senses are not always clearly distinguished. Sometimes the ge-
neric meaning has been narrowed to the specific, while in other cases
the specific meaning has been enlarged or altered. Examples of the
former class are furnished by some ecclesiastical terms: apostles, proph-
ets, bishops, elders, catholics. Examples of the latter class may also be
found in a similar field: jesuits, puritans, methodists, and the like.
Sometimes the meaning is both narrowed and enlarged; and a good
or bad sense will subsist side by side with a neutral one. A curious
effect is produced on the meaning of a word when the very term
which is stigmatized by the world (e.g. Methodists) is adopted by the
obnoxious or derided class; this tends to define the meaning. Or, again,
the opposite result is produced, when the world refuses to allow some
sect or body of men the possession of an honourable name which
they have assumed, or applies it to them only in mockery or irony.
The term ‘Sophist’ is one of those words of which the meaning
has been both contracted and enlarged. Passages may be quoted
from Herodotus and the tragedians, in which the word is used in a
neutral sense for a contriver or deviser or inventor, without includ-
ing any ethical idea of goodness or badness. Poets as well as philoso-
phers were called Sophists in the fifth century before Christ. In Plato
himself the term is applied in the sense of a ‘master in art,’ without
any bad meaning attaching to it (Symp.; Meno). In the later Greek,
again, ‘sophist’ and ‘philosopher’ became almost indistinguishable.
There was no reproach conveyed by the word; the additional asso-
ciation, if any, was only that of rhetorician or teacher. Philosophy

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had become eclecticism and imitation: in the decline of Greek

thought there was no original voice lifted up ‘which reached to a
thousand years because of the god.’ Hence the two words, like the
characters represented by them, tended to pass into one another.
Yet even here some differences appeared; for the term ‘Sophist’ would
hardly have been applied to the greater names, such as Plotinus,
and would have been more often used of a professor of philosophy
in general than of a maintainer of particular tenets.
But the real question is, not whether the word ‘Sophist’ has all
these senses, but whether there is not also a specific bad sense in
which the term is applied to certain contemporaries of Socrates.
Would an Athenian, as Mr. Grote supposes, in the fifth century
before Christ, have included Socrates and Plato, as well as Gorgias
and Protagoras, under the specific class of Sophists? To this ques-
tion we must answer, No: if ever the term is applied to Socrates and
Plato, either the application is made by an enemy out of mere spite,
or the sense in which it is used is neutral. Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates,
Aristotle, all give a bad import to the word; and the Sophists are
regarded as a separate class in all of them. And in later Greek litera-
ture, the distinction is quite marked between the succession of phi-
losophers from Thales to Aristotle, and the Sophists of the age of
Socrates, who appeared like meteors for a short time in different
parts of Greece. For the purposes of comedy, Socrates may have
been identified with the Sophists, and he seems to complain of this
in the Apology. But there is no reason to suppose that Socrates,
differing by so many outward marks, would really have been con-
founded in the mind of Anytus, or Callicles, or of any intelligent
Athenian, with the splendid foreigners who from time to time vis-
ited Athens, or appeared at the Olympic games. The man of genius,
the great original thinker, the disinterested seeker after truth, the
master of repartee whom no one ever defeated in an argument, was
separated, even in the mind of the vulgar Athenian, by an ‘interval
which no geometry can express,’ from the balancer of sentences, the
interpreter and reciter of the poets, the divider of the meanings of
words, the teacher of rhetoric, the professor of morals and manners.
2. The use of the term ‘Sophist’ in the dialogues of Plato also
shows that the bad sense was not affixed by his genius, but already

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 Plato

current. When Protagoras says, ‘I confess that I am a Sophist,’ he

implies that the art which he professes has already a bad name; and
the words of the young Hippocrates, when with a blush upon his
face which is just seen by the light of dawn he admits that he is
going to be made ‘a Sophist,’ would lose their point, unless the term
had been discredited. There is nothing surprising in the Sophists
having an evil name; that, whether deserved or not, was a natural
consequence of their vocation. That they were foreigners, that they
made fortunes, that they taught novelties, that they excited the minds
of youth, are quite sufficient reasons to account for the opprobrium
which attached to them. The genius of Plato could not have stamped
the word anew, or have imparted the associations which occur in
contemporary writers, such as Xenophon and Isocrates. Changes in
the meaning of words can only be made with great difficulty, and
not unless they are supported by a strong current of popular feeling.
There is nothing improbable in supposing that Plato may have ex-
tended and envenomed the meaning, or that he may have done the
Sophists the same kind of disservice with posterity which Pascal did
to the Jesuits. But the bad sense of the word was not and could not
have been invented by him, and is found in his earlier dialogues,
e.g. the Protagoras, as well as in the later.
3. There is no ground for disbelieving that the principal Sophists,
Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, were good and honourable
men. The notion that they were corrupters of the Athenian youth
has no real foundation, and partly arises out of the use of the term
‘Sophist’ in modern times. The truth is, that we know little about
them; and the witness of Plato in their favour is probably not much
more historical than his witness against them. Of that national de-
cline of genius, unity, political force, which has been sometimes
described as the corruption of youth, the Sophists were one among
many signs;—in these respects Athens may have degenerated; but,
as Mr. Grote remarks, there is no reason to suspect any greater moral
corruption in the age of Demosthenes than in the age of Pericles.
The Athenian youth were not corrupted in this sense, and therefore
the Sophists could not have corrupted them. It is remarkable, and
may be fairly set down to their credit, that Plato nowhere attributes
to them that peculiar Greek sympathy with youth, which he as-

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cribes to Parmenides, and which was evidently common in the

Socratic circle. Plato delights to exhibit them in a ludicrous point of
view, and to show them always rather at a disadvantage in the com-
pany of Socrates. But he has no quarrel with their characters, and
does not deny that they are respectable men.
The Sophist, in the dialogue which is called after him, is exhib-
ited in many different lights, and appears and reappears in a variety
of forms. There is some want of the higher Platonic art in the Eleatic
Stranger eliciting his true character by a labourious process of en-
quiry, when he had already admitted that he knew quite well the
difference between the Sophist and the Philosopher, and had often
heard the question discussed;—such an anticipation would hardly
have occurred in the earlier dialogues. But Plato could not alto-
gether give up his Socratic method, of which another trace may be
thought to be discerned in his adoption of a common instance be-
fore he proceeds to the greater matter in hand. Yet the example is
also chosen in order to damage the ‘hooker of men’ as much as
possible; each step in the pedigree of the angler suggests some inju-
rious reflection about the Sophist. They are both hunters after a
living prey, nearly related to tyrants and thieves, and the Sophist is
the cousin of the parasite and flatterer. The effect of this is height-
ened by the accidental manner in which the discovery is made, as
the result of a scientific division. His descent in another branch
affords the opportunity of more ‘unsavoury comparisons.’ For he is
a retail trader, and his wares are either imported or home-made, like
those of other retail traders; his art is thus deprived of the character
of a liberal profession. But the most distinguishing characteristic of
him is, that he is a disputant, and higgles over an argument. A fea-
ture of the Eristic here seems to blend with Plato’s usual description
of the Sophists, who in the early dialogues, and in the Republic, are
frequently depicted as endeavouring to save themselves from dis-
puting with Socrates by making long orations. In this character he
parts company from the vain and impertinent talker in private life,
who is a loser of money, while he is a maker of it.
But there is another general division under which his art may be
also supposed to fall, and that is purification; and from purification
is descended education, and the new principle of education is to

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interrogate men after the manner of Socrates, and make them teach
themselves. Here again we catch a glimpse rather of a Socratic or
Eristic than of a Sophist in the ordinary sense of the term. And
Plato does not on this ground reject the claim of the Sophist to be
the true philosopher. One more feature of the Eristic rather than of
the Sophist is the tendency of the troublesome animal to run away
into the darkness of Not-being. Upon the whole, we detect in him
a sort of hybrid or double nature, of which, except perhaps in the
Euthydemus of Plato, we find no other trace in Greek philosophy;
he combines the teacher of virtue with the Eristic; while in his om-
niscience, in his ignorance of himself, in his arts of deception, and
in his lawyer-like habit of writing and speaking about all things, he
is still the antithesis of Socrates and of the true teacher.
II. The question has been asked, whether the method of ‘abscissio
infinti,’ by which the Sophist is taken, is a real and valuable logical
process. Modern science feels that this, like other processes of for-
mal logic, presents a very inadequate conception of the actual com-
plex procedure of the mind by which scientific truth is detected and
verified. Plato himself seems to be aware that mere division is an
unsafe and uncertain weapon, first, in the Statesman, when he says
that we should divide in the middle, for in that way we are more
likely to attain species; secondly, in the parallel precept of the
Philebus, that we should not pass from the most general notions to
infinity, but include all the intervening middle principles, until, as
he also says in the Statesman, we arrive at the infima species; thirdly,
in the Phaedrus, when he says that the dialectician will carve the
limbs of truth without mangling them; and once more in the States-
man, if we cannot bisect species, we must carve them as well as we
can. No better image of nature or truth, as an organic whole, can be
conceived than this. So far is Plato from supposing that mere divi-
sion and subdivision of general notions will guide men into all truth.
Plato does not really mean to say that the Sophist or the States-
man can be caught in this way. But these divisions and subdivisions
were favourite logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and
while indulging his dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to
logical method, he delights also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with
weapons borrowed from his own armoury. As we have already seen,

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the division gives him the opportunity of making the most damag-
ing reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and kin, and to ex-
hibit him in the most discreditable light.
Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assum-
ing that an animal so various could not be confined within the lim-
its of a single definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to
obtain a definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after re-
flection scarcely occurred to them that the word might have several
senses, which shaded off into one another, and were not capable of
being comprehended in a single notion. There is no trace of this
reflection in Plato. But neither is there any reason to think, even if
the reflection had occurred to him, that he would have been de-
terred from carrying on the war with weapons fair or unfair against
the outlaw Sophist.
III. The puzzle about ‘Not-being’ appears to us to be one of the
most unreal difficulties of ancient philosophy. We cannot under-
stand the attitude of mind which could imagine that falsehood had
no existence, if reality was denied to Not-being: How could such a
question arise at all, much less become of serious importance? The
answer to this, and to nearly all other difficulties of early Greek
philosophy, is to be sought for in the history of ideas, and the an-
swer is only unsatisfactory because our knowledge is defective. In
the passage from the world of sense and imagination and common
language to that of opinion and reflection the human mind was
exposed to many dangers, and often

‘Found no end in wandering mazes lost.’

On the other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great

source of all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing
aside of the old, the revelation of the new. But each one of the com-
pany of abstractions, if we may speak in the metaphorical language
of Plato, became in turn the tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea,
which would allow no other to have a share in the throne. This is
especially true of the Eleatic philosophy: while the absoluteness of
Being was asserted in every form of language, the sensible world
and all the phenomena of experience were comprehended under

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Not-being. Nor was any difficulty or perplexity thus created, so long

as the mind, lost in the contemplation of Being, asked no more
questions, and never thought of applying the categories of Being or
Not-being to mind or opinion or practical life.
But the negative as well as the positive idea had sunk deep into
the intellect of man. The effect of the paradoxes of Zeno extended
far beyond the Eleatic circle. And now an unforeseen consequence
began to arise. If the Many were not, if all things were names of the
One, and nothing could be predicated of any other thing, how could
truth be distinguished from falsehood? The Eleatic philosopher
would have replied that Being is alone true. But mankind had got
beyond his barren abstractions: they were beginning to analyze, to
classify, to define, to ask what is the nature of knowledge, opinion,
sensation. Still less could they be content with the description which
Achilles gives in Homer of the man whom his soul hates—

os chi eteron men keuthe eni phresin, allo de eipe.

For their difficulty was not a practical but a metaphysical one; and
their conception of falsehood was really impaired and weakened by
a metaphysical illusion.
The strength of the illusion seems to lie in the alternative: If we
once admit the existence of Being and Not-being, as two spheres
which exclude each other, no Being or reality can be ascribed to
Not-being, and therefore not to falsehood, which is the image or
expression of Not-being. Falsehood is wholly false; and to speak of
true falsehood, as Theaetetus does (Theaet.), is a contradiction in
terms. The fallacy to us is ridiculous and transparent,—no better
than those which Plato satirizes in the Euthydemus. It is a confu-
sion of falsehood and negation, from which Plato himself is not
entirely free. Instead of saying, ‘This is not in accordance with facts,’
‘This is proved by experience to be false,’ and from such examples
forming a general notion of falsehood, the mind of the Greek thinker
was lost in the mazes of the Eleatic philosophy. And the greater
importance which Plato attributes to this fallacy, compared with
others, is due to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exerted
over him. He sees clearly to a certain extent; but he has not yet

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attained a complete mastery over the ideas of his predecessors—

they are still ends to him, and not mere instruments of thought.
They are too rough-hewn to be harmonized in a single structure,
and may be compared to rocks which project or overhang in some
ancient city’s walls. There are many such imperfect syncretisms or
eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A modern philosopher,
though emancipated from scholastic notions of essence or substance,
might still be seriously affected by the abstract idea of necessity; or
though accustomed, like Bacon, to criticize abstract notions, might
not extend his criticism to the syllogism.
The saying or thinking the thing that is not, would be the popu-
lar definition of falsehood or error. If we were met by the Sophist’s
objection, the reply would probably be an appeal to experience. Ten
thousands, as Homer would say (mala murioi), tell falsehoods and
fall into errors. And this is Plato’s reply, both in the Cratylus and
Sophist. ‘Theaetetus is flying,’ is a sentence in form quite as gram-
matical as ‘Theaetetus is sitting’; the difference between the two
sentences is, that the one is true and the other false. But, before
making this appeal to common sense, Plato propounds for our con-
sideration a theory of the nature of the negative.
The theory is, that Not-being is relation. Not-being is the other
of Being, and has as many kinds as there are differences in Being.
This doctrine is the simple converse of the famous proposition of
Spinoza,—not ‘Omnis determinatio est negatio,’ but ‘Omnis negatio
est determinatio’;—not, All distinction is negation, but, All negation
is distinction. Not-being is the unfolding or determining of Being,
and is a necessary element in all other things that are. We should be
careful to observe, first, that Plato does not identify Being with Not-
being; he has no idea of progression by antagonism, or of the
Hegelian vibration of moments: he would not have said with
Heracleitus, ‘All things are and are not, and become and become not.’
Secondly, he has lost sight altogether of the other sense of Not- being,
as the negative of Being; although he again and again recognizes the
validity of the law of contradiction. Thirdly, he seems to confuse false-
hood with negation. Nor is he quite consistent in regarding Not-
being as one class of Being, and yet as coextensive with Being in gen-
eral. Before analyzing further the topics thus suggested, we will en-

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deavour to trace the manner in which Plato arrived at his conception

of Not-being.
In all the later dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence
becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras
employed inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in
the Philebus, the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, at-
tributing to Providence a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all
creation. The divine mind is the leading religious thought of the
later works of Plato. The human mind is a sort of reflection of this,
having ideas of Being, Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be
parted by a great gulf (Parmenides); at other times they have a common
nature, and the light of a common intelligence.
But this ever-growing idea of mind is really irreconcilable with the
abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics. To the passionate language of
Parmenides, Plato replies in a strain equally passionate:—What! has
not Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this
is admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?—in motion,
then, and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been com-
pelled to attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the answer to
the difficulty about Being may be equally the answer to the difficulty
about Not-being.
The answer is, that in these and all other determinations of any
notion we are attributing to it ‘Not-being.’ We went in search of Not-
being and seemed to lose Being, and now in the hunt after Being we
recover both. Not-being is a kind of Being, and in a sense co-exten-
sive with Being. And there are as many divisions of Not-being as of
Being. To every positive idea—’just,’ ‘beautiful,’ and the like, there is
a corresponding negative idea—’not-just,’ ‘not-beautiful,’ and the like.
A doubt may be raised whether this account of the negative is
really the true one. The common logicians would say that the ‘not-
just,’ ‘not- beautiful,’ are not really classes at all, but are merged in
one great class of the infinite or negative. The conception of Plato,
in the days before logic, seems to be more correct than this. For the
word ‘not’ does not altogether annihilate the positive meaning of
the word ‘just’: at least, it does not prevent our looking for the ‘not-
just’ in or about the same class in which we might expect to find
the ‘just.’‘Not-just is not- honourable’ is neither a false nor an un-

17
Sophist

meaning proposition. The reason is that the negative proposition

has really passed into an undefined positive. To say that ‘not-just’
has no more meaning than ‘not-honourable’—that is to say, that
the two cannot in any degree be distinguished, is clearly repugnant
to the common use of language.
The ordinary logic is also jealous of the explanation of negation as
relation, because seeming to take away the principle of contradic-
tion. Plato, as far as we know, is the first philosopher who distinctly
enunciated this principle; and though we need not suppose him to
have been always consistent with himself, there is no real inconsis-
tency between his explanation of the negative and the principle of
contradiction. Neither the Platonic notion of the negative as the
principle of difference, nor the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-
being, at all touch the principle of contradiction. For what is as-
serted about Being and Not-Being only relates to our most abstract
notions, and in no way interferes with the principle of contradic-
tion employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified with
Other, or Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposi-
tion ‘Some have not eaten’ any the less a contradiction of ‘All have
eaten.’
The explanation of the negative given by Plato in the Sophist is a true
but partial one; for the word ‘not,’ besides the meaning of ‘other,’ may
also imply ‘opposition.’ And difference or opposition may be either
total or partial: the not-beautiful may be other than the beautiful, or in
no relation to the beautiful, or a specific class in various degrees op-
posed to the beautiful. And the negative may be a negation of fact or of
thought (you and me). Lastly, there are certain ideas, such as ‘begin-
ning,’ ‘becoming,’ ‘the finite,’ ‘the abstract,’ in which the negative can-
not be separated from the positive, and ‘Being’ and ‘Not-being’ are
inextricably blended.
Plato restricts the conception of Not-being to difference. Man
is a rational animal, and is not—as many other things as are not
included under this definition. He is and is not, and is because he
is not. Besides the positive class to which he belongs, there are
endless negative classes to which he may be referred. This is cer-
tainly intelligible, but useless. To refer a subject to a negative class
is unmeaning, unless the ‘not’ is a mere modification of the posi-

18
 Plato

tive, as in the example of ‘not honourable’and ‘dishonourable’; or

unless the class is characterized by the absence rather than the
presence of a particular quality.
Nor is it easy to see how Not-being any more than Sameness or
Otherness is one of the classes of Being. They are aspects rather
than classes of Being. Not-being can only be included in Being, as
the denial of some particular class of Being. If we attempt to pursue
such airy phantoms at all, the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-
being is a more apt and intelligible expression of the same mental
phenomenon. For Plato has not distinguished between the Being
which is prior to Not-being, and the Being which is the negation of
Not-being (compare Parm.).
But he is not thinking of this when he says that Being compre-
hends Not-being. Again, we should probably go back for the true
explanation to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exercised
over him. Under ‘Not-being’ the Eleatic had included all the reali-
ties of the sensible world. Led by this association and by the com-
mon use of language, which has been already noticed, we cannot be
much surprised that Plato should have made classes of Not-being.
It is observable that he does not absolutely deny that there is an
opposite of Being. He is inclined to leave the question, merely re-
marking that the opposition, if admissible at all, is not expressed by
the term ‘Not-being.’
On the whole, we must allow that the great service rendered by
Plato to metaphysics in the Sophist, is not his explanation of ‘Not-
being’ as difference. With this he certainly laid the ghost of ‘Not-
being’; and we may attribute to him in a measure the credit of an-
ticipating Spinoza and Hegel. But his conception is not clear or
consistent; he does not recognize the different senses of the nega-
tive, and he confuses the different classes of Not-being with the
abstract notion. As the Pre-Socratic philosopher failed to distin-
guish between the universal and the true, while he placed the par-
ticulars of sense under the false and apparent, so Plato appears to
identify negation with falsehood, or is unable to distinguish them.
The greatest service rendered by him to mental science is the recog-
nition of the communion of classes, which, although based by him
on his account of ‘Not-being,’ is independent of it. He clearly saw

19
Sophist

that the isolation of ideas or classes is the annihilation of reasoning.

Thus, after wandering in many diverging paths, we return to com-
mon sense. And for this reason we may be inclined to do less than
justice to Plato,—because the truth which he attains by a real effort
of thought is to us a familiar and unconscious truism, which no one
would any longer think either of doubting or examining.
IV. The later dialogues of Plato contain many references to con-
temporary philosophy. Both in the Theaetetus and in the Sophist
he recognizes that he is in the midst of a fray; a huge irregular battle
everywhere surrounds him (Theaet.). First, there are the two great
philosophies going back into cosmogony and poetry: the philoso-
phy of Heracleitus, supposed to have a poetical origin in Homer,
and that of the Eleatics, which in a similar spirit he conceives to be
even older than Xenophanes (compare Protag.). Still older were
theories of two and three principles, hot and cold, moist and dry,
which were ever marrying and being given in marriage: in speaking
of these, he is probably referring to Pherecydes and the early Ionians.
In the philosophy of motion there were different accounts of the
relation of plurality and unity, which were supposed to be joined
and severed by love and hate, some maintaining that this process
was perpetually going on (e.g. Heracleitus); others (e.g. Empedocles)
that there was an alternation of them. Of the Pythagoreans or of
Anaxagoras he makes no distinct mention. His chief opponents are,
first, Eristics or Megarians; secondly, the Materialists.
The picture which he gives of both these latter schools is indis-
tinct; and he appears reluctant to mention the names of their teach-
ers. Nor can we easily determine how much is to be assigned to the
Cynics, how much to the Megarians, or whether the ‘repellent Ma-
terialists’ (Theaet.) are Cynics or Atomists, or represent some un-
known phase of opinion at Athens. To the Cynics and Antisthenes
is commonly attributed, on the authority of Aristotle, the denial of
predication, while the Megarians are said to have been Nominalists,
asserting the One Good under many names to be the true Being of
Zeno and the Eleatics, and, like Zeno, employing their negative
dialectic in the refutation of opponents. But the later Megarians
also denied predication; and this tenet, which is attributed to all of
them by Simplicius, is certainly in accordance with their over-refin-

20
 Plato

ing philosophy. The ‘tyros young and old,’ of whom Plato speaks,
probably include both. At any rate, we shall be safer in accepting
the general description of them which he has given, and in not at-
tempting to draw a precise line between them.
Of these Eristics, whether Cynics or Megarians, several character-
istics are found in Plato:—
1. They pursue verbal oppositions; 2. they make reasoning im-
possible by their over-accuracy in the use of language; 3. they deny
predication; 4. they go from unity to plurality, without passing
through the intermediate stages; 5. they refuse to attribute motion
or power to Being; 6. they are the enemies of sense;—whether they
are the ‘friends of ideas,’ who carry on the polemic against sense, is
uncertain; probably under this remarkable expression Plato desig-
nates those who more nearly approached himself, and may be criti-
cizing an earlier form of his own doctrines. We may observe (1) that
he professes only to give us a few opinions out of many which were at
that time current in Greece; (2) that he nowhere alludes to the ethical
teaching of the Cynics—unless the argument in the Protagoras, that
the virtues are one and not many, may be supposed to contain a refer-
ence to their views, as well as to those of Socrates; and unless they are
the school alluded to in the Philebus, which is described as ‘being
very skilful in physics, and as maintaining pleasure to be the absence
of pain.’ That Antisthenes wrote a book called ‘Physicus,’ is hardly a
sufficient reason for describing them as skilful in physics, which ap-
pear to have been very alien to the tendency of the Cynics.
The Idealism of the fourth century before Christ in Greece, as in
other ages and countries, seems to have provoked a reaction towards
Materialism. The maintainers of this doctrine are described in the
Theaetetus as obstinate persons who will believe in nothing which they
cannot hold in their hands, and in the Sophist as incapable of argu-
ment. They are probably the same who are said in the Tenth Book of
the Laws to attribute the course of events to nature, art, and chance.
Who they were, we have no means of determining except from Plato’s
description of them. His silence respecting the Atomists might lead us
to suppose that here we have a trace of them. But the Atomists were not
Materialists in the grosser sense of the term, nor were they incapable of
reasoning; and Plato would hardly have described a great genius like

21
Sophist

Democritus in the disdainful terms which he uses of the Materialists.

Upon the whole, we must infer that the persons here spoken of are
unknown to us, like the many other writers and talkers at Athens and
elsewhere, of whose endless activity of mind Aristotle in his Metaphys-
ics has preserved an anonymous memorial.
V. The Sophist is the sequel of the Theaetetus, and is connected
with the Parmenides by a direct allusion (compare Introductions to
Theaetetus and Parmenides). In the Theaetetus we sought to discover
the nature of knowledge and false opinion. But the nature of false
opinion seemed impenetrable; for we were unable to understand how
there could be any reality in Not-being. In the Sophist the question is
taken up again; the nature of Not-being is detected, and there is no
longer any metaphysical impediment in the way of admitting the
possibility of falsehood. To the Parmenides, the Sophist stands in a
less defined and more remote relation. There human thought is in
process of disorganization; no absurdity or inconsistency is too great
to be elicited from the analysis of the simple ideas of Unity or Being.
In the Sophist the same contradictions are pursued to a certain ex-
tent, but only with a view to their resolution. The aim of the dialogue
is to show how the few elemental conceptions of the human mind
admit of a natural connexion in thought and speech, which Megarian
or other sophistry vainly attempts to deny.

* * *

TRUE TO THE APPOINTMENT of the previous day, Theodorus and

Theaetetus meet Socrates at the same spot, bringing with them an
Eleatic Stranger, whom Theodorus introduces as a true philosopher.
Socrates, half in jest, half in earnest, declares that he must be a god
in disguise, who, as Homer would say, has come to earth that he
may visit the good and evil among men, and detect the foolishness
of Athenian wisdom. At any rate he is a divine person, one of a class
who are hardly recognized on earth; who appear in divers forms—
now as statesmen, now as sophists, and are often deemed madmen.
‘Philosopher, statesman, sophist,’ says Socrates, repeating the
words—’I should like to ask our Eleatic friend what his country-
men think of them; do they regard them as one, or three?’

22
 Plato

The Stranger has been already asked the same question by Theodorus
and Theaetetus; and he at once replies that they are thought to be
three; but to explain the difference fully would take time. He is pressed
to give this fuller explanation, either in the form of a speech or of
question and answer. He prefers the latter, and chooses as his respon-
dent Theaetetus, whom he already knows, and who is recommended
to him by Socrates.
We are agreed, he says, about the name Sophist, but we may not
be equally agreed about his nature. Great subjects should be ap-
proached through familiar examples, and, considering that he is a
creature not easily caught, I think that, before approaching him, we
should try our hand upon some more obvious animal, who may be
made the subject of logical experiment; shall we say an angler? ‘Very
good.’
In the first place, the angler is an artist; and there are two kinds of
art,—productive art, which includes husbandry, manufactures, imi-
tations; and acquisitive art, which includes learning, trading, fight-
ing, hunting. The angler’s is an acquisitive art, and acquisition may
be effected either by exchange or by conquest; in the latter case,
either by force or craft. Conquest by craft is called hunting, and of
hunting there is one kind which pursues inanimate, and another
which pursues animate objects; and animate objects may be either
land animals or water animals, and water animals either fly over the
water or live in the water. The hunting of the last is called fishing;
and of fishing, one kind uses enclosures, catching the fish in nets
and baskets, and another kind strikes them either with spears by
night or with barbed spears or barbed hooks by day; the barbed
spears are impelled from above, the barbed hooks are jerked into
the head and lips of the fish, which are then drawn from below
upwards. Thus, by a series of divisions, we have arrived at the defi-
nition of the angler’s art.
And now by the help of this example we may proceed to bring to
light the nature of the Sophist. Like the angler, he is an artist, and
the resemblance does not end here. For they are both hunters, and
hunters of animals; the one of water, and the other of land animals.
But at this point they diverge, the one going to the sea and the
rivers, and the other to the rivers of wealth and rich meadow-lands,

23
Sophist

in which generous youth abide. On land you may hunt tame ani-
mals, or you may hunt wild animals. And man is a tame animal,
and he may be hunted either by force or persuasion;—either by the
pirate, man-stealer, soldier, or by the lawyer, orator, talker. The lat-
ter use persuasion, and persuasion is either private or public. Of the
private practitioners of the art, some bring gifts to those whom they
hunt: these are lovers. And others take hire; and some of these flat-
ter, and in return are fed; others profess to teach virtue and receive a
round sum. And who are these last? Tell me who? Have we not
unearthed the Sophist?
But he is a many-sided creature, and may still be traced in another
line of descent. The acquisitive art had a branch of exchange as well as
of hunting, and exchange is either giving or selling; and the seller is
either a manufacturer or a merchant; and the merchant either retails
or exports; and the exporter may export either food for the body or
food for the mind. And of this trading in food for the mind, one kind
may be termed the art of display, and another the art of selling learn-
ing; and learning may be a learning of the arts or of virtue. The seller
of the arts may be called an art-seller; the seller of virtue, a Sophist.
Again, there is a third line, in which a Sophist may be traced. For is
he less a Sophist when, instead of exporting his wares to another coun-
try, he stays at home, and retails goods, which he not only buys of
others, but manufactures himself?
Or he may be descended from the acquisitive art in the combative
line, through the pugnacious, the controversial, the disputatious arts;
and he will be found at last in the eristic section of the latter, and in
that division of it which disputes in private for gain about the gen-
eral principles of right and wrong.
And still there is a track of him which has not yet been followed
out by us. Do not our household servants talk of sifting, straining,
winnowing? And they also speak of carding, spinning, and the like.
All these are processes of division; and of division there are two
kinds,—one in which like is divided from like, and another in which
the good is separated from the bad. The latter of the two is termed
purification; and again, of purification, there are two sorts,—of ani-
mate bodies (which may be internal or external), and of inanimate.
Medicine and gymnastic are the internal purifications of the ani-

24
 Plato

mate, and bathing the external; and of the inanimate, fulling and
cleaning and other humble processes, some of which have ludicrous
names. Not that dialectic is a respecter of names or persons, or a
despiser of humble occupations; nor does she think much of the
greater or less benefits conferred by them. For her aim is knowl-
edge; she wants to know how the arts are related to one another,
and would quite as soon learn the nature of hunting from the ver-
min-destroyer as from the general. And she only desires to have a
general name, which shall distinguish purifications of the soul from
purifications of the body.
Now purification is the taking away of evil; and there are two
kinds of evil in the soul,—the one answering to disease in the body,
and the other to deformity. Disease is the discord or war of opposite
principles in the soul; and deformity is the want of symmetry, or
failure in the attainment of a mark or measure. The latter arises
from ignorance, and no one is voluntarily ignorant; ignorance is
only the aberration of the soul moving towards knowledge. And as
medicine cures the diseases and gymnastic the deformity of the body,
so correction cures the injustice, and education (which differs among
the Hellenes from mere instruction in the arts) cures the ignorance
of the soul. Again, ignorance is twofold, simple ignorance, and ig-
norance having the conceit of knowledge. And education is also
twofold: there is the old-fashioned moral training of our forefathers,
which was very troublesome and not very successful; and another,
of a more subtle nature, which proceeds upon a notion that all ig-
norance is involuntary. The latter convicts a man out of his own
mouth, by pointing out to him his inconsistencies and contradic-
tions; and the consequence is that he quarrels with himself, instead
of quarrelling with his neighbours, and is cured of prejudices and
obstructions by a mode of treatment which is equally entertaining
and effectual. The physician of the soul is aware that his patient will
receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned out; and the
soul of the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this purifi-
cation, is unclean and impure.
And who are the ministers of the purification? Sophists I may not
call them. Yet they bear about the same likeness to Sophists as the
dog, who is

25
Sophist

the gentlest of animals, does to the wolf, who is the fiercest. Com-
parisons are slippery things; but for the present let us assume the
resemblance of the two, which may probably be disallowed hereaf-
ter. And so, from division comes purification; and from this, men-
tal purification; and from mental purification, instruction; and from
instruction, education; and from education, the nobly-descended
art of Sophistry, which is engaged in the detection of conceit. I do
not however think that we have yet found the Sophist, or that his
will ultimately prove to be the desired art of education; but neither
do I think that he can long escape me, for every way is blocked.
Before we make the final assault, let us take breath, and reckon up
the many forms which he has assumed: (1) he was the paid hunter
of wealth and birth; (2) he was the trader in the goods of the soul;
(3) he was the retailer of them; (4) he was the manufacturer of his
own learned wares; (5) he was the disputant; and (6) he was the
purger away of prejudices—although this latter point is admitted to
be doubtful.
Now, there must surely be something wrong in the professor of any
art having so many names and kinds of knowledge. Does not the very
number of them imply that the nature of his art is not understood? And
that we may not be involved in the misunderstanding, let us observe
which of his characteristics is the most prominent. Above all things he
is a disputant. He will dispute and teach others to dispute about things
visible and invisible—about man, about the gods, about politics, about
law, about wrestling, about all things. But can he know all things? ‘He
cannot.’ How then can he dispute satisfactorily with any one who knows?
‘Impossible.’ Then what is the trick of his art, and why does he receive
money from his admirers? ‘Because he is believed by them to know all
things.’ You mean to say that he seems to have a knowledge of them?
‘Yes.’
Suppose a person were to say, not that he would dispute about all
things, but that he would make all things, you and me, and all other
creatures, the earth and the heavens and the gods, and would sell them
all for a few pence—this would be a great jest; but not greater than if he
said that he knew all things, and could teach them in a short time, and
at a small cost. For all imitation is a jest, and the most graceful form of
jest. Now the painter is a man who professes to make all things, and

26
 Plato

children, who see his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them for
realities: and the Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too, can
deceive young men, who are still at a distance from the truth, not through
their eyes, but through their ears, by the mummery of words, and in-
duce them to believe him. But as they grow older, and come into con-
tact with realities, they learn by experience the futility of his preten-
sions. The Sophist, then, has not real knowledge; he is only an imitator,
or image-maker.
And now, having got him in a corner of the dialectical net, let us
divide and subdivide until we catch him. Of image-making there
are two kinds,—the art of making likenesses, and the art of making
appearances. The latter may be illustrated by sculpture and paint-
ing, which often use illusions, and alter the proportions of figures,
in order to adapt their works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses
illusions, and his imitations are apparent and not real. But how can
anything be an appearance only? Here arises a difficulty which has
always beset the subject of appearances. For the argument is assert-
ing the existence of not-being. And this is what the great Parmenides
was all his life denying in prose and also in verse. ‘You will never
find,’ he says, ‘that not-being is.’ And the words prove themselves!
Not-being cannot be attributed to any being; for how can any being
be wholly abstracted from being? Again, in every predication there
is an attribution of singular or plural. But number is the most real
of all things, and cannot be attributed to not-being. Therefore not-
being cannot be predicated or expressed; for how can we say ‘is,’ ‘are
not,’without number?
And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If not-being is incon-
ceivable, how can not-being be refuted? And am I not contradicting
myself at this moment, in speaking either in the singular or the
plural of that to which I deny both plurality and unity? You,
Theaetetus, have the might of youth, and I conjure you to exert
yourself, and, if you can, to find an expression for not-being which
does not imply being and number. ‘But I cannot.’ Then the Soph-
ist must be left in his hole. We may call him an image-maker if we
please, but he will only say, ‘And pray, what is an image?’ And we
shall reply, ‘A reflection in the water, or in a mirror’; and he will say,
‘Let us shut our eyes and open our minds; what is the common

27
Sophist

notion of all images?’ ‘I should answer, Such another, made in the

likeness of the true.’ Real or not real? ‘Not real; at least, not in a true
sense.’ And the real ‘is,’ and the not-real ‘is not’? ‘Yes.’ Then a like-
ness is really unreal, and essentially not. Here is a pretty complica-
tion of being and not-being, in which the many-headed Sophist has
entangled us. He will at once point out that he is compelling us to
contradict ourselves, by affirming being of not-being. I think that
we must cease to look for him in the class of imitators.
But ought we to give him up? ‘I should say, certainly not.’ Then I
fear that I must lay hands on my father Parmenides; but do not call
me a parricide; for there is no way out of the difficulty except to
show that in some sense not-being is; and if this is not admitted, no
one can speak of falsehood, or false opinion, or imitation, without
falling into a contradiction. You observe how unwilling I am to
undertake the task; for I know that I am exposing myself to the
charge of inconsistency in asserting the being of not-being. But if I
am to make the attempt, I think that I had better begin at the be-
ginning.
Lightly in the days of our youth, Parmenides and others told us
tales about the origin of the universe: one spoke of three principles
warring and at peace again, marrying and begetting children; an-
other of two principles, hot and cold, dry and moist, which also
formed relationships. There were the Eleatics in our part of the world,
saying that all things are one; whose doctrine begins with
Xenophanes, and is even older. Ionian, and, more recently, Sicilian
muses speak of a one and many which are held together by enmity
and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting. Some of them do not
insist on the perpetual strife, but adopt a gentler strain, and speak of
alternation only. Whether they are right or not, who can say? But
one thing we can say—that they went on their way without much
caring whether we understood them or not. For tell me, Theaetetus,
do you understand what they mean by their assertion of unity, or by
their combinations and separations of two or more principles? I
used to think, when I was young, that I knew all about not-being,
and now I am in great difficulties even about being.
Let us proceed first to the examination of being. Turning to the
dualist philosophers, we say to them: Is being a third element be-

28
 Plato

sides hot and cold? or do you identify one or both of the two ele-
ments with being? At any rate, you can hardly avoid resolving them
into one. Let us next interrogate the patrons of the one. To them we
say: Are being and one two different names for the same thing? But
how can there be two names when there is nothing but one? Or you
may identify them; but then the name will be either the name of
nothing or of itself, i.e. of a name. Again, the notion of being is
conceived of as a whole—in the words of Parmenides, ‘like every
way unto a rounded sphere.’ And a whole has parts; but that which
has parts is not one, for unity has no parts. Is being, then, one,
because the parts of being are one, or shall we say that being is not
a whole? In the former case, one is made up of parts; and in the
latter there is still plurality, viz. being, and a whole which is apart
from being. And being, if not all things, lacks something of the
nature of being, and becomes not-being. Nor can being ever have
come into existence, for nothing comes into existence except as a
whole; nor can being have number, for that which has number is a
whole or sum of number. These are a few of the difficulties which
are accumulating one upon another in the consideration of being.
We may proceed now to the less exact sort of philosophers. Some
of them drag down everything to earth, and carry on a war like that
of the giants, grasping rocks and oaks in their hands. Their adver-
saries defend themselves warily from an invisible world, and reduce
the substances of their opponents to the minutest fractions, until
they are lost in generation and flux. The latter sort are civil people
enough; but the materialists are rude and ignorant of dialectics; they
must be taught how to argue before they can answer. Yet, for the
sake of the argument, we may assume them to be better than they
are, and able to give an account of themselves. They admit the exist-
ence of a mortal living creature, which is a body containing a soul,
and to this they would not refuse to attribute qualities—wisdom,
folly, justice and injustice. The soul, as they say, has a kind of body,
but they do not like to assert of these qualities of the soul, either
that they are corporeal, or that they have no existence; at this point
they begin to make distinctions. ‘Sons of earth,’ we say to them, ‘if
both visible and invisible qualities exist, what is the common nature
which is attributed to them by the term “being” or “existence”?’

29
Sophist

And, as they are incapable of answering this question, we may as

well reply for them, that being is the power of doing or suffering.
Then we turn to the friends of ideas: to them we say, ‘You distin-
guish becoming from being?’ ‘Yes,’ they will reply. ‘And in becom-
ing you participate through the bodily senses, and in being, by
thought and the mind?’ ‘Yes.’ And you mean by the word ‘partici-
pation’ a power of doing or suffering? To this they answer—I am
acquainted with them, Theaetetus, and know their ways better than
you do—that being can neither do nor suffer, though becoming
may. And we rejoin: Does not the soul know? And is not ‘being’
known? And are not ‘knowing’ and ‘being known’ active and pas-
sive? That which is known is affected by knowledge, and therefore
is in motion. And, indeed, how can we imagine that perfect being is
a mere everlasting form, devoid of motion and soul? for there can
be no thought without soul, nor can soul be devoid of motion. But
neither can thought or mind be devoid of some principle of rest or
stability. And as children say entreatingly, ‘Give us both,’ so the
philosopher must include both the moveable and immoveable in
his idea of being. And yet, alas! he and we are in the same difficulty
with which we reproached the dualists; for motion and rest are con-
tradictions—how then can they both exist? Does he who affirms
this mean to say that motion is rest, or rest motion? ‘No; he means
to assert the existence of some third thing, different from them both,
which neither rests nor moves.’ But how can there be anything which
neither rests nor moves? Here is a second difficulty about being,
quite as great as that about not-being. And we may hope that any
light which is thrown upon the one may extend to the other.
Leaving them for the present, let us enquire what we mean by
giving many names to the same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man;
out of which tyros old and young derive such a feast of amusement.
Their meagre minds refuse to predicate anything of anything; they
say that good is good, and man is man; and that to affirm one of the
other would be making the many one and the one many. Let us
place them in a class with our previous opponents, and interrogate
both of them at once. Shall we assume (1) that being and rest and
motion, and all other things, are incommunicable with one another?
or (2) that they all have indiscriminate communion? or (3) that

30
 Plato

there is communion of some and not of others? And we will con-

sider the first hypothesis first of all.
(1) If we suppose the universal separation of kinds, all theories
alike are swept away; the patrons of a single principle of rest or of
motion, or of a plurality of immutable ideas—all alike have the
ground cut from under them; and all creators of the universe by
theories of composition and division, whether out of or into a finite
or infinite number of elemental forms, in alternation or continu-
ance, share the same fate. Most ridiculous is the discomfiture which
attends the opponents of predication, who, like the ventriloquist
Eurycles, have the voice that answers them in their own breast. For
they cannot help using the words ‘is,’ ‘apart,’ ‘from others,’ and the
like; and their adversaries are thus saved the trouble of refuting them.
But (2) if all things have communion with all things, motion will
rest, and rest will move; here is a reductio ad absurdum. Two out of
the three hypotheses are thus seen to be false. The third (3) remains,
which affirms that only certain things communicate with certain
other things. In the alphabet and the scale there are some letters and
notes which combine with others, and some which do not; and the
laws according to which they combine or are separated are known
to the grammarian and musician. And there is a science which teaches
not only what notes and letters, but what classes admit of combina-
tion with one another, and what not. This is a noble science, on
which we have stumbled unawares; in seeking after the Sophist we
have found the philosopher. He is the master who discerns one whole
or form pervading a scattered multitude, and many such wholes
combined under a higher one, and many entirely apart—he is the
true dialectician. Like the Sophist, he is hard to recognize, though
for the opposite reasons; the Sophist runs away into the obscurity of
not-being, the philosopher is dark from excess of light. And now,
leaving him, we will return to our pursuit of the Sophist.
Agreeing in the truth of the third hypothesis, that some things have
communion and others not, and that some may have communion
with all, let us examine the most important kinds which are capable
of admixture; and in this way we may perhaps find out a sense in
which not-being may be affirmed to have being. Now the highest
kinds are being, rest, motion; and of these, rest and motion exclude

31
Sophist

each other, but both of them are included in being; and again, they
are the same with themselves and the other of each other. What is the
meaning of these words, ‘same’ and ‘other’? Are there two more kinds
to be added to the three others? For sameness cannot be either rest or
motion, because predicated both of rest and motion; nor yet being;
because if being were attributed to both of them we should attribute
sameness to both of them. Nor can other be identified with being; for
then other, which is relative, would have the absoluteness of being.
Therefore we must assume a fifth principle, which is universal, and
runs through all things, for each thing is other than all other things.
Thus there are five principles: (1) being, (2) motion, which is not (3)
rest, and because participating both in the same and other, is and is
not (4) the same with itself, and is and is not (5) other than the other.
And motion is not being, but partakes of being, and therefore is and
is not in the most absolute sense. Thus we have discovered that not-
being is the principle of the other which runs through all things, be-
ing not excepted. And ‘being’ is one thing, and ‘not-being’ includes
and is all other things. And not-being is not the opposite of being,
but only the other. Knowledge has many branches, and the other or
difference has as many, each of which is described by prefixing the
word ‘not’ to some kind of knowledge. The not-beautiful is as real as
the beautiful, the not-just as the just. And the essence of the not-
beautiful is to be separated from and opposed to a certain kind of
existence which is termed beautiful. And this opposition and nega-
tion is the not-being of which we are in search, and is one kind of
being. Thus, in spite of Parmenides, we have not only discovered the
existence, but also the nature of not-being—that nature we have found
to be relation. In the communion of different kinds, being and other
mutually interpenetrate; other is, but is other than being, and other
than each and all of the remaining kinds, and therefore in an infinity
of ways ‘is not.’ And the argument has shown that the pursuit of
contradictions is childish and useless, and the very opposite of that
higher spirit which criticizes the words of another according to the
natural meaning of them. Nothing can be more unphilosophical than
the denial of all communion of kinds. And we are fortunate in having
established such a communion for another reason, because in con-
tinuing the hunt after the Sophist we have to examine the nature of

32
 Plato

discourse, and there could be no discourse if there were no commun-

ion. For the Sophist, although he can no longer deny the existence of
not-being, may still affirm that not-being cannot enter into discourse,
and as he was arguing before that there could be no such thing as
falsehood, because there was no such thing as not-being, he may con-
tinue to argue that there is no such thing as the art of image-making
and phantastic, because not-being has no place in language. Hence
arises the necessity of examining speech, opinion, and imagination.
And first concerning speech; let us ask the same question about
words which we have already answered about the kinds of being
and the letters of the alphabet: To what extent do they admit of
combination? Some words have a meaning when combined, and
others have no meaning. One class of words describes action, an-
other class agents: ‘walks,’ ‘runs,’ ‘sleeps’ are examples of the first;
‘stag,’ ‘horse,’ ‘lion’ of the second. But no combination of words can
be formed without a verb and a noun, e.g. ‘A man learns’; the sim-
plest sentence is composed of two words, and one of these must be
a subject. For example, in the sentence, ‘Theaetetus sits,’ which is
not very long, ‘Theaetetus’ is the subject, and in the sentence
‘Theaetetus flies,’ ‘Theaetetus’ is again the subject. But the two sen-
tences differ in quality, for the first says of you that which is true,
and the second says of you that which is not true, or, in other words,
attributes to you things which are not as though they were. Here is
false discourse in the shortest form. And thus not only speech, but
thought and opinion and imagination are proved to be both true
and false. For thought is only the process of silent speech, and opin-
ion is only the silent assent or denial which follows this, and imagi-
nation is only the expression of this in some form of sense. All of
them are akin to speech, and therefore, like speech, admit of true
and false. And we have discovered false opinion, which is an en-
couraging sign of our probable success in the rest of the enquiry.
Then now let us return to our old division of likeness-making
and phantastic. When we were going to place the Sophist in one of
them, a doubt arose whether there could be such a thing as an ap-
pearance, because there was no such thing as falsehood. At length
falsehood has been discovered by us to exist, and we have acknowl-
edged that the Sophist is to be found in the class of imitators. All art

33
Sophist

was divided originally by us into two branches—productive and

acquisitive. And now we may divide both on a different principle
into the creations or imitations which are of human, and those which
are of divine, origin. For we must admit that the world and our-
selves and the animals did not come into existence by chance, or the
spontaneous working of nature, but by divine reason and knowl-
edge. And there are not only divine creations but divine imitations,
such as apparitions and shadows and reflections, which are equally
the work of a divine mind. And there are human creations and hu-
man imitations too,—there is the actual house and the drawing of
it. Nor must we forget that image-making may be an imitation of
realities or an imitation of appearances, which last has been called
by us phantastic. And this phantastic may be again divided into
imitation by the help of instruments and impersonations. And the
latter may be either dissembling or unconscious, either with or with-
out knowledge. A man cannot imitate you, Theaetetus, without
knowing you, but he can imitate the form of justice or virtue if he
have a sentiment or opinion about them. Not being well provided
with names, the former I will venture to call the imitation of sci-
ence, and the latter the imitation of opinion.
The latter is our present concern, for the Sophist has no claims to
science or knowledge. Now the imitator, who has only opinion, may
be either the simple imitator, who thinks that he knows, or the dis-
sembler, who is conscious that he does not know, but disguises his
ignorance. And the last may be either a maker of long speeches, or of
shorter speeches which compel the person conversing to contradict
himself. The maker of longer speeches is the popular orator; the maker
of the shorter is the Sophist, whose art may be traced as being the

/contradictious
/dissembling
/without knowledge
/human and not divine
/juggling with words
/phantastic or unreal
/art of image-making.

34
 Plato

* * *

IN COMMENTING ON THE DIALOGUE in which Plato most nearly ap-

proaches the great modern master of metaphysics there are several points
which it will
be useful to consider, such as the unity of opposites, the conception of
the ideas as causes, and the relation of the Platonic and Hegelian dialec-
tic.
The unity of opposites was the crux of ancient thinkers in the age
of Plato: How could one thing be or become another? That sub-
stances have attributes was implied in common language; that heat
and cold, day and night, pass into one another was a matter of expe-
rience ‘on a level with the cobbler’s understanding’ (Theat.). But
how could philosophy explain the connexion of ideas, how justify
the passing of them into one another? The abstractions of one, other,
being, not-being, rest, motion, individual, universal, which succes-
sive generations of philosophers had recently discovered, seemed to
be beyond the reach of human thought, like stars shining in a dis-
tant heaven. They were the symbols of different schools of philoso-
phy: but in what relation did they stand to one another and to the
world of sense? It was hardly conceivable that one could be other, or
the same different. Yet without some reconciliation of these elemen-
tary ideas thought was impossible. There was no distinction be-
tween truth and falsehood, between the Sophist and the philoso-
pher. Everything could be predicated of everything, or nothing of
anything. To these difficulties Plato finds what to us appears to be the
answer of common sense—that Not-being is the relative or other of
Being, the defining and distinguishing principle, and that some ideas
combine with others, but not all with all. It is remarkable however
that he offers this obvious reply only as the result of a long and te-
dious enquiry; by a great effort he is able to look down as ‘from a
height’ on the ‘friends of the ideas’ as well as on the pre-Socratic phi-
losophies. Yet he is merely asserting principles which no one who
could be made to understand them would deny.
The Platonic unity of differences or opposites is the beginning of
the modern view that all knowledge is of relations; it also antici-
pates the doctrine of Spinoza that all determination is negation.

35
Sophist

Plato takes or gives so much of either of these theories as was neces-

sary or possible in the age in which he lived. In the Sophist, as in the
Cratylus, he is opposed to the Heracleitean flux and equally to the
Megarian and Cynic denial of predication, because he regards both
of them as making knowledge impossible. He does not assert that
everything is and is not, or that the same thing can be affected in
the same and in opposite ways at the same time and in respect of the
same part of itself. The law of contradiction is as clearly laid down
by him in the Republic, as by Aristotle in his Organon. Yet he is
aware that in the negative there is also a positive element, and that
oppositions may be only differences. And in the Parmenides he de-
duces the many from the one and Not-being from Being, and yet
shows that the many are included in the one, and that Not-being
returns to Being.
In several of the later dialogues Plato is occupied with the connexion
of the sciences, which in the Philebus he divides into two classes of
pure and applied, adding to them there as elsewhere (Phaedr., Crat.,
Republic, States.) a superintending science of dialectic. This is the
origin of Aristotle’s Architectonic, which seems, however, to have passed
into an imaginary science of essence, and no longer to retain any
relation to other branches of knowledge. Of such a science, whether
described as ‘philosophia prima,’ the science of ousia, logic or meta-
physics, philosophers have often dreamed. But even now the time has
not arrived when the anticipation of Plato can be realized. Though
many a thinker has framed a ‘hierarchy of the sciences,’ no one has as
yet found the higher science which arrays them in harmonious order,
giving to the organic and inorganic, to the physical and moral, their
respective limits, and showing how they all work together in the world
and in man.
Plato arranges in order the stages of knowledge and of existence.
They are the steps or grades by which he rises from sense and the
shadows of sense to the idea of beauty and good. Mind is in motion
as well as at rest (Soph.); and may be described as a dialectical progress
which passes from one limit or determination of thought to an-
other and back again to the first. This is the account of dialectic
given by Plato in the Sixth Book of the Republic, which regarded
under another aspect is the mysticism of the Symposium. He does

36
 Plato

not deny the existence of objects of sense, but according to him

they only receive their true meaning when they are incorporated in
a principle which is above them (Republic). In modern language
they might be said to come first in the order of experience, last in
the order of nature and reason. They are assumed, as he is fond of
repeating, upon the condition that they shall give an account of
themselves and that the truth of their existence shall be hereafter
proved. For philosophy must begin somewhere and may begin any-
where,—with outward objects, with statements of opinion, with
abstract principles. But objects of sense must lead us onward to the
ideas or universals which are contained in them; the statements of
opinion must be verified; the abstract principles must be filled up
and connected with one another. In Plato we find, as we might
expect, the germs of many thoughts which have been further devel-
oped by the genius of Spinoza and Hegel. But there is a difficulty in
separating the germ from the flower, or in drawing the line which
divides ancient from modern philosophy. Many coincidences which
occur in them are unconscious, seeming to show a natural tendency
in the human mind towards certain ideas and forms of thought.
And there are many speculations of Plato which would have passed
away unheeded, and their meaning, like that of some hieroglyphic,
would have remained undeciphered, unless two thousand years and
more afterwards an interpreter had arisen of a kindred spirit and of
the same intellectual family. For example, in the Sophist Plato be-
gins with the abstract and goes on to the concrete, not in the lower
sense of returning to outward objects, but to the Hegelian concrete
or unity of abstractions. In the intervening period hardly any im-
portance would have been attached to the question which is so full
of meaning to Plato and Hegel.
They differ however in their manner of regarding the question. For
Plato is answering a difficulty; he is seeking to justify the use of com-
mon language and of ordinary thought into which philosophy had
introduced a principle of doubt and dissolution. Whereas Hegel tries
to go beyond common thought, and to combine abstractions in a
higher unity: the ordinary mechanism of language and logic is carried
by him into another region in which all oppositions are absorbed and
all contradictions affirmed, only that they may be done away with.

37
Sophist

But Plato, unlike Hegel, nowhere bases his system on the unity of
opposites, although in the Parmenides he shows an Hegelian subtlety
in the analysis of one and Being.
It is difficult within the compass of a few pages to give even a faint
outline of the Hegelian dialectic. No philosophy which is worth
understanding can be understood in a moment; common sense will
not teach us metaphysics any more than mathematics. If all sciences
demand of us protracted study and attention, the highest of all can
hardly be matter of immediate intuition. Neither can we appreciate
a great system without yielding a half assent to it—like flies we are
caught in the spider’s web; and we can only judge of it truly when
we place ourselves at a distance from it. Of all philosophies
Hegelianism is the most obscure: and the difficulty inherent in the
subject is increased by the use of a technical language. The saying of
Socrates respecting the writings of Heracleitus—‘Noble is that which
I understand, and that which I do not understand may be as noble;
but the strength of a Delian diver is needed to swim through it’—
expresses the feeling with which the reader rises from the perusal of
Hegel. We may truly apply to him the words in which Plato de-
scribes the Pre-Socratic philosophers: ‘He went on his way rather
regardless of whether we understood him or not’; or, as he is re-
ported himself to have said of his own pupils: ‘There is only one of
you who understands me, and he does not understand me.’
Nevertheless the consideration of a few general aspects of the
Hegelian philosophy may help to dispel some errors and to awaken
an interest about it. (i) It is an ideal philosophy which, in popular
phraseology, maintains not matter but mind to be the truth of things,
and this not by a mere crude substitution of one word for another,
but by showing either of them to be the complement of the other.
Both are creations of thought, and the difference in kind which
seems to divide them may also be regarded as a difference of degree.
One is to the other as the real to the ideal, and both may be con-
ceived together under the higher form of the notion. (ii) Under
another aspect it views all the forms of sense and knowledge as stages
of thought which have always existed implicitly and unconsciously,
and to which the mind of the world, gradually disengaged from
sense, has become awakened. The present has been the past. The

38
 Plato

succession in time of human ideas is also the eternal ‘now’; it is

historical and also a divine ideal. The history of philosophy stripped
of personality and of the other accidents of time and place is gath-
ered up into philosophy, and again philosophy clothed in circum-
stance expands into history. (iii) Whether regarded as present or
past, under the form of time or of eternity, the spirit of dialectic is
always moving onwards from one determination of thought to an-
other, receiving each successive system of philosophy and subordi-
nating it to that which follows—impelled by an irresistible neces-
sity from one idea to another until the cycle of human thought and
existence is complete. It follows from this that all previous philoso-
phies which are worthy of the name are not mere opinions or specu-
lations, but stages or moments of thought which have a necessary
place in the world of mind. They are no longer the last word of
philosophy, for another and another has succeeded them, but they
still live and are mighty; in the language of the Greek poet, ‘There is
a great God in them, and he grows not old.’ (iv) This vast ideal
system is supposed to be based upon experience. At each step it pro-
fesses to carry with it the ‘witness of eyes and ears’ and of common
sense, as well as the internal evidence of its own consistency; it has a
place for every science, and affirms that no philosophy of a narrower
type is capable of comprehending all true facts.
The Hegelian dialectic may be also described as a movement from
the simple to the complex. Beginning with the generalizations of
sense, (1) passing through ideas of quality, quantity, measure, num-
ber, and the like, (2) ascending from presentations, that is pictorial
forms of sense, to representations in which the picture vanishes and
the essence is detached in thought from the outward form, (3) com-
bining the I and the not-I, or the subject and object, the natural
order of thought is at last found to include the leading ideas of the
sciences and to arrange them in relation to one another. Abstrac-
tions grow together and again become concrete in a new and higher
sense. They also admit of development from within their own
spheres. Everywhere there is a movement of attraction and repul-
sion going on—an attraction or repulsion of ideas of which the
physical phenomenon described under a similar name is a figure.
Freedom and necessity, mind and matter, the continuous and the

39
Sophist

discrete, cause and effect, are perpetually being severed from one
another in thought, only to be perpetually reunited. The finite and
infinite, the absolute and relative are not really opposed; the finite
and the negation of the finite are alike lost in a higher or positive
infinity, and the absolute is the sum or correlation of all relatives.
When this reconciliation of opposites is finally completed in all its
stages, the mind may come back again and review the things of
sense, the opinions of philosophers, the strife of theology and poli-
tics, without being disturbed by them. Whatever is, if not the very
best—and what is the best, who can tell?—is, at any rate, historical
and rational, suitable to its own age, unsuitable to any other. Nor
can any efforts of speculative thinkers or of soldiers and statesmen
materially quicken the ‘process of the suns.’
Hegel was quite sensible how great would be the difficulty of pre-
senting philosophy to mankind under the form of opposites. Most of
us live in the one-sided truth which the understanding offers to us,
and if occasionally we come across difficulties like the time-honoured
controversy of necessity and free-will, or the Eleatic puzzle of Achilles
and the tortoise, we relegate some of them to the sphere of mystery,
others to the book of riddles, and go on our way rejoicing. Most men
(like Aristotle) have been accustomed to regard a contradiction in
terms as the end of strife; to be told that contradiction is the life and
mainspring of the intellectual world is indeed a paradox to them.
Every abstraction is at first the enemy of every other, yet they are
linked together, each with all, in the chain of Being. The struggle for
existence is not confined to the animals, but appears in the kingdom
of thought. The divisions which arise in thought between the physi-
cal and moral and between the moral and intellectual, and the like,
are deepened and widened by the formal logic which elevates the
defects of the human faculties into Laws of Thought; they become a
part of the mind which makes them and is also made up of them.
Such distinctions become so familiar to us that we regard the thing
signified by them as absolutely fixed and defined. These are some of
the illusions from which Hegel delivers us by placing us above our-
selves, by teaching us to analyze the growth of ‘what we are pleased to
call our minds,’ by reverting to a time when our present distinctions
of thought and language had no existence.

40
 Plato

Of the great dislike and childish impatience of his system which

would be aroused among his opponents, he was fully aware, and
would often anticipate the jests which the rest of the world, ‘in the
superfluity of their wits,’ were likely to make upon him. Men are
annoyed at what puzzles them; they think what they cannot easily
understand to be full of danger. Many a sceptic has stood, as he
supposed, firmly rooted in the categories of the understanding which
Hegel resolves into their original nothingness. For, like Plato, he
‘leaves no stone unturned’ in the intellectual world. Nor can we
deny that he is unnecessarily difficult, or that his own mind, like
that of all metaphysicians, was too much under the dominion of his
system and unable to see beyond: or that the study of philosophy, if
made a serious business (compare Republic), involves grave results
to the mind and life of the student. For it may encumber him with-
out enlightening his path; and it may weaken his natural faculties of
thought and expression without increasing his philosophical power.
The mind easily becomes entangled among abstractions, and loses
hold of facts. The glass which is adapted to distant objects takes
away the vision of what is near and present to us.
To Hegel, as to the ancient Greek thinkers, philosophy was a reli-
gion, a principle of life as well as of knowledge, like the idea of good
in the Sixth Book of the Republic, a cause as well as an effect, the
source of growth as well as of light. In forms of thought which by
most of us are regarded as mere categories, he saw or thought that
he saw a gradual revelation of the Divine Being. He would have
been said by his opponents to have confused God with the history
of philosophy, and to have been incapable of distinguishing ideas
from facts. And certainly we can scarcely understand how a deep
thinker like Hegel could have hoped to revive or supplant the old
traditional faith by an unintelligible abstraction: or how he could
have imagined that philosophy consisted only or chiefly in the cat-
egories of logic. For abstractions, though combined by him in the
notion, seem to be never really concrete; they are a metaphysical
anatomy, not a living and thinking substance. Though we are re-
minded by him again and again that we are gathering up the world
in ideas, we feel after all that we have not really spanned the gulf
which separates phainomena from onta.

41
Sophist

Having in view some of these difficulties, he seeks—and we may

follow his example—to make the understanding of his system easier
(a) by illustrations, and (b) by pointing out the coincidence of the
speculative idea and the historical order of thought.
(a) If we ask how opposites can coexist, we are told that many
different qualities inhere in a flower or a tree or in any other con-
crete object, and that any conception of space or matter or time
involves the two contradictory attributes of divisibility and con-
tinuousness. We may ponder over the thought of number, remind-
ing ourselves that every unit both implies and denies the existence
of every other, and that the one is many—a sum of fractions, and
the many one—a sum of units. We may be reminded that in nature
there is a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force, a regulator as well
as a spring, a law of attraction as well as of repulsion. The way to the
West is the way also to the East; the north pole of the magnet can-
not be divided from the south pole; two minus signs make a plus in
Arithmetic and Algebra. Again, we may liken the successive layers
of thought to the deposits of geological strata which were once fluid
and are now solid, which were at one time uppermost in the series
and are now hidden in the earth; or to the successive rinds or barks
of trees which year by year pass inward; or to the ripple of water
which appears and reappears in an ever-widening circle. Or our at-
tention may be drawn to ideas which the moment we analyze them
involve a contradiction, such as ‘beginning’ or ‘becoming,’ or to the
opposite poles, as they are sometimes termed, of necessity and free-
dom, of idea and fact. We may be told to observe that every nega-
tive is a positive, that differences of kind are resolvable into differ-
ences of degree, and that differences of degree may be heightened
into differences of kind. We may remember the common remark
that there is much to be said on both sides of a question. We may be
recommended to look within and to explain how opposite ideas can
coexist in our own minds; and we may be told to imagine the minds
of all mankind as one mind in which the true ideas of all ages and
countries inhere. In our conception of God in his relation to man
or of any union of the divine and human nature, a contradiction
appears to be unavoidable. Is not the reconciliation of mind and
body a necessity, not only of speculation but of practical life? Re-

42
 Plato

flections such as these will furnish the best preparation and give the
right attitude of mind for understanding the Hegelian philosophy.
(b) Hegel’s treatment of the early Greek thinkers affords the readiest
illustration of his meaning in conceiving all philosophy under the
form of opposites. The first abstraction is to him the beginning of
thought. Hitherto there had only existed a tumultuous chaos of
mythological fancy, but when Thales said ‘All is water’ a new era
began to dawn upon the world. Man was seeking to grasp the uni-
verse under a single form which was at first simply a material ele-
ment, the most equable and colourless and universal which could
be found. But soon the human mind became dissatisfied with the
emblem, and after ringing the changes on one element after an-
other, demanded a more abstract and perfect conception, such as
one or Being, which was absolutely at rest. But the positive had its
negative, the conception of Being involved Not-being, the concep-
tion of one, many, the conception of a whole, parts. Then the pen-
dulum swung to the other side, from rest to motion, from
Xenophanes to Heracleitus. The opposition of Being and Not-be-
ing projected into space became the atoms and void of Leucippus
and Democritus. Until the Atomists, the abstraction of the indi-
vidual did not exist; in the philosophy of Anaxagoras the idea of
mind, whether human or divine, was beginning to be realized. The
pendulum gave another swing, from the individual to the universal,
from the object to the subject. The Sophist first uttered the word
‘Man is the measure of all things,’ which Socrates presented in a
new form as the study of ethics. Once more we return from mind to
the object of mind, which is knowledge, and out of knowledge the
various degrees or kinds of knowledge more or less abstract were
gradually developed. The threefold division of logic, physic, and
ethics, foreshadowed in Plato, was finally established by Aristotle
and the Stoics. Thus, according to Hegel, in the course of about
two centuries by a process of antagonism and negation the leading
thoughts of philosophy were evolved.
There is nothing like this progress of opposites in Plato, who in
the Symposium denies the possibility of reconciliation until the
opposition has passed away. In his own words, there is an absurdity
in supposing that ‘harmony is discord; for in reality harmony con-

43
Sophist

sists of notes of a higher and lower pitch which disagreed once, but
are now reconciled by the art of music’ (Symp.). He does indeed
describe objects of sense as regarded by us sometimes from one point
of view and sometimes from another. As he says at the end of the
Fifth Book of the Republic, ‘There is nothing light which is not
heavy, or great which is not small.’ And he extends this relativity to
the conceptions of just and good, as well as to great and small. In
like manner he acknowledges that the same number may be more
or less in relation to other numbers without any increase or diminu-
tion (Theat.). But the perplexity only arises out of the confusion of
the human faculties; the art of measuring shows us what is truly
great and truly small. Though the just and good in particular in-
stances may vary, the idea of good is eternal and unchangeable. And
the idea of good is the source of knowledge and also of Being, in
which all the stages of sense and knowledge are gathered up and
from being hypotheses become realities.
Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now consider the value
of this invention of Hegel. There can be no question of the impor-
tance of showing that two contraries or contradictories may in cer-
tain cases be both true. The silliness of the so-called laws of thought
(‘All A = A,’ or, in the negative form, ‘Nothing can at the same time
be both A, and not A’) has been well exposed by Hegel himself
(Wallace’s Hegel), who remarks that ‘the form of the maxim is vir-
tually self-contradictory, for a proposition implies a distinction be-
tween subject and predicate, whereas the maxim of identity, as it is
called, A = A, does not fulfil what its form requires. Nor does any
mind ever think or form conceptions in accordance with this law,
nor does any existence conform to it.’ Wisdom of this sort is well
parodied in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, ‘Clown: For as the old her-
mit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a
niece of King Gorboduc, “That that is is”...for what is “that” but
“that,” and “is” but “is”?’). Unless we are willing to admit that two
contradictories may be true, many questions which lie at the thresh-
old of mathematics and of morals will be insoluble puzzles to us.
The influence of opposites is felt in practical life. The understand-
ing sees one side of a question only—the common sense of man-
kind joins one of two parties in politics, in religion, in philosophy.

44
 Plato

Yet, as everybody knows, truth is not wholly the possession of ei-

ther. But the characters of men are one-sided and accept this or that
aspect of the truth. The understanding is strong in a single abstract
principle and with this lever moves mankind. Few attain to a bal-
ance of principles or recognize truly how in all human things there
is a thesis and antithesis, a law of action and of reaction. In politics
we require order as well as liberty, and have to consider the propor-
tions in which under given circumstances they may be safely com-
bined. In religion there is a tendency to lose sight of morality, to
separate goodness from the love of truth, to worship God without
attempting to know him. In philosophy again there are two oppo-
site principles, of immediate experience and of those general or a
priori truths which are supposed to transcend experience. But the
common sense or common opinion of mankind is incapable of ap-
prehending these opposite sides or views—men are determined by
their natural bent to one or other of them; they go straight on for a
time in a single line, and may be many things by turns but not at
once.
Hence the importance of familiarizing the mind with forms which
will assist us in conceiving or expressing the complex or contrary as-
pects of life and nature. The danger is that they may be too much for us,
and obscure our appreciation of facts. As the complexity of mechanics
cannot be understood without mathematics, so neither can the many-
sidedness of the mental and moral world be truly apprehended without
the assistance of new forms of thought. One of these forms is the unity
of opposites. Abstractions have a great power over us, but they are apt
to be partial and one-sided, and only when modified by other abstrac-
tions do they make an approach to the truth. Many a man has become
a fatalist because he has fallen under the dominion of a single idea. He
says to himself, for example, that he must be either free or necessary—
he cannot be both. Thus in the ancient world whole schools of philoso-
phy passed away in the vain attempt to solve the problem of the conti-
nuity or divisibility of matter. And in comparatively modern times,
though in the spirit of an ancient philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, feeling
a similar perplexity, is inclined to deny the truth of infinitesimals in
mathematics. Many difficulties arise in practical religion from the im-
possibility of conceiving body and mind at once and in adjusting their

45
Sophist

movements to one another. There is a border ground between them

which seems to belong to both; and there is as much difficulty in con-
ceiving the body without the soul as the soul without the body. To the
‘either’ and ‘or’ philosophy (‘Everything is either A or not A’) should at
least be added the clause ‘or neither,’ ‘or both.’ The double form makes
reflection easier and more conformable to experience, and also more
comprehensive. But in order to avoid paradox and the danger of giving
offence to the unmetaphysical part of mankind, we may speak of it as
due to the imperfection of language or the limitation of human facul-
ties. It is nevertheless a discovery which, in Platonic language, may be
termed a ‘most gracious aid to thought.’
The doctrine of opposite moments of thought or of progression
by antagonism, further assists us in framing a scheme or system of
the sciences. The negation of one gives birth to another of them.
The double notions are the joints which hold them together. The
simple is developed into the complex, the complex returns again
into the simple. Beginning with the highest notion of mind or
thought, we may descend by a series of negations to the first gener-
alizations of sense. Or again we may begin with the simplest ele-
ments of sense and proceed upwards to the highest being or thought.
Metaphysic is the negation or absorption of physiology—physiol-
ogy of chemistry—chemistry of mechanical philosophy. Similarly
in mechanics, when we can no further go we arrive at chemistry—
when chemistry becomes organic we arrive at physiology: when we
pass from the outward and animal to the inward nature of man we
arrive at moral and metaphysical philosophy. These sciences have
each of them their own methods and are pursued independently of
one another. But to the mind of the thinker they are all one—latent
in one another—developed out of one another.
This method of opposites has supplied new instruments of thought
for the solution of metaphysical problems, and has thrown down many
of the walls within which the human mind was confined. Formerly
when philosophers arrived at the infinite and absolute, they seemed
to be lost in a region beyond human comprehension. But Hegel has
shown that the absolute and infinite are no more true than the rela-
tive and finite, and that they must alike be negatived before we arrive
at a true absolute or a true infinite. The conceptions of the infinite

46
 Plato

and absolute as ordinarily understood are tiresome because they are

unmeaning, but there is no peculiar sanctity or mystery in them. We
might as well make an infinitesimal series of fractions or a perpetually
recurring decimal the object of our worship. They are the widest and
also the thinnest of human ideas, or, in the language of logicians, they
have the greatest extension and the least comprehension. Of all words
they may be truly said to be the most inflated with a false meaning.
They have been handed down from one philosopher to another until
they have acquired a religious character. They seem also to derive a
sacredness from their association with the Divine Being. Yet they are
the poorest of the predicates under which we describe him—signify-
ing no more than this, that he is not finite, that he is not relative, and
tending to obscure his higher attributes of wisdom, goodness, truth.
The system of Hegel frees the mind from the dominion of ab-
stract ideas. We acknowledge his originality, and some of us delight
to wander in the mazes of thought which he has opened to us. For
Hegel has found admirers in England and Scotland when his popu-
larity in Germany has departed, and he, like the philosophers whom
he criticizes, is of the past. No other thinker has ever dissected the
human mind with equal patience and minuteness. He has light-
ened the burden of thought because he has shown us that the chains
which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to place ourselves
not only above the opinions of men but above their modes of think-
ing, is a great height of philosophy. This dearly obtained freedom,
however, we are not disposed to part with, or to allow him to build
up in a new form the ‘beggarly elements’ of scholastic logic which
he has thrown down. So far as they are aids to reflection and expres-
sion, forms of thought are useful, but no further:—we may easily
have too many of them.
And when we are asked to believe the Hegelian to be the sole or
universal logic, we naturally reply that there are other ways in which
our ideas may be connected. The triplets of Hegel, the division into
being, essence, and notion, are not the only or necessary modes in
which the world of thought can be conceived. There may be an
evolution by degrees as well as by opposites. The word ‘continuity’
suggests the possibility of resolving all differences into differences
of quantity. Again, the opposites themselves may vary from the least

47
Sophist

degree of diversity up to contradictory opposition. They are not like

numbers and figures, always and everywhere of the same value. And
therefore the edifice which is constructed out of them has merely an
imaginary symmetry, and is really irregular and out of proportion.
The spirit of Hegelian criticism should be applied to his own sys-
tem, and the terms Being, Not-being, existence, essence, notion,
and the like challenged and defined. For if Hegel introduces a great
many distinctions, he obliterates a great many others by the help of
the universal solvent ‘is not,’ which appears to be the simplest of
negations, and yet admits of several meanings. Neither are we able
to follow him in the play of metaphysical fancy which conducts
him from one determination of thought to another. But we begin
to suspect that this vast system is not God within us, or God imma-
nent in the world, and may be only the invention of an individual
brain. The ‘beyond’ is always coming back upon us however often
we expel it. We do not easily believe that we have within the com-
pass of the mind the form of universal knowledge. We rather incline
to think that the method of knowledge is inseparable from actual
knowledge, and wait to see what new forms may be developed out
of our increasing experience and observation of man and nature.
We are conscious of a Being who is without us as well as within us.
Even if inclined to Pantheism we are unwilling to imagine that the
meagre categories of the understanding, however ingeniously ar-
ranged or displayed, are the image of God;—that what all religions
were seeking after from the beginning was the Hegelian philosophy
which has been revealed in the latter days. The great metaphysician,
like a prophet of old, was naturally inclined to believe that his own
thoughts were divine realities. We may almost say that whatever
came into his head seemed to him to be a necessary truth. He never
appears to have criticized himself, or to have subjected his own ideas
to the process of analysis which he applies to every other philoso-
pher.
Hegel would have insisted that his philosophy should be accepted
as a whole or not at all. He would have urged that the parts derived
their meaning from one another and from the whole. He thought
that he had supplied an outline large enough to contain all future
knowledge, and a method to which all future philosophies must

48
 Plato

conform. His metaphysical genius is especially shown in the con-

struction of the categories—a work which was only begun by Kant,
and elaborated to the utmost by himself. But is it really true that the
part has no meaning when separated from the whole, or that knowl-
edge to be knowledge at all must be universal? Do all abstractions
shine only by the reflected light of other abstractions? May they not
also find a nearer explanation in their relation to phenomena? If
many of them are correlatives they are not all so, and the relations
which subsist between them vary from a mere association up to a
necessary connexion. Nor is it easy to determine how far the un-
known element affects the known, whether, for example, new dis-
coveries may not one day supersede our most elementary notions
about nature. To a certain extent all our knowledge is conditional
upon what may be known in future ages of the world. We must
admit this hypothetical element, which we cannot get rid of by an
assumption that we have already discovered the method to which
all philosophy must conform. Hegel is right in preferring the con-
crete to the abstract, in setting actuality before possibility, in ex-
cluding from the philosopher’s vocabulary the word ‘inconceivable.’
But he is too well satisfied with his own system ever to consider the
effect of what is unknown on the element which is known. To the
Hegelian all things are plain and clear, while he who is outside the
charmed circle is in the mire of ignorance and ‘logical impurity’: he
who is within is omniscient, or at least has all the elements of knowl-
edge under his hand.
Hegelianism may be said to be a transcendental defense of the
world as it is. There is no room for aspiration and no need of any:
‘What is actual is rational, what is rational is actual.’ But a good
man will not readily acquiesce in this aphorism. He knows of course
that all things proceed according to law whether for good or evil.
But when he sees the misery and ignorance of mankind he is con-
vinced that without any interruption of the uniformity of nature
the condition of the world may be indefinitely improved by human
effort. There is also an adaptation of persons to times and countries,
but this is very far from being the fulfillment of their higher na-
tures. The man of the seventeenth century is unfitted for the eigh-
teenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most

49
Sophist

of us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence.

But all higher minds are much more akin than they are different:
genius is of all ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excel-
lence than in mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankind—
Plato, Dante, Sir Thomas More—meet in a higher sphere above the
ordinary ways of men; they understand one another from afar, not-
withstanding the interval which separates them. They are ‘the spec-
tators of all time and of all existence;’ their works live for ever; and
there is nothing to prevent the force of their individuality breaking
through the uniformity which surrounds them. But such disturbers
of the order of thought Hegel is reluctant to acknowledge.
The doctrine of Hegel will to many seem the e xpression of an
indolent conservatism, and will at any rate be made an excuse for it.
The mind of the patriot rebels when he is told that the worst tyr-
anny and oppression has a natural fitness: he cannot be persuaded,
for example, that the conquest of Prussia by Napoleon I. was either
natural or necessary, or that any similar calamity befalling a nation
should be a matter of indifference to the poet or philosopher. We
may need such a philosophy or religion to console us under evils
which are irremediable, but we see that it is fatal to the higher life of
man. It seems to say to us, ‘The world is a vast system or machine
which can be conceived under the forms of logic, but in which no
single man can do any great good or any great harm. Even if it were
a thousand times worse than it is, it could be arranged in categories
and explained by philosophers. And what more do we want?’
The philosophy of Hegel appeals to an historical criterion: the
ideas of men have a succession in time as well as an order of thought.
But the assumption that there is a correspondence between the suc-
cession of ideas in history and the natural order of philosophy is
hardly true even of the beginnings of thought. And in later systems
forms of thought are too numerous and complex to admit of our
tracing in them a regular succession. They seem also to be in part
reflections of the past, and it is difficult to separate in them what is
original and what is borrowed. Doubtless they have a relation to
one another—the transition from Descartes to Spinoza or from
Locke to Berkeley is not a matter of chance, but it can hardly be
described as an alternation of opposites or figured to the mind by

50
 Plato

the vibrations of a pendulum. Even in Aristotle and Plato, rightly

understood, we cannot trace this law of action and reaction. They
are both idealists, although to the one the idea is actual and imma-
nent,—to the other only potential and transcendent, as Hegel him-
self has pointed out (Wallace’s Hegel). The true meaning of Aristotle
has been disguised from us by his own appeal to fact and the opin-
ions of mankind in his more popular works, and by the use made of
his writings in the Middle Ages. No book, except the Scriptures, has
been so much read, and so little understood. The Pre-Socratic phi-
losophies are simpler, and we may observe a progress in them; but is
there any regular succession? The ideas of Being, change, number,
seem to have sprung up contemporaneously in different parts of
Greece and we have no difficulty in constructing them out of one
another—we can see that the union of Being and Not-being gave
birth to the idea of change or Becoming and that one might be
another aspect of Being. Again, the Eleatics may be regarded as de-
veloping in one direction into the Megarian school, in the other
into the Atomists, but there is no necessary connection between
them. Nor is there any indication that the deficiency which was felt
in one school was supplemented or compensated by another. They
were all efforts to supply the want which the Greeks began to feel at
the beginning of the sixth century before Christ,—the want of ab-
stract ideas. Nor must we forget the uncertainty of chronology;—if,
as Aristotle says, there were Atomists before Leucippus, Eleatics be-
fore Xenophanes, and perhaps ‘patrons of the flux’ before Heracleitus,
Hegel’s order of thought in the history of philosophy would be as
much disarranged as his order of religious thought by recent discov-
eries in the history of religion.
Hegel is fond of repeating that all philosophies still live and that
the earlier are preserved in the later; they are refuted, and they are
not refuted, by those who succeed them. Once they reigned su-
preme, now they are subordinated to a power or idea greater or
more comprehensive than their own. The thoughts of Socrates and
Plato and Aristotle have certainly sunk deep into the mind of the
world, and have exercised an influence which will never pass away;
but can we say that they have the same meaning in modern and
ancient philosophy? Some of them, as for example the words ‘Be-

51
Sophist

ing,’ ‘essence,’ ‘matter,’ ‘form,’ either have become obsolete, or are

used in new senses, whereas ‘individual,’ ‘cause,’ ‘motive,’ have ac-
quired an exaggerated importance. Is the manner in which the logi-
cal determinations of thought, or ‘categories’ as they may be termed,
have been handed down to us, really different from that in which
other words have come down to us? Have they not been equally
subject to accident, and are they not often used by Hegel himself in
senses which would have been quite unintelligible to their original
inventors—as for example, when he speaks of the ‘ground’ of Leibnitz
(‘Everything has a sufficient ground’) as identical with his own doc-
trine of the ‘notion’ (Wallace’s Hegel), or the ‘Being and Not-being’
of Heracleitus as the same with his own ‘Becoming’?
As the historical order of thought has been adapted to the logical,
so we have reason for suspecting that the Hegelian logic has been in
some degree adapted to the order of thought in history. There is
unfortunately no criterion to which either of them can be subjected,
and not much forcing was required to bring either into near rela-
tions with the other. We may fairly doubt whether the division of
the first and second parts of logic in the Hegelian system has not
really arisen from a desire to make them accord with the first and
second stages of the early Greek philosophy. Is there any reason why
the conception of measure in the first part, which is formed by the
union of quality and quantity, should not have been equally placed
in the second division of mediate or reflected ideas? The more we
analyze them the less exact does the coincidence of philosophy and
the history of philosophy appear. Many terms which were used ab-
solutely in the beginning of philosophy, such as ‘Being,’ ‘matter,’
‘cause,’ and the like, became relative in the subsequent history of
thought. But Hegel employs some of them absolutely, some rela-
tively, seemingly without any principle and without any regard to
their original significance.
The divisions of the Hegelian logic bear a superficial resemblance
to the divisions of the scholastic logic. The first part answers to the
term, the second to the proposition, the third to the syllogism. These
are the grades of thought under which we conceive the world, first, in
the general terms of quality, quantity, measure; secondly, under the
relative forms of ‘ground’ and existence, substance and accidents, and

52
 Plato

the like; thirdly in syllogistic forms of the individual mediated with

the universal by the help of the particular. Of syllogisms there are
various kinds,—qualitative, quantitative, inductive, mechanical, te-
leological,—which are developed out of one another. But is there any
meaning in reintroducing the forms of the old logic? Who ever thinks
of the world as a syllogism? What connexion is there between the
proposition and our ideas of reciprocity, cause and effect, and similar
relations? It is difficult enough to conceive all the powers of nature
and mind gathered up in one. The difficulty is greatly increased when
the new is confused with the old, and the common logic is the
Procrustes’ bed into which they are forced.
The Hegelian philosophy claims, as we have seen, to be based
upon experience: it abrogates the distinction of a priori and a poste-
riori truth. It also acknowledges that many differences of kind are
resolvable into differences of degree. It is familiar with the terms
‘evolution,’ ‘development,’ and the like. Yet it can hardly be said to
have considered the forms of thought which are best adapted for
the expression of facts. It has never applied the categories to experi-
ence; it has not defined the differences in our ideas of opposition, or
development, or cause and effect, in the different sciences which
make use of these terms. It rests on a knowledge which is not the
result of exact or serious enquiry, but is floating in the air; the mind
has been imperceptibly informed of some of the methods required
in the sciences. Hegel boasts that the movement of dialectic is at
once necessary and spontaneous: in reality it goes beyond experi-
ence and is unverified by it. Further, the Hegelian philosophy, while
giving us the power of thinking a great deal more than we are able
to fill up, seems to be wanting in some determinations of thought
which we require. We cannot say that physical science, which at
present occupies so large a share of popular attention, has been made
easier or more intelligible by the distinctions of Hegel. Nor can we
deny that he has sometimes interpreted physics by metaphysics, and
confused his own philosophical fancies with the laws of nature. The
very freedom of the movement is not without suspicion, seeming to
imply a state of the human mind which has entirely lost sight of
facts. Nor can the necessity which is attributed to it be very strin-
gent, seeing that the successive categories or determinations of

53
Sophist

thought in different parts of his writings are arranged by the phi-

losopher in different ways. What is termed necessary evolution seems
to be only the order in which a succession of ideas presented them-
selves to the mind of Hegel at a particular time.
The nomenclature of Hegel has been made by himself out of the
language of common life. He uses a few words only which are bor-
rowed from his predecessors, or from the Greek philosophy, and
these generally in a sense peculiar to himself. The first stage of his
philosophy answers to the word ‘is,’ the second to the word ‘has
been,’ the third to the words ‘has been’ and ‘is’ combined. In other
words, the first sphere is immediate, the second mediated by reflec-
tion, the third or highest returns into the first, and is both mediate
and immediate. As Luther’s Bible was written in the language of the
common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his
philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic Ger-
man words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been
successful. First because such words as ‘in sich seyn,’ ‘an sich seyn,’
‘an und fur sich seyn,’ though the simplest combinations of nouns
and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate explanation. The sim-
plicity of the words contrasts with the hardness of their meaning.
Secondly, the use of technical phraseology necessarily separates phi-
losophy from general literature; the student has to learn a new lan-
guage of uncertain meaning which he with difficulty remembers.
No former philosopher had ever carried the use of technical terms
to the same extent as Hegel. The language of Plato or even of Aristotle
is but slightly removed from that of common life, and was intro-
duced naturally by a series of thinkers: the language of the scholas-
tic logic has become technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the
vernacular Latin of priests and students. The higher spirit of phi-
losophy, the spirit of Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian
use of language as mechanical and technical.
Hegel is fond of etymologies and often seems to trifle with words.
He gives etymologies which are bad, and never considers that the
meaning of a word may have nothing to do with its derivation. He
lived before the days of Comparative Philology or of Comparative
Mythology and Religion, which would have opened a new world to
him. He makes no allowance for the element of chance either in

54
 Plato

language or thought; and perhaps there is no greater defect in his

system than the want of a sound theory of language. He speaks as if
thought, instead of being identical with language, was wholly inde-
pendent of it. It is not the actual growth of the mind, but the imagi-
nary growth of the Hegelian system, which is attractive to him.
Neither are we able to say why of the common forms of thought
some are rejected by him, while others have an undue prominence
given to them. Some of them, such as ‘ground’ and ‘existence,’ have
hardly any basis either in language or philosophy, while others, such
as ‘cause’ and ‘effect,’ are but slightly considered. All abstractions
are supposed by Hegel to derive their meaning from one another.
This is true of some, but not of all, and in different degrees. There is
an explanation of abstractions by the phenomena which they repre-
sent, as well as by their relation to other abstractions. If the knowl-
edge of all were necessary to the knowledge of any one of them, the
mind would sink under the load of thought. Again, in every process
of reflection we seem to require a standing ground, and in the at-
tempt to obtain a complete analysis we lose all fixedness. If, for
example, the mind is viewed as the complex of ideas, or the differ-
ence between things and persons denied, such an analysis may be
justified from the point of view of Hegel: but we shall find that in
the attempt to criticize thought we have lost the power of thinking,
and, like the Heracliteans of old, have no words in which our mean-
ing can be expressed. Such an analysis may be of value as a correc-
tive of popular language or thought, but should still allow us to
retain the fundamental distinctions of philosophy.
In the Hegelian system ideas supersede persons. The world of
thought, though sometimes described as Spirit or ‘Geist,’ is really
impersonal. The minds of men are to be regarded as one mind, or
more correctly as a succession of ideas. Any comprehensive view of
the world must necessarily be general, and there may be a use with
a view to comprehensiveness in dropping individuals and their lives
and actions. In all things, if we leave out details, a certain degree of
order begins to appear; at any rate we can make an order which,
with a little exaggeration or disproportion in some of the parts, will
cover the whole field of philosophy. But are we therefore justified in
saying that ideas are the causes of the great movement of the world

55
Sophist

rather than the personalities which conceived them? The great man
is the expression of his time, and there may be peculiar difficulties
in his age which he cannot overcome. He may be out of harmony
with his circumstances, too early or too late, and then all his thoughts
perish; his genius passes away unknown. But not therefore is he to
be regarded as a mere waif or stray in human history, any more than
he is the mere creature or expression of the age in which he lives.
His ideas are inseparable from himself, and would have been noth-
ing without him. Through a thousand personal influences they have
been brought home to the minds of others. He starts from anteced-
ents, but he is great in proportion as he disengages himself from
them or absorbs himself in them. Moreover the types of greatness
differ; while one man is the expression of the influences of his age,
another is in antagonism to them. One man is borne on the surface
of the water; another is carried forward by the current which flows
beneath. The character of an individual, whether he be indepen-
dent of circumstances or not, inspires others quite as much as his
words. What is the teaching of Socrates apart from his personal
history, or the doctrines of Christ apart from the Divine life in which
they are embodied? Has not Hegel himself delineated the greatness
of the life of Christ as consisting in his ‘Schicksalslosigkeit’ or inde-
pendence of the destiny of his race? Do not persons become ideas,
and is there any distinction between them? Take away the five great-
est legislators, the five greatest warriors, the five greatest poets, the
five greatest founders or teachers of a religion, the five greatest phi-
losophers, the five greatest inventors,—where would have been all
that we most value in knowledge or in life? And can that be a true
theory of the history of philosophy which, in Hegel’s own language,
‘does not allow the individual to have his right’?
Once more, while we readily admit that the world is relative to
the mind, and the mind to the world, and that we must suppose a
common or correlative growth in them, we shrink from saying
that this complex nature can contain, even in outline, all the end-
less forms of Being and knowledge. Are we not ‘seeking the living
among the dead’ and dignifying a mere logical skeleton with the
name of philosophy and almost of God? When we look far away
into the primeval sources of thought and belief, do we suppose

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 Plato

that the mere accident of our being the heirs of the Greek philoso-
phers can give us a right to set ourselves up as having the true and
only standard of reason in the world? Or when we contemplate
the infinite worlds in the expanse of heaven can we imagine that a
few meagre categories derived from language and invented by the
genius of one or two great thinkers contain the secret of the uni-
verse? Or, having regard to the ages during which the human race
may yet endure, do we suppose that we can anticipate the propor-
tions human knowledge may attain even within the short space of
one or two thousand years?
Again, we have a difficulty in understanding how ideas can be
causes, which to us seems to be as much a figure of speech as the old
notion of a creator artist, ‘who makes the world by the help of the
demigods’ (Plato, Tim.), or with ‘a golden pair of compasses’ mea-
sures out the circumference of the universe (Milton, P.L.). We can
understand how the idea in the mind of an inventor is the cause of
the work which is produced by it; and we can dimly imagine how
this universal frame may be animated by a divine intelligence. But
we cannot conceive how all the thoughts of men that ever were,
which are themselves subject to so many external conditions of cli-
mate, country, and the like, even if regarded as the single thought of
a Divine Being, can be supposed to have made the world. We ap-
pear to be only wrapping up ourselves in our own conceits—to be
confusing cause and effect—to be losing the distinction between
reflection and action, between the human and divine.
These are some of the doubts and suspicions which arise in the
mind of a student of Hegel, when, after living for a time within the
charmed circle, he removes to a little distance and looks back upon
what he has learnt, from the vantage-ground of history and experi-
ence. The enthusiasm of his youth has passed away, the authority of
the master no longer retains a hold upon him. But he does not
regret the time spent in the study of him. He finds that he has
received from him a real enlargement of mind, and much of the
true spirit of philosophy, even when he has ceased to believe in him.
He returns again and again to his writings as to the recollections of
a first love, not undeserving of his admiration still. Perhaps if he
were asked how he can admire without believing, or what value he

57
Sophist

can attribute to what he knows to be erroneous, he might answer in

some such manner as the following:—
1. That in Hegel he finds glimpses of the genius of the poet and of
the common sense of the man of the world. His system is not cast in
a poetic form, but neither has all this load of logic extinguished in
him the feeling of poetry. He is the true countryman of his contem-
poraries Goethe and Schiller. Many fine expressions are scattered
up and down in his writings, as when he tells us that ‘the Crusaders
went to the Sepulchre but found it empty.’ He delights to find ves-
tiges of his own philosophy in the older German mystics. And though
he can be scarcely said to have mixed much in the affairs of men,
for, as his biographer tells us, ‘he lived for thirty years in a single
room,’ yet he is far from being ignorant of the world. No one can
read his writings without acquiring an insight into life. He loves to
touch with the spear of logic the follies and self- deceptions of man-
kind, and make them appear in their natural form, stripped of the
disguises of language and custom. He will not allow men to defend
themselves by an appeal to one-sided or abstract principles. In this
age of reason any one can too easily find a reason for doing what he
likes (Wallace). He is suspicious of a distinction which is often made
between a person’s character and his conduct. His spirit is the oppo-
site of that of Jesuitism or casuistry (Wallace). He affords an ex-
ample of a remark which has been often made, that in order to
know the world it is not necessary to have had a great experience of
it.
2. Hegel, if not the greatest philosopher, is certainly the greatest
critic of philosophy who ever lived. No one else has equally mas-
tered the opinions of his predecessors or traced the connexion of
them in the same manner. No one has equally raised the human
mind above the trivialities of the common logic and the
unmeaningness of ‘mere’ abstractions, and above imaginary possi-
bilities, which, as he truly says, have no place in philosophy. No one
has won so much for the kingdom of ideas. Whatever may be thought
of his own system it will hardly be denied that he has overthrown
Locke, Kant, Hume, and the so-called philosophy of common sense.
He shows us that only by the study of metaphysics can we get rid of
metaphysics, and that those who are in theory most opposed to

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 Plato

them are in fact most entirely and hopelessly enslaved by them: ‘Die
reinen Physiker sind nur die Thiere.’ The disciple of Hegel will hardly
become the slave of any other system-maker. What Bacon seems to
promise him he will find realized in the great German thinker, an
emancipation nearly complete from the influences of the scholastic
logic.
3. Many of those who are least disposed to become the votaries of
Hegelianism nevertheless recognize in his system a new logic supplying a
variety of instruments and methods hitherto unemployed. We may not be
able to agree with him in assimilating the natural order of human thought
with the history of philosophy, and still less in identifying both with the
divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge that the great thinker has
thrown a light on many parts of human knowledge, and has solved many
difficulties. We cannot receive his doctrine of opposites as the last word of
philosophy, but still we may regard it as a very important contribution to
logic. We cannot affirm that words have no meaning when taken out of
their connexion in the history of thought. But we recognize that their meaning
is to a great extent due to association, and to their correlation with one
another. We see the advantage of viewing in the concrete what man-
kind regard only in the abstract. There is much to be said for his faith or
conviction, that God is immanent in the world,—within the sphere of
the human mind, and not beyond it. It was natural that he himself, like
a prophet of old, should regard the philosophy which he had invented
as the voice of God in man. But this by no means implies that he
conceived himself as creating God in thought. He was the servant of his
own ideas and not the master of them. The philosophy of history and
the history of philosophy may be almost said to have been discovered
by him. He has done more to explain Greek thought than all other
writers put together. Many ideas of development, evolution, reciproc-
ity, which have become the symbols of another school of thinkers may
be traced to his speculations. In the theology and philosophy of En-
gland as well as of Germany, and also in the lighter literature of both
countries, there are always appearing ‘fragments of the great banquet’ of
Hegel.

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Sophist

SOPHIST
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:

Theodorus, Theaetetus, Socrates.
An Eleatic Stranger, whom Theodorus and Theaetetus bring with
them.
The younger Socrates, who is a silent auditor.

THEODORUS: Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement of

yesterday; and we bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is a dis-
ciple of Parmenides and Zeno, and a true philosopher.

SOCRATES: Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in

the disguise of a stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and espe-
cially the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and
visit the good and evil among men. And may not your companion be
one of those higher powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to
spy out our weakness in argument, and to cross-examine us?

THEODORUS: Nay, Socrates, he is not one of the disputatious

sort—he is too good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at
all; but divine he certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to
all philosophers.

SOCRATES: Capital, my friend! and I may add that they are almost as
hard to be discerned as the gods. For the true philosophers, and such as

60
 Plato

are not merely made up for the occasion, appear in various forms un-
recognized by the ignorance of men, and they ‘hover about cities,’ as
Homer declares, looking from above upon human life; and some think
nothing of them, and others can never think enough; and sometimes
they appear as statesmen, and sometimes as sophists; and then, again,
to many they seem to be no better than madmen. I should like to ask
our Eleatic friend, if he would tell us, what is thought about them in
Italy, and to whom the terms are applied.

THEODORUS: What terms?

SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher.

THEODORUS: What is your difficulty about them, and what made

you ask?

SOCRATES: I want to know whether by his countrymen they are

regarded as one or two; or do they, as the names are three, distin-
guish also three kinds, and assign one to each name?

THEODORUS: I dare say that the Stranger will not object to dis-
cuss the question. What do you say, Stranger?

STRANGER: I am far from objecting, Theodorus, nor have I any

difficulty in replying that by us they are regarded as three. But to
define precisely the nature of each of them is by no means a slight or
easy task.

THEODORUS: You have happened to light, Socrates, almost on

the very question which we were asking our friend before we came
hither, and he excused himself to us, as he does now to you; al-
though he admitted that the matter had been fully discussed, and
that he remembered the answer.

SOCRATES: Then do not, Stranger, deny us the first favour which

we ask of you: I am sure that you will not, and therefore I shall only
beg of you to say whether you like and are accustomed to make a

61
Sophist

long oration on a subject which you want to explain to another, or

to proceed by the method of question and answer. I remember hear-
ing a very noble discussion in which Parmenides employed the lat-
ter of the two methods, when I was a young man, and he was far
advanced in years. (Compare Parm.)

STRANGER: I prefer to talk with another when he responds pleas-

antly, and is light in hand; if not, I would rather have my own say.

SOCRATES: Any one of the present company will respond kindly

to you, and you can choose whom you like of them; I should rec-
ommend you to take a young person—Theaetetus, for example—
unless you have a preference for some one else.

STRANGER: I feel ashamed, Socrates, being a new-comer into your

society, instead of talking a little and hearing others talk, to be spin-
ning out a long soliloquy or address, as if I wanted to show off. For
the true answer will certainly be a very long one, a great deal longer
than might be expected from such a short and simple question. At
the same time, I fear that I may seem rude and ungracious if I refuse
your courteous request, especially after what you have said. For I
certainly cannot object to your proposal, that Theaetetus should
respond, having already conversed with him myself, and being rec-
ommended by you to take him.

THEAETETUS: But are you sure, Stranger, that this will be quite
so acceptable to the rest of the company as Socrates imagines?

STRANGER: You hear them applauding, Theaetetus; after that,

there is nothing more to be said. Well then, I am to argue with you,
and if you tire of the argument, you may complain of your friends
and not of me.

THEAETETUS: I do not think that I shall tire, and if I do, I shall

get my friend here, young Socrates, the namesake of the elder
Socrates, to help; he is about my own age, and my partner at the
gymnasium, and is constantly accustomed to work with me.

62
 Plato

STRANGER: Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as
we proceed. Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire
into the nature of the Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to
make out what he is and bring him to light in a discussion; for at
present we are only agreed about the name, but of the thing to
which we both apply the name possibly you have one notion and I
another; whereas we ought always to come to an understanding
about the thing itself in terms of a definition, and not merely about
the name minus the definition. Now the tribe of Sophists which we
are investigating is not easily caught or defined; and the world has
long ago agreed, that if great subjects are to be adequately treated,
they must be studied in the lesser and easier instances of them be-
fore we proceed to the greatest of all. And as I know that the tribe of
Sophists is troublesome and hard to be caught, I should recom-
mend that we practise beforehand the method which is to be ap-
plied to him on some simple and smaller thing, unless you can sug-
gest a better way.

THEAETETUS: Indeed I cannot.

STRANGER: Then suppose that we work out some lesser example

which will be a pattern of the greater?

THEAETETUS: Good.

STRANGER: What is there which is well known and not great,

and is yet as susceptible of definition as any larger thing? Shall I say
an angler? He is familiar to all of us, and not a very interesting or
important person.

THEAETETUS: He is not.

STRANGER: Yet I suspect that he will furnish us with the sort of

definition and line of enquiry which we want.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

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Sophist

STRANGER: Let us begin by asking whether he is a man having

art or not having art, but some other power.

THEAETETUS: He is clearly a man of art.

STRANGER: And of arts there are two kinds?

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: There is agriculture, and the tending of mortal crea-

tures, and the art of constructing or moulding vessels, and there is the
art of imitation—all these may be appropriately called by a single name.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean? And what is the name?

STRANGER: He who brings into existence something that did not

exist before is said to be a producer, and that which is brought into
existence is said to be produced.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And all the arts which were just now mentioned are
characterized by this power of producing?

THEAETETUS: They are.

STRANGER: Then let us sum them up under the name of produc-

tive or creative art.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: Next follows the whole class of learning and cognition;

then comes trade, fighting, hunting. And since none of these produces
anything, but is only engaged in conquering by word or deed, or in pre-
venting others from conquering, things which exist and have been al-
ready produced—in each and all of these branches there appears to be an
art which may be called acquisitive.

64
 Plato

THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the proper name.

STRANGER: Seeing, then, that all arts are either acquisitive or cre-
ative, in which class shall we place the art of the angler?

THEAETETUS: Clearly in the acquisitive class.

STRANGER: And the acquisitive may be subdivided into two parts:

there is exchange, which is voluntary and is effected by gifts, hire,
purchase; and the other part of acquisitive, which takes by force of
word or deed, may be termed conquest?

THEAETETUS: That is implied in what has been said.

STRANGER: And may not conquest be again subdivided?

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: Open force may be called fighting, and secret force

may have the general name of hunting?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And there is no reason why the art of hunting should

not be further divided.

THEAETETUS: How would you make the division?

STRANGER: Into the hunting of living and of lifeless prey.

THEAETETUS: Yes, if both kinds exist.

STRANGER: Of course they exist; but the hunting after lifeless

things having no special name, except some sorts of diving, and
other small matters, may be omitted; the hunting after living things
may be called animal hunting.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And animal hunting may be truly said to have two

divisions, land-animal hunting, which has many kinds and names,
and water-animal hunting, or the hunting after animals who swim?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And of swimming animals, one class lives on the wing

and the other in the water?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Fowling is the general term under which the hunting

of all birds is included.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: The hunting of animals who live in the water has the
general name of fishing.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And this sort of hunting may be further divided also

into two principal kinds?

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: There is one kind which takes them in nets, another

which takes them by a blow.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean, and how do you distinguish

them?

STRANGER: As to the first kind—all that surrounds and encloses

anything to prevent egress, may be rightly called an enclosure.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: For which reason twig baskets, casting-nets, nooses,

creels, and the like may all be termed ‘enclosures’?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And therefore this first kind of capture may be called

by us capture with enclosures, or something of that sort?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: The other kind, which is practised by a blow with

hooks and three-pronged spears, when summed up under one name,
may be called striking, unless you, Theaetetus, can find some better
name?

THEAETETUS: Never mind the name—what you suggest will do

very well.

STRANGER: There is one mode of striking, which is done at night,

and by the light of a fire, and is by the hunters themselves called
firing, or spearing by firelight.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And the fishing by day is called by the general name

of barbing, because the spears, too, are barbed at the point.

THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the term.

STRANGER: Of this barb-fishing, that which strikes the fish who

is below from above is called spearing, because this is the way in
which the three-pronged spears are mostly used.

THEAETETUS: Yes, it is often called so.

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Sophist

STRANGER: Then now there is only one kind remaining.

THEAETETUS: What is that?

STRANGER: When a hook is used, and the fish is not struck in

any chance part of his body, as he is with the spear, but only about
the head and mouth, and is then drawn out from below upwards
with reeds and rods:—What is the right name of that mode of fish-
ing, Theaetetus?

THEAETETUS: I suspect that we have now discovered the object

of our search.

STRANGER: Then now you and I have come to an understanding

not only about the name of the angler’s art, but about the definition
of the thing itself. One half of all art was acquisitive—half of the
acquisitive art was conquest or taking by force, half of this was hunt-
ing, and half of hunting was hunting animals, half of this was hunt-
ing water animals—of this again, the under half was fishing, half of
fishing was striking; a part of striking was fishing with a barb, and one
half of this again, being the kind which strikes with a hook and draws
the fish from below upwards, is the art which we have been seeking,
and which from the nature of the operation is denoted angling or
drawing up (aspalieutike, anaspasthai).

THEAETETUS: The result has been quite satisfactorily brought

out.

STRANGER: And now, following this pattern, let us endeavour to

find out what a Sophist is.

THEAETETUS: By all means.

STRANGER: The first question about the angler was, whether he

was a skilled artist or unskilled?

THEAETETUS: True.

68
 Plato

STRANGER: And shall we call our new friend unskilled, or a thor-

ough master of his craft?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not unskilled, for his name, as, indeed,

you imply, must surely express his nature.

STRANGER: Then he must be supposed to have some art.

THEAETETUS: What art?

STRANGER: By heaven, they are cousins! it never occurred to us.

THEAETETUS: Who are cousins?

STRANGER: The angler and the Sophist.

THEAETETUS: In what way are they related?

STRANGER: They both appear to me to be hunters.

THEAETETUS: How the Sophist? Of the other we have spoken.

STRANGER: You remember our division of hunting, into hunting after swim-
ming animals and land animals?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And you remember that we subdivided the swim-

ming and left the land animals, saying that there were many kinds
of them?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Thus far, then, the Sophist and the angler, starting
from the art of acquiring, take the same road?

THEAETETUS: So it would appear.

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Sophist

STRANGER: Their paths diverge when they reach the art of ani-
mal hunting; the one going to the sea-shore, and to the rivers and to
the lakes, and angling for the animals which are in them.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: While the other goes to land and water of another

sort—rivers of wealth and broad meadow-lands of generous youth;
and he also is intending to take the animals which are in them.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Of hunting on land there are two principal divisions.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: One is the hunting of tame, and the other of wild

animals.

THEAETETUS: But are tame animals ever hunted?

STRANGER: Yes, if you include man under tame animals. But if

you like you may say that there are no tame animals, or that, if there
are, man is not among them; or you may say that man is a tame
animal but is not hunted—you shall decide which of these alterna-
tives you prefer.

THEAETETUS: I should say, Stranger, that man is a tame animal,

and I admit that he is hunted.

STRANGER: Then let us divide the hunting of tame animals into

two parts.

THEAETETUS: How shall we make the division?

STRANGER: Let us define piracy, man-stealing, tyranny, the whole

military art, by one name, as hunting with violence.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: But the art of the lawyer, of the popular orator, and
the art of conversation may be called in one word the art of persua-
sion.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And of persuasion, there may be said to be two kinds?

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: One is private, and the other public.

THEAETETUS: Yes; each of them forms a class.

STRANGER: And of private hunting, one sort receives hire, and

the other brings gifts.

THEAETETUS: I do not understand you.

STRANGER: You seem never to have observed the manner in which

lovers hunt.

THEAETETUS: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: I mean that they lavish gifts on those whom they

hunt in addition to other inducements.

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: Let us admit this, then, to be the amatory art.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: But that sort of hireling whose conversation is pleas-

ing and who baits his hook only with pleasure and exacts nothing

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Sophist

but his maintenance in return, we should all, if I am not mistaken,

describe as possessing flattery or an art of making things pleasant.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And that sort, which professes to form acquaintan-

ces only for the sake of virtue, and demands a reward in the shape of
money, may be fairly called by another name?

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: And what is the name? Will you tell me?

THEAETETUS: It is obvious enough; for I believe that we have dis-

covered the Sophist: which is, as I conceive, the proper name for the
class described.

STRANGER: Then now, Theaetetus, his art may be traced as a

branch of the appropriative, acquisitive family—which hunts ani-
mals,—living—land—tame animals; which hunts man,—pri-
vately—for hire,—taking money in exchange—having the semblance
of education; and this is termed Sophistry, and is a hunt after young
men of wealth and rank—such is the conclusion.

THEAETETUS: Just so.

STRANGER: Let us take another branch of his genealogy; for he is

a professor of a great and many-sided art; and if we look back at
what has preceded we see that he presents another aspect, besides
that of which we are speaking.

THEAETETUS: In what respect?

STRANGER: There were two sorts of acquisitive art; the one con-
cerned with hunting, the other with exchange.

THEAETETUS: There were.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And of the art of exchange there are two divisions,

the one of giving, and the other of selling.

THEAETETUS: Let us assume that.

STRANGER: Next, we will suppose the art of selling to be divided

into two parts.

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: There is one part which is distinguished as the sale of

a man’s own productions; another, which is the exchange of the
works of others.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And is not that part of exchange which takes place in

the city, being about half of the whole, termed retailing?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And that which exchanges the goods of one city for
those of another by selling and buying is the exchange of the mer-
chant?

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: And you are aware that this exchange of the mer-
chant is of two kinds: it is partly concerned with food for the use of
the body, and partly with the food of the soul which is bartered and
received in exchange for money.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: You want to know what is the meaning of food for

the soul; the other kind you surely understand.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Take music in general and painting and marionette

playing and many other things, which are purchased in one city,
and carried away and sold in another—wares of the soul which are
hawked about either for the sake of instruction or amusement;—
may not he who takes them about and sells them be quite as truly
called a merchant as he who sells meats and drinks?

THEAETETUS: To be sure he may.

STRANGER: And would you not call by the same name him who
buys up knowledge and goes about from city to city exchanging his
wares for money?

THEAETETUS: Certainly I should.

STRANGER: Of this merchandise of the soul, may not one part be

fairly termed the art of display? And there is another part which is
certainly not less ridiculous, but being a trade in learning must be
called by some name germane to the matter?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: The latter should have two names,—one descriptive

of the sale of the knowledge of virtue, and the other of the sale of
other kinds of knowledge.

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: The name of art-seller corresponds well enough to

the latter; but you must try and tell me the name of the other.

THEAETETUS: He must be the Sophist, whom we are seeking;

no other name can possibly be right.

STRANGER: No other; and so this trader in virtue again turns out

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 Plato

to be our friend the Sophist, whose art may now be traced from the
art of acquisition through exchange, trade, merchandise, to a mer-
chandise of the soul which is concerned with speech and the knowl-
edge of virtue.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And there may be a third reappearance of him;—for

he may have settled down in a city, and may fabricate as well as buy
these same wares, intending to live by selling them, and he would
still be called a Sophist?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Then that part of the acquisitive art which exchanges,

and of exchange which either sells a man’s own productions or re-
tails those of others, as the case may be, and in either way sells the
knowledge of virtue, you would again term Sophistry?

THEAETETUS: I must, if I am to keep pace with the argument.

STRANGER: Let us consider once more whether there may not be yet
another aspect of sophistry.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: In the acquisitive there was a subdivision of the com-

bative or fighting art.

THEAETETUS: There was.

STRANGER: Perhaps we had better divide it.

THEAETETUS: What shall be the divisions?

STRANGER: There shall be one division of the competitive, and

another of the pugnacious.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: That part of the pugnacious which is a contest of

bodily strength may be properly called by some such name as vio-
lent.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And when the war is one of words, it may be termed

controversy?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And controversy may be of two kinds.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: When long speeches are answered by long speeches, and

there is public discussion about the just and unjust, that is forensic
controversy.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And there is a private sort of controversy, which is

cut up into questions and answers, and this is commonly called
disputation?

THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the name.

STRANGER: And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion

about contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules of art,
is recognized by the reasoning faculty to be a distinct class, but has
hitherto had no distinctive name, and does not deserve to receive one
from us.

THEAETETUS: No; for the different sorts of it are too minute

and heterogeneous.

76
 Plato

STRANGER: But that which proceeds by rules of art to dispute

about justice and injustice in their own nature, and about things in
general, we have been accustomed to call argumentation (Eristic)?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And of argumentation, one sort wastes money, and

the other makes money.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Suppose we try and give to each of these two classes

a name.

THEAETETUS: Let us do so.

STRANGER: I should say that the habit which leads a man to neglect
his own affairs for the pleasure of conversation, of which the style is far
from being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly termed
loquacity: such is my opinion.

THEAETETUS: That is the common name for it.

STRANGER: But now who the other is, who makes money out of
private disputation, it is your turn to say.

THEAETETUS: There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful

Sophist, of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the
fourth time.

STRANGER: Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-

making species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugna-
cious, combative, acquisitive family, as the argument has already
proven.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

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Sophist

STRANGER: How true was the observation that he was a many-

sided animal, and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!

THEAETETUS: Then you must catch him with two.

STRANGER: Yes, we must, if we can. And therefore let us try an-

other track in our pursuit of him: You are aware that there are certain
menial occupations which have names among servants?

THEAETETUS: Yes, there are many such; which of them do you

mean?

STRANGER: I mean such as sifting, straining, winnowing, thresh-

ing.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And besides these there are a great many more, such
as carding, spinning, adjusting the warp and the woof; and thou-
sands of similar expressions are used in the arts.

THEAETETUS: Of what are they to be patterns, and what are we

going to do with them all?

STRANGER: I think that in all of these there is implied a notion of

division.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Then if, as I was saying, there is one art which in-
cludes all of them, ought not that art to have one name?

THEAETETUS: And what is the name of the art?

STRANGER: The art of discerning or discriminating.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

78
 Plato

STRANGER: Think whether you cannot divide this.

THEAETETUS: I should have to think a long while.

STRANGER: In all the previously named processes either like has

been separated from like or the better from the worse.

THEAETETUS: I see now what you mean.

STRANGER: There is no name for the first kind of separation; of

the second, which throws away the worse and preserves the better, I
do know a name.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: Every discernment or discrimination of that kind, as

I have observed, is called a purification.

THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the usual expression.

STRANGER: And any one may see that purification is of two kinds.

THEAETETUS: Perhaps so, if he were allowed time to think; but I

do not see at this moment.

STRANGER: There are many purifications of bodies which may

with propriety be comprehended under a single name.

THEAETETUS: What are they, and what is their name?

STRANGER: There is the purification of living bodies in their in-

ward and in their outward parts, of which the former is duly ef-
fected by medicine and gymnastic, the latter by the not very digni-
fied art of the bath-man; and there is the purification of inanimate
substances—to this the arts of fulling and of furbishing in general
attend in a number of minute particulars, having a variety of names
which are thought ridiculous.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: There can be no doubt that they are thought ridicu-

lous, Theaetetus; but then the dialectical art never considers whether
the benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less than that
to be derived from the sponge, and has not more interest in the one
than in the other; her endeavour is to know what is and is not kin-
dred in all arts, with a view to the acquisition of intelligence; and
having this in view, she honours them all alike, and when she makes
comparisons, she counts one of them not a whit more ridiculous
than another; nor does she esteem him who adduces as his example
of hunting, the general’s art, at all more decorous than another who
cites that of the vermin-destroyer, but only as the greater pretender
of the two. And as to your question concerning the name which was
to comprehend all these arts of purification, whether of animate or
inanimate bodies, the art of dialectic is in no wise particular about
fine words, if she may be only allowed to have a general name for all
other purifications, binding them up together and separating them
off from the purification of the soul or intellect. For this is the puri-
fication at which she wants to arrive, and this we should understand
to be her aim.

THEAETETUS: Yes, I understand; and I agree that there are two

sorts of purification, and that one of them is concerned with the
soul, and that there is another which is concerned with the body.

STRANGER: Excellent; and now listen to what I am going to say,

and try to divide further the first of the two.

THEAETETUS: Whatever line of division you suggest, I will en-

deavour to assist you.

STRANGER: Do we admit that virtue is distinct from vice in the

soul?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And purification was to leave the good and to cast

out whatever is bad?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then any taking away of evil from the soul may be
properly called purification?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And in the soul there are two kinds of evil.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: The one may be compared to disease in the body, the

other to deformity.

THEAETETUS: I do not understand.

STRANGER: Perhaps you have never reflected that disease and dis-
cord are the same.

THEAETETUS: To this, again, I know not what I should reply.

STRANGER: Do you not conceive discord to be a dissolution of

kindred elements, originating in some disagreement?

THEAETETUS: Just that.

STRANGER: And is deformity anything but the want of measure,

which is always unsightly?

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: And do we not see that opinion is opposed to desire,

pleasure to anger, reason to pain, and that all these elements are
opposed to one another in the souls of bad men?

81
Sophist

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And yet they must all be akin?

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: Then we shall be right in calling vice a discord and

disease of the soul?

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: And when things having motion, and aiming at an

appointed mark, continually miss their aim and glance aside, shall
we say that this is the effect of symmetry among them, or of the
want of symmetry?

THEAETETUS: Clearly of the want of symmetry.

STRANGER: But surely we know that no soul is voluntarily igno-

rant of anything?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And what is ignorance but the aberration of a mind

which is bent on truth, and in which the process of understanding
is perverted?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then we are to regard an unintelligent soul as de-

formed and devoid of symmetry?

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Then there are these two kinds of evil in the soul—
the one which is generally called vice, and is obviously a disease of
the soul …

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And there is the other, which they call ignorance,

and which, because existing only in the soul, they will not allow to
be vice.

THEAETETUS: I certainly admit what I at first disputed—that

there are two kinds of vice in the soul, and that we ought to con-
sider cowardice, intemperance, and injustice to be alike forms of
disease in the soul, and ignorance, of which there are all sorts of
varieties, to be deformity.

STRANGER: And in the case of the body are there not two arts
which have to do with the two bodily states?

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: There is gymnastic, which has to do with deformity,

and medicine, which has to do with disease.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And where there is insolence and injustice and coward-

ice, is not chastisement the art which is most required?

THEAETETUS: That certainly appears to be the opinion of man-

kind.

STRANGER: Again, of the various kinds of ignorance, may not

instruction be rightly said to be the remedy?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And of the art of instruction, shall we say that there

is one or many kinds? At any rate there are two principal ones. Think.

THEAETETUS: I will.

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Sophist

STRANGER: I believe that I can see how we shall soonest arrive at

the answer to this question.

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: If we can discover a line which divides ignorance

into two halves. For a division of ignorance into two parts will cer-
tainly imply that the art of instruction is also twofold, answering to
the two divisions of ignorance.

THEAETETUS: Well, and do you see what you are looking for?

STRANGER: I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort
of ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the
scale against all other sorts of ignorance put together.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: When a person supposes that he knows, and does

not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the
intellect.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of igno-

rance which specially earns the title of stupidity.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: What name, then, shall be given to the sort of in-

struction which gets rid of this?

THEAETETUS: The instruction which you mean, Stranger, is, I

should imagine, not the teaching of handicraft arts, but what, thanks
to us, has been termed education in this part the world.

STRANGER: Yes, Theaetetus, and by nearly all Hellenes. But we

84
 Plato

have still to consider whether education admits of any further divi-

sion.

THEAETETUS: We have.

STRANGER: I think that there is a point at which such a division

is possible.

THEAETETUS: Where?

STRANGER: Of education, one method appears to be rougher,

and another smoother.

THEAETETUS: How are we to distinguish the two?

STRANGER: There is the time-honoured mode which our fathers

commonly practised towards their sons, and which is still adopted by
many—either of roughly reproving their errors, or of gently advising
them; which varieties may be correctly included under the general term
of admonition.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: But whereas some appear to have arrived at the con-

clusion that all ignorance is involuntary, and that no one who thinks
himself wise is willing to learn any of those things in which he is
conscious of his own cleverness, and that the admonitory sort of
instruction gives much trouble and does little good—

THEAETETUS: There they are quite right.

STRANGER: Accordingly, they set to work to eradicate the spirit

of conceit in another way.

THEAETETUS: In what way?

STRANGER: They cross-examine a man’s words, when he thinks

85
Sophist

that he is saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily

convict him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then col-
lect by the dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show
that they contradict one another about the same things, in relation
to the same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry
with himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely
delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is
most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good
effect on the person who is the subject of the operation. For as the
physician considers that the body will receive no benefit from tak-
ing food until the internal obstacles have been removed, so the pu-
rifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no benefit
from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from
refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices first
and made to think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.

THEAETETUS: That is certainly the best and wisest state of mind.

STRANGER: For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must admit that

refutation is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who
has not been refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an
awful state of impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those
things in which he who would be truly blessed ought to be fairest
and purest.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: And who are the ministers of this art? I am afraid to

say the Sophists.

THEAETETUS: Why?

STRANGER: Lest we should assign to them too high a preroga-

tive.

THEAETETUS: Yet the Sophist has a certain likeness to our min-

ister of purification.

86
 Plato

STRANGER: Yes, the same sort of likeness which a wolf, who is

the fiercest of animals, has to a dog, who is the gentlest. But he who
would not be found tripping, ought to be very careful in this matter
of comparisons, for they are most slippery things. Nevertheless, let
us assume that the Sophists are the men. I say this provisionally, for
I think that the line which divides them will be marked enough if
proper care is taken.

THEAETETUS: Likely enough.

STRANGER: Let us grant, then, that from the discerning art comes
purification, and from purification let there be separated off a part which
is concerned with the soul; of this mental purification instruction is a
portion, and of instruction education, and of education, that refutation
of vain conceit which has been discovered in the present argument; and
let this be called by you and me the nobly-descended art of Sophistry.

THEAETETUS: Very well; and yet, considering the number of forms

in which he has presented himself, I begin to doubt how I can with
any truth or confidence describe the real nature of the Sophist.

STRANGER: You naturally feel perplexed; and yet I think that he

must be still more perplexed in his attempt to escape us, for as the
proverb says, when every way is blocked, there is no escape; now,
then, is the time of all others to set upon him.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: First let us wait a moment and recover breath, and

while we are resting, we may reckon up in how many forms he has
appeared. In the first place, he was discovered to be a paid hunter
after wealth and youth.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: In the second place, he was a merchant in the goods

of the soul.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: In the third place, he has turned out to be a retailer

of the same sort of wares.

THEAETETUS: Yes; and in the fourth place, he himself manufac-

tured the learned wares which he sold.

STRANGER: Quite right; I will try and remember the fifth myself.
He belonged to the fighting class, and was further distinguished as
a hero of debate, who professed the eristic art.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: The sixth point was doubtful, and yet we at last agreed
that he was a purger of souls, who cleared away notions obstructive
to knowledge.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Do you not see that when the professor of any art
has one name and many kinds of knowledge, there must be some-
thing wrong? The multiplicity of names which is applied to him
shows that the common principle to which all these branches of
knowledge are tending, is not understood.

THEAETETUS: I should imagine this to be the case.

STRANGER: At any rate we will understand him, and no indo-

lence shall prevent us. Let us begin again, then, and re-examine
some of our statements concerning the Sophist; there was one thing
which appeared to me especially characteristic of him.

THEAETETUS: To what are you referring?

STRANGER: We were saying of him, if I am not mistaken, that he

was a disputer?

88
 Plato

THEAETETUS: We were.

STRANGER: And does he not also teach others the art of disputation?

THEAETETUS: Certainly he does.

STRANGER: And about what does he profess that he teaches men

to dispute? To begin at the beginning—Does he make them able to
dispute about divine things, which are invisible to men in general?

THEAETETUS: At any rate, he is said to do so.

STRANGER: And what do you say of the visible things in heaven

and earth, and the like?

THEAETETUS: Certainly he disputes, and teaches to dispute about

them.

STRANGER: Then, again, in private conversation, when any uni-

versal assertion is made about generation and essence, we know that
such persons are tremendous argufiers, and are able to impart their
own skill to others.

THEAETETUS: Undoubtedly.

STRANGER: And do they not profess to make men able to dispute

about law and about politics in general?

THEAETETUS: Why, no one would have anything to say to them,

if they did not make these professions.

STRANGER: In all and every art, what the craftsman ought to say
in answer to any question is written down in a popular form, and he
who likes may learn.

THEAETETUS: I suppose that you are referring to the precepts of

Protagoras about wrestling and the other arts?

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Sophist

STRANGER: Yes, my friend, and about a good many other things.

In a word, is not the art of disputation a power of disputing about
all things?

THEAETETUS: Certainly; there does not seem to be much which

is left out.

STRANGER: But oh! my dear youth, do you suppose this possible? for
perhaps your young eyes may see things which to our duller sight do not
appear.

THEAETETUS: To what are you alluding? I do not think that I

understand your present question.

STRANGER: I ask whether anybody can understand all things.

THEAETETUS: Happy would mankind be if such a thing were

possible!

SOCRATES: But how can any one who is ignorant dispute in a

rational manner against him who knows?

THEAETETUS: He cannot.

STRANGER: Then why has the sophistical art such a mysterious

power?

THEAETETUS: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: How do the Sophists make young men believe in their

supreme and universal wisdom? For if they neither disputed nor were
thought to dispute rightly, or being thought to do so were deemed no
wiser for their controversial skill, then, to quote your own observation,
no one would give them money or be willing to learn their art.

THEAETETUS: They certainly would not.

90
 Plato

STRANGER: But they are willing.

THEAETETUS: Yes, they are.

STRANGER: Yes, and the reason, as I should imagine, is that they

are supposed to have knowledge of those things about which they
dispute?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And they dispute about all things?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And therefore, to their disciples, they appear to be

all-wise?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: But they are not; for that was shown to be impos-
sible.

THEAETETUS: Impossible, of course.

STRANGER: Then the Sophist has been shown to have a sort of

conjectural or apparent knowledge only of all things, which is not
the truth?

THEAETETUS: Exactly; no better description of him could be given.

STRANGER: Let us now take an illustration, which will still more

clearly explain his nature.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: I will tell you, and you shall answer me, giving your
very closest attention. Suppose that a person were to profess, not

91
Sophist

that he could speak or dispute, but that he knew how to make and
do all things, by a single art.

THEAETETUS: All things?

STRANGER: I see that you do not understand the first word that I
utter, for you do not understand the meaning of ‘all.’

THEAETETUS: No, I do not.

STRANGER: Under all things, I include you and me, and also
animals and trees.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Suppose a person to say that he will make you and

me, and all creatures.

THEAETETUS: What would he mean by ‘making’? He cannot be

a husbandman;—for you said that he is a maker of animals.

STRANGER: Yes; and I say that he is also the maker of the sea, and
the earth, and the heavens, and the gods, and of all other things;
and, further, that he can make them in no time, and sell them for a
few pence.

THEAETETUS: That must be a jest.

STRANGER: And when a man says that he knows all things, and
can teach them to another at a small cost, and in a short time, is not
that a jest?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And is there any more artistic or graceful form of jest

than imitation?

92
 Plato

THEAETETUS: Certainly not; and imitation is a very compre-

hensive term, which includes under one class the most diverse sorts
of things.

STRANGER: We know, of course, that he who professes by one art to

make all things is really a painter, and by the painter’s art makes resem-
blances of real things which have the same name with them; and he can
deceive the less intelligent sort of young children, to whom he shows his
pictures at a distance, into the belief that he has the absolute power of
making whatever he likes.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And may there not be supposed to be an imitative

art of reasoning? Is it not possible to enchant the hearts of young
men by words poured through their ears, when they are still at a
distance from the truth of facts, by exhibiting to them fictitious
arguments, and making them think that they are true, and that the
speaker is the wisest of men in all things?

THEAETETUS: Yes; why should there not be another such art?

STRANGER: But as time goes on, and their hearers advance in

years, and come into closer contact with realities, and have learnt by
sad experience to see and feel the truth of things, are not the greater
part of them compelled to change many opinions which they for-
merly entertained, so that the great appears small to them, and the
easy difficult, and all their dreamy speculations are overturned by
the facts of life?

THEAETETUS: That is my view, as far as I can judge, although, at

my age, I may be one of those who see things at a distance only.

STRANGER: And the wish of all of us, who are your friends, is and
always will be to bring you as near to the truth as we can without
the sad reality. And now I should like you to tell me, whether the
Sophist is not visibly a magician and imitator of true being; or are

93
Sophist

we still disposed to think that he may have a true knowledge of the

various matters about which he disputes?

THEAETETUS: But how can he, Stranger? Is there any doubt,

after what has been said, that he is to be located in one of the divi-
sions of children’s play?

STRANGER: Then we must place him in the class of magicians

and mimics.

THEAETETUS: Certainly we must.

STRANGER: And now our business is not to let the animal out,
for we have got him in a sort of dialectical net, and there is one
thing which he decidedly will not escape.

THEAETETUS: What is that?

STRANGER: The inference that he is a juggler.

THEAETETUS: Precisely my own opinion of him.

STRANGER: Then, clearly, we ought as soon as possible to divide

the image-making art, and go down into the net, and, if the Sophist
does not run away from us, to seize him according to orders and
deliver him over to reason, who is the lord of the hunt, and pro-
claim the capture of him; and if he creeps into the recesses of the
imitative art, and secretes himself in one of them, to divide again
and follow him up until in some sub-section of imitation he is caught.
For our method of tackling each and all is one which neither he nor
any other creature will ever escape in triumph.

THEAETETUS: Well said; and let us do as you propose.

STRANGER: Well, then, pursuing the same analytic method as before,

I think that I can discern two divisions of the imitative art, but I am not
as yet able to see in which of them the desired form is to be found.

94
 Plato

THEAETETUS: Will you tell me first what are the two divisions of
which you are speaking?

STRANGER: One is the art of likeness-making;—generally a like-

ness of anything is made by producing a copy which is executed
according to the proportions of the original, similar in length and
breadth and depth, each thing receiving also its appropriate colour.

THEAETETUS: Is not this always the aim of imitation?

STRANGER: Not always; in works either of sculpture or of paint-

ing, which are of any magnitude, there is a certain degree of decep-
tion; for artists were to give the true proportions of their fair works,
the upper part, which is farther off, would appear to be out of pro-
portion in comparison with the lower, which is nearer; and so they
give up the truth in their images and make only the proportions
which appear to be beautiful, disregarding the real ones.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And that which being other is also like, may we not
fairly call a likeness or image?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And may we not, as I did just now, call that part of
the imitative art which is concerned with making such images the
art of likeness-making?

THEAETETUS: Let that be the name.

STRANGER: And what shall we call those resemblances of the beauti-

ful, which appear such owing to the unfavourable position of the specta-
tor, whereas if a person had the power of getting a correct view of works of
such magnitude, they would appear not even like that to which they
profess to be like? May we not call these ‘appearances,’ since they appear
only and are not really like?

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: There is a great deal of this kind of thing in painting,

and in all imitation.

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: And may we not fairly call the sort of art, which
produces an appearance and not an image, phantastic art?

THEAETETUS: Most fairly.

STRANGER: These then are the two kinds of image-making—the

art of making likenesses, and phantastic or the art of making ap-
pearances?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: I was doubtful before in which of them I should

place the Sophist, nor am I even now able to see clearly; verily he
is a wonderful and inscrutable creature. And now in the cleverest
manner he has got into an impossible place.

THEAETETUS: Yes, he has.

STRANGER: Do you speak advisedly, or are you carried away at

the moment by the habit of assenting into giving a hasty answer?

THEAETETUS: May I ask to what you are referring?

STRANGER: My dear friend, we are engaged in a very difficult

speculation—there can be no doubt of that; for how a thing can
appear and seem, and not be, or how a man can say a thing which is
not true, has always been and still remains a very perplexing ques-
tion. Can any one say or think that falsehood really exists, and avoid
being caught in a contradiction? Indeed, Theaetetus, the task is a
difficult one.

96
 Plato

THEAETETUS: Why?

STRANGER: He who says that falsehood exists has the audacity to

assert the being of not-being; for this is implied in the possibility of
falsehood. But, my boy, in the days when I was a boy, the great
Parmenides protested against this doctrine, and to the end of his life
he continued to inculcate the same lesson—always repeating both
in verse and out of verse:

‘Keep your mind from this way of enquiry,

for never will you show that not-being is.’

Such is his testimony, which is confirmed by the very expression

when sifted a little. Would you object to begin with the consider-
ation of the words themselves?

THEAETETUS: Never mind about me; I am only desirous that

you should carry on the argument in the best way, and that you
should take me with you.

STRANGER: Very good; and now say, do we venture to utter the

forbidden word ‘not-being’?

THEAETETUS: Certainly we do.

STRANGER: Let us be serious then, and consider the question

neither in strife nor play: suppose that one of the hearers of
Parmenides was asked, ‘To what is the term “not-being” to be ap-
plied?’—do you know what sort of object he would single out in
reply, and what answer he would make to the enquirer?

THEAETETUS: That is a difficult question, and one not to be an-

swered at all by a person like myself.

STRANGER: There is at any rate no difficulty in seeing that the

predicate ‘not-being’ is not applicable to any being.

97
Sophist

THEAETETUS: None, certainly.

STRANGER: And if not to being, then not to something.

THEAETETUS: Of course not.

STRANGER: It is also plain, that in speaking of something we

speak of being, for to speak of an abstract something naked and
isolated from all
being is impossible.

THEAETETUS: Impossible.

STRANGER: You mean by assenting to imply that he who says

something must say some one thing?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Some in the singular (ti) you would say is the sign of
one, some in the dual (tine) of two, some in the plural (tines) of
many?

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: Then he who says ‘not something’ must say abso-

lutely nothing.

THEAETETUS: Most assuredly.

STRANGER: And as we cannot admit that a man speaks and says

nothing, he who says ‘not-being’ does not speak at all.

THEAETETUS: The difficulty of the argument can no further go.

STRANGER: Not yet, my friend, is the time for such a word; for
there still remains of all perplexities the first and greatest, touching
the very foundation of the matter.

98
 Plato

THEAETETUS: What do you mean? Do not be afraid to speak.

STRANGER: To that which is, may be attributed some other thing

which is?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: But can anything which is, be attributed to that which

is not?

THEAETETUS: Impossible.

STRANGER: And all number is to be reckoned among things which

are?

THEAETETUS: Yes, surely number, if anything, has a real exist-

ence.

STRANGER: Then we must not attempt to attribute to not-being

number either in the singular or plural?

THEAETETUS: The argument implies that we should be wrong

in doing so.

STRANGER: But how can a man either express in words or even

conceive in thought things which are not or a thing which is not
without number?

THEAETETUS: How indeed?

STRANGER: When we speak of things which are not, are we not

attributing plurality to not-being?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: But, on the other hand, when we say ‘what is not,’

do we not attribute unity?

99
Sophist

THEAETETUS: Manifestly.

STRANGER: Nevertheless, we maintain that you may not and ought not
to attribute being to not-being?

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: Do you see, then, that not-being in itself can neither

be spoken, uttered, or thought, but that it is unthinkable, unutter-
able, unspeakable, indescribable?

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: But, if so, I was wrong in telling you just now that
the difficulty which was coming is the greatest of all.

THEAETETUS: What! is there a greater still behind?

STRANGER: Well, I am surprised, after what has been said already,

that you do not see the difficulty in which he who would refute the
notion of not-being is involved. For he is compelled to contradict him-
self as soon as he makes the attempt.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean? Speak more clearly.

STRANGER: Do not expect clearness from me. For I, who main-

tain that not-being has no part either in the one or many, just now
spoke and am still speaking of not-being as one; for I say ‘not-be-
ing.’ Do you understand?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And a little while ago I said that not-being is unut-

terable, unspeakable, indescribable: do you follow?

THEAETETUS: I do after a fashion.

100
 Plato

STRANGER: When I introduced the word ‘is,’ did I not contra-

dict what I said before?

THEAETETUS: Clearly.

STRANGER: And in using the singular verb, did I not speak of

not-being as one?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And when I spoke of not-being as indescribable and

unspeakable and unutterable, in using each of these words in the
singular, did I not refer to not-being as one?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And yet we say that, strictly speaking, it should not

be defined as one or many, and should not even be called ‘it,’ for the
use of the word ‘it’ would imply a form of unity.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: How, then, can any one put any faith in me? For
now, as always, I am unequal to the refutation of not-being. And
therefore, as I was saying, do not look to me for the right way of
speaking about not-being; but come, let us try the experiment with
you.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Make a noble effort, as becomes youth, and endeav-

our with all your might to speak of not-being in a right manner, with-
out introducing into it either existence or unity or plurality.

THEAETETUS: It would be a strange boldness in me which would

attempt the task when I see you thus discomfited.

101
Sophist

STRANGER: Say no more of ourselves; but until we find some one

or other who can speak of not-being without number, we must ac-
knowledge that the Sophist is a clever rogue who will not be got out
of his hole.

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: And if we say to him that he professes an art of making

appearances, he will grapple with us and retort our argument upon
ourselves; and when we call him an image-maker he will say, ‘Pray what
do you mean at all by an image?’—and I should like to know, Theaetetus,
how we can possibly answer the younker’s question?

THEAETETUS: We shall doubtless tell him of the images which are

reflected in water or in mirrors; also of sculptures, pictures, and other
duplicates.

STRANGER: I see, Theaetetus, that you have never made the ac-
quaintance of the Sophist.

THEAETETUS: Why do you think so?

STRANGER: He will make believe to have his eyes shut, or to have

none.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: When you tell him of something existing in a mirror,

or in sculpture, and address him as though he had eyes, he will
laugh you to scorn, and will pretend that he knows nothing of mir-
rors and streams, or of sight at all; he will say that he is asking about
an idea.

THEAETETUS: What can he mean?

STRANGER: The common notion pervading all these objects,

which you speak of as many, and yet call by the single name of

102
 Plato

image, as though it were the unity under which they were all in-
cluded. How will you maintain your ground against him?

THEAETETUS: How, Stranger, can I describe an image except as

something fashioned in the likeness of the true?

STRANGER: And do you mean this something to be some other

true thing, or what do you mean?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not another true thing, but only a re-

semblance.

STRANGER: And you mean by true that which really is?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the not true is that which is the opposite of the true?

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: A resemblance, then, is not really real, if, as you say,

not true?

THEAETETUS: Nay, but it is in a certain sense.

STRANGER: You mean to say, not in a true sense?

THEAETETUS: Yes; it is in reality only an image.

STRANGER: Then what we call an image is in reality really unreal.

THEAETETUS: In what a strange complication of being and not-

being we are involved!

STRANGER: Strange! I should think so. See how, by his reciproca-

tion of opposites, the many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite
against our will, to admit the existence of not-being.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Yes, indeed, I see.

STRANGER: The difficulty is how to define his art without falling

into a contradiction.

THEAETETUS: How do you mean? And where does the danger

lie?

STRANGER: When we say that he deceives us with an illusion,

and that his art is illusory, do we mean that our soul is led by his art
to think falsely, or what do we mean?

THEAETETUS: There is nothing else to be said.

STRANGER: Again, false opinion is that form of opinion which

thinks the opposite of the truth:—You would assent?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: You mean to say that false opinion thinks what is

not?

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: Does false opinion think that things which are not
are not, or that in a certain sense they are?

THEAETETUS: Things that are not must be imagined to exist in a

certain sense, if any degree of falsehood is to be possible.

STRANGER: And does not false opinion also think that things
which most certainly exist do not exist at all?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And here, again, is falsehood?

104
 Plato

THEAETETUS: Falsehood—yes.

STRANGER: And in like manner, a false proposition will be deemed

to be one which asserts the non-existence of things which are, and
the existence of things which are not.

THEAETETUS: There is no other way in which a false proposi-

tion can arise.

STRANGER: There is not; but the Sophist will deny these state-
ments. And indeed how can any rational man assent to them, when
the very expressions which we have just used were before acknowl-
edged by us to be unutterable, unspeakable, indescribable, unthink-
able? Do you see his point, Theaetetus?

THEAETETUS: Of course he will say that we are contradicting our-

selves when we hazard the assertion, that falsehood exists in opinion and
in words; for in maintaining this, we are compelled over and over again to
assert being of not-being, which we admitted just now to be an utter
impossibility.

STRANGER: How well you remember! And now it is high time to

hold a consultation as to what we ought to do about the Sophist; for
if we persist in looking for him in the class of false workers and
magicians, you see that the handles for objection and the difficul-
ties which will arise are very numerous and obvious.

THEAETETUS: They are indeed.

STRANGER: We have gone through but a very small portion of them,

and they are really infinite.

THEAETETUS: If that is the case, we cannot possibly catch the

Sophist.

STRANGER: Shall we then be so faint-hearted as to give him up?

105
Sophist

THEAETETUS: Certainly not, I should say, if we can get the slight-

est hold upon him.

STRANGER: Will you then forgive me, and, as your words imply,
not be altogether displeased if I flinch a little from the grasp of such
a sturdy argument?

THEAETETUS: To be sure I will.

STRANGER: I have a yet more urgent request to make.

THEAETETUS: Which is—?

STRANGER: That you will promise not to regard me as a parri-

cide.

THEAETETUS: And why?

STRANGER: Because, in self-defence, I must test the philosophy of my

father Parmenides, and try to prove by main force that in a certain sense
not-being is, and that being, on the other hand, is not.

THEAETETUS: Some attempt of the kind is clearly needed.

STRANGER: Yes, a blind man, as they say, might see that, and,
unless these questions are decided in one way or another, no one
when he speaks of false words, or false opinion, or idols, or images,
or imitations, or appearances, or about the arts which are concerned
with them; can avoid falling into ridiculous contradictions.

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: And therefore I must venture to lay hands on my father’s

argument; for if I am to be over-scrupulous, I shall have to give the
matter up.

THEAETETUS: Nothing in the world should ever induce us to do so.

106
 Plato

STRANGER: I have a third little request which I wish to make.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: You heard me say what I have always felt and still
feel—that I have no heart for this argument?

THEAETETUS: I did.

STRANGER: I tremble at the thought of what I have said, and expect

that you will deem me mad, when you hear of my sudden changes and
shiftings; let me therefore observe, that I am examining the question
entirely out of regard for you.

THEAETETUS: There is no reason for you to fear that I shall im-

pute any impropriety to you, if you attempt this refutation and proof;
take heart, therefore, and proceed.

STRANGER: And where shall I begin the perilous enterprise? I

think that the road which I must take is—

THEAETETUS: Which?—Let me hear.

STRANGER: I think that we had better, first of all, consider the

points which at present are regarded as self-evident, lest we may
have fallen into some confusion, and be too ready to assent to one
another, fancying that we are quite clear about them.

THEAETETUS: Say more distinctly what you mean.

STRANGER: I think that Parmenides, and all ever yet undertook

to determine the number and nature of existences, talked to us in
rather a light and easy strain.

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: As if we had been children, to whom they repeated

107
Sophist

each his own mythus or story;—one said that there were three prin-
ciples, and that at one time there was war between certain of them;
and then again there was peace, and they were married and begat
children, and brought them up; and another spoke of two prin-
ciples,—a moist and a dry, or a hot and a cold, and made them
marry and cohabit. The Eleatics, however, in our part of the world,
say that all things are many in name, but in nature one; this is their
mythus, which goes back to Xenophanes, and is even older. Then
there are Ionian, and in more recent times Sicilian muses, who have
arrived at the conclusion that to unite the two principles is safer,
and to say that being is one and many, and that these are held to-
gether by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting, as the
severer Muses assert, while the gentler ones do not insist on the
perpetual strife and peace, but admit a relaxation and alternation of
them; peace and unity sometimes prevailing under the sway of
Aphrodite, and then again plurality and war, by reason of a prin-
ciple of strife. Whether any of them spoke the truth in all this is
hard to determine; besides, antiquity and famous men should have
reverence, and not be liable to accusations so serious. Yet one thing
may be said of them without offence—

THEAETETUS: What thing?

STRANGER: That they went on their several ways disdaining to

notice people like ourselves; they did not care whether they took us
with them, or left us behind them.

THEAETETUS: How do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean to say, that when they talk of one, two, or

more elements, which are or have become or are becoming, or again
of heat mingling with cold, assuming in some other part of their
works separations and mixtures,—tell me, Theaetetus, do you un-
derstand what they mean by these expressions? When I was a younger
man, I used to fancy that I understood quite well what was meant
by the term ‘not-being,’ which is our present subject of dispute; and
now you see in what a fix we are about it.

108
 Plato

THEAETETUS: I see.

STRANGER: And very likely we have been getting into the same
perplexity about ‘being,’ and yet may fancy that when anybody ut-
ters the word, we understand him quite easily, although we do not
know about not-being. But we may be; equally ignorant of both.

THEAETETUS: I dare say.

STRANGER: And the same may be said of all the terms just men-
tioned.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: The consideration of most of them may be deferred;

but we had better now discuss the chief captain and leader of them.

THEAETETUS: Of what are you speaking? You clearly think that

we must first investigate what people mean by the word ‘being.’

STRANGER: You follow close at my heels, Theaetetus. For the right

method, I conceive, will be to call into our presence the dualistic
philosophers and to interrogate them. ‘Come,’ we will say, ‘Ye, who
affirm that hot and cold or any other two principles are the universe,
what is this term which you apply to both of them, and what do you
mean when you say that both and each of them “are”? How are we to
understand the word “are”? Upon your view, are we to suppose that
there is a third principle over and above the other two,—three in all,
and not two? For clearly you cannot say that one of the two principles
is being, and yet attribute being equally to both of them; for, if you
did, whichever of the two is identified with being, will comprehend
the other; and so they will be one and not two.’

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: But perhaps you mean to give the name of ‘being’ to

both of them together?

109
Sophist

THEAETETUS: Quite likely.

STRANGER: ‘Then, friends,’ we shall reply to them, ‘the answer is

plainly that the two will still be resolved into one.’

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: ‘Since, then, we are in a difficulty, please to tell us

what you mean, when you speak of being; for there can be no doubt
that you always from the first understood your own meaning, whereas
we once thought that we understood you, but now we are in a
great strait. Please to begin by explaining this matter to us, and let
us no longer fancy that we understand you, when we entirely mis-
understand you.’ There will be no impropriety in our demanding
an answer to this question, either of the dualists or of the plural-
ists?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And what about the assertors of the oneness of the

all—must we not endeavour to ascertain from them what they mean
by ‘being’?

THEAETETUS: By all means.

STRANGER: Then let them answer this question: One, you say,
alone is? ‘Yes,’ they will reply.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And there is something which you call ‘being’?

THEAETETUS: ‘Yes.’

STRANGER: And is being the same as one, and do you apply two
names to the same thing?

110
 Plato

THEAETETUS: What will be their answer, Stranger?

STRANGER: It is clear, Theaetetus, that he who asserts the unity

of being will find a difficulty in answering this or any other ques-
tion.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: To admit of two names, and to affirm that there is

nothing but unity, is surely ridiculous?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And equally irrational to admit that a name is any-

thing?

THEAETETUS: How so?

STRANGER: To distinguish the name from the thing, implies du-

ality.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And yet he who identifies the name with the thing
will be compelled to say that it is the name of nothing, or if he says
that it is the name of something, even then the name will only be
the name of a name, and of nothing else.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And the one will turn out to be only one of one, and
being absolute unity, will represent a mere name.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And would they say that the whole is other than the
one that is, or the same with it?

111
Sophist

THEAETETUS: To be sure they would, and they actually say so.

STRANGER: If being is a whole, as Parmenides sings,—

‘Every way like unto the fullness of a well-rounded sphere,

Evenly balanced from the centre on every side,
And must needs be neither greater nor less in any way,
Neither on this side nor on that—’

then being has a centre and extremes, and, having these, must also
have parts.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Yet that which has parts may have the attribute of unity
in all the parts, and in this way being all and a whole, may be one?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: But that of which this is the condition cannot be

absolute unity?

THEAETETUS: Why not?

STRANGER: Because, according to right reason, that which is truly

one must be affirmed to be absolutely indivisible.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: But this indivisible, if made up of many parts, will

contradict reason.

THEAETETUS: I understand.

STRANGER: Shall we say that being is one and a whole, because it

has the attribute of unity? Or shall we say that being is not a whole
at all?

112
 Plato

THEAETETUS: That is a hard alternative to offer.

STRANGER: Most true; for being, having in a certain sense the

attribute of one, is yet proved not to be the same as one, and the all
is therefore more than one.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And yet if being be not a whole, through having the

attribute of unity, and there be such a thing as an absolute whole,
being lacks something of its own nature?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Upon this view, again, being, having a defect of be-

ing, will become not-being?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And, again, the all becomes more than one, for be-
ing and the whole will each have their separate nature.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: But if the whole does not exist at all, all the previous
difficulties remain the same, and there will be the further difficulty,
that besides having no being, being can never have come into be-
ing.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: Because that which comes into being always comes

into being as a whole, so that he who does not give whole a place
among beings, cannot speak either of essence or generation as exist-
ing.

THEAETETUS: Yes, that certainly appears to be true.

113
Sophist

STRANGER: Again; how can that which is not a whole have any
quantity? For that which is of a certain quantity must necessarily be
the whole of that quantity.

THEAETETUS: Exactly.

STRANGER: And there will be innumerable other points, each of

them causing infinite trouble to him who says that being is either
one or two.

THEAETETUS: The difficulties which are dawning upon us prove

this; for one objection connects with another, and they are always
involving what has preceded in a greater and worse perplexity.

STRANGER: We are far from having exhausted the more exact

thinkers who treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to
leave them, and proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and
we shall find as the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as
difficult to comprehend as that of not-being.

THEAETETUS: Then now we will go to the others.

STRANGER: There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods

going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about
the nature of essence.

THEAETETUS: How is that?

STRANGER: Some of them are dragging down all things from

heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in
their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obsti-
nately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or
handled have being or essence, because they define being and
body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body
exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but
body.

114
 Plato

THEAETETUS: I have often met with such men, and terrible fel-
lows they are.

STRANGER: And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously

defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily con-
tending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorpo-
real ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are main-
tained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their
arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and
motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an end-
less conflict raging concerning these matters.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of

that which they call essence.

THEAETETUS: How shall we get it out of them?

STRANGER: With those who make being to consist in ideas, there

will be less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will
be very great difficulty, or rather an absolute impossibility, in get-
ting an opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter.
Shall I tell you what we must do?

THEAETETUS: What?

STRANGER: Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this

is not possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are,
and more willing to answer in accordance with the rules of argu-
ment, and then their opinion will be more worth having; for
that which better men acknowledge has more weight than that
which is acknowledged by inferior men. Moreover we are no re-
specters of persons, but seekers after truth.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

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Sophist

STRANGER: Then now, on the supposition that they are improved,

let us ask them to state their views, and do you interpret them.

THEAETETUS: Agreed.

STRANGER: Let them say whether they would admit that there is such
a thing as a mortal animal.

THEAETETUS: Of course they would.

STRANGER: And do they not acknowledge this to be a body hav-

ing a soul?

THEAETETUS: Certainly they do.

STRANGER: Meaning to say that the soul is something which ex-

ists?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And do they not say that one soul is just, and an-
other unjust, and that one soul is wise, and another foolish?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And that the just and wise soul becomes just and
wise by the possession of justice and wisdom, and the opposite un-
der opposite
circumstances?

THEAETETUS: Yes, they do.

STRANGER: But surely that which may be present or may be ab-

sent will be admitted by them to exist?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

116
 Plato

STRANGER: And, allowing that justice, wisdom, the other vir-

tues, and their opposites exist, as well as a soul in which they inhere,
do they affirm any of them to be visible and tangible, or are they all
invisible?

THEAETETUS: They would say that hardly any of them are vis-
ible.

STRANGER: And would they say that they are corporeal?

THEAETETUS: They would distinguish: the soul would be said

by them to have a body; but as to the other qualities of justice,
wisdom, and the like, about which you asked, they would not ven-
ture either to deny their existence, or to maintain that they were all
corporeal.

STRANGER: Verily, Theaetetus, I perceive a great improvement in

them; the real aborigines, children of the dragon’s teeth, would have
been deterred by no shame at all, but would have obstinately as-
serted that nothing is which they are not able to squeeze in their
hands.

THEAETETUS: That is pretty much their notion.

STRANGER: Let us push the question; for if they will admit that
any, even the smallest particle of being, is incorporeal, it is enough;
they must then say what that nature is which is common to both
the corporeal and incorporeal, and which they have in their mind’s
eye when they say of both of them that they ‘are.’ Perhaps they may
be in a difficulty; and if this is the case, there is a possibility that
they may accept a notion of ours respecting the nature of being,
having nothing of their own to offer.

THEAETETUS: What is the notion? Tell me, and we shall soon see.

STRANGER: My notion would be, that anything which possesses

any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if

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Sophist

only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however
slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition
of being is simply power.

THEAETETUS: They accept your suggestion, having nothing bet-

ter of their own to offer.

STRANGER: Very good; perhaps we, as well as they, may one day
change our minds; but, for the present, this may be regarded as the
understanding which is established with them.

THEAETETUS: Agreed.

STRANGER: Let us now go to the friends of ideas; of their opin-

ions, too, you shall be the interpreter.

THEAETETUS: I will.

STRANGER: To them we say—You would distinguish essence from

generation?

THEAETETUS: ‘Yes,’ they reply.

STRANGER: And you would allow that we participate in generation

with the body, and through perception, but we participate with the
soul through thought in true essence; and essence you would affirm
to be always the same and immutable, whereas generation or becom-
ing varies?

THEAETETUS: Yes; that is what we should affirm.

STRANGER: Well, fair sirs, we say to them, what is this participa-

tion, which you assert of both? Do you agree with our recent defini-
tion?

THEAETETUS: What definition?

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 Plato

STRANGER: We said that being was an active or passive energy,

arising out of a certain power which proceeds from elements meet-
ing with one another. Perhaps your ears, Theaetetus, may fail to
catch their answer, which I recognize because I have been accus-
tomed to hear it.

THEAETETUS: And what is their answer?

STRANGER: They deny the truth of what we were just now saying
to the aborigines about existence.

THEAETETUS: What was that?

STRANGER: Any power of doing or suffering in a degree however

slight was held by us to be a sufficient definition of being?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: They deny this, and say that the power of doing or
suffering is confined to becoming, and that neither power is appli-
cable to being.

THEAETETUS: And is there not some truth in what they say?

STRANGER: Yes; but our reply will be, that we want to ascertain
from them more distinctly, whether they further admit that the soul
knows, and that being or essence is known.

THEAETETUS: There can be no doubt that they say so.

STRANGER: And is knowing and being known doing or suffer-

ing, or both, or is the one doing and the other suffering, or has
neither any share in either?

THEAETETUS: Clearly, neither has any share in either; for if they

say anything else, they will contradict themselves.

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Sophist

STRANGER: I understand; but they will allow that if to know is

active, then, of course, to be known is passive. And on this view
being, in so far as it is known, is acted upon by knowledge, and is
therefore in motion; for that which is in a state of rest cannot be
acted upon, as we affirm.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And, O heavens, can we ever be made to believe that

motion and life and soul and mind are not present with perfect
being? Can we imagine that being is devoid of life and mind, and
exists in awful unmeaningness an everlasting fixture?

THEAETETUS: That would be a dreadful thing to admit, Stranger.

STRANGER: But shall we say that has mind and not life?

THEAETETUS: How is that possible?

STRANGER: Or shall we say that both inhere in perfect being, but

that it has no soul which contains them?

THEAETETUS: And in what other way can it contain them?

STRANGER: Or that being has mind and life and soul, but al-
though endowed with soul remains absolutely unmoved?

THEAETETUS: All three suppositions appear to me to be irrational.

STRANGER: Under being, then, we must include motion, and

that which is moved.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Then, Theaetetus, our inference is, that if there is no mo-

tion, neither is there any mind anywhere, or about anything or belonging
to any one.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And yet this equally follows, if we grant that all things
are in motion—upon this view too mind has no existence.

THEAETETUS: How so?

STRANGER: Do you think that sameness of condition and mode

and subject could ever exist without a principle of rest?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

STRANGER: Can you see how without them mind could exist, or
come into existence anywhere?

THEAETETUS: No.

STRANGER: And surely contend we must in every possible way

against him who would annihilate knowledge and reason and mind,
and yet ventures to speak confidently about anything.

THEAETETUS: Yes, with all our might.

STRANGER: Then the philosopher, who has the truest reverence

for these qualities, cannot possibly accept the notion of those who
say that the whole is at rest, either as unity or in many forms: and he
will be utterly deaf to those who assert universal motion. As chil-
dren say entreatingly ‘Give us both,’ so he will include both the
moveable and immoveable in his definition of being and all.

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: And now, do we seem to have gained a fair notion of

being?

THEAETETUS: Yes truly.

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Sophist

STRANGER: Alas, Theaetetus, methinks that we are now only be-

ginning to see the real difficulty of the enquiry into the nature of it.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: O my friend, do you not see that nothing can exceed

our ignorance, and yet we fancy that we are saying something good?

THEAETETUS: I certainly thought that we were; and I do not at

all understand how we never found out our desperate case.

STRANGER: Reflect: after having made these admissions, may we

not be justly asked the same questions which we ourselves were ask-
ing of those who said that all was hot and cold?

THEAETETUS: What were they? Will you recall them to my mind?

STRANGER: To be sure I will, and I will remind you of them, by put-

ting the same questions to you which I did to them, and then we shall get
on.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Would you not say that rest and motion are in the
most entire opposition to one another?

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: And yet you would say that both and either of them
equally are?

THEAETETUS: I should.

STRANGER: And when you admit that both or either of them are,
do you mean to say that both or either of them are in motion?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

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 Plato

STRANGER: Or do you wish to imply that they are both at rest,

when you say that they are?

THEAETETUS: Of course not.

STRANGER: Then you conceive of being as some third and dis-

tinct nature, under which rest and motion are alike included; and,
observing that they both participate in being, you declare that they
are.

THEAETETUS: Truly we seem to have an intimation that being is

some third thing, when we say that rest and motion are.

STRANGER: Then being is not the combination of rest and mo-

tion, but something different from them.

THEAETETUS: So it would appear.

STRANGER: Being, then, according to its own nature, is neither

in motion nor at rest.

THEAETETUS: That is very much the truth.

STRANGER: Where, then, is a man to look for help who would

have any clear or fixed notion of being in his mind?

THEAETETUS: Where, indeed?

STRANGER: I scarcely think that he can look anywhere; for that

which is not in motion must be at rest, and again, that which is not
at rest must be in motion; but being is placed outside of both these
classes. Is this possible?

THEAETETUS: Utterly impossible.

STRANGER: Here, then, is another thing which we ought to bear

in mind.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: What?

STRANGER: When we were asked to what we were to assign the ap-

pellation of not-being, we were in the greatest difficulty:—do you re-
member?

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: And are we not now in as great a difficulty about

being?

THEAETETUS: I should say, Stranger, that we are in one which is,

if possible, even greater.

STRANGER: Then let us acknowledge the difficulty; and as being and

not-being are involved in the same perplexity, there is hope that when
the one appears more or less distinctly, the other will equally appear;
and if we are able to see neither, there may still be a chance of steering
our way in between them, without any great discredit.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: Let us enquire, then, how we come to predicate many

names of the same thing.

THEAETETUS: Give an example.

STRANGER: I mean that we speak of man, for example, under

many names—that we attribute to him colours and forms and mag-
nitudes and virtues and vices, in all of which instances and in ten
thousand others we not only speak of him as a man, but also as
good, and having numberless other attributes, and in the same way
anything else which we originally supposed to be one is described
by us as many, and under many names.

THEAETETUS: That is true.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And thus we provide a rich feast for tyros, whether

young or old; for there is nothing easier than to argue that the one
cannot be many, or the many one; and great is their delight in deny-
ing that a man is good; for man, they insist, is man and good is
good. I dare say that you have met with persons who take an inter-
est in such matters—they are often elderly men, whose meagre sense
is thrown into amazement by these discoveries of theirs, which they
believe to be the height of wisdom.

THEAETETUS: Certainly, I have.

STRANGER: Then, not to exclude any one who has ever specu-
lated at all upon the nature of being, let us put our questions to
them as well as to our former friends.

THEAETETUS: What questions?

STRANGER: Shall we refuse to attribute being to motion and rest,

or anything to anything, and assume that they do not mingle, and
are incapable of participating in one another? Or shall we gather all
into one class of things communicable with one another? Or are
some things communicable and others not?—Which of these alter-
natives, Theaetetus, will they prefer?

THEAETETUS: I have nothing to answer on their behalf. Suppose

that you take all these hypotheses in turn, and see what are the
consequences which follow from each of them.

STRANGER: Very good, and first let us assume them to say that
nothing is capable of participating in anything else in any respect;
in that case rest and motion cannot participate in being at all.

THEAETETUS: They cannot.

STRANGER: But would either of them be if not participating in

being?

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: No.

STRANGER: Then by this admission everything is instantly over-

turned, as well the doctrine of universal motion as of universal rest,
and also then doctrine of those who distribute being into immu-
table and everlasting kinds; for all these add on a notion of being,
some affirming that things ‘are’ truly in motion, and others that
they ‘are’ truly at rest.

THEAETETUS: Just so.

STRANGER: Again, those who would at one time compound, and

at another resolve all things, whether making them into one and out
of one creating infinity, or dividing them into finite elements, and
forming compounds out of these; whether they suppose the processes
of creation to be successive or continuous, would be talking nonsense
in all this if there were no admixture.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Most ridiculous of all will the men themselves be

who want to carry out the argument and yet forbid us to call any-
thing, because participating in some affection from another, by the
name of that other.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: Why, because they are compelled to use the words

‘to be,’‘apart,’ ‘from others,’ ‘in itself,’ and ten thousand more, which
they cannot give up, but must make the connecting links of dis-
course; and therefore they do not require to be refuted by others,
but their enemy, as the saying is, inhabits the same house with them;
they are always carrying about with them an adversary, like the won-
derful ventriloquist, Eurycles, who out of their own bellies audibly
contradicts them.

THEAETETUS: Precisely so; a very true and exact illustration.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And now, if we suppose that all things have the power
of communion with one another—what will follow?

THEAETETUS: Even I can solve that riddle.

STRANGER: How?

THEAETETUS: Why, because motion itself would be at rest, and

rest again in motion, if they could be attributed to one another.

STRANGER: But this is utterly impossible.

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: Then only the third hypothesis remains.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: For, surely, either all things have communion with

all; or nothing with any other thing; or some things communicate
with some things and others not.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And two out of these three suppositions have been

found to be impossible.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Every one then, who desires to answer truly, will adopt the
third and remaining hypothesis of the communion of some with some.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: This communion of some with some may be illus-

trated by the case of letters; for some letters do not fit each other,
while others do.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: And the vowels, especially, are a sort of bond which

pervades all the other letters, so that without a vowel one consonant
cannot be joined to another.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: But does every one know what letters will unite with
what? Or is art required in order to do so?

THEAETETUS: Art is required.

STRANGER: What art?

THEAETETUS: The art of grammar.

STRANGER: And is not this also true of sounds high and low?—Is
not he who has the art to know what sounds mingle, a musician,
and he who is ignorant, not a musician?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And we shall find this to be generally true of art or

the absence of art.

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: And as classes are admitted by us in like manner to

be some of them capable and others incapable of intermixture,
must not he who would rightly show what kinds will unite and
what will not, proceed by the help of science in the path of argu-
ment? And will he not ask if the connecting links are universal,
and so capable of intermixture with all things; and again, in divi-
sions, whether there are not other universal classes, which make
them possible?

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: To be sure he will require science, and, if I am not

mistaken, the very greatest of all sciences.

STRANGER: How are we to call it? By Zeus, have we not lighted

unwittingly upon our free and noble science, and in looking for the
Sophist have we not entertained the philosopher unawares?

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Should we not say that the division according to

classes, which neither makes the same other, nor makes other the
same, is the business of the dialectical science?

THEAETETUS: That is what we should say.

STRANGER: Then, surely, he who can divide rightly is able to see

clearly one form pervading a scattered multitude, and many differ-
ent forms contained under one higher form; and again, one form
knit together into a single whole and pervading many such wholes,
and many forms, existing only in separation and isolation. This is
the knowledge of classes which determines where they can have com-
munion with one another and where not.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And the art of dialectic would be attributed by you

only to the philosopher pure and true?

THEAETETUS: Who but he can be worthy?

STRANGER: In this region we shall always discover the philoso-

pher, if we look for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discovered,
but for a different reason.

THEAETETUS: For what reason?

STRANGER: Because the Sophist runs away into the darkness of

129
Sophist

not-being, in which he has learned by habit to feel about, and can-

not be discovered because of the darkness of the place. Is not that
true?

THEAETETUS: It seems to be so.

STRANGER: And the philosopher, always holding converse through

reason with the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light; for
the souls of the many have no eye which can endure the vision of
the divine.

THEAETETUS: Yes; that seems to be quite as true as the other.

STRANGER: Well, the philosopher may hereafter be more fully

considered by us, if we are disposed; but the Sophist must clearly
not be allowed to escape until we have had a good look at him.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: Since, then, we are agreed that some classes have a

communion with one another, and others not, and some have com-
munion with a few and others with many, and that there is no rea-
son why some should not have universal communion with all, let us
now pursue the enquiry, as the argument suggests, not in relation to
all ideas, lest the multitude of them should confuse us, but let us
select a few of those which are reckoned to be the principal ones,
and consider their several natures and their capacity of communion
with one another, in order that if we are not able to apprehend with
perfect clearness the notions of being and not-being, we may at
least not fall short in the consideration of them, so far as they come
within the scope of the present enquiry, if peradventure we may be
allowed to assert the reality of not-being, and yet escape unscathed.

THEAETETUS: We must do so.

STRANGER: The most important of all the genera are those which
we were just now mentioning—being and rest and motion.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Yes, by far.

STRANGER: And two of these are, as we affirm, incapable of com-

munion with one another.

THEAETETUS: Quite incapable.

STRANGER: Whereas being surely has communion with both of

them, for both of them are?

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: That makes up three of them.

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: And each of them is other than the remaining two,

but the same with itself.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: But then, what is the meaning of these two words,

‘same’ and ‘other’? Are they two new kinds other than the three, and
yet always of necessity intermingling with them, and are we to have
five kinds instead of three; or when we speak of the same and other,
are we unconsciously speaking of one of the three first kinds?

THEAETETUS: Very likely we are.

STRANGER: But, surely, motion and rest are neither the other nor
the same.

THEAETETUS: How is that?

STRANGER: Whatever we attribute to motion and rest in com-

mon, cannot be either of them.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Why not?

STRANGER: Because motion would be at rest and rest in motion,

for either of them, being predicated of both, will compel the other
to change into the opposite of its own nature, because partaking of
its opposite.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: Yet they surely both partake of the same and of the
other?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Then we must not assert that motion, any more than
rest, is either the same or the other.

THEAETETUS: No; we must not.

STRANGER: But are we to conceive that being and the same are
identical?

THEAETETUS: Possibly.

STRANGER: But if they are identical, then again in saying that

motion and rest have being, we should also be saying that they are
the same.

THEAETETUS: Which surely cannot be.

STRANGER: Then being and the same cannot be one.

THEAETETUS: Scarcely.

STRANGER: Then we may suppose the same to be a fourth class,

which is now to be added to the three others.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And shall we call the other a fifth class? Or should

we consider being and other to be two names of the same class?

THEAETETUS: Very likely.

STRANGER: But you would agree, if I am not mistaken, that existences are
relative as well as absolute?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And the other is always relative to other?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: But this would not be the case unless being and the
other entirely differed; for, if the other, like being, were absolute as
well as relative, then there would have been a kind of other which
was not other than other. And now we find that what is other must
of necessity be what it is in relation to some other.

THEAETETUS: That is the true state of the case.

STRANGER: Then we must admit the other as the fifth of our

selected classes.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the fifth class pervades all classes, for they all
differ from one another, not by reason of their own nature, but
because they partake of the idea of the other.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: Then let us now put the case with reference to each
of the five.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: How?

STRANGER: First there is motion, which we affirm to be abso-

lutely ‘other’than rest: what else can we say?

THEAETETUS: It is so.

STRANGER: And therefore is not rest.

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And yet is, because partaking of being.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Again, motion is other than the same?

THEAETETUS: Just so.

STRANGER: And is therefore not the same.

THEAETETUS: It is not.

STRANGER: Yet, surely, motion is the same, because all things

partake of the same.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Then we must admit, and not object to say, that

motion is the same and is not the same, for we do not apply the
terms ‘same’ and ‘not the same,’ in the same sense; but we call it the
‘same,’ in relation to itself, because partaking of the same; and not
the same, because having communion with the other, it is thereby
severed from the same, and has become not that but other, and is
therefore rightly spoken of as ‘not the same.’

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And if absolute motion in any point of view partook

of rest, there would be no absurdity in calling motion stationary.

THEAETETUS: Quite right,—that is, on the supposition that some

classes mingle with one another, and others not.

STRANGER: That such a communion of kinds is according to nature,

we had already proved before we arrived at this part of our discussion.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Let us proceed, then. May we not say that motion is

other than the other, having been also proved by us to be other than
the same and other than rest?

THEAETETUS: That is certain.

STRANGER: Then, according to this view, motion is other and

also not other?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: What is the next step? Shall we say that motion is

other than the three and not other than the fourth,—for we agreed
that there are five classes about and in the sphere of which we pro-
posed to make enquiry?

THEAETETUS: Surely we cannot admit that the number is less

than it appeared to be just now.

STRANGER: Then we may without fear contend that motion is

other than being?

THEAETETUS: Without the least fear.

STRANGER: The plain result is that motion, since it partakes of

being, really is and also is not?

135
Sophist

THEAETETUS: Nothing can be plainer.

STRANGER: Then not-being necessarily exists in the case of mo-

tion and of every class; for the nature of the other entering into
them all, makes each of them other than being, and so non-exis-
tent; and therefore of all of them, in like manner, we may truly say
that they are not; and again, inasmuch as they partake of being, that
they are and are existent.

THEAETETUS: So we may assume.

STRANGER: Every class, then, has plurality of being and infinity

of not-being.

THEAETETUS: So we must infer.

STRANGER: And being itself may be said to be other than the

other kinds.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Then we may infer that being is not, in respect of as

many other things as there are; for not-being these it is itself one,
and is not the other things, which are infinite in number.

THEAETETUS: That is not far from the truth.

STRANGER: And we must not quarrel with this result, since it is

of the nature of classes to have communion with one another; and if
any one denies our present statement [viz., that being is not, etc.],
let him first argue with our former conclusion [i.e., respecting the
communion of ideas], and then he may proceed to argue with what
follows.

THEAETETUS: Nothing can be fairer.

STRANGER: Let me ask you to consider a further question.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: What question?

STRANGER: When we speak of not-being, we speak, I suppose,

not of something opposed to being, but only different.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: When we speak of something as not great, does the

expression seem to you to imply what is little any more than what is
equal?

THEAETETUS: Certainly not.

STRANGER: The negative particles, ou and me, when prefixed to words, do

not imply opposition, but only difference from the words, or more correctly
from the things represented by the words, which follow them.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: There is another point to be considered, if you do

not object.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: The nature of the other appears to me to be divided

into fractions like knowledge.

THEAETETUS: How so?

STRANGER: Knowledge, like the other, is one; and yet the various
parts of knowledge have each of them their own particular name,
and hence there are many arts and kinds of knowledge.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And is not the case the same with the parts of the
other, which is also one?

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: Very likely; but will you tell me how?

STRANGER: There is some part of the other which is opposed to

the beautiful?

THEAETETUS: There is.

STRANGER: Shall we say that this has or has not a name?

THEAETETUS: It has; for whatever we call not-beautiful is other

than the beautiful, not than something else.

STRANGER: And now tell me another thing.

THEAETETUS: What?

STRANGER: Is the not-beautiful anything but this—an existence

parted off from a certain kind of existence, and again from another
point of view opposed to an existing something?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then the not-beautiful turns out to be the opposi-

tion of being to being?

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: But upon this view, is the beautiful a more real and
the not-beautiful a less real existence?

THEAETETUS: Not at all.

STRANGER: And the not-great may be said to exist, equally with

the great?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And, in the same way, the just must be placed in the
same category with the not-just—the one cannot be said to have
any more existence than the other.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: The same may be said of other things; seeing that the
nature of the other has a real existence, the parts of this nature must
equally be supposed to exist.

THEAETETUS: Of course.

STRANGER: Then, as would appear, the opposition of a part of

the other, and of a part of being, to one another, is, if I may venture
to say so, as truly essence as being itself, and implies not the oppo-
site of being, but only what is other than being.

THEAETETUS: Beyond question.

STRANGER: What then shall we call it?

THEAETETUS: Clearly, not-being; and this is the very nature for

which the Sophist compelled us to search.

STRANGER: And has not this, as you were saying, as real an exist-
ence as any other class? May I not say with confidence that not-
being has an assured existence, and a nature of its own? Just as the
great was found to be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not-
great not-great, and the not-beautiful not-beautiful, in the same
manner not-being has been found to be and is not-being, and is to
be reckoned one among the many classes of being. Do you,
Theaetetus, still feel any doubt of this?

THEAETETUS: None whatever.

STRANGER: Do you observe that our scepticism has carried us

beyond the range of Parmenides’ prohibition?

139
Sophist

THEAETETUS: In what?

STRANGER: We have advanced to a further point, and shown

him more than he forbad us to investigate.

THEAETETUS: How is that?

STRANGER: Why, because he says—

‘Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy

thoughts from this way of enquiry.’

THEAETETUS: Yes, he says so.

STRANGER: Whereas, we have not only proved that things which

are not are, but we have shown what form of being not-being is; for
we have shown that the nature of the other is, and is distributed
over all things in their relations to one another, and whatever part
of the other is contrasted with being, this is precisely what we have
ventured to call not-being.

THEAETETUS: And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.

STRANGER: Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the
opposition of not-being to being, we still assert the being of not-
being; for as to whether there is an opposite of being, to that en-
quiry we have long said good-bye—it may or may not be, and may
or may not be capable of definition. But as touching our present
account of not-being, let a man either convince us of error, or, so
long as he cannot, he too must say, as we are saying, that there is a
communion of classes, and that being, and difference or other,
traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, so that the other
partakes of being, and by reason of this participation is, and yet is
not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than being,
it is clearly a necessity that not-being should be. And again, being,
through partaking of the other, becomes a class other than the re-
maining classes, and being other than all of them, is not each one of

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 Plato

them, and is not all the rest, so that undoubtedly there are thou-
sands upon thousands of cases in which being is not, and all other
things, whether regarded individually or collectively, in many re-
spects are, and in many respects are not.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And he who is sceptical of this contradiction, must think

how he can find something better to say; or if he sees a puzzle, and his
pleasure is to drag words this way and that, the argument will prove to
him, that he is not making a worthy use of his faculties; for there is no
charm in such puzzles, and there is no difficulty in detecting them; but
we can tell him of something else the pursuit of which is noble and also
difficult.

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: A thing of which I have already spoken;—letting alone

these puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow and
criticize in detail every argument, and when a man says that the same is
in a manner other, or that other is the same, to understand and refute
him from his own point of view, and in the same respect in which he
asserts either of these affections. But to show that somehow and in
some sense the same is other, or the other same, or the great small, or
the like unlike; and to delight in always bringing forward such contra-
dictions, is no real refutation, but is clearly the new-born babe of some
one who is only beginning to approach the problem of being.

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: For certainly, my friend, the attempt to separate all

existences from one another is a barbarism and utterly unworthy of
an educated or philosophical mind.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: The attempt at universal separation is the final anni-

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Sophist

hilation of all reasoning; for only by the union of conceptions with

one another do we attain to discourse of reason.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And, observe that we were only just in time in mak-

ing a resistance to such separatists, and compelling them to admit
that one thing mingles with another.

THEAETETUS: Why so?

STRANGER: Why, that we might be able to assert discourse to be

a kind of being; for if we could not, the worst of all consequences
would follow; we should have no philosophy. Moreover, the neces-
sity for determining the nature of discourse presses upon us at this
moment; if utterly deprived of it, we could no more hold discourse;
and deprived of it we should be if we admitted that there was no
admixture of natures at all.

THEAETETUS: Very true. But I do not understand why at this

moment we must determine the nature of discourse.

STRANGER: Perhaps you will see more clearly by the help of the
following explanation.

THEAETETUS: What explanation?

STRANGER: Not-being has been acknowledged by us to be one

among many classes diffused over all being.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And thence arises the question, whether not-being mingles

with opinion and language.

THEAETETUS: How so?

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 Plato

STRANGER: If not-being has no part in the proposition, then all

things must be true; but if not-being has a part, then false opinion
and false speech are possible, for to think or to say what is not—is
falsehood, which thus arises in the region of thought and in speech.

THEAETETUS: That is quite true.

STRANGER: And where there is falsehood surely there must be

deceit.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And if there is deceit, then all things must be full of

idols and images and fancies.

THEAETETUS: To be sure.

STRANGER: Into that region the Sophist, as we said, made his

escape, and, when he had got there, denied the very possibility of
falsehood; no one, he argued, either conceived or uttered falsehood,
inasmuch as not-being did not in any way partake of being.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And now, not-being has been shown to partake of

being, and therefore he will not continue fighting in this direction,
but he will probably say that some ideas partake of not-being, and
some not, and that language and opinion are of the non-partaking
class; and he will still fight to the death against the existence of the
image-making and phantastic art, in which we have placed him,
because, as he will say, opinion and language do not partake of not-
being, and unless this participation exists, there can be no such thing
as falsehood. And, with the view of meeting this evasion, we must
begin by enquiring into the nature of language, opinion, and imagi-
nation, in order that when we find them we may find also that they
have communion with not-being, and, having made out the
connexion of them, may thus prove that falsehood exists; and therein

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Sophist

we will imprison the Sophist, if he deserves it, or, if not, we will let
him go again and look for him in another class.

THEAETETUS: Certainly, Stranger, there appears to be truth in

what was said about the Sophist at first, that he was of a class not
easily caught, for he seems to have abundance of defences, which he
throws up, and which must every one of them be stormed before we
can reach the man himself. And even now, we have with difficulty
got through his first defence, which is the not-being of not-being,
and lo! here is another; for we have still to show that falsehood exists
in the sphere of language and opinion, and there will be another and
another line of defence without end.

STRANGER: Any one, Theaetetus, who is able to advance even a

little ought to be of good cheer, for what would he who is dispirited
at a little progress do, if he were making none at all, or even under-
going a repulse? Such a faint heart, as the proverb says, will never
take a city: but now that we have succeeded thus far, the citadel is
ours, and what remains is easier.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Then, as I was saying, let us first of all obtain a concep-

tion of language and opinion, in order that we may have clearer grounds
for determining, whether not-being has any concern with them, or
whether they are both always true, and neither of them ever false.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then, now, let us speak of names, as before we were

speaking of ideas and letters; for that is the direction in which the
answer may be expected.

THEAETETUS: And what is the question at issue about names?

STRANGER: The question at issue is whether all names may be

connected with one another, or none, or only some of them.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Clearly the last is true.

STRANGER: I understand you to say that words which have a

meaning when in sequence may be connected, but that words which
have no meaning when in sequence cannot be connected?

THEAETETUS: What are you saying?

STRANGER: What I thought that you intended when you gave your
assent; for there are two sorts of intimation of being which are given by
the voice.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: One of them is called nouns, and the other verbs.

THEAETETUS: Describe them.

STRANGER: That which denotes action we call a verb.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And the other, which is an articulate mark set on

those who do the actions, we call a noun.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: A succession of nouns only is not a sentence, any

more than of verbs without nouns.

THEAETETUS: I do not understand you.

STRANGER: I see that when you gave your assent you had some-
thing else in your mind. But what I intended to say was, that a mere
succession of nouns or of verbs is not discourse.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

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Sophist

STRANGER: I mean that words like ‘walks,’ ‘runs,’ ‘sleeps,’ or any

other words which denote action, however many of them you string
together, do not make discourse.

THEAETETUS: How can they?

STRANGER: Or, again, when you say ‘lion,’ ‘stag,’ ‘horse,’ or any
other words which denote agents—neither in this way of stringing
words together do you attain to discourse; for there is no expression
of action or inaction, or of the existence of existence or non-exist-
ence indicated by the sounds, until verbs are mingled with nouns;
then the words fit, and the smallest combination of them forms
language, and is the simplest and least form of discourse.

THEAETETUS: Again I ask, What do you mean?

STRANGER: When any one says ‘A man learns,’ should you not
call this the simplest and least of sentences?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Yes, for he now arrives at the point of giving an inti-

mation about something which is, or is becoming, or has become,
or will be. And he not only names, but he does something, by con-
necting verbs with nouns; and therefore we say that he discourses,
and to this connexion of words we give the name of discourse.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And as there are some things which fit one another,
and other things which do not fit, so there are some vocal signs
which do, and others which do not, combine and form discourse.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: There is another small matter.

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: A sentence must and cannot help having a subject.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And must be of a certain quality.

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And now let us mind what we are about.

THEAETETUS: We must do so.

STRANGER: I will repeat a sentence to you in which a thing and

an action are combined, by the help of a noun and a verb; and you
shall tell me of whom the sentence speaks.

THEAETETUS: I will, to the best of my power.

STRANGER: ‘Theaetetus sits’—not a very long sentence.

THEAETETUS: Not very.

STRANGER: Of whom does the sentence speak, and who is the subject?
that is what you have to tell.

THEAETETUS: Of me; I am the subject.

STRANGER: Or this sentence, again—

THEAETETUS: What sentence?

STRANGER: ‘Theaetetus, with whom I am now speaking, is flying.’

THEAETETUS: That also is a sentence which will be admitted by

every one to speak of me, and to apply to me.

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Sophist

STRANGER: We agreed that every sentence must necessarily have

a certain quality.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And what is the quality of each of these two sen-

tences?

THEAETETUS: The one, as I imagine, is false, and the other true.

STRANGER: The true says what is true about you?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the false says what is other than true?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And therefore speaks of things which are not as if

they were?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And say that things are real of you which are not; for,
as we were saying, in regard to each thing or person, there is much
that is and much that is not.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: The second of the two sentences which related to you

was first of all an example of the shortest form consistent with our
definition.

THEAETETUS: Yes, this was implied in recent admission.

STRANGER: And, in the second place, it related to a subject?

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 Plato

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Who must be you, and can be nobody else?

THEAETETUS: Unquestionably.

STRANGER: And it would be no sentence at all if there were no

subject, for, as we proved, a sentence which has no subject is impos-
sible.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: When other, then, is asserted of you as the same, and

not-being as being, such a combination of nouns and verbs is really
and truly false discourse.

THEAETETUS: Most true.

STRANGER: And therefore thought, opinion, and imagination are

now proved to exist in our minds both as true and false.

THEAETETUS: How so?

STRANGER: You will know better if you first gain a knowledge of

what they are, and in what they severally differ from one another.

THEAETETUS: Give me the knowledge which you would wish

me to gain.

STRANGER: Are not thought and speech the same, with this ex-
ception, that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of
the soul with herself?

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: But the stream of thought which flows through the lips
and is audible is called speech?

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And we know that there exists in speech …

THEAETETUS: What exists?

STRANGER: Affirmation.

THEAETETUS: Yes, we know it.

STRANGER: When the affirmation or denial takes Place in silence

and in the mind only, have you any other name by which to call it
but opinion?

THEAETETUS: There can be no other name.

STRANGER: And when opinion is presented, not simply, but in

some form of sense, would you not call it imagination?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: And seeing that language is true and false, and that
thought is the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is
the end of thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of
sense and opinion, the inference is that some of them, since they are
akin to language, should have an element of falsehood as well as of
truth?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Do you perceive, then, that false opinion and speech

have been discovered sooner than we expected?—For just now we
seemed to be undertaking a task which would never be accomplished.

THEAETETUS: I perceive.

STRANGER: Then let us not be discouraged about the future; but

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 Plato

now having made this discovery, let us go back to our previous clas-
sification.

THEAETETUS: What classification?

STRANGER: We divided image-making into two sorts; the one

likeness-making, the other imaginative or phantastic.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And we said that we were uncertain in which we

should place the Sophist.

THEAETETUS: We did say so.

STRANGER: And our heads began to go round more and more

when it was asserted that there is no such thing as an image or idol
or appearance, because in no manner or time or place can there ever
be such a thing as falsehood.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And now, since there has been shown to be false speech
and false opinion, there may be imitations of real existences, and
out of this condition of the mind an art of deception may arise.

THEAETETUS: Quite possible.

STRANGER: And we have already admitted, in what preceded,

that the Sophist was lurking in one of the divisions of the likeness-
making art?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Let us, then, renew the attempt, and in dividing any
class, always take the part to the right, holding fast to that which
holds the Sophist, until we have stripped him of all his common

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Sophist

properties, and reached his difference or peculiar. Then we may ex-

hibit him in his true nature, first to ourselves and then to kindred
dialectical spirits.

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: You may remember that all art was originally divided
by us into creative and acquisitive.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And the Sophist was flitting before us in the acquisi-

tive class, in the subdivisions of hunting, contests, merchandize,
and the like.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: But now that the imitative art has enclosed him, it is
clear that we must begin by dividing the art of creation; for imita-
tion is a kind of creation—of images, however, as we affirm, and
not of real things.

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: In the first place, there are two kinds of creation.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: One of them is human and the other divine.

THEAETETUS: I do not follow.

STRANGER: Every power, as you may remember our saying origi-

nally, which causes things to exist, not previously existing, was de-
fined by us as creative.

THEAETETUS: I remember.

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 Plato

STRANGER: Looking, now, at the world and all the animals and
plants, at things which grow upon the earth from seeds and roots, as
well as at inanimate substances which are formed within the earth,
fusile or non-fusile, shall we say that they come into existence—not
having existed previously—by the creation of God, or shall we agree
with vulgar opinion about them?

THEAETETUS: What is it?

STRANGER: The opinion that nature brings them into being from
some spontaneous and unintelligent cause. Or shall we say that they
are created by a divine reason and a knowledge which comes from
God?

THEAETETUS: I dare say that, owing to my youth, I may often

waver in my view, but now when I look at you and see that you
incline to refer them to God, I defer to your authority.

STRANGER: Nobly said, Theaetetus, and if I thought that you were

one of those who would hereafter change your mind, I would have
gently argued with you, and forced you to assent; but as I perceive that
you will come of yourself and without any argument of mine, to that
belief which, as you say, attracts you, I will not forestall the work of
time. Let me suppose, then, that things which are said to be made by
nature are the work of divine art, and that things which are made by
man out of these are works of human art. And so there are two kinds of
making and production, the one human and the other divine.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then, now, subdivide each of the two sections which

we have already.

THEAETETUS: How do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean to say that you should make a vertical division

of production or invention, as you have already made a lateral one.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: I have done so.

STRANGER: Then, now, there are in all four parts or segments—

two of them have reference to us and are human, and two of them
have reference to the gods and are divine.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And, again, in the division which was supposed to be

made in the other way, one part in each subdivision is the making
of the things themselves, but the two remaining parts may be called
the making of likenesses; and so the productive art is again divided
into two parts.

THEAETETUS: Tell me the divisions once more.

STRANGER: I suppose that we, and the other animals, and the ele-
ments out of which things are made—fire, water, and the like—are
known by us to be each and all the creation and work of God.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And there are images of them, which are not them,
but which correspond to them; and these are also the creation of a
wonderful skill.

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: The appearances which spring up of themselves in

sleep or by day, such as a shadow when darkness arises in a fire, or
the reflection which is produced when the light in bright and smooth
objects meets on their surface with an external light, and creates a
perception the opposite of our ordinary sight.

THEAETETUS: Yes; and the images as well as the creation are

equally the work of a divine hand.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And what shall we say of human art? Do we not

make one house by the art of building, and another by the art of
drawing, which is a sort of dream created by man for those who are
awake?

THEAETETUS: Quite true.

STRANGER: And other products of human creation are also two-

fold and go in pairs; there is the thing, with which the art of making
the thing is concerned, and the image, with which imitation is con-
cerned.

THEAETETUS: Now I begin to understand, and am ready to ac-

knowledge that there are two kinds of production, and each of them
twofold; in the lateral division there is both a divine and a human
production; in the vertical there are realities and a creation of a kind
of similitudes.

STRANGER: And let us not forget that of the imitative class the
one part was to have been likeness-making, and the other phantastic,
if it could be shown that falsehood is a reality and belongs to the
class of real being.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And this appeared to be the case; and therefore now,

without hesitation, we shall number the different kinds as two.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Then, now, let us again divide the phantastic art.

THEAETETUS: Where shall we make the division?

STRANGER: There is one kind which is produced by an instru-

ment, and another in which the creator of the appearance is himself
the instrument.

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Sophist

THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

STRANGER: When any one makes himself appear like another in

his figure or his voice, imitation is the name for this part of the
phantastic art.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: Let this, then, be named the art of mimicry, and this
the province assigned to it; as for the other division, we are weary
and will give that up, leaving to some one else the duty of making
the class and giving it a suitable name.

THEAETETUS: Let us do as you say—assign a sphere to the one

and leave the other.

STRANGER: There is a further distinction, Theaetetus, which is

worthy of our consideration, and for a reason which I will tell you.

THEAETETUS: Let me hear.

STRANGER: There are some who imitate, knowing what they

imitate, and some who do not know. And what line of distinction
can there possibly be greater than that which divides ignorance from
knowledge?

THEAETETUS: There can be no greater.

STRANGER: Was not the sort of imitation of which we spoke just

now the imitation of those who know? For he who would imitate
you would surely know you and your figure?

THEAETETUS: Naturally.

STRANGER: And what would you say of the figure or form of

justice or of virtue in general? Are we not well aware that many,
having no knowledge of either, but only a sort of opinion, do their

156
 Plato

best to show that this opinion is really entertained by them, by ex-

pressing it, as far as they can, in word and deed?

THEAETETUS: Yes, that is very common.

STRANGER: And do they always fail in their attempt to be thought

just, when they are not? Or is not the very opposite true?

THEAETETUS: The very opposite.

STRANGER: Such a one, then, should be described as an imita-

tor—to be distinguished from the other, as he who is ignorant is
distinguished from him who knows?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: Can we find a suitable name for each of them? This

is clearly not an easy task; for among the ancients there was some
confusion of ideas, which prevented them from attempting to di-
vide genera into species; wherefore there is no great abundance of
names. Yet, for the sake of distinctness, I will make bold to call the
imitation which coexists with opinion, the imitation of appearance—
that which coexists with science, a scientific or learned imitation.

THEAETETUS: Granted.

STRANGER: The former is our present concern, for the Sophist was
classed with imitators indeed, but not among those who have knowl-
edge.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: Let us, then, examine our imitator of appearance,

and see whether he is sound, like a piece of iron, or whether there is
still some crack in him.

THEAETETUS: Let us examine him.

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Sophist

STRANGER: Indeed there is a very considerable crack; for if you look,

you find that one of the two classes of imitators is a simple creature,
who thinks that he knows that which he only fancies; the other sort has
knocked about among arguments, until he suspects and fears that he is
ignorant of that which to the many he pretends to know.

THEAETETUS: There are certainly the two kinds which you de-
scribe.

STRANGER: Shall we regard one as the simple imitator—the other

as the dissembling or ironical imitator?

THEAETETUS: Very good.

STRANGER: And shall we further speak of this latter class as hav-

ing one or two divisions?

THEAETETUS: Answer yourself.

STRANGER: Upon consideration, then, there appear to me to be

two; there is the dissembler, who harangues a multitude in public in
a long speech, and the dissembler, who in private and in short
speeches compels the person who is conversing with him to contra-
dict himself.

THEAETETUS: What you say is most true.

STRANGER: And who is the maker of the longer speeches? Is he the states-
man or the popular orator?

THEAETETUS: The latter.

STRANGER: And what shall we call the other? Is he the philoso-

pher or the Sophist?

THEAETETUS: The philosopher he cannot be, for upon our view

he is ignorant; but since he is an imitator of the wise he will have a

158
 Plato

name which is formed by an adaptation of the word sophos. What

shall we name him? I am pretty sure that I cannot be mistaken in
terming him the true and very Sophist.

STRANGER: Shall we bind up his name as we did before, making

a chain from one end of his genealogy to the other?

THEAETETUS: By all means.

STRANGER: He, then, who traces the pedigree of his art as fol-
lows—who, belonging to the conscious or dissembling section of
the art of causing self-contradiction, is an imitator of appearance,
and is separated from the class of phantastic which is a branch of
image-making into that further division of creation, the juggling of
words, a creation human, and not divine—any one who affirms the
real Sophist to be of this blood and lineage will say the very truth.

THEAETETUS: Undoubtedly.

159
Statesman

STATESMAN
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS

IN THE PHAEDRUS, the Republic, the Philebus, the Parmenides, and

the Sophist, we may observe the tendency of Plato to combine two
or more subjects or different aspects of the same subject in a single
dialogue. In the Sophist and Statesman especially we note that the
discussion is partly regarded as an illustration of method, and that
analogies are brought from afar which throw light on the main sub-
ject. And in his later writings generally we further remark a decline
of style, and of dramatic power; the characters excite little or no
interest, and the digressions are apt to overlay the main thesis; there
is not the ‘callida junctura’ of an artistic whole. Both the serious
discussions and the jests are sometimes out of place. The invincible
Socrates is withdrawn from view; and new foes begin to appear un-
der old names. Plato is now chiefly concerned, not with the original
Sophist, but with the sophistry of the schools of philosophy, which
are making reasoning impossible; and is driven by them out of the
regions of transcendental speculation back into the path of com-
mon sense. A logical or psychological phase takes the place of the
doctrine of Ideas in his mind. He is constantly dwelling on the im-
portance of regular classification, and of not putting words in the
place of things. He has banished the poets, and is beginning to use
a technical language. He is bitter and satirical, and seems to be sadly
conscious of the realities of human life. Yet the ideal glory of the

160
 Plato

Platonic philosophy is not extinguished. He is still looking for a city

in which kings are either philosophers or gods (compare Laws).
The Statesman has lost the grace and beauty of the earlier dia-
logues. The mind of the writer seems to be so overpowered in the
effort of thought as to impair his style; at least his gift of expression
does not keep up with the increasing difficulty of his theme. The
idea of the king or statesman and the illustration of method are
connected, not like the love and rhetoric of the Phaedrus, by ‘little
invisible pegs,’ but in a confused and inartistic manner, which fails
to produce any impression of a whole on the mind of the reader.
Plato apologizes for his tediousness, and acknowledges that the im-
provement of his audience has been his only aim in some of his
digressions. His own image may be used as a motto of his style: like
an inexpert statuary he has made the figure or outline too large, and
is unable to give the proper colours or proportions to his work. He
makes mistakes only to correct them—this seems to be his way of
drawing attention to common dialectical errors. The Eleatic stranger,
here, as in the Sophist, has no appropriate character, and appears
only as the expositor of a political ideal, in the delineation of which
he is frequently interrupted by purely logical illustrations. The
younger Socrates resembles his namesake in nothing but a name.
The dramatic character is so completely forgotten, that a special
reference is twice made to discussions in the Sophist; and this, per-
haps, is the strongest ground which can be urged for doubting the
genuineness of the work. But, when we remember that a similar
allusion is made in the Laws to the Republic, we see that the entire
disregard of dramatic propriety is not always a sufficient reason for
doubting the genuineness of a Platonic writing.
The search after the Statesman, which is carried on, like that for
the Sophist, by the method of dichotomy, gives an opportunity for
many humorous and satirical remarks. Several of the jests are man-
nered and laboured: for example, the turn of words with which the
dialogue opens; or the clumsy joke about man being an animal,
who has a power of two-feet—both which are suggested by the pres-
ence of Theodorus, the geometrician. There is political as well as
logical insight in refusing to admit the division of mankind into
Hellenes and Barbarians: ‘if a crane could speak, he would in like

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manner oppose men and all other animals to cranes.’ The pride of
the Hellene is further humbled, by being compared to a Phrygian
or Lydian. Plato glories in this impartiality of the dialectical method,
which places birds in juxtaposition with men, and the king side by
side with the bird-catcher; king or vermin-destroyer are objects of
equal interest to science (compare Parmen.). There are other pas-
sages which show that the irony of Socrates was a lesson which Plato
was not slow in learning—as, for example, the passing remark, that
‘the kings and statesmen of our day are in their breeding and educa-
tion very like their subjects;’ or the anticipation that the rivals of the
king will be found in the class of servants; or the imposing attitude
of the priests, who are the established interpreters of the will of
heaven, authorized by law. Nothing is more bitter in all his writings
than his comparison of the contemporary politicians to lions, cen-
taurs, satyrs, and other animals of a feebler sort, who are ever chang-
ing their forms and natures. But, as in the later dialogues generally,
the play of humour and the charm of poetry have departed, never
to return.
Still the Politicus contains a higher and more ideal conception of
politics than any other of Plato’s writings. The city of which there is
a pattern in heaven (Republic), is here described as a Paradisiacal
state of human society. In the truest sense of all, the ruler is not man
but God; and such a government existed in a former cycle of hu-
man history, and may again exist when the gods resume their care
of mankind. In a secondary sense, the true form of government is
that which has scientific rulers, who are irresponsible to their sub-
jects. Not power but knowledge is the characteristic of a king or
royal person. And the rule of a man is better and higher than law,
because he is more able to deal with the infinite complexity of hu-
man affairs. But mankind, in despair of finding a true ruler, are
willing to acquiesce in any law or custom which will save them
from the caprice of individuals. They are ready to accept any of the
six forms of government which prevail in the world. To the Greek,
nomos was a sacred word, but the political idealism of Plato soars
into a region beyond; for the laws he would substitute the intelli-
gent will of the legislator. Education is originally to implant in men’s
minds a sense of truth and justice, which is the divine bond of states,

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and the legislator is to contrive human bonds, by which dissimilar

natures may be united in marriage and supply the deficiencies of
one another. As in the Republic, the government of philosophers,
the causes of the perversion of states, the regulation of marriages,
are still the political problems with which Plato’s mind is occupied.
He treats them more slightly, partly because the dialogue is shorter,
and also because the discussion of them is perpetually crossed by
the other interest of dialectic, which has begun to absorb him.
The plan of the Politicus or Statesman may be briefly sketched as
follows: (1) By a process of division and subdivision we discover the
true herdsman or king of men. But before we can rightly distinguish
him from his rivals, we must view him, (2) as he is presented to us in
a famous ancient tale: the tale will also enable us to distinguish the
divine from the human herdsman or shepherd: (3) and besides our
fable, we must have an example; for our example we will select the
art of weaving, which will have to be distinguished from the kindred
arts; and then, following this pattern, we will separate the king from
his subordinates or competitors. (4) But are we not exceeding all due
limits; and is there not a measure of all arts and sciences, to which the
art of discourse must conform? There is; but before we can apply this
measure, we must know what is the aim of discourse: and our dis-
course only aims at the dialectical improvement of ourselves and
others.—Having made our apology, we return once more to the
king or statesman, and proceed to contrast him with pretenders in
the same line with him, under their various forms of government.
(5) His characteristic is, that he alone has science, which is superior
to law and written enactments; these do but spring out of the neces-
sities of mankind, when they are in despair of finding the true king.
(6) The sciences which are most akin to the royal are the sciences of
the general, the judge, the orator, which minister to him, but even
these are subordinate to him. (7) Fixed principles are implanted by
education, and the king or statesman completes the political web by
marrying together dissimilar natures, the courageous and the tem-
perate, the bold and the gentle, who are the warp and the woof of
society.
The outline may be filled up as follows:—

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SOCRATES: I have reason to thank you, Theodorus, for the ac-

quaintance of Theaetetus and the Stranger.

THEODORUS: And you will have three times as much reason to

thank me when they have delineated the Statesman and Philoso-
pher, as well as the Sophist.

SOCRATES: Does the great geometrician apply the same measure

to all three? Are they not divided by an interval which no geometri-
cal ratio can express?

THEODORUS: By the god Ammon, Socrates, you are right; and I

am glad to see that you have not forgotten your geometry. But be-
fore I retaliate on you, I must request the Stranger to finish the
argument…

The Stranger suggests that Theaetetus shall be allowed to rest,

and that Socrates the younger shall respond in his place; Theodorus
agrees to the suggestion, and Socrates remarks that the name of the
one and the face of the other give him a right to claim relationship
with both of them. They propose to take the Statesman after the
Sophist; his path they must determine, and part off all other ways,
stamping upon them a single negative form (compare Soph.).
The Stranger begins the enquiry by making a division of the arts
and sciences into theoretical and practical—the one kind concerned
with knowledge exclusively, and the other with action; arithmetic
and the mathematical sciences are examples of the former, and car-
pentering and handicraft arts of the latter (compare Philebus). Un-
der which of the two shall we place the Statesman? Or rather, shall
we not first ask, whether the king, statesman, master, householder,
practise one art or many? As the adviser of a physician may be said
to have medical science and to be a physician, so the adviser of a
king has royal science and is a king. And the master of a large house-
hold may be compared to the ruler of a small state. Hence we con-
clude that the science of the king, statesman, and householder is
one and the same. And this science is akin to knowledge rather than
to action. For a king rules with his mind, and not with his hands.

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But theoretical science may be a science either of judging, like

arithmetic, or of ruling and superintending, like that of the archi-
tect or master-builder. And the science of the king is of the latter
nature; but the power which he exercises is underived and uncon-
trolled,—a characteristic which distinguishes him from heralds,
prophets, and other inferior officers. He is the wholesale dealer in
command, and the herald, or other officer, retails his commands to
others. Again, a ruler is concerned with the production of some
object, and objects may be divided into living and lifeless, and rul-
ers into the rulers of living and lifeless objects. And the king is not
like the master-builder, concerned with lifeless matter, but has the
task of managing living animals. And the tending of living animals
may be either a tending of individuals, or a managing of herds. And
the Statesman is not a groom, but a herdsman, and his art may be
called either the art of managing a herd, or the art of collective
management:—Which do you prefer? ‘No matter.’ Very good,
Socrates, and if you are not too particular about words you will be
all the richer some day in true wisdom. But how would you subdi-
vide the herdsman’s art? ‘I should say, that there is one management
of men, and another of beasts.’ Very good, but you are in too great
a hurry to get to man. All divisions which are rightly made should
cut through the middle; if you attend to this rule, you will be more
likely to arrive at classes. ‘I do not understand the nature of my
mistake.’ Your division was like a division of the human race into
Hellenes and Barbarians, or into Lydians or Phrygians and all other
nations, instead of into male and female; or like a division of num-
ber into ten thousand and all other numbers, instead of into odd
and even. And I should like you to observe further, that though I
maintain a class to be a part, there is no similar necessity for a part
to be a class. But to return to your division, you spoke of men and
other animals as two classes—the second of which you compre-
hended under the general name of beasts. This is the sort of division
which an intelligent crane would make: he would put cranes into a
class by themselves for their special glory, and jumble together all
others, including man, in the class of beasts. An error of this kind
can only be avoided by a more regular subdivision. Just now we
divided the whole class of animals into gregarious and non-gregari-

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ous, omitting the previous division into tame and wild. We forgot
this in our hurry to arrive at man, and found by experience, as the
proverb says, that ‘the more haste the worse speed.’
And now let us begin again at the art of managing herds. You have
probably heard of the fish-preserves in the Nile and in the ponds of
the Great King, and of the nurseries of geese and cranes in Thessaly.
These suggest a new division into the rearing or management of
land-herds and of water-herds:— I need not say with which the
king is concerned. And land-herds may be divided into walking and
flying; and every idiot knows that the political animal is a pedes-
trian. At this point we may take a longer or a shorter road, and as we
are already near the end, I see no harm in taking the longer, which
is the way of mesotomy, and accords with the principle which we
were laying down. The tame, walking, herding animal, may be di-
vided into two classes—the horned and the hornless, and the king
is concerned with the hornless; and these again may be subdivided
into animals having or not having cloven feet, or mixing or not
mixing the breed; and the king or statesman has the care of animals
which have not cloven feet, and which do not mix the breed. And
now, if we omit dogs, who can hardly be said to herd, I think that
we have only two species left which remain undivided: and how are
we to distinguish them? To geometricians, like you and Theaetetus,
I can have no difficulty in explaining that man is a diameter, having
a power of two feet; and the power of four-legged creatures, being
the double of two feet, is the diameter of our diameter. There is
another excellent jest which I spy in the two remaining species. Men
and birds are both bipeds, and human beings are running a race
with the airiest and freest of creation, in which they are far behind
their competitors;—this is a great joke, and there is a still better in
the juxtaposition of the bird-taker and the king, who may be seen
scampering after them. For, as we remarked in discussing the Soph-
ist, the dialectical method is no respecter of persons. But we might
have proceeded, as I was saying, by another and a shorter road. In
that case we should have begun by dividing land animals into bi-
peds and quadrupeds, and bipeds into winged and wingless; we
should than have taken the Statesman and set him over the ‘bipes
implume,’ and put the reins of government into his hands.

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Here let us sum up:—The science of pure knowledge had a part

which was the science of command, and this had a part which was
a science of wholesale command; and this was divided into the man-
agement of animals, and was again parted off into the management
of herds of animals, and again of land animals, and these into horn-
less, and these into bipeds; and so at last we arrived at man, and
found the political and royal science. And yet we have not clearly
distinguished the political shepherd from his rivals. No one would
think of usurping the prerogatives of the ordinary shepherd, who
on all hands is admitted to be the trainer, matchmaker, doctor, mu-
sician of his flock. But the royal shepherd has numberless competi-
tors, from whom he must be distinguished; there are merchants,
husbandmen, physicians, who will all dispute his right to manage
the flock. I think that we can best distinguish him by having re-
course to a famous old tradition, which may amuse as well as in-
struct us; the narrative is perfectly true, although the scepticism of
mankind is prone to doubt the tales of old. You have heard what
happened in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes? ‘You mean about
the golden lamb?’ No, not that; but another part of the story, which
tells how the sun and stars once arose in the west and set in the east,
and that the god reversed their motion, as a witness to the right of
Atreus. ‘There is such a story.’ And no doubt you have heard of the
empire of Cronos, and of the earthborn men? The origin of these
and the like stories is to be found in the tale which I am about to
narrate.
There was a time when God directed the revolutions of the world,
but at the completion of a certain cycle he let go; and the world, by
a necessity of its nature, turned back, and went round the other
way. For divine things alone are unchangeable; but the earth and
heavens, although endowed with many glories, have a body, and are
therefore liable to perturbation. In the case of the world, the pertur-
bation is very slight, and amounts only to a reversal of motion. For
the lord of moving things is alone self-moved; neither can piety
allow that he goes at one time in one direction and at another time
in another; or that God has given the universe opposite motions; or
that there are two gods, one turning it in one direction, another in
another. But the truth is, that there are two cycles of the world, and

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in one of them it is governed by an immediate Providence, and

receives life and immortality, and in the other is let go again, and
has a reverse action during infinite ages. This new action is sponta-
neous, and is due to exquisite perfection of balance, to the vast size
of the universe, and to the smallness of the pivot upon which it
turns. All changes in the heaven affect the animal world, and this
being the greatest of them, is most destructive to men and animals.
At the beginning of the cycle before our own very few of them had
survived; and on these a mighty change passed. For their life was
reversed like the motion of the world, and first of all coming to a
stand then quickly returned to youth and beauty. The white locks
of the aged became black; the cheeks of the bearded man were re-
stored to their youth and fineness; the young men grew softer and
smaller, and, being reduced to the condition of children in mind as
well as body, began to vanish away; and the bodies of those who had
died by violence, in a few moments underwent a parallel change
and disappeared. In that cycle of existence there was no such thing
as the procreation of animals from one another, but they were born
of the earth, and of this our ancestors, who came into being imme-
diately after the end of the last cycle and at the beginning of this,
have preserved the recollection. Such traditions are often now un-
duly discredited, and yet they may be proved by internal evidence.
For observe how consistent the narrative is; as the old returned to
youth, so the dead returned to life; the wheel of their existence hav-
ing been reversed, they rose again from the earth: a few only were
reserved by God for another destiny. Such was the origin of the
earthborn men.
‘And is this cycle, of which you are speaking, the reign of Cronos,
or our present state of existence?’ No, Socrates, that blessed and
spontaneous life belongs not to this, but to the previous state, in
which God was the governor of the whole world, and other gods
subject to him ruled over parts of the world, as is still the case in
certain places. They were shepherds of men and animals, each of
them sufficing for those of whom he had the care. And there was no
violence among them, or war, or devouring of one another. Their
life was spontaneous, because in those days God ruled over man;
and he was to man what man is now to the animals. Under his

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government there were no estates, or private possessions, or fami-

lies; but the earth produced a sufficiency of all things, and men
were born out of the earth, having no traditions of the past; and as
the temperature of the seasons was mild, they took no thought for
raiment, and had no beds, but lived and dwelt in the open air.
Such was the age of Cronos, and the age of Zeus is our own. Tell
me, which is the happier of the two? Or rather, shall I tell you that
the happiness of these children of Cronos must have depended on
how they used their time? If having boundless leisure, and the power
of discoursing not only with one another but with the animals, they
had employed these advantages with a view to philosophy, gather-
ing from every nature some addition to their store of knowledge;—
or again, if they had merely eaten and drunk, and told stories to one
another, and to the beasts;—in either case, I say, there would be no
difficulty in answering the question. But as nobody knows which
they did, the question must remain unanswered. And here is the
point of my tale. In the fulness of time, when the earthborn men
had all passed away, the ruler of the universe let go the helm, and
became a spectator; and destiny and natural impulse swayed the
world. At the same instant all the inferior deities gave up their hold;
the whole universe rebounded, and there was a great earthquake,
and utter ruin of all manner of animals. After a while the tumult
ceased, and the universal creature settled down in his accustomed
course, having authority over all other creatures, and following the
instructions of his God and Father, at first more precisely, after-
wards with less exactness. The reason of the falling off was the dis-
engagement of a former chaos; ‘a muddy vesture of decay’ was a
part of his original nature, out of which he was brought by his Cre-
ator, under whose immediate guidance, while he remained in that
former cycle, the evil was minimized and the good increased to the
utmost. And in the beginning of the new cycle all was well enough,
but as time went on, discord entered in; at length the good was
minimized and the evil everywhere diffused, and there was a danger
of universal ruin. Then the Creator, seeing the world in great straits,
and fearing that chaos and infinity would come again, in his tender
care again placed himself at the helm and restored order, and made
the world immortal and imperishable. Once more the cycle of life

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and generation was reversed; the infants grew into young men, and
the young men became greyheaded; no longer did the animals spring
out of the earth; as the whole world was now lord of its own progress,
so the parts were to be self-created and self-nourished. At first the
case of men was very helpless and pitiable; for they were alone among
the wild beasts, and had to carry on the struggle for existence without
arts or knowledge, and had no food, and did not know how to get
any. That was the time when Prometheus brought them fire,
Hephaestus and Athene taught them arts, and other gods gave them
seeds and plants. Out of these human life was framed; for mankind
were left to themselves, and ordered their own ways, living, like the
universe, in one cycle after one manner, and in another cycle after
another manner.
Enough of the myth, which may show us two errors of which we
were guilty in our account of the king. The first and grand error was
in choosing for our king a god, who belongs to the other cycle, in-
stead of a man from our own; there was a lesser error also in our
failure to define the nature of the royal functions. The myth gave us
only the image of a divine shepherd, whereas the statesmen and kings
of our own day very much resemble their subjects in education and
breeding. On retracing our steps we find that we gave too narrow a
designation to the art which was concerned with command-for-self
over living creatures, when we called it the ‘feeding’ of animals in
flocks. This would apply to all shepherds, with the exception of the
Statesman; but if we say ‘managing’ or ‘tending’ animals, the term
would include him as well. Having remodelled the name, we may
subdivide as before, first separating the human from the divine shep-
herd or manager. Then we may subdivide the human art of governing
into the government of willing and unwilling subjects—royalty and
tyranny—which are the extreme opposites of one another, although
we in our simplicity have hitherto confounded them.
And yet the figure of the king is still defective. We have taken up
a lump of fable, and have used more than we needed. Like statuar-
ies, we have made some of the features out of proportion, and shall
lose time in reducing them. Or our mythus may be compared to a
picture, which is well drawn in outline, but is not yet enlivened by
colour. And to intelligent persons language is, or ought to be, a

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better instrument of description than any picture. ‘But what,

Stranger, is the deficiency of which you speak?’ No higher truth can
be made clear without an example; every man seems to know all
things in a dream, and to know nothing when he is awake. And the
nature of example can only be illustrated by an example. Children
are taught to read by being made to compare cases in which they do
not know a certain letter with cases in which they know it, until
they learn to recognize it in all its combinations. Example comes
into use when we identify something unknown with that which is
known, and form a common notion of both of them. Like the child
who is learning his letters, the soul recognizes some of the first ele-
ments of things; and then again is at fault and unable to recognize
them when they are translated into the difficult language of facts.
Let us, then, take an example, which will illustrate the nature of
example, and will also assist us in characterizing the political sci-
ence, and in separating the true king from his rivals.
I will select the example of weaving, or, more precisely, weaving of
wool. In the first place, all possessions are either productive or pre-
ventive; of the preventive sort are spells and antidotes, divine and
human, and also defences, and defences are either arms or screens,
and screens are veils and also shields against heat and cold, and
shields against heat and cold are shelters and coverings, and cover-
ings are blankets or garments, and garments are in one piece or have
many parts; and of these latter, some are stitched and others are
fastened, and of these again some are made of fibres of plants and
some of hair, and of these some are cemented with water and earth,
and some are fastened with their own material; the latter are called
clothes, and are made by the art of clothing, from which the art of
weaving differs only in name, as the political differs from the royal
science. Thus we have drawn several distinctions, but as yet have
not distinguished the weaving of garments from the kindred and
co-operative arts. For the first process to which the material is sub-
jected is the opposite of weaving—I mean carding. And the art of
carding, and the whole art of the fuller and the mender, are con-
cerned with the treatment and production of clothes, as well as the
art of weaving. Again, there are the arts which make the weaver’s
tools. And if we say that the weaver’s art is the greatest and noblest

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of those which have to do with woollen garments,—this, although

true, is not sufficiently distinct; because these other arts require to
be first cleared away. Let us proceed, then, by regular steps:—There
are causal or principal, and co-operative or subordinate arts. To the
causal class belong the arts of washing and mending, of carding and
spinning the threads, and the other arts of working in wool; these
are chiefly of two kinds, falling under the two great categories of
composition and division. Carding is of the latter sort. But our con-
cern is chiefly with that part of the art of wool-working which com-
poses, and of which one kind twists and the other interlaces the
threads, whether the firmer texture of the warp or the looser texture
of the woof. These are adapted to each other, and the orderly com-
position of them forms a woollen garment. And the art which pre-
sides over these operations is the art of weaving.
But why did we go through this circuitous process, instead of
saying at once that weaving is the art of entwining the warp and the
woof? In order that our labour may not seem to be lost, I must
explain the whole nature of excess and defect. There are two arts of
measuring—one is concerned with relative size, and the other has
reference to a mean or standard of what is meet. The difference
between good and evil is the difference between a mean or measure
and excess or defect. All things require to be compared, not only
with one another, but with the mean, without which there would
be no beauty and no art, whether the art of the statesman or the art
of weaving or any other; for all the arts guard against excess or de-
fect, which are real evils. This we must endeavour to show, if the
arts are to exist; and the proof of this will be a harder piece of work
than the demonstration of the existence of not-being which we
proved in our discussion about the Sophist. At present I am content
with the indirect proof that the existence of such a standard is nec-
essary to the existence of the arts. The standard or measure, which
we are now only applying to the arts, may be some day required
with a view to the demonstration of absolute truth.
We may now divide this art of measurement into two parts; plac-
ing in the one part all the arts which measure the relative size or
number of objects, and in the other all those which depend upon a
mean or standard. Many accomplished men say that the art of mea-

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surement has to do with all things, but these persons, although in

this notion of theirs they may very likely be right, are apt to fail in
seeing the differences of classes—they jumble together in one the
‘more’ and the ‘too much,’ which are very different things. Whereas
the right way is to find the differences of classes, and to compre-
hend the things which have any affinity under the same class.
I will make one more observation by the way. When a pupil at a
school is asked the letters which make up a particular word, is he
not asked with a view to his knowing the same letters in all words?
And our enquiry about the Statesman in like manner is intended
not only to improve our knowledge of politics, but our reasoning
powers generally. Still less would any one analyze the nature of weav-
ing for its own sake. There is no difficulty in exhibiting sensible
images, but the greatest and noblest truths have no outward form
adapted to the eye of sense, and are only revealed in thought. And
all that we are now saying is said for the sake of them. I make these
remarks, because I want you to get rid of any impression that our
discussion about weaving and about the reversal of the universe,
and the other discussion about the Sophist and not-being, were te-
dious and irrelevant. Please to observe that they can only be fairly
judged when compared with what is meet; and yet not with what is
meet for producing pleasure, nor even meet for making discoveries,
but for the great end of developing the dialectical method and sharp-
ening the wits of the auditors. He who censures us, should prove
that, if our words had been fewer, they would have been better cal-
culated to make men dialecticians.
And now let us return to our king or statesman, and transfer to
him the example of weaving. The royal art has been separated from
that of other herdsmen, but not from the causal and co-operative
arts which exist in states; these do not admit of dichotomy, and
therefore they must be carved neatly, like the limbs of a victim, not
into more parts than are necessary. And first (1) we have the large
class of instruments, which includes almost everything in the world;
from these may be parted off (2) vessels which are framed for the
preservation of things, moist or dry, prepared in the fire or out of
the fire. The royal or political art has nothing to do with either of
these, any more than with the arts of making (3) vehicles, or (4)

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defences, whether dresses, or arms, or walls, or (5) with the art of

making ornaments, whether pictures or other playthings, as they
may be fitly called, for they have no serious use. Then (6) there are
the arts which furnish gold, silver, wood, bark, and other materials,
which should have been put first; these, again, have no concern
with the kingly science; any more than the arts (7) which provide
food and nourishment for the human body, and which furnish oc-
cupation to the husbandman, huntsman, doctor, cook, and the like,
but not to the king or statesman. Further, there are small things,
such as coins, seals, stamps, which may with a little violence be
comprehended in one of the above-mentioned classes. Thus they
will embrace every species of property with the exception of ani-
mals,—but these have been already included in the art of tending
herds. There remains only the class of slaves or ministers, among
whom I expect that the real rivals of the king will be discovered. I
am not speaking of the veritable slave bought with money, nor of
the hireling who lets himself out for service, nor of the trader or
merchant, who at best can only lay claim to economical and not to
royal science. Nor am I referring to government officials, such as
heralds and scribes, for these are only the servants of the rulers, and
not the rulers themselves. I admit that there may be something
strange in any servants pretending to be masters, but I hardly think
that I could have been wrong in supposing that the principal claim-
ants to the throne will be of this class. Let us try once more: There
are diviners and priests, who are full of pride and prerogative; these,
as the law declares, know how to give acceptable gifts to the gods,
and in many parts of Hellas the duty of performing solemn sacri-
fices is assigned to the chief magistrate, as at Athens to the King
Archon. At last, then, we have found a trace of those whom we were
seeking. But still they are only servants and ministers.
And who are these who next come into view in various forms of
men and animals and other monsters appearing—lions and cen-
taurs and satyrs—who are these? I did not know them at first, for
every one looks strange when he is unexpected. But now I recognize
the politician and his troop, the chief of Sophists, the prince of
charlatans, the most accomplished of wizards, who must be care-
fully distinguished from the true king or statesman. And here I will

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interpose a question: What are the true forms of government? Are

they not three—monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy? and the dis-
tinctions of freedom and compulsion, law and no law, poverty and
riches expand these three into six. Monarchy may be divided into
royalty and tyranny; oligarchy into aristocracy and plutocracy; and
democracy may observe the law or may not observe it. But are any
of these governments worthy of the name? Is not government a
science, and are we to suppose that scientific government is secured
by the rulers being many or few, rich or poor, or by the rule being
compulsory or voluntary? Can the many attain to science? In no
Hellenic city are there fifty good draught players, and certainly there
are not as many kings, for by kings we mean all those who are pos-
sessed of the political science. A true government must therefore be
the government of one, or of a few. And they may govern us either
with or without law, and whether they are poor or rich, and how-
ever they govern, provided they govern on some scientific prin-
ciple,—it makes no difference. And as the physician may cure us
with our will, or against our will, and by any mode of treatment,
burning, bleeding, lowering, fattening, if he only proceeds scientifi-
cally: so the true governor may reduce or fatten or bleed the body
corporate, while he acts according to the rules of his art, and with a
view to the good of the state, whether according to law or without
law.
‘I do not like the notion, that there can be good government with-
out law.’
I must explain: Law-making certainly is the business of a king;
and yet the best thing of all is, not that the law should rule, but that
the king should rule, for the varieties of circumstances are endless,
and no simple or universal rule can suit them all, or last for ever.
The law is just an ignorant brute of a tyrant, who insists always on
his commands being fulfilled under all circumstances. ‘Then why
have we laws at all?’ I will answer that question by asking you whether
the training master gives a different discipline to each of his pupils,
or whether he has a general rule of diet and exercise which is suited
to the constitutions of the majority? ‘The latter.’ The legislator, too,
is obliged to lay down general laws, and cannot enact what is pre-
cisely suitable to each particular case. He cannot be sitting at every

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man’s side all his life, and prescribe for him the minute particulars
of his duty, and therefore he is compelled to impose on himself and
others the restriction of a written law. Let me suppose now, that a
physician or trainer, having left directions for his patients or pupils,
goes into a far country, and comes back sooner than he intended;
owing to some unexpected change in the weather, the patient or
pupil seems to require a different mode of treatment: Would he
persist in his old commands, under the idea that all others are nox-
ious and heterodox? Viewed in the light of science, would not the
continuance of such regulations be ridiculous? And if the legislator,
or another like him, comes back from a far country, is he to be
prohibited from altering his own laws? The common people say:
Let a man persuade the city first, and then let him impose new laws.
But is a physician only to cure his patients by persuasion, and not
by force? Is he a worse physician who uses a little gentle violence in
effecting the cure? Or shall we say, that the violence is just, if exer-
cised by a rich man, and unjust, if by a poor man? May not any
man, rich or poor, with or without law, and whether the citizens
like or not, do what is for their good? The pilot saves the lives of the
crew, not by laying down rules, but by making his art a law, and,
like him, the true governor has a strength of art which is superior to
the law. This is scientific government, and all others are imitations
only. Yet no great number of persons can attain to this science. And
hence follows an important result. The true political principle is to
assert the inviolability of the law, which, though not the best thing
possible, is best for the imperfect condition of man.
I will explain my meaning by an illustration:—Suppose that
mankind, indignant at the rogueries and caprices of physicians
and pilots, call together an assembly, in which all who like may
speak, the skilled as well as the unskilled, and that in their assem-
bly they make decrees for regulating the practice of navigation
and medicine which are to be binding on these professions for all
time. Suppose that they elect annually by vote or lot those to whom
authority in either department is to be delegated. And let us fur-
ther imagine, that when the term of their magistracy has expired,
the magistrates appointed by them are summoned before an igno-
rant and unprofessional court, and may be condemned and pun-

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ished for breaking the regulations. They even go a step further,

and enact, that he who is found enquiring into the truth of navi-
gation and medicine, and is seeking to be wise above what is writ-
ten, shall be called not an artist, but a dreamer, a prating Sophist
and a corruptor of youth; and if he try to persuade others to inves-
tigate those sciences in a manner contrary to the law, he shall be
punished with the utmost severity. And like rules might be ex-
tended to any art or science. But what would be the consequence?
‘The arts would utterly perish, and human life, which is bad
enough already, would become intolerable.’
But suppose, once more, that we were to appoint some one as the
guardian of the law, who was both ignorant and interested, and
who perverted the law: would not this be a still worse evil than the
other? ‘Certainly.’ For the laws are based on some experience and
wisdom. Hence the wiser course is, that they should be observed,
although this is not the best thing of all, but only the second best.
And whoever, having skill, should try to improve them, would act
in the spirit of the law-giver. But then, as we have seen, no great
number of men, whether poor or rich, can be makers of laws. And
so, the nearest approach to true government is, when men do noth-
ing contrary to their own written laws and national customs. When
the rich preserve their customs and maintain the law, this is called
aristocracy, or if they neglect the law, oligarchy. When an individual
rules according to law, whether by the help of science or opinion,
this is called monarchy; and when he has royal science he is a king,
whether he be so in fact or not; but when he rules in spite of law,
and is blind with ignorance and passion, he is called a tyrant. These
forms of government exist, because men despair of the true king
ever appearing among them; if he were to appear, they would joy-
fully hand over to him the reins of government. But, as there is no
natural ruler of the hive, they meet together and make laws. And
do we wonder, when the foundation of politics is in the letter only,
at the miseries of states? Ought we not rather to admire the strength
of the political bond? For cities have endured the worst of evils time
out of mind; many cities have been shipwrecked, and some are like
ships foundering, because their pilots are absolutely ignorant of the
science which they profess.

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Let us next ask, which of these untrue forms of government is the

least bad, and which of them is the worst? I said at the beginning,
that each of the three forms of government, royalty, aristocracy, and
democracy, might be divided into two, so that the whole number of
them, including the best, will be seven. Under monarchy we have
already distinguished royalty and tyranny; of oligarchy there were
two kinds, aristocracy and plutocracy; and democracy may also be
divided, for there is a democracy which observes, and a democracy
which neglects, the laws. The government of one is the best and the
worst—the government of a few is less bad and less good—the gov-
ernment of the many is the least bad and least good of them all,
being the best of all lawless governments, and the worst of all lawful
ones. But the rulers of all these states, unless they have knowledge,
are maintainers of idols, and themselves idols—wizards, and also
Sophists; for, after many windings, the term ‘Sophist’ comes home
to them.
And now enough of centaurs and satyrs: the play is ended, and
they may quit the political stage. Still there remain some other and
better elements, which adhere to the royal science, and must be
drawn off in the refiner’s fire before the gold can become quite pure.
The arts of the general, the judge, and the orator, will have to be
separated from the royal art; when the separation has been made,
the nature of the king will be unalloyed. Now there are inferior
sciences, such as music and others; and there is a superior science,
which determines whether music is to be learnt or not, and this is
different from them, and the governor of them. The science which
determines whether we are to use persuasion, or not, is higher than
the art of persuasion; the science which determines whether we are
to go to war, is higher than the art of the general. The science which
makes the laws, is higher than that which only administers them.
And the science which has this authority over the rest, is the science
of the king or statesman.
Once more we will endeavour to view this royal science by the
light of our example. We may compare the state to a web, and I will
show you how the different threads are drawn into one. You would
admit—would you not?—that there are parts of virtue (although
this position is sometimes assailed by Eristics), and one part of vir-

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tue is temperance, and another courage. These are two principles

which are in a manner antagonistic to one another; and they per-
vade all nature; the whole class of the good and beautiful is included
under them. The beautiful may be subdivided into two lesser classes:
one of these is described by us in terms expressive of motion or
energy, and the other in terms expressive of rest and quietness. We
say, how manly! how vigorous! how ready! and we say also, how
calm! how temperate! how dignified! This opposition of terms is
extended by us to all actions, to the tones of the voice, the notes of
music, the workings of the mind, the characters of men. The two
classes both have their exaggerations; and the exaggerations of the
one are termed ‘hardness,’ ‘violence,’ ‘madness;’ of the other ‘cow-
ardliness,’ or ‘sluggishness.’ And if we pursue the enquiry, we find
that these opposite characters are naturally at variance, and can hardly
be reconciled. In lesser matters the antagonism between them is
ludicrous, but in the State may be the occasion of grave disorders,
and may disturb the whole course of human life. For the orderly
class are always wanting to be at peace, and hence they pass imper-
ceptibly into the condition of slaves; and the courageous sort are
always wanting to go to war, even when the odds are against them,
and are soon destroyed by their enemies. But the true art of govern-
ment, first preparing the material by education, weaves the two ele-
ments into one, maintaining authority over the carders of the wool,
and selecting the proper subsidiary arts which are necessary for mak-
ing the web. The royal science is queen of educators, and begins by
choosing the natures which she is to train, punishing with death
and exterminating those who are violently carried away to atheism
and injustice, and enslaving those who are wallowing in the mire of
ignorance. The rest of the citizens she blends into one, combining
the stronger element of courage, which we may call the warp, with
the softer element of temperance, which we may imagine to be the
woof. These she binds together, first taking the eternal elements of
the honourable, the good, and the just, and fastening them with a
divine cord in a heaven-born nature, and then fastening the animal
elements with a human cord. The good legislator can implant by
education the higher principles; and where they exist there is no
difficulty in inserting the lesser human bonds, by which the State is

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held together; these are the laws of intermarriage, and of union for
the sake of offspring. Most persons in their marriages seek after wealth
or power; or they are clannish, and choose those who are like them-
selves,—the temperate marrying the temperate, and the courageous
the courageous. The two classes thrive and flourish at first, but they
soon degenerate; the one become mad, and the other feeble and use-
less. This would not have been the case, if they had both originally
held the same notions about the honourable and the good; for then
they never would have allowed the temperate natures to be separated
from the courageous, but they would have bound them together by
common honours and reputations, by intermarriages, and by the
choice of rulers who combine both qualities. The temperate are care-
ful and just, but are wanting in the power of action; the courageous
fall short of them in justice, but in action are superior to them: and no
state can prosper in which either of these qualities is wanting. The
noblest and best of all webs or states is that which the royal science
weaves, combining the two sorts of natures in a single texture, and in
this enfolding freeman and slave and every other social element, and
presiding over them all.
‘Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no less than of
the Sophist, is quite perfect.’

THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS in the Statesman may be conveniently em-

braced under six or seven heads:—(1) the myth; (2) the dialectical
interest; (3) the political aspects of the dialogue; (4) the satirical and
paradoxical vein; (5) the necessary imperfection of law; (6) the rela-
tion of the work to the other writings of Plato; lastly (7), we may
briefly consider the genuineness of the Sophist and Statesman, which
can hardly be assumed without proof, since the two dialogues have
been questioned by three such eminent Platonic scholars as Socher,
Schaarschmidt, and Ueberweg.
I. The hand of the master is clearly visible in the myth. First in the
connection with mythology;—he wins a kind of verisimilitude for
this as for his other myths, by adopting received traditions, of which
he pretends to find an explanation in his own larger conception

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(compare Introduction to Critias). The young Socrates has heard of

the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, and of the earth-
born men; but he has never heard the origin of these remarkable
phenomena. Nor is Plato, here or elsewhere, wanting in denuncia-
tions of the incredulity of ‘this latter age,’ on which the lovers of the
marvellous have always delighted to enlarge. And he is not without
express testimony to the truth of his narrative;—such testimony as,
in the Timaeus, the first men gave of the names of the gods (‘They
must surely have known their own ancestors’). For the first genera-
tion of the new cycle, who lived near the time, are supposed to have
preserved a recollection of a previous one. He also appeals to inter-
nal evidence, viz. the perfect coherence of the tale, though he is very
well aware, as he says in the Cratylus, that there may be consistency
in error as well as in truth. The gravity and minuteness with which
some particulars are related also lend an artful aid. The profound
interest and ready assent of the young Socrates, who is not too old
to be amused ‘with a tale which a child would love to hear,’ are a
further assistance. To those who were naturally inclined to believe
that the fortunes of mankind are influenced by the stars, or who
maintained that some one principle, like the principle of the Same
and the Other in the Timaeus, pervades all things in the world, the
reversal of the motion of the heavens seemed necessarily to produce
a reversal of the order of human life. The spheres of knowledge,
which to us appear wide asunder as the poles, astronomy and medi-
cine, were naturally connected in the minds of early thinkers, be-
cause there was little or nothing in the space between them. Thus
there is a basis of philosophy, on which the improbabilities of the
tale may be said to rest. These are some of the devices by which
Plato, like a modern novelist, seeks to familiarize the marvellous.
The myth, like that of the Timaeus and Critias, is rather historical
than poetical, in this respect corresponding to the general change in
the later writings of Plato, when compared with the earlier ones. It
is hardly a myth in the sense in which the term might be applied to
the myth of the Phaedrus, the Republic, the Phaedo, or the Gorgias,
but may be more aptly compared with the didactic tale in which
Protagoras describes the fortunes of primitive man, or with the de-
scription of the gradual rise of a new society in the Third Book of

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the Laws. Some discrepancies may be observed between the my-

thology of the Statesman and the Timaeus, and between the Timaeus
and the Republic. But there is no reason to expect that all Plato’s
visions of a former, any more than of a future, state of existence,
should conform exactly to the same pattern. We do not find perfect
consistency in his philosophy; and still less have we any right to
demand this of him in his use of mythology and figures of speech.
And we observe that while employing all the resources of a writer of
fiction to give credibility to his tales, he is not disposed to insist
upon their literal truth. Rather, as in the Phaedo, he says, ‘Some-
thing of the kind is true;’ or, as in the Gorgias, ‘This you will think
to be an old wife’s tale, but you can think of nothing truer;’ or, as in
the Statesman, he describes his work as a ‘mass of mythology,’ which
was introduced in order to teach certain lessons; or, as in the Phaedrus,
he secretly lau ghs at such stories while refusing to disturb the popular
belief in them.
The greater interest of the myth consists in the philosophical les-
sons which Plato presents to us in this veiled form. Here, as in the
tale of Er, the son of Armenius, he touches upon the question of
freedom and necessity, both in relation to God and nature. For at
first the universe is governed by the immediate providence of God,—
this is the golden age,—but after a while the wheel is reversed, and
man is left to himself. Like other theologians and philosophers, Plato
relegates his explanation of the problem to a transcendental world;
he speaks of what in modern language might be termed ‘impossi-
bilities in the nature of things,’ hindering God from continuing
immanent in the world. But there is some inconsistency; for the
‘letting go’ is spoken of as a divine act, and is at the same time
attributed to the necessary imperfection of matter; there is also a
numerical necessity for the successive births of souls. At first, man
and the world retain their divine instincts, but gradually degener-
ate. As in the Book of Genesis, the first fall of man is succeeded by
a second; the misery and wickedness of the world increase continu-
ally. The reason of this further decline is supposed to be the
disorganisation of matter: the latent seeds of a former chaos are
disengaged, and envelope all things. The condition of man becomes
more and more miserable; he is perpetually waging an unequal war-

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fare with the beasts. At length he obtains such a measure of educa-

tion and help as is necessary for his existence. Though deprived of
God’s help, he is not left wholly destitute; he has received from
Athene and Hephaestus a knowledge of the arts; other gods give
him seeds and plants; and out of these human life is reconstructed.
He now eats bread in the sweat of his brow, and has dominion over
the animals, subjected to the conditions of his nature, and yet able
to cope with them by divine help. Thus Plato may be said to repre-
sent in a figure—(1) the state of innocence; (2) the fall of man; (3)
the still deeper decline into barbarism; (4) the restoration of man by
the partial interference of God, and the natural growth of the arts
and of civilised society. Two lesser features of this description should
not pass unnoticed:—(1) the primitive men are supposed to be cre-
ated out of the earth, and not after the ordinary manner of human
generation—half the causes of moral evil are in this way removed;
(2) the arts are attributed to a divine revelation: and so the greatest
difficulty in the history of pre-historic man is solved. Though no
one knew better than Plato that the introduction of the gods is not
a reason, but an excuse for not giving a reason (Cratylus), yet, con-
sidering that more than two thousand years later mankind are still
discussing these problems, we may be satisfied to find in Plato a
statement of the difficulties which arise in conceiving the relation
of man to God and nature, without expecting to obtain from him a
solution of them. In such a tale, as in the Phaedrus, various aspects
of the Ideas were doubtless indicated to Plato’s own mind, as the
corresponding theological problems are to us. The immanence of
things in the Ideas, or the partial separation of them, and the self-
motion of the supreme Idea, are probably the forms in which he
would have interpreted his own parable.
He touches upon another question of great interest—the con-
sciousness of evil—what in the Jewish Scriptures is called ‘eating of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’ At the end of the narra-
tive, the Eleatic asks his companion whether this life of innocence,
or that which men live at present, is the better of the two. He wants
to distinguish between the mere animal life of innocence, the ‘city
of pigs,’ as it is comically termed by Glaucon in the Republic, and
the higher life of reason and philosophy. But as no one can deter-

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mine the state of man in the world before the Fall, ‘the question
must remain unanswered.’ Similar questions have occupied the minds
of theologians in later ages; but they can hardly be said to have
found an answer. Professor Campbell well observes, that the general
spirit of the myth may be summed up in the words of the Lysis: ‘If
evil were to perish, should we hunger any more, or thirst any more,
or have any similar sensations? Yet perhaps the question what will
or will not be is a foolish one, for who can tell?’ As in the Theaetetus,
evil is supposed to continue,—here, as the consequence of a former
state of the world, a sort of mephitic vapour exhaling from some
ancient chaos,—there, as involved in the possibility of good, and
incident to the mixed state of man.
Once more—and this is the point of connexion with the rest of
the dialogue—the myth is intended to bring out the difference be-
tween the ideal and the actual state of man. In all ages of the world
men have dreamed of a state of perfection, which has been, and is to
be, but never is, and seems to disappear under the necessary condi-
tions of human society. The uselessness, the danger, the true value
of such political ideals have often been discussed; youth is too ready
to believe in them; age to disparage them. Plato’s ‘prudens quaestio’
respecting the comparative happiness of men in this and in a former
cycle of existence is intended to elicit this contrast between the golden
age and ‘the life under Zeus’ which is our own. To confuse the di-
vine and human, or hastily apply one to the other, is a ‘tremendous
error.’ Of the ideal or divine government of the world we can form
no true or adequate conception; and this our mixed state of life, in
which we are partly left to ourselves, but not wholly deserted by the
gods, may contain some higher elements of good and knowledge
than could have existed in the days of innocence under the rule of
Cronos. So we may venture slightly to enlarge a Platonic thought
which admits of a further application to Christian theology. Here
are suggested also the distinctions between God causing and per-
mitting evil, and between his more and less immediate government
of the world.
II. The dialectical interest of the Statesman seems to contend in
Plato’s mind with the political; the dialogue might have been desig-
nated by two equally descriptive titles—either the ‘Statesman,’ or ‘Con-

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cerning Method.’ Dialectic, which in the earlier writings of Plato is a

revival of the Socratic question and answer applied to definition, is
now occupied with classification; there is nothing in which he takes
greater delight than in processes of division (compare Phaedr.); he
pursues them to a length out of proportion to his main subject, and
appears to value them as a dialectical exercise, and for their own sake.
A poetical vision of some order or hierarchy of ideas or sciences has
already been floating before us in the Symposium and the Republic.
And in the Phaedrus this aspect of dialectic is further sketched out,
and the art of rhetoric is based on the division of the characters of
mankind into their several classes. The same love of divisions is ap-
parent in the Gorgias. But in a well-known passage of the Philebus
occurs the first criticism on the nature of classification. There we are
exhorted not to fall into the common error of passing from unity to
infinity, but to find the intermediate classes; and we are reminded
that in any process of generalization, there may be more than one
class to which individuals may be referred, and that we must carry on
the process of division until we have arrived at the infima species.
These precepts are not forgotten, either in the Sophist or in the
Statesman. The Sophist contains four examples of division, carried
on by regular steps, until in four different lines of descent we detect
the Sophist. In the Statesman the king or statesman is discovered by
a similar process; and we have a summary, probably made for the
first time, of possessions appropriated by the labour of man, which
are distributed into seven classes. We are warned against preferring
the shorter to the longer method;—if we divide in the middle, we
are most likely to light upon species; at the same time, the impor-
tant remark is made, that ‘a part is not to be confounded with a
class.’ Having discovered the genus under which the king falls, we
proceed to distinguish him from the collateral species. To assist our
imagination in making this separation, we require an example. The
higher ideas, of which we have a dreamy knowledge, can only be
represented by images taken from the external world. But, first of
all, the nature of example is explained by an example. The child is
taught to read by comparing the letters in words which he knows
with the same letters in unknown combinations; and this is the sort
of process which we are about to attempt. As a parallel to the king

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we select the worker in wool, and compare the art of weaving with
the royal science, trying to separate either of them from the inferior
classes to which they are akin. This has the incidental advantage,
that weaving and the web furnish us with a figure of speech, which
we can afterwards transfer to the State.
There are two uses of examples or images—in the first place, they
suggest thoughts—secondly, they give them a distinct form. In the
infancy of philosophy, as in childhood, the language of pictures is
natural to man: truth in the abstract is hardly won, and only by use
familiarized to the mind. Examples are akin to analogies, and have a
reflex influence on thought; they people the vacant mind, and may
often originate new directions of enquiry. Plato seems to be con-
scious of the suggestiveness of imagery; the general analogy of the
arts is constantly employed by him as well as the comparison of
particular arts—weaving, the refining of gold, the learning to read,
music, statuary, painting, medicine, the art of the pilot—all of which
occur in this dialogue alone: though he is also aware that ‘compari-
sons are slippery things,’ and may often give a false clearness to
ideas. We shall find, in the Philebus, a division of sciences into prac-
tical and speculative, and into more or less speculative: here we have
the idea of master-arts, or sciences which control inferior ones. Be-
sides the supreme science of dialectic, ‘which will forget us, if we
forget her,’ another master-science for the first time appears in view—
the science of government, which fixes the limits of all the rest. This
conception of the political or royal science as, from another point of
view, the science of sciences, which holds sway over the rest, is not
originally found in Aristotle, but in Plato.
The doctrine that virtue and art are in a mean, which is familiar-
ized to us by the study of the Nicomachean Ethics, is also first dis-
tinctly asserted in the Statesman of Plato. The too much and the
too little are in restless motion: they must be fixed by a mean, which
is also a standard external to them. The art of measuring or finding
a mean between excess and defect, like the principle of division in
the Phaedrus, receives a particular application to the art of discourse.
The excessive length of a discourse may be blamed; but who can say
what is excess, unless he is furnished with a measure or standard?
Measure is the life of the arts, and may some day be discovered to be

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the single ultimate principle in which all the sciences are contained.
Other forms of thought may be noted—the distinction between
causal and co-operative arts, which may be compared with the dis-
tinction between primary and co-operative causes in the Timaeus;
or between cause and condition in the Phaedo; the passing mention
of economical science; the opposition of rest and motion, which is
found in all nature; the general conception of two great arts of com-
position and division, in which are contained weaving, politics, dia-
lectic; and in connexion with the conception of a mean, the two
arts of measuring.
In the Theaetetus, Plato remarks that precision in the use of terms,
though sometimes pedantic, is sometimes necessary. Here he makes
the opposite reflection, that there may be a philosophical disregard
of words. The evil of mere verbal oppositions, the requirement of
an impossible accuracy in the use of terms, the error of supposing
that philosophy was to be found in language, the danger of word-
catching, have frequently been discussed by him in the previous
dialogues, but nowhere has the spirit of modern inductive philoso-
phy been more happily indicated than in the words of the States-
man:—’If you think more about things, and less about words, you
will be richer in wisdom as you grow older.’ A similar spirit is dis-
cernible in the remarkable expressions, ‘the long and difficult lan-
guage of facts;’ and ‘the interrogation of every nature, in order to
obtain the particular contribution of each to the store of knowl-
edge.’ Who has described ‘the feeble intelligence of all things; given
by metaphysics better than the Eleatic Stranger in the words—’The
higher ideas can hardly be set forth except through the medium of
examples; every man seems to know all things in a kind of dream,
and then again nothing when he is awake?’ Or where is the value of
metaphysical pursuits more truly expressed than in the words, —
’The greatest and noblest things have no outward image of them-
selves visible to man: therefore we should learn to give a rational
account of them?’
III. The political aspects of the dialogue are closely connected with
the dialectical. As in the Cratylus, the legislator has ‘the dialectician
standing on his right hand;’ so in the Statesman, the king or states-
man is the dialectician, who, although he may be in a private station,

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is still a king. Whether he has the power or not, is a mere accident; or

rather he has the power, for what ought to be is (‘Was ist vernunftig,
das ist wirklich’); and he ought to be and is the true governor of man-
kind. There is a reflection in this idealism of the Socratic ‘Virtue is
knowledge;’ and, without idealism, we may remark that knowledge is
a great part of power. Plato does not trouble himself to construct a
machinery by which ‘philosophers shall be made kings,’ as in the Re-
public: he merely holds up the ideal, and affirms that in some sense
science is really supreme over human life.
He is struck by the observation ‘quam parva sapientia regitur
mundus,’ and is touched with a feeling of the ills which afflict states.
The condition of Megara before and during the Peloponnesian War,
of Athens under the Thirty and afterwards, of Syracuse and the
other Sicilian cities in their alternations of democratic excess and
tyranny, might naturally suggest such reflections. Some states he
sees already shipwrecked, others foundering for want of a pilot; and
he wonders not at their destruction, but at their endurance. For
they ought to have perished long ago, if they had depended on the
wisdom of their rulers. The mingled pathos and satire of this re-
mark is characteristic of Plato’s later style.
The king is the personification of political science. And yet he is
something more than this,—the perfectly good and wise tyrant of
the Laws, whose will is better than any law. He is the special provi-
dence who is always interfering with and regulating all things. Such
a conception has sometimes been entertained by modern theolo-
gians, and by Plato himself, of the Supreme Being. But whether
applied to Divine or to human governors the conception is faulty
for two reasons, neither of which are noticed by Plato:—first, be-
cause all good government supposes a degree of co-operation in the
ruler and his subjects,—an ‘education in politics’ as well as in moral
virtue; secondly, because government, whether Divine or human,
implies that the subject has a previous knowledge of the rules under
which he is living. There is a fallacy, too, in comparing unchange-
able laws with a personal governor. For the law need not necessarily
be an ‘ignorant and brutal tyrant,’ but gentle and humane, capable
of being altered in the spirit of the legislator, and of being adminis-
tered so as to meet the cases of individuals. Not only in fact, but in

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idea, both elements must remain—the fixed law and the living will;
the written word and the spirit; the principles of obligation and of
freedom; and their applications whether made by law or equity in
particular cases.
There are two sides from which positive laws may be attacked:—
either from the side of nature, which rises up and rebels against
them in the spirit of Callicles in the Gorgias; or from the side of
idealism, which attempts to soar above them,—and this is the spirit
of Plato in the Statesman. But he soon falls, like Icarus, and is
content to walk instead of flying; that is, to accommodate himself
to the actual state of human things. Mankind have long been in
despair of finding the true ruler; and therefore are ready to acqui-
esce in any of the five or six received forms of government as bet-
ter than none. And the best thing which they can do (though only
the second best in reality), is to reduce the ideal state to the condi-
tions of actual life. Thus in the Statesman, as in the Laws, we have
three forms of government, which we may venture to term, (1)
the ideal, (2) the practical, (3) the sophistical—what ought to be,
what might be, what is. And thus Plato seems to stumble, almost
by accident, on the notion of a constitutional monarchy, or of a
monarchy ruling by laws.
The divine foundations of a State are to be laid deep in education
(Republic), and at the same time some little violence may be used in
exterminating natures which are incapable of education (compare
Laws). Plato is strongly of opinion that the legislator, like the physi-
cian, may do men good against their will (compare Gorgias). The
human bonds of states are formed by the inter-marriage of disposi-
tions adapted to supply the defects of each other. As in the Republic,
Plato has observed that there are opposite natures in the world, the
strong and the gentle, the courageous and the temperate, which,
borrowing an expression derived from the image of weaving, he
calls the warp and the woof of human society. To interlace these is
the crowning achievement of political science. In the Protagoras,
Socrates was maintaining that there was only one virtue, and not
many: now Plato is inclined to think that there are not only parallel,
but opposite virtues, and seems to see a similar opposition pervad-
ing all art and nature. But he is satisfied with laying down the prin-

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ciple, and does not inform us by what further steps the union of
opposites is to be effected.
In the loose framework of a single dialogue Plato has thus com-
bined two distinct subjects—politics and method. Yet they are not
so far apart as they appear: in his own mind there was a secret link
of connexion between them. For the philosopher or dialectician is
also the only true king or statesman. In the execution of his plan
Plato has invented or distinguished several important forms of
thought, and made incidentally many valuable remarks. Questions
of interest both in ancient and modern politics also arise in the
course of the dialogue, which may with advantage be further con-
sidered by us:—
a. The imaginary ruler, whether God or man, is above the law,
and is a law to himself and to others. Among the Greeks as among
the Jews, law was a sacred name, the gift of God, the bond of states.
But in the Statesman of Plato, as in the New Testament, the word
has also become the symbol of an imperfect good, which is almost
an evil. The law sacrifices the individual to the universal, and is the
tyranny of the many over the few (compare Republic). It has fixed
rules which are the props of order, and will not swerve or bend in
extreme cases. It is the beginning of political society, but there is
something higher—an intelligent ruler, whether God or man, who
is able to adapt himself to the endless varieties of circumstances.
Plato is fond of picturing the advantages which would result from
the union of the tyrant who has power with the legislator who has
wisdom: he regards this as the best and speediest way of reforming
mankind. But institutions cannot thus be artificially created, nor
can the external authority of a ruler impose laws for which a nation
is unprepared. The greatest power, the highest wisdom, can only
proceed one or two steps in advance of public opinion. In all stages
of civilization human nature, after all our efforts, remains intrac-
table,—not like clay in the hands of the potter, or marble under the
chisel of the sculptor. Great changes occur in the history of nations,
but they are brought about slowly, like the changes in the frame of
nature, upon which the puny arm of man hardly makes an impres-
sion. And, speaking generally, the slowest growths, both in nature
and in politics, are the most permanent.

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b. Whether the best form of the ideal is a person or a law may

fairly be doubted. The former is more akin to us: it clothes itself in
poetry and art, and appeals to reason more in the form of feeling: in
the latter there is less danger of allowing ourselves to be deluded by
a figure of speech. The ideal of the Greek state found an expression
in the deification of law: the ancient Stoic spoke of a wise man
perfect in virtue, who was fancifully said to be a king; but neither
they nor Plato had arrived at the conception of a person who was
also a law. Nor is it easy for the Christian to think of God as wis-
dom, truth, holiness, and also as the wise, true, and holy one. He is
always wanting to break through the abstraction and interrupt the
law, in order that he may present to himself the more familiar image
of a divine friend. While the impersonal has too slender a hold upon
the affections to be made the basis of religion, the conception of a
person on the other hand tends to degenerate into a new kind of
idolatry. Neither criticism nor experience allows us to suppose that
there are interferences with the laws of nature; the idea is inconceiv-
able to us and at variance with facts. The philosopher or theologian
who could realize to mankind that a person is a law, that the higher
rule has no exception, that goodness, like knowledge, is also power,
would breathe a new religious life into the world.
c. Besides the imaginary rule of a philosopher or a God, the actual
forms of government have to be considered. In the infancy of politi-
cal science, men naturally ask whether the rule of the many or of
the few is to be preferred. If by ‘the few’ we mean ‘the good’ and by
‘the many,’ ‘the bad,’ there can be but one reply: ‘The rule of one
good man is better than the rule of all the rest, if they are bad.’ For,
as Heracleitus says, ‘One is ten thousand if he be the best.’ If, how-
ever, we mean by the rule of the few the rule of a class neither better
nor worse than other classes, not devoid of a feeling of right, but
guided mostly by a sense of their own interests, and by the rule of
the many the rule of all classes, similarly under the influence of
mixed motives, no one would hesitate to answer—’The rule of all
rather than one, because all classes are more likely to take care of all
than one of another; and the government has greater power and
stability when resting on a wider basis.’ Both in ancient and mod-
ern times the best balanced form of government has been held to be

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the best; and yet it should not be so nicely balanced as to make

action and movement impossible.
The statesman who builds his hope upon the aristocracy, upon the
middle classes, upon the people, will probably, if he have sufficient
experience of them, conclude that all classes are much alike, and that
one is as good as another, and that the liberties of no class are safe in
the hands of the rest. The higher ranks have the advantage in educa-
tion and manners, the middle and lower in industry and self-denial;
in every class, to a certain extent, a natural sense of right prevails,
sometimes communicated from the lower to the higher, sometimes
from the higher to the lower, which is too strong for class interests.
There have been crises in the history of nations, as at the time of the
Crusades or the Reformation, or the French Revolution, when the
same inspiration has taken hold of whole peoples, and permanently
raised the sense of freedom and justice among mankind.
But even supposing the different classes of a nation, when viewed
impartially, to be on a level with each other in moral virtue, there
remain two considerations of opposite kinds which enter into the
problem of government. Admitting of course that the upper and
lower classes are equal in the eye of God and of the law, yet the one
may be by nature fitted to govern and the other to be governed. A
ruling caste does not soon altogether lose the governing qualities,
nor a subject class easily acquire them. Hence the phenomenon so
often observed in the old Greek revolutions, and not without paral-
lel in modern times, that the leaders of the democracy have been
themselves of aristocratic origin. The people are expecting to be
governed by representatives of their own, but the true man of the
people either never appears, or is quickly altered by circumstances.
Their real wishes hardly make themselves felt, although their lower
interests and prejudices may sometimes be flattered and yielded to
for the sake of ulterior objects by those who have political power.
They will often learn by experience that the democracy has become
a plutocracy. The influence of wealth, though not the enjoyment of
it, has become diffused among the poor as well as among the rich;
and society, instead of being safer, is more at the mercy of the ty-
rant, who, when things are at the worst, obtains a guard—that is,
an army—and announces himself as the saviour.

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The other consideration is of an opposite kind. Admitting that a

few wise men are likely to be better governors than the unwise many,
yet it is not in their power to fashion an entire people according to
their behest. When with the best intentions the benevolent despot
begins his regime, he finds the world hard to move. A succession of
good kings has at the end of a century left the people an inert and
unchanged mass. The Roman world was not permanently improved
by the hundred years of Hadrian and the Antonines. The kings of
Spain during the last century were at least equal to any contempo-
rary sovereigns in virtue and ability. In certain states of the world
the means are wanting to render a benevolent power effectual. These
means are not a mere external organisation of posts or telegraphs,
hardly the introduction of new laws or modes of industry. A change
must be made in the spirit of a people as well as in their externals.
The ancient legislator did not really take a blank tablet and inscribe
upon it the rules which reflection and experience had taught him to
be for a nation’s interest; no one would have obeyed him if he had.
But he took the customs which he found already existing in a half-
civilised state of society: these he reduced to form and inscribed on
pillars; he defined what had before been undefined, and gave cer-
tainty to what was uncertain. No legislation ever sprang, like Athene,
in full power out of the head either of God or man.
Plato and Aristotle are sensible of the difficulty of combining the
wisdom of the few with the power of the many. According to Plato,
he is a physician who has the knowledge of a physician, and he is a
king who has the knowledge of a king. But how the king, one or
more, is to obtain the required power, is hardly at all considered by
him. He presents the idea of a perfect government, but except the
regulation for mixing different tempers in marriage, he never makes
any provision for the attainment of it. Aristotle, casting aside ideals,
would place the government in a middle class of citizens, sufficiently
numerous for stability, without admitting the populace; and such
appears to have been the constitution which actually prevailed for a
short time at Athens—the rule of the Five Thousand—character-
ized by Thucydides as the best government of Athens which he had
known. It may however be doubted how far, either in a Greek or
modern state, such a limitation is practicable or desirable; for those

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who are left outside the pale will always be dangerous to those who
are within, while on the other hand the leaven of the mob can hardly
affect the representation of a great country. There is reason for the
argument in favour of a property qualification; there is reason also
in the arguments of those who would include all and so exhaust the
political situation.
The true answer to the question is relative to the circumstances of
nations. How can we get the greatest intelligence combined with
the greatest power? The ancient legislator would have found this
question more easy than we do. For he would have required that all
persons who had a share of government should have received their
education from the state and have borne her burdens, and should
have served in her fleets and armies. But though we sometimes hear
the cry that we must ‘educate the masses, for they are our masters,’
who would listen to a proposal that the franchise should be con-
fined to the educated or to those who fulfil political duties? Then
again, we know that the masses are not our masters, and that they
are more likely to become so if we educate them. In modern politics
so many interests have to be consulted that we are compelled to do,
not what is best, but what is possible.
d. Law is the first principle of society, but it cannot supply all the
wants of society, and may easily cause more evils than it cures. Plato
is aware of the imperfection of law in failing to meet the varieties of
circumstances: he is also aware that human life would be intolerable
if every detail of it were placed under legal regulation. It may be a
great evil that physicians should kill their patients or captains cast
away their ships, but it would be a far greater evil if each particular
in the practice of medicine or seamanship were regulated by law.
Much has been said in modern times about the duty of leaving men
to themselves, which is supposed to be the best way of taking care of
them. The question is often asked, What are the limits of legislation
in relation to morals? And the answer is to the same effect, that
morals must take care of themselves. There is a one-sided truth in
these answers, if they are regarded as condemnations of the interfer-
ence with commerce in the last century or of clerical persecution in
the Middle Ages. But ‘laissez-faire’ is not the best but only the sec-
ond best. What the best is, Plato does not attempt to determine; he

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only contrasts the imperfection of law with the wisdom of the per-
fect ruler.
Laws should be just, but they must also be certain, and we are
obliged to sacrifice something of their justice to their certainty. Sup-
pose a wise and good judge, who paying little or no regard to the
law, attempted to decide with perfect justice the cases that were
brought before him. To the uneducated person he would appear to
be the ideal of a judge. Such justice has been often exercised in
primitive times, or at the present day among eastern rulers. But in
the first place it depends entirely on the personal character of the
judge. He may be honest, but there is no check upon his dishon-
esty, and his opinion can only be overruled, not by any principle of
law, but by the opinion of another judging like himself without law.
In the second place, even if he be ever so honest, his mode of decid-
ing questions would introduce an element of uncertainty into hu-
man life; no one would know beforehand what would happen to
him, or would seek to conform in his conduct to any rule of law.
For the compact which the law makes with men, that they shall be
protected if they observe the law in their dealings with one another,
would have to be substituted another principle of a more general
character, that they shall be protected by the law if they act rightly
in their dealings with one another. The complexity of human ac-
tions and also the uncertainty of their effects would be increased
tenfold. For one of the principal advantages of law is not merely
that it enforces honesty, but that it makes men act in the same way,
and requires them to produce the same evidence of their acts. Too
many laws may be the sign of a corrupt and overcivilized state of
society, too few are the sign of an uncivilized one; as soon as com-
merce begins to grow, men make themselves customs which have
the validity of laws. Even equity, which is the exception to the law,
conforms to fixed rules and lies for the most part within the limits
of previous decisions.
IV. The bitterness of the Statesman is characteristic of Plato’s later
style, in which the thoughts of youth and love have fled away, and
we are no longer tended by the Muses or the Graces. We do not
venture to say that Plato was soured by old age, but certainly the
kindliness and courtesy of the earlier dialogues have disappeared.

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He sees the world under a harder and grimmer aspect: he is dealing

with the reality of things, not with visions or pictures of them: he is
seeking by the aid of dialectic only, to arrive at truth. He is deeply
impressed with the importance of classification: in this alone he
finds the true measure of human things; and very often in the pro-
cess of division curious results are obtained. For the dialectical art is
no respecter of persons: king and vermin-taker are all alike to the
philosopher. There may have been a time when the king was a god,
but he now is pretty much on a level with his subjects in breeding
and education. Man should be well advised that he is only one of
the animals, and the Hellene in particular should be aware that he
himself was the author of the distinction between Hellene and Bar-
barian, and that the Phrygian would equally divide mankind into
Phrygians and Barbarians, and that some intelligent animal, like a
crane, might go a step further, and divide the animal world into
cranes and all other animals. Plato cannot help laughing (compare
Theaet.) when he thinks of the king running after his subjects, like
the pig-driver or the bird-taker. He would seriously have him con-
sider how many competitors there are to his throne, chiefly among
the class of serving-men. A good deal of meaning is lurking in the
expression— ‘There is no art of feeding mankind worthy the name.’
There is a similar depth in the remark,—‘The wonder about states
is not that they are short-lived, but that they last so long in spite of
the badness of their rulers.’
V. There is also a paradoxical element in the Statesman which
delights in reversing the accustomed use of words. The law which to
the Greek was the highest object of reverence is an ignorant and
brutal tyrant—the tyrant is converted into a beneficent king. The
sophist too is no longer, as in the earlier dialogues, the rival of the
statesman, but assumes his form. Plato sees that the ideal of the
state in his own day is more and more severed from the actual. From
such ideals as he had once formed, he turns away to contemplate
the decline of the Greek cities which were far worse now in his old
age than they had been in his youth, and were to become worse and
worse in the ages which followed. He cannot contain his disgust at
the contemporary statesmen, sophists who had turned politicians,
in various forms of men and animals, appearing, some like lions

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and centaurs, others like satyrs and monkeys. In this new disguise
the Sophists make their last appearance on the scene: in the Laws
Plato appears to have forgotten them, or at any rate makes only a
slight allusion to them in a single passage (Laws).
VI. The Statesman is naturally connected with the Sophist. At
first sight we are surprised to find that the Eleatic Stranger discourses
to us, not only concerning the nature of Being and Not-being, but
concerning the king and statesman. We perceive, however, that there
is no inappropriateness in his maintaining the character of chief
speaker, when we remember the close connexion which is assumed
by Plato to exist between politics and dialectic. In both dialogues
the Proteus Sophist is exhibited, first, in the disguise of an Eristic,
secondly, of a false statesman. There are several lesser features which
the two dialogues have in common. The styles and the situations of
the speakers are very similar; there is the same love of division, and
in both of them the mind of the writer is greatly occupied about
method, to which he had probably intended to return in the pro-
jected ‘Philosopher.’
The Statesman stands midway between the Republic and the Laws,
and is also related to the Timaeus. The mythical or cosmical ele-
ment reminds us of the Timaeus, the ideal of the Republic. A previ-
ous chaos in which the elements as yet were not, is hinted at both in
the Timaeus and Statesman. The same ingenious arts of giving veri-
similitude to a fiction are practised in both dialogues, and in both,
as well as in the myth at the end of the Republic, Plato touches on
the subject of necessity and free-will. The words in which he de-
scribes the miseries of states seem to be an amplification of the ‘Cit-
ies will never cease from ill’ of the Republic. The point of view in
both is the same; and the differences not really important, e.g. in
the myth, or in the account of the different kinds of states. But the
treatment of the subject in the Statesman is fragmentary, and the
shorter and later work, as might be expected, is less finished, and
less worked out in detail. The idea of measure and the arrangement
of the sciences supply connecting links both with the Republic and
the Philebus.
More than any of the preceding dialogues, the Statesman seems
to approximate in thought and language to the Laws. There is the

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same decline and tendency to monotony in style, the same self-

consciousness, awkwardness, and over-civility; and in the Laws is
contained the pattern of that second best form of government, which,
after all, is admitted to be the only attainable one in this world. The
‘gentle violence,’ the marriage of dissimilar natures, the figure of the
warp and the woof, are also found in the Laws. Both expressly rec-
ognize the conception of a first or ideal state, which has receded
into an invisible heaven. Nor does the account of the origin and
growth of society really differ in them, if we make allowance for the
mythic character of the narrative in the Statesman. The virtuous
tyrant is common to both of them; and the Eleatic Stranger takes
up a position similar to that of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws.
VII. There would have been little disposition to doubt the genu-
ineness of the Sophist and Statesman, if they had been compared
with the Laws rather than with the Republic, and the Laws had been
received, as they ought to be, on the authority of Aristotle and on
the ground of their intrinsic excellence, as an undoubted work of
Plato. The detailed consideration of the genuineness and order of
the Platonic dialogues has been reserved for another place: a few of
the reasons for defending the Sophist and Statesman may be given
here.
1. The excellence, importance, and metaphysical originality of the
two dialogues: no works at once so good and of such length are
known to have proceeded from the hands of a forger.
2. The resemblances in them to other dialogues of Plato are such
as might be expected to be found in works of the same author, and
not in those of an imitator, being too subtle and minute to have
been invented by another. The similar passages and turns of thought
are generally inferior to the parallel passages in his earlier writings;
and we might a priori have expected that, if altered, they would
have been improved. But the comparison of the Laws proves that
this repetition of his own thoughts and words in an inferior form is
characteristic of Plato’s later style.
3. The close connexion of them with the Theaetetus, Parmenides,
and Philebus, involves the fate of these dialogues, as well as of the
two suspected ones.
4. The suspicion of them seems mainly to rest on a presumption

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that in Plato’s writings we may expect to find an uniform type of

doctrine and opinion. But however we arrange the order, or narrow
the circle of the dialogues, we must admit that they exhibit a growth
and progress in the mind of Plato. And the appearance of change or
progress is not to be regarded as impugning the genuineness of any
particular writings, but may be even an argument in their favour. If
we suppose the Sophist and Politicus to stand halfway between the
Republic and the Laws, and in near connexion with the Theaetetus,
the Parmenides, the Philebus, the arguments against them derived
from differences of thought and style disappear or may be said with-
out paradox in some degree to confirm their genuineness. There is
no such interval between the Republic or Phaedrus and the two
suspected dialogues, as that which separates all the earlier writings
of Plato from the Laws. And the Theaetetus, Parmenides, and Philebus,
supply links, by which, however different from them, they may be
reunited with the great body of the Platonic writings.

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STATESMAN
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:

Theodorus, Socrates, The Eleatic Stranger, The Younger Socrates.

SOCRATES: I owe you many thanks, indeed, Theodorus, for the

acquaintance both of Theaetetus and of the Stranger.

THEODORUS: And in a little while, Socrates, you will owe me

three times as many, when they have completed for you the delinea-
tion of the Statesman and of the Philosopher, as well as of the Soph-
ist.

SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher! O my dear

Theodorus, do my ears truly witness that this is the estimate formed
of them by the great calculator and geometrician?

THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I mean that you rate them all at the same value, whereas
they are really separated by an interval, which no geometrical ratio
can express.

THEODORUS: By Ammon, the god of Cyrene, Socrates, that is a

very fair hit; and shows that you have not forgotten your geometry.

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I will retaliate on you at some other time, but I must now ask the
Stranger, who will not, I hope, tire of his goodness to us, to proceed
either with the Statesman or with the Philosopher, whichever he
prefers.

STRANGER: That is my duty, Theodorus; having begun I must go

on, and not leave the work unfinished. But what shall be done with
Theaetetus?

THEODORUS: In what respect?

STRANGER: Shall we relieve him, and take his companion, the

Young Socrates, instead of him? What do you advise?

THEODORUS: Yes, give the other a turn, as you propose. The

young always do better when they have intervals of rest.

SOCRATES: I think, Stranger, that both of them may be said to be

in some way related to me; for the one, as you affirm, has the cut of
my ugly face (compare Theaet.), the other is called by my name.
And we should always be on the look-out to recognize a kinsman by
the style of his conversation. I myself was discoursing with Theaetetus
yesterday, and I have just been listening to his answers; my name-
sake I have not yet examined, but I must. Another time will do for
me; to-day let him answer you.

STRANGER: Very good. Young Socrates, do you hear what the

elder Socrates is proposing?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do.

STRANGER: And do you agree to his proposal?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: As you do not object, still less can I. After the Soph-
ist, then, I think that the Statesman naturally follows next in the

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order of enquiry. And please to say, whether he, too, should be ranked
among those who have science.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: Then the sciences must be divided as before?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I dare say.

STRANGER: But yet the division will not be the same?

YOUNG SOCRATES: How then?

STRANGER: They will be divided at some other point.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: Where shall we discover the path of the Statesman?

We must find and separate off, and set our seal upon this, and we
will set the mark of another class upon all diverging paths. Thus the
soul will conceive of all kinds of knowledge under two classes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To find the path is your business, Stranger,

and not mine.

STRANGER: Yes, Socrates, but the discovery, when once made,

must be yours as well as mine.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Well, and are not arithmetic and certain other kin-
dred arts, merely abstract knowledge, wholly separated from action?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But in the art of carpentering and all other handi-

crafts, the knowledge of the workman is merged in his work; he not

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 Plato

only knows, but he also makes things which previously did not ex-
ist.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Then let us divide sciences in general into those which

are practical and those which are purely intellectual.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let us assume these two divisions of sci-

ence, which is one whole.

STRANGER: And are ‘statesman,’ ‘king,’ ‘master,’ or ‘householder,’

one and the same; or is there a science or art answering to each of
these names? Or rather, allow me to put the matter in another way.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: If any one who is in a private station has the skill to

advise one of the public physicians, must not he also be called a
physician?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And if any one who is in a private station is able to

advise the ruler of a country, may not he be said to have the knowl-
edge which the ruler himself ought to have?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But surely the science of a true king is royal science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And will not he who possesses this knowledge,

whether he happens to be a ruler or a private man, when regarded
only in reference to his art, be truly called ‘royal’?

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YOUNG SOCRATES: He certainly ought to be.

STRANGER: And the householder and master are the same?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

STRANGER: Again, a large household may be compared to a small

state:—will they differ at all, as far as government is concerned?

YOUNG SOCRATES: They will not.

STRANGER: Then, returning to the point which we were just now

discussing, do we not clearly see that there is one science of all of
them; and this science may be called either royal or political or eco-
nomical; we will not quarrel with any one about the name.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: This too, is evident, that the king cannot do much

with his hands, or with his whole body, towards the maintenance of
his empire, compared with what he does by the intelligence and
strength of his mind.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly not.

STRANGER: Then, shall we say that the king has a greater affinity
to knowledge than to manual arts and to practical life in general?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly he has.

STRANGER: Then we may put all together as one and the same—
statesmanship and the statesman—the kingly science and the king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.

STRANGER: And now we shall only be proceeding in due order if

we go on to divide the sphere of knowledge?

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Think whether you can find any joint or parting in

knowledge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me of what sort.

STRANGER: Such as this: You may remember that we made an art

of calculation?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: Which was, unmistakeably, one of the arts of knowl-

edge?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And to this art of calculation which discerns the dif-

ferences of numbers shall we assign any other function except to
pass judgment on their differences?

YOUNG SOCRATES: How could we?

STRANGER: You know that the master-builder does not work him-
self, but is the ruler of workmen?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: He contributes knowledge, not manual labour?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And may therefore be justly said to share in theoreti-

cal science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

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Statesman

STRANGER: But he ought not, like the calculator, to regard his

functions as at an end when he has formed a judgment;—he must
assign to the individual workmen their appropriate task until they
have completed the work.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Are not all such sciences, no less than arithmetic and
the like, subjects of pure knowledge; and is not the difference be-
tween the two classes, that the one sort has the power of judging
only, and the other of ruling as well?

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is evident.

STRANGER: May we not very properly say, that of all knowledge,

there are two divisions—one which rules, and the other which judges?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I should think so.

STRANGER: And when men have anything to do in common,

that they should be of one mind is surely a desirable thing?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Then while we are at unity among ourselves, we need

not mind about the fancies of others?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And now, in which of these divisions shall we place

the king?—Is he a judge and a kind of spectator? Or shall we assign
to him the art of command—for he is a ruler?

YOUNG SOCRATES: The latter, clearly.

STRANGER: Then we must see whether there is any mark of divi-

sion in the art of command too. I am inclined to think that there is

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 Plato

a distinction similar to that of manufacturer and retail dealer, which

parts off the king from the herald.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How is this?

STRANGER: Why, does not the retailer receive and sell over again
the productions of others, which have been sold before?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly he does.

STRANGER: And is not the herald under command, and does he

not receive orders, and in his turn give them to others?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Then shall we mingle the kingly art in the same class
with the art of the herald, the interpreter, the boatswain, the prophet,
and the numerous kindred arts which exercise command; or, as in
the preceding comparison we spoke of manufacturers, or sellers for
themselves, and of retailers,—seeing, too, that the class of supreme
rulers, or rulers for themselves, is almost nameless—shall we make a
word following the same analogy, and refer kings to a supreme or
ruling-for-self science, leaving the rest to receive a name from some
one else? For we are seeking the ruler; and our enquiry is not con-
cerned with him who is not a ruler.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Thus a very fair distinction has been attained be-

tween the man who gives his own commands, and him who gives
another’s. And now let us see if the supreme power allows of any
further division.

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: I think that it does; and please to assist me in making

the division.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: At what point?

STRANGER: May not all rulers be supposed to command for the

sake of producing something?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Nor is there any difficulty in dividing the things pro-

duced into two classes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How would you divide them?

STRANGER: Of the whole class, some have life and some are with-
out life.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And by the help of this distinction we may make, if

we please, a subdivision of the section of knowledge which com-
mands.

YOUNG SOCRATES: At what point?

STRANGER: One part may be set over the production of lifeless,

the other of living objects; and in this way the whole will be di-
vided.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: That division, then, is complete; and now we may

leave one half, and take up the other; which may also be divided
into two.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Which of the two halves do you mean?

STRANGER: Of course that which exercises command about ani-

mals. For, surely, the royal science is not like that of a master-work-

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 Plato

man, a science presiding over lifeless objects;—the king has a no-

bler function, which is the management and control of living be-
ings.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And the breeding and tending of living beings may

be observed to be sometimes a tending of the individual; in other
cases, a common care of creatures in flocks?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But the statesman is not a tender of individuals—

not like the driver or groom of a single ox or horse; he is rather to be
compared with the keeper of a drove of horses or oxen.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, I see, thanks to you.

STRANGER: Shall we call this art of tending many animals to-

gether, the art of managing a herd, or the art of collective manage-
ment?

YOUNG SOCRATES: No matter;—whichever suggests itself to

us in the course of conversation.

STRANGER: Very good, Socrates; and, if you continue to be not

too particular about names, you will be all the richer in wisdom
when you are an old man. And now, as you say, leaving the discus-
sion of the name,—can you see a way in which a person, by show-
ing the art of herding to be of two kinds, may cause that which is
now sought amongst twice the number of things, to be then sought
amongst half that number?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I will try;—there appears to me to be one

management of men and another of beasts.

STRANGER: You have certainly divided them in a most straight-

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forward and manly style; but you have fallen into an error which
hereafter I think that we had better avoid.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is the error?

STRANGER: I think that we had better not cut off a single small
portion which is not a species, from many larger portions; the part
should be a species. To separate off at once the subject of investiga-
tion, is a most excellent plan, if only the separation be rightly made;
and you were under the impression that you were right, because
you saw that you would come to man; and this led you to hasten
the steps. But you should not chip off too small a piece, my friend;
the safer way is to cut through the middle; which is also the more
likely way of finding classes. Attention to this principle makes all
the difference in a process of enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean, Stranger?

STRANGER: I will endeavour to speak more plainly out of love to

your good parts, Socrates; and, although I cannot at present entirely
explain myself, I will try, as we proceed, to make my meaning a little
clearer.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was the error of which, as you say, we

were guilty in our recent division?

STRANGER: The error was just as if some one who wanted to

divide the human race, were to divide them after the fashion which
prevails in this part of the world; here they cut off the Hellenes as
one species, and all the other species of mankind, which are innu-
merable, and have no ties or common language, they include under
the single name of ‘barbarians,’ and because they have one name
they are supposed to be of one species also. Or suppose that in di-
viding numbers you were to cut off ten thousand from all the rest,
and make of it one species, comprehending the rest under another
separate name, you might say that here too was a single class, be-
cause you had given it a single name. Whereas you would make a

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 Plato

much better and more equal and logical classification of numbers,

if you divided them into odd and even; or of the human species, if
you divided them into male and female; and only separated off
Lydians or Phrygians, or any other tribe, and arrayed them against
the rest of the world, when you could no longer make a division
into parts which were also classes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true; but I wish that this distinction

between a part and a class could still be made somewhat plainer.

STRANGER: O Socrates, best of men, you are imposing upon me

a very difficult task. We have already digressed further from our
original intention than we ought, and you would have us wander
still further away. But we must now return to our subject; and here-
after, when there is a leisure hour, we will follow up the other track;
at the same time, I wish you to guard against imagining that you
ever heard me declare—

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: That a class and a part are distinct.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What did I hear, then?

STRANGER: That a class is necessarily a part, but there is no simi-

lar necessity that a part should be a class; that is the view which I
should always wish you to attribute to me, Socrates.

YOUNG SOCRATES: So be it.

STRANGER: There is another thing which I should like to know.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: The point at which we digressed; for, if I am not

mistaken, the exact place was at the question, Where you would
divide the management of herds. To this you appeared rather too

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ready to answer that there were two species of animals; man being
one, and all brutes making up the other.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: I thought that in taking away a part, you imagined

that the remainder formed a class, because you were able to call
them by the common name of brutes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That again is true.

STRANGER: Suppose now, O most courageous of dialecticians,

that some wise and understanding creature, such as a crane is re-
puted to be, were, in imitation of you, to make a similar division,
and set up cranes against all other animals to their own special glo-
rification, at the same time jumbling together all the others, includ-
ing man, under the appellation of brutes,—here would be the sort
of error which we must try to avoid.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How can we be safe?

STRANGER: If we do not divide the whole class of animals, we

shall be less likely to fall into that error.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We had better not take the whole?

STRANGER: Yes, there lay the source of error in our former divi-
sion.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How?

STRANGER: You remember how that part of the art of knowledge

which was concerned with command, had to do with the rearing of
living creatures,—I mean, with animals in herds?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

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 Plato

STRANGER: In that case, there was already implied a division of

all animals into tame and wild; those whose nature can be tamed are
called tame, and those which cannot be tamed are called wild.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And the political science of which we are in search, is

and ever was concerned with tame animals, and is also confined to
gregarious animals.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But then we ought not to divide, as we did, taking

the whole class at once. Neither let us be in too great haste to arrive
quickly at the political science; for this mistake has already brought
upon us the misfortune of which the proverb speaks.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What misfortune?

STRANGER: The misfortune of too much haste, which is too little

speed.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And all the better, Stranger;—we got what

we deserved.

STRANGER: Very well: Let us then begin again, and endeavour to

divide the collective rearing of animals; for probably the comple-
tion of the argument will best show what you are so anxious to
know. Tell me, then—

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: Have you ever heard, as you very likely may—for I

do not suppose that you ever actually visited them—of the pre-
serves of fishes in the Nile, and in the ponds of the Great King; or
you may have seen similar preserves in wells at home?

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, to be sure, I have seen them, and I have

often heard the others described.

STRANGER: And you may have heard also, and may have been
assured by report, although you have not travelled in those regions,
of nurseries of geese and cranes in the plains of Thessaly?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: I asked you, because here is a new division of the

management of herds, into the management of land and of water
herds.

YOUNG SOCRATES: There is.

STRANGER: And do you agree that we ought to divide the collec-

tive rearing of herds into two corresponding parts, the one the rear-
ing of water, and the other the rearing of land herds?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: There is surely no need to ask which of these two

contains the royal art, for it is evident to everybody.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Any one can divide the herds which feed on dry land?

YOUNG SOCRATES: How would you divide them?

STRANGER: I should distinguish between those which fly and

those which walk.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.

STRANGER: And where shall we look for the political animal?

Might not an idiot, so to speak, know that he is a pedestrian?

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: The art of managing the walking animal has to be

further divided, just as you might halve an even number.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.

STRANGER: Let me note that here appear in view two ways to

that part or class which the argument aims at reaching,—the one a
speedier way, which cuts off a small portion and leaves a large; the
other agrees better with the principle which we were laying down,
that as far as we can we should divide in the middle; but it is longer.
We can take either of them, whichever we please.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Cannot we have both ways?

STRANGER: Together? What a thing to ask! but, if you take them

in turn, you clearly may.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Then I should like to have them in turn.

STRANGER: There will be no difficulty, as we are near the end; if

we had been at the beginning, or in the middle, I should have de-
murred to your request; but now, in accordance with your desire, let
us begin with the longer way; while we are fresh, we shall get on
better. And now attend to the division.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: The tame walking herding animals are distributed

by nature into two classes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Upon what principle?

STRANGER: The one grows horns; and the other is without horns.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.

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Statesman

STRANGER: Suppose that you divide the science which manages

pedestrian animals into two corresponding parts, and define them;
for if you try to invent names for them, you will find the intricacy
too great.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How must I speak of them, then?

STRANGER: In this way: let the science of managing pedestrian

animals be divided into two parts, and one part assigned to the
horned herd, and the other to the herd that has no horns.

YOUNG SOCRATES: All that you say has been abundantly proved,
and may therefore be assumed.

STRANGER: The king is clearly the shepherd of a polled herd,

who have no horns.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is evident.

STRANGER: Shall we break up this hornless herd into sections,

and endeavour to assign to him what is his?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: Shall we distinguish them by their having or not hav-

ing cloven feet, or by their mixing or not mixing the breed? You
know what I mean.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: I mean that horses and asses naturally breed from

one another.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But the remainder of the hornless herd of tame ani-

mals will not mix the breed.

216
 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And of which has the Statesman charge,—of the

mixed or of the unmixed race?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly of the unmixed.

STRANGER: I suppose that we must divide this again as before.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We must.

STRANGER: Every tame and herding animal has now been split
up, with the exception of two species; for I hardly think that dogs
should be reckoned among gregarious animals.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not; but how shall we divide the

two remaining species?

STRANGER: There is a measure of difference which may be ap-

propriately employed by you and Theaetetus, who are students of
geometry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is that?

STRANGER: The diameter; and, again, the diameter of a diam-

eter. (Compare Meno.)

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: How does man walk, but as a diameter whose power

is two feet?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Just so.

STRANGER: And the power of the remaining kind, being the power
of twice two feet, may be said to be the diameter of our diameter.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly; and now I think that I pretty

nearly understand you.

STRANGER: In these divisions, Socrates, I descry what would make

another famous jest.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: Human beings have come out in the same class with
the freest and airiest of creation, and have been running a race with
them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I remark that very singular coincidence.

STRANGER: And would you not expect the slowest to arrive last?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Indeed I should.

STRANGER: And there is a still more ridiculous consequence, that

the king is found running about with the herd and in close compe-
tition with the bird-catcher, who of all mankind is most of an adept
at the airy life. (Plato is here introducing a new suddivision, i.e. that
of bipeds into men and birds. Others however refer the passage to
the division into quadrupeds and bipeds, making pigs compete with
human beings and the pig-driver with the king. According to this
explanation we must translate the words above, ‘freest and airiest of
creation,’ ‘worthiest and laziest of creation.’)

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the

truth of what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist? (Compare
Sophist.)

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: That the dialectical method is no respecter of per-

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 Plato

sons, and does not set the great above the small, but always arrives
in her own way at the truest result.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.

STRANGER: And now, I will not wait for you to ask the, but will
of my own accord take you by the shorter road to the definition of
a king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: I say that we should have begun at first by dividing

land animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd,
and that alone, comes out in the same class with man, we should
divide bipeds into those which have feathers and those which have
not, and when they have been divided, and the art of the manage-
ment of mankind is brought to light, the time will have come to
produce our Statesman and ruler, and set him like a charioteer in
his place, and hand over to him the reins of state, for that too is a
vocation which belongs to him.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; you have paid me the debt,—I

mean, that you have completed the argument, and I suppose that
you added the digression by way of interest. (Compare Republic.)

STRANGER: Then now, let us go back to the beginning, and join

the links, which together make the definition of the name of the
Statesman’s art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: The science of pure knowledge had, as we said origi-

nally, a part which was the science of rule or command, and from this
was derived another part, which was called command-for-self, on the
analogy of selling-for-self; an important section of this was the manage-
ment of living animals, and this again was further limited to the man-
agement of them in herds; and again in herds of pedestrian animals.

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Statesman

The chief division of the latter was the art of managing pedestrian ani-
mals which are without horns; this again has a part which can only be
comprehended under one term by joining together three names—
shepherding pure-bred animals. The only further subdivision is the art
of man-herding,—this has to do with bipeds, and is what we were
seeking after, and have now found, being at once the royal and political.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: And do you think, Socrates, that we really have done

as you say?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: Do you think, I mean, that we have really fulfilled

our intention?—There has been a sort of discussion, and yet the
investigation seems to me not to be perfectly worked out: this is
where the enquiry fails.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.

STRANGER: I will try to make the thought, which is at this mo-

ment present in my mind, clearer to us both.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: There were many arts of shepherding, and one of

them was the political, which had the charge of one particular herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And this the argument defined to be the art of rear-

ing, not horses or other brutes, but the art of rearing man collec-
tively?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

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 Plato

STRANGER: Note, however, a difference which distinguishes the

king from all other shepherds.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: I want to ask, whether any one of the other herds-

men has a rival who professes and claims to share with him in the
management of the herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean to say that merchants, husbandmen, provid-

ers of food, and also training-masters and physicians, will all con-
tend with the herdsmen of humanity, whom we call Statesmen, de-
claring that they themselves have the care of rearing or managing
mankind, and that they rear not only the common herd, but also
the rulers themselves.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Are they not right in saying so?

STRANGER: Very likely they may be, and we will consider their claim.
But we are certain of this,—that no one will raise a similar claim as against
the herdsman, who is allowed on all hands to be the sole and only feeder
and physician of his herd; he is also their match-maker and accoucheur;
no one else knows that department of science. And he is their merry-
maker and musician, as far as their nature is susceptible of such influ-
ences, and no one can console and soothe his own herd better than he
can, either with the natural tones of his voice or with instruments. And
the same may be said of tenders of animals in general.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: But if this is as you say, can our argument about the
king be true and unimpeachable? Were we right in selecting him
out of ten thousand other claimants to be the shepherd and rearer
of the human flock?

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Surely not.

STRANGER: Had we not reason just to now to apprehend, that

although we may have described a sort of royal form, we have not as
yet accurately worked out the true image of the Statesman? and that
we cannot reveal him as he truly is in his own nature, until we have
disengaged and separated him from those who hang about him and
claim to share in his prerogatives?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And that, Socrates, is what we must do, if we do not mean

to bring disgrace upon the argument at its close.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We must certainly avoid that.

STRANGER: Then let us make a new beginning, and travel by a

different road.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What road?

STRANGER: I think that we may have a little amusement; there is

a famous tale, of which a good portion may with advantage be in-
terwoven, and then we may resume our series of divisions, and pro-
ceed in the old path until we arrive at the desired summit. Shall we
do as I say?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to

hear; and you are not too old for childish amusement.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.

STRANGER: There did really happen, and will again happen, like
many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record,
the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel

222
 Plato

of Atreus and Thyestes. You have heard, no doubt, and remember

what they say happened at that time?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you to mean the token of the

birth of the golden lamb.

STRANGER: No, not that; but another part of the story, which
tells how the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the
east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that
which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; there is that legend also.

STRANGER: Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very often.

STRANGER: Did you ever hear that the men of former times were
earth-born, and not begotten of one another?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is another old tradition.

STRANGER: All these stories, and ten thousand others which are still
more wonderful, have a common origin; many of them have been lost
in the lapse of ages, or are repeated only in a disconnected form; but the
origin of them is what no one has told, and may as well be told now; for
the tale is suited to throw light on the nature of the king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; and I hope that you will give
the whole story, and leave out nothing.

STRANGER: Listen, then. There is a time when God himself guides

and helps to roll the world in its course; and there is a time, on the
completion of a certain cycle, when he lets go, and the world being
a living creature, and having originally received intelligence from its
author and creator, turns about and by an inherent necessity re-
volves in the opposite direction.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why is that?

STRANGER: Why, because only the most divine things of all re-
main ever unchanged and the same, and body is not included in
this class. Heaven and the universe, as we have termed them, al-
though they have been endowed by the Creator with many glories,
partake of a bodily nature, and therefore cannot be entirely free
from perturbation. But their motion is, as far as possible, single and
in the same place, and of the same kind; and is therefore only sub-
ject to a reversal, which is the least alteration possible. For the lord
of all moving things is alone able to move of himself; and to think
that he moves them at one time in one direction and at another
time in another is blasphemy. Hence we must not say that the world
is either self-moved always, or all made to go round by God in two
opposite courses; or that two Gods, having opposite purposes, make
it move round. But as I have already said (and this is the only re-
maining alternative) the world is guided at one time by an external
power which is divine and receives fresh life and immortality from
the renewing hand of the Creator, and again, when let go, moves
spontaneously, being set free at such a time as to have, during infi-
nite cycles of years, a reverse movement: this is due to its perfect
balance, to its vast size, and to the fact that it turns on the smallest
pivot.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Your account of the world seems to be very

reasonable indeed.

STRANGER: Let us now reflect and try to gather from what has
been said the nature of the phenomenon which we affirmed to be
the cause of all these
wonders. It is this.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: The reversal which takes place from time to time of

the motion of the universe.

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that the cause?

STRANGER: Of all changes of the heavenly motions, we may con-

sider this to be the greatest and most complete.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I should imagine so.

STRANGER: And it may be supposed to result in the greatest

changes to the human beings who are the inhabitants of the world
at the time.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Such changes would naturally occur.

STRANGER: And animals, as we know, survive with difficulty great

and serious changes of many different kinds when they come upon
them at once.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Hence there necessarily occurs a great destruction of

them, which extends also to the life of man; few survivors of the
race are left, and those who remain become the subjects of several
novel and remarkable phenomena, and of one in particular, which
takes place at the time when the transition is made to the cycle
opposite to that in which we are now living.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: The life of all animals first came to a standstill, and

the mortal nature ceased to be or look older, and was then reversed
and grew young and delicate; the white locks of the aged darkened
again, and the cheeks the bearded man became smooth, and recov-
ered their former bloom; the bodies of youths in their prime grew
softer and smaller, continually by day and night returning and be-
coming assimilated to the nature of a newly-born child in mind as
well as body; in the succeeding stage they wasted away and wholly
disappeared. And the bodies of those who died by violence at that

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time quickly passed through the like changes, and in a few days
were no more seen.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Then how, Stranger, were the animals cre-

ated in those days; and in what way were they begotten of one an-
other?

STRANGER: It is evident, Socrates, that there was no such thing

in the then order of nature as the procreation of animals from one
another; the earth-born race, of which we hear in story, was the one
which existed in those days—they rose again from the ground; and
of this tradition, which is now-a-days often unduly discredited, our
ancestors, who were nearest in point of time to the end of the last
period and came into being at the beginning of this, are to us the
heralds. And mark how consistent the sequel of the tale is; after the
return of age to youth, follows the return of the dead, who are lying
in the earth, to life; simultaneously with the reversal of the world
the wheel of their generation has been turned back, and they are
put together and rise and live in the opposite order, unless God has
carried any of them away to some other lot. According to this tradi-
tion they of necessity sprang from the earth and have the name of
earth-born, and so the above legend clings to them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly that is quite consistent with what

has preceded; but tell me, was the life which you said existed in the
reign of Cronos in that cycle of the world, or in this? For the change
in the course of the stars and the sun must have occurred in both.

STRANGER: I see that you enter into my meaning;—no, that

blessed and spontaneous life does not belong to the present cycle of
the world, but to the previous one, in which God superintended the
whole revolution of the universe; and the several parts the universe
were distributed under the rule of certain inferior deities, as is the
way in some places still. There were demigods, who were the shep-
herds of the various species and herds of animals, and each one was
in all respects sufficient for those of whom he was the shepherd;
neither was there any violence, or devouring of one another, or war

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 Plato

or quarrel among them; and I might tell of ten thousand other bless-
ings, which belonged to that dispensation. The reason why the life
of man was, as tradition says, spontaneous, is as follows: In those
days God himself was their shepherd, and ruled over them, just as
man, who is by comparison a divine being, still rules over the lower
animals. Under him there were no forms of government or separate
possession of women and children; for all men rose again from the
earth, having no memory of the past. And although they had noth-
ing of this sort, the earth gave them fruits in abundance, which
grew on trees and shrubs unbidden, and were not planted by the
hand of man. And they dwelt naked, and mostly in the open air, for
the temperature of their seasons was mild; and they had no beds,
but lay on soft couches of grass, which grew plentifully out of the
earth. Such was the life of man in the days of Cronos, Socrates; the
character of our present life, which is said to be under Zeus, you
know from your own experience. Can you, and will you, determine
which of them you deem the happier?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.

STRANGER: Then shall I determine for you as well as I can?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: Suppose that the nurslings of Cronos, having this

boundless leisure, and the power of holding intercourse, not only
with men, but with the brute creation, had used all these advan-
tages with a view to philosophy, conversing with the brutes as well
as with one another, and learning of every nature which was gifted
with any special power, and was able to contribute some special
experience to the store of wisdom, there would be no difficulty in
deciding that they would be a thousand times happier than the men
of our own day. Or, again, if they had merely eaten and drunk until
they were full, and told stories to one another and to the animals—
such stories as are now attributed to them—in this case also, as I
should imagine, the answer would be easy. But until some satisfac-
tory witness can be found of the love of that age for knowledge and

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discussion, we had better let the matter drop, and give the reason
why we have unearthed this tale, and then we shall be able to get
on. In the fulness of time, when the change was to take place, and
the earth-born race had all perished, and every soul had completed
its proper cycle of births and been sown in the earth her appointed
number of times, the pilot of the universe let the helm go, and
retired to his place of view; and then Fate and innate desire reversed
the motion of the world. Then also all the inferior deities who share
the rule of the supreme power, being informed of what was happen-
ing, let go the parts of the world which were under their control.
And the world turning round with a sudden shock, being impelled
in an opposite direction from beginning to end, was shaken by a
mighty earthquake, which wrought a new destruction of all manner
of animals. Afterwards, when sufficient time had elapsed, the tu-
mult and confusion and earthquake ceased, and the universal crea-
ture, once more at peace, attained to a calm, and settled down into
his own orderly and accustomed course, having the charge and rule
of himself and of all the creatures which are contained in him, and
executing, as far as he remembered them, the instructions of his
Father and Creator, more precisely at first, but afterwords with less
exactness. The reason of the falling off was the admixture of matter
in him; this was inherent in the primal nature, which was full of
disorder, until attaining to the present order. From God, the con-
structor, the world received all that is good in him, but from a pre-
vious state came elements of evil and unrighteousness, which, thence
derived, first of all passed into the world, and were then transmitted
to the animals. While the world was aided by the pilot in nurturing
the animals, the evil was small, and great the good which he pro-
duced, but after the separation, when the world was let go, at first
all proceeded well enough; but, as time went on, there was more
and more forgetting, and the old discord again held sway and burst
forth in full glory; and at last small was the good, and great was the
admixture of evil, and there was a danger of universal ruin to the
world, and to the things contained in him. Wherefore God, the
orderer of all, in his tender care, seeing that the world was in great
straits, and fearing that all might be dissolved in the storm and dis-
appear in infinite chaos, again seated himself at the helm; and bring-

228
 Plato

ing back the elements which had fallen into dissolution and disor-
der to the motion which had prevailed under his dispensation, he
set them in order and restored them, and made the world imperish-
able and immortal. And this is the whole tale, of which the first part
will suffice to illustrate the nature of the king. For when the world
turned towards the present cycle of generation, the age of man again
stood still, and a change opposite to the previous one was the result.
The small creatures which had almost disappeared grew in and stat-
ure, and the newly-born children of the earth became grey and died
and sank into the earth again. All things changed, imitating and
following the condition of the universe, and of necessity agreeing
with that in their mode of conception and generation and nurture;
for no animal was any longer allowed to come into being in the
earth through the agency of other creative beings, but as the world
was ordained to be the lord of his own progress, in like manner the
parts were ordained to grow and generate and give nourishment, as
far as they could, of themselves, impelled by a similar movement.
And so we have arrived at the real end of this discourse; for al-
though there might be much to tell of the lower animals, and of the
condition out of which they changed and of the causes of the change,
about men there is not much, and that little is more to the purpose.
Deprived of the care of God, who had possessed and tended them,
they were left helpless and defenceless, and were torn in pieces by
the beasts, who were naturally fierce and had now grown wild. And
in the first ages they were still without skill or resource; the food
which once grew spontaneously had failed, and as yet they knew
not how to procure it, because they had never felt the pressure of
necessity. For all these reasons they were in a great strait; wherefore
also the gifts spoken of in the old tradition were imparted to man
by the gods, together with so much teaching and education as was
indispensable; fire was given to them by Prometheus, the arts by
Hephaestus and his fellow-worker, Athene, seeds and plants by oth-
ers. From these is derived all that has helped to frame human life;
since the care of the Gods, as I was saying, had now failed men, and
they had to order their course of life for themselves, and were their
own masters, just like the universal creature whom they imitate and
follow, ever changing, as he changes, and ever living and growing,

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at one time in one manner, and at another time in another. Enough

of the story, which may be of use in showing us how greatly we
erred in the delineation of the king and the statesman in our previ-
ous discourse.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was this great error of which you

speak?

STRANGER: There were two; the first a lesser one, the other was
an error on a much larger and grander scale.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean to say that when we were asked about a king

and statesman of the present cycle and generation, we told of a shep-
herd of a human flock who belonged to the other cycle, and of one
who was a god when he ought to have been a man; and this a great
error. Again, we declared him to be the ruler of the entire State,
without explaining how: this was not the whole truth, nor very in-
telligible; but still it was true, and therefore the second error was not
so great as the first.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Before we can expect to have a perfect description of

the statesman we must define the nature of his office.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And the myth was introduced in order to show, not

only that all others are rivals of the true shepherd who is the object
of our search, but in order that we might have a clearer view of him
who is alone worthy to receive this appellation, because he alone of
shepherds and herdsmen, according to the image which we have
employed, has the care of human beings.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And I cannot help thinking, Socrates, that the form

of the divine shepherd is even higher than that of a king; whereas
the statesmen who are now on earth seem to be much more like
their subjects in character, and much more nearly to partake of their
breeding and education.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Still they must be investigated all the same, to see

whether, like the divine shepherd, they are above their subjects or
on a level with them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

STRANGER: To resume:—Do you remember that we spoke of a

command-for-self exercised over animals, not singly but collectively,
which we called the art of rearing a herd?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, I remember.

STRANGER: There, somewhere, lay our error; for we never in-

cluded or mentioned the Statesman; and we did not observe that he
had no place in our nomenclature.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How was that?

STRANGER: All other herdsmen ‘rear’ their herds, but this is not a
suitable term to apply to the Statesman; we should use a name which
is common to them all.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True, if there be such a name.

STRANGER: Why, is not ‘care’ of herds applicable to all? For this

implies no feeding, or any special duty; if we say either ‘tending’ the
herds, or ‘managing’ the herds, or ‘having the care’ of them, the
same word will include all, and then we may wrap up the Statesman
with the rest, as the argument seems to require.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right; but how shall we take the next
step in the division?

STRANGER: As before we divided the art of ‘rearing’ herds ac-

cordingly as they were land or water herds, winged and wingless,
mixing or not mixing the breed, horned and hornless, so we may
divide by these same differences the ‘tending’ of herds, comprehend-
ing in our definition the kingship of to-day and the rule of Cronos.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is clear; but I still ask, what is to follow.

STRANGER: If the word had been ‘managing’ herds, instead of

feeding or rearing them, no one would have argued that there was
no care of men in the case of the politician, although it was justly
contended, that there was no human art of feeding them which was
worthy of the name, or at least, if there were, many a man had a
prior and greater right to share in such an art than any king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But no other art or science will have a prior or better

right than the royal science to care for human society and to rule
over men in general.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: In the next place, Socrates, we must surely notice

that a great error was committed at the end of our analysis.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was it?

STRANGER: Why, supposing we were ever so sure that there is

such an art as the art of rearing or feeding bipeds, there was no
reason why we should call this the royal or political art, as though
there were no more to be said.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

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 Plato

STRANGER: Our first duty, as we were saying, was to remodel the

name, so as to have the notion of care rather than of feeding, and
then to divide, for there may be still considerable divisions.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How can they be made?

STRANGER: First, by separating the divine shepherd from the

human guardian or manager.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And the art of management which is assigned to man

would again have to be subdivided.

YOUNG SOCRATES: On what principle?

STRANGER: On the principle of voluntary and compulsory.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why?

STRANGER: Because, if I am not mistaken, there has been an er-

ror here; for our simplicity led us to rank king and tyrant together,
whereas they are utterly distinct, like their modes of government.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Then, now, as I said, let us make the correction and

divide human care into two parts, on the principle of voluntary and
compulsory.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And if we call the management of violent rulers tyr-

anny, and the voluntary management of herds of voluntary bipeds
politics, may we not further assert that he who has this latter art of
management is the true king and statesman?

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: I think, Stranger, that we have now com-

pleted the account of the Statesman.

STRANGER: Would that we had, Socrates, but I have to satisfy

myself as well as you; and in my judgment the figure of the king is
not yet perfected; like statuaries who, in their too great haste, hav-
ing overdone the several parts of their work, lose time in cutting
them down, so too we, partly out of haste, partly out of a magnani-
mous desire to expose our former error, and also because we imag-
ined that a king required grand illustrations, have taken up a mar-
vellous lump of fable, and have been obliged to use more than was
necessary. This made us discourse at large, and, nevertheless, the
story never came to an end. And our discussion might be compared
to a picture of some living being which had been fairly drawn in
outline, but had not yet attained the life and clearness which is given
by the blending of colours. Now to intelligent persons a living be-
ing had better be delineated by language and discourse than by any
painting or work of art: to the duller sort by works of art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true; but what is the imperfection

which still remains? I wish that you would tell me.

STRANGER: The higher ideas, my dear friend, can hardly be set

forth except through the medium of examples; every man seems to
know all things in a dreamy sort of way, and then again to wake up
and to know nothing.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I fear that I have been unfortunate in raising a ques-

tion about our experience of knowledge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why so?

STRANGER: Why, because my ‘example’ requires the assistance of

another example.

234
 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Proceed; you need not fear that I shall tire.

STRANGER: I will proceed, finding, as I do, such a ready listener

in you: when children are beginning to know their letters—

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are you going to say?

STRANGER: That they distinguish the several letters well enough

in very short and easy syllables, and are able to tell them correctly.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Whereas in other syllables they do not recognize them,

and think and speak falsely of them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Will not the best and easiest way of bringing them to
a knowledge of what they do not as yet know be—

YOUNG SOCRATES: Be what?

STRANGER: To refer them first of all to cases in which they judge

correctly about the letters in question, and then to compare these with
the cases in which they do not as yet know, and to show them that the
letters are the same, and have the same character in both combinations,
until all cases in which they are right have been placed side by side with
all cases in which they are wrong. In this way they have examples, and
are made to learn that each letter in every combination is always the
same and not another, and is always called by the same name.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Are not examples formed in this manner? We take a

thing and compare it with another distinct instance of the same
thing, of which we have a right conception, and out of the compari-
son there arises one true notion, which includes both of them.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly.

STRANGER: Can we wonder, then, that the soul has the same
uncertainty about the alphabet of things, and sometimes and in
some cases is firmly fixed by the truth in each particular, and then,
again, in other cases is altogether at sea; having somehow or other a
correct notion of combinations; but when the elements are trans-
ferred into the long and difficult language (syllables) of facts, is again
ignorant of them?

YOUNG SOCRATES: There is nothing wonderful in that.

STRANGER: Could any one, my friend, who began with false opin-
ion ever expect to arrive even at a small portion of truth and to
attain wisdom?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Hardly.

STRANGER: Then you and I will not be far wrong in trying to see
the nature of example in general in a small and particular instance;
afterwards from lesser things we intend to pass to the royal class,
which is the highest form of the same nature, and endeavour to
discover by rules of art what the management of cities is; and then
the dream will become a reality to us.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Then, once more, let us resume the previous argu-

ment, and as there were innumerable rivals of the royal race who
claim to have the care of states, let us part them all off, and leave
him alone; and, as I was saying, a model or example of this process
has first to be framed.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly.

STRANGER: What model is there which is small, and yet has any
analogy with the political occupation? Suppose, Socrates, that if we

236
 Plato

have no other example at hand, we choose weaving, or, more pre-

cisely, weaving of wool—this will be quite enough, without taking
the whole of weaving, to illustrate our meaning?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Why should we not apply to weaving the same pro-

cesses of division and subdivision which we have already applied to
other classes; going once more as rapidly as we can through all the
steps until we come to that which is needed for our purpose?

YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?

STRANGER: I shall reply by actually performing the process.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: All things which we make or acquire are either cre-

ative or preventive; of the preventive class are antidotes, divine and
human, and also defences; and defences are either military weapons
or protections; and protections are veils, and also shields against
heat and cold, and shields against heat and cold are shelters and
coverings; and coverings are blankets and garments; and garments
are some of them in one piece, and others of them are made in
several parts; and of these latter some are stitched, others are fas-
tened and not stitched; and of the not stitched, some are made of
the sinews of plants, and some of hair; and of these, again, some are
cemented with water and earth, and others are fastened together by
themselves. And these last defences and coverings which are fas-
tened together by themselves are called clothes, and the art which
superintends them we may call, from the nature of the operation,
the art of clothing, just as before the art of the Statesman was de-
rived from the State; and may we not say that the art of weaving, at
least that largest portion of it which was concerned with the making
of clothes, differs only in name from this art of clothing, in the
same way that, in the previous case, the royal science differed from
the political?

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.

STRANGER: In the next place, let us make the reflection, that the
art of weaving clothes, which an incompetent person might fancy
to have been sufficiently described, has been separated off from sev-
eral others which are of the same family, but not from the co-opera-
tive arts.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And which are the kindred arts?

STRANGER: I see that I have not taken you with me. So I think
that we had better go backwards, starting from the end. We just
now parted off from the weaving of clothes, the making of blankets,
which differ from each other in that one is put under and the other
is put around: and these are what I termed kindred arts.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I understand.

STRANGER: And we have subtracted the manufacture of all ar-

ticles made of flax and cords, and all that we just now metaphori-
cally termed the sinews of plants, and we have also separated off the
process of felting and the putting together of materials by stitching
and sewing, of which the most important part is the cobbler’s art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Precisely.

STRANGER: Then we separated off the currier’s art, which pre-

pared coverings in entire pieces, and the art of sheltering, and sub-
tracted the various arts of making water-tight which are employed
in building, and in general in carpentering, and in other crafts, and
all such arts as furnish impediments to thieving and acts of vio-
lence, and are concerned with making the lids of boxes and the
fixing of doors, being divisions of the art of joining; and we also cut
off the manufacture of arms, which is a section of the great and
manifold art of making defences; and we originally began by part-
ing off the whole of the magic art which is concerned with anti-
dotes, and have left, as would appear, the very art of which we were

238
 Plato

in search, the art of protection against winter cold, which fabricates

woollen defences, and has the name of weaving.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Yes, my boy, but that is not all; for the first process to
which the material is subjected is the opposite of weaving.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?

STRANGER: Weaving is a sort of uniting?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But the first process is a separation of the clotted and

matted fibres?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I mean the work of the carder’s art; for we cannot say
that carding is weaving, or that the carder is a weaver.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: Again, if a person were to say that the art of making

the warp and the woof was the art of weaving, he would say what
was paradoxical and false.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: Shall we say that the whole art of the fuller or of the
mender has nothing to do with the care and treatment of clothes, or
are we to regard all these as arts of weaving?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: And yet surely all these arts will maintain that they

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Statesman

are concerned with the treatment and production of clothes; they

will dispute the exclusive prerogative of weaving, and though as-
signing a larger sphere to that, will still reserve a considerable field
for themselves.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Besides these, there are the arts which make tools and
instruments of weaving, and which will claim at least to be co-operative
causes in every work of the weaver.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.

STRANGER: Well, then, suppose that we define weaving, or rather

that part of it which has been selected by us, to be the greatest and
noblest of arts which are concerned with woollen garments—shall
we be right? Is not the definition, although true, wanting in clear-
ness and completeness; for do not all those other arts require to be
first cleared away?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Then the next thing will be to separate them, in or-

der that the argument may proceed in a regular manner?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: Let us consider, in the first place, that there are two
kinds of arts entering into everything which we do.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?

STRANGER: The one kind is the conditional or co-operative, the

other the principal cause.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

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 Plato

STRANGER: The arts which do not manufacture the actual thing,

but which furnish the necessary tools for the manufacture, without
which the several arts could not fulfil their appointed work, are co-
operative; but those which make the things themselves are causal.

YOUNG SOCRATES: A very reasonable distinction.

STRANGER: Thus the arts which make spindles, combs, and other
instruments of the production of clothes, may be called co-opera-
tive, and those which treat and fabricate the things themselves, causal.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: The arts of washing and mending, and the other pre-
paratory arts which belong to the causal class, and form a division
of the great art of adornment, may be all comprehended under what
we call the fuller’s art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Carding and spinning threads and all the parts of the
process which are concerned with the actual manufacture of a woollen
garment form a single art, which is one of those universally acknowl-
edged,—the art of working in wool.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: Of working in wool, again, there are two divisions,

and both these are parts of two arts at once.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that?

STRANGER: Carding and one half of the use of the comb, and the
other processes of wool-working which separate the composite, may
be classed together as belonging both to the art of wool-working,
and also to one of the two great arts which are of universal applica-
tion—the art of composition and the art of division.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: To the latter belong carding and the other processes

of which I was just now speaking; the art of discernment or division
in wool and yarn, which is effected in one manner with the comb
and in another with the hands, is variously described under all the
names which I just now mentioned.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Again, let us take some process of wool-working which

is also a portion of the art of composition, and, dismissing the ele-
ments of division which we found there, make two halves, one on
the principle of composition, and the other on the principle of divi-
sion.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let that be done.

STRANGER: And once more, Socrates, we must divide the part

which belongs at once both to wool-working and composition, if
we are ever to discover satisfactorily the aforesaid art of weaving.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We must.

STRANGER: Yes, certainly, and let us call one part of the art the
art of twisting threads, the other the art of combining them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Do I understand you, in speaking of twist-

ing, to be referring to manufacture of the warp?

STRANGER: Yes, and of the woof too; how, if not by twisting, is

the woof made?

YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no other way.

STRANGER: Then suppose that you define the warp and the woof,
for I think that the definition will be of use to you.

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: How shall I define them?

STRANGER: As thus: A piece of carded wool which is drawn out

lengthwise and breadthwise is said to be pulled out.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And the wool thus prepared, when twisted by the

spindle, and made into a firm thread, is called the warp, and the art
which regulates these operations the art of spinning the warp.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And the threads which are more loosely spun, hav-
ing a softness proportioned to the intertexture of the warp and to
the degree of force used in dressing the cloth,—the threads which
are thus spun are called the woof, and the art which is set over them
may be called the art of spinning the woof.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And, now, there can be no mistake about the nature

of the part of weaving which we have undertaken to define. For
when that part of the art of composition which is employed in the
working of wool forms a web by the regular intertexture of warp
and woof, the entire woven substance is called by us a woollen gar-
ment, and the art which presides over this is the art of weaving.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: But why did we not say at once that weaving is the
art of entwining warp and woof, instead of making a long and use-
less circuit?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I thought, Stranger, that there was nothing

useless in what was said.

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Statesman

STRANGER: Very likely, but you may not always think so, my
sweet friend; and in case any feeling of dissatisfaction should here-
after arise in your mind, as it very well may, let me lay down a
principle which will apply to arguments in general.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Proceed.

STRANGER: Let us begin by considering the whole nature of ex-

cess and defect, and then we shall have a rational ground on which
we may praise or blame too much length or too much shortness in
discussions of this kind.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let us do so.

STRANGER: The points on which I think that we ought to dwell

are the following:—

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: Length and shortness, excess and defect; with all of these
the art of measurement is conversant.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And the art of measurement has to be divided into

two parts, with a view to our present purpose.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Where would you make the division?

STRANGER: As thus: I would make two parts, one having regard

to the relativity of greatness and smallness to each other; and there
is another, without which the existence of production would be
impossible.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Do you not think that it is only natural for the greater

244
 Plato

to be called greater with reference to the less alone, and the less less
with reference to the greater alone?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: Well, but is there not also something exceeding and

exceeded by the principle of the mean, both in speech and action,
and is not this a reality, and the chief mark of difference between
good and bad men?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Plainly.

STRANGER: Then we must suppose that the great and small exist
and are discerned in both these ways, and not, as we were saying
before, only relatively to one another, but there must also be an-
other comparison of them with the mean or ideal standard; would
you like to hear the reason why?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: If we assume the greater to exist only in relation to

the less, there will never be any comparison of either with the mean.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And would not this doctrine be the ruin of all the
arts and their creations; would not the art of the Statesman and the
aforesaid art of weaving disappear? For all these arts are on the watch
against excess and defect, not as unrealities, but as real evils, which
occasion a difficulty in action; and the excellence or beauty of every
work of art is due to this observance of measure.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: But if the science of the Statesman disappears, the search

for the royal science will be impossible.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Well, then, as in the case of the Sophist we extorted

the inference that not-being had an existence, because here was the
point at which the argument eluded our grasp, so in this we must
endeavour to show that the greater and less are not only to be mea-
sured with one another, but also have to do with the production of
the mean; for if this is not admitted, neither a statesman nor any
other man of action can be an undisputed master of his science.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must certainly do again what we did then.

STRANGER: But this, Socrates, is a greater work than the other, of

which we only too well remember the length. I think, however, that
we may fairly assume something of this sort—

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: That we shall some day require this notion of a mean

with a view to the demonstration of absolute truth; meanwhile, the
argument that the very existence of the arts must be held to depend
on the possibility of measuring more or less, not only with one an-
other, but also with a view to the attainment of the mean, seems to
afford a grand support and satisfactory proof of the doctrine which
we are maintaining; for if there are arts, there is a standard of mea-
sure, and if there is a standard of measure, there are arts; but if
either is wanting, there is neither.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True; and what is the next step?

STRANGER: The next step clearly is to divide the art of measure-

ment into two parts, as we have said already, and to place in the one
part all the arts which measure number, length, depth, breadth,
swiftness with their opposites; and to have another part in which
they are measured with the mean, and the fit, and the opportune,
and the due, and with all those words, in short, which denote a
mean or standard removed from the extremes.

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Here are two vast divisions, embracing two

very different spheres.

STRANGER: There are many accomplished men, Socrates, who

say, believing themselves to speak wisely, that the art of measure-
ment is universal, and has to do with all things. And this means
what we are now saying; for all things which come within the prov-
ince of art do certainly in some sense partake of measure. But these
persons, because they are not accustomed to distinguish classes ac-
cording to real forms, jumble together two widely different things,
relation to one another, and to a standard, under the idea that they
are the same, and also fall into the converse error of dividing other
things not according to their real parts. Whereas the right way is, if
a man has first seen the unity of things, to go on with the enquiry
and not desist until he has found all the differences contained in it
which form distinct classes; nor again should he be able to rest con-
tented with the manifold diversities which are seen in a multitude
of things until he has comprehended all of them that have any af-
finity within the bounds of one similarity and embraced them within
the reality of a single kind. But we have said enough on this head,
and also of excess and defect; we have only to bear in mind that two
divisions of the art of measurement have been discovered which are
concerned with them, and not forget what they are.

YOUNG SOCRATES: We will not forget.

STRANGER: And now that this discussion is completed, let us go

on to consider another question, which concerns not this argument
only but the conduct of such arguments in general.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is this new question?

STRANGER: Take the case of a child who is engaged in learning

his letters: when he is asked what letters make up a word, should we
say that the question is intended to improve his grammatical knowl-
edge of that particular word, or of all words?

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly, in order that he may have a better

knowledge of all words.

STRANGER: And is our enquiry about the Statesman intended

only to improve our knowledge of politics, or our power of reason-
ing generally?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly, as in the former example, the pur-

pose is general.

STRANGER: Still less would any rational man seek to analyse

the notion of weaving for its own sake. But people seem to for-
get that some things have sensible images, which are readily
known, and can be easily pointed out when any one desires to
answer an enquirer without any trouble or argument; whereas
the greatest and highest truths have no outward image of them-
selves visible to man, which he who wishes to satisfy the soul of
the enquirer can adapt to the eye of sense (compare Phaedr.),
and therefore we ought to train ourselves to give and accept a
rational account of them; for immaterial things, which are the
noblest and greatest, are shown only in thought and idea, and in
no other way, and all that we are now saying is said for the sake
of them. Moreover, there is always less difficulty in fixing the
mind on small matters than on great.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Let us call to mind the bearing of all this.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: I wanted to get rid of any impression of tediousness

which we may have experienced in the discussion about weaving,
and the reversal of the universe, and in the discussion concerning
the Sophist and the being of not-being. I know that they were felt
to be too long, and I reproached myself with this, fearing that they
might be not only tedious but irrelevant; and all that I have now

248
 Plato

said is only designed to prevent the recurrence of any such

disagreeables for the future.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good. Will you proceed?

STRANGER: Then I would like to observe that you and I, remem-

bering what has been said, should praise or blame the length or
shortness of discussions, not by comparing them with one another,
but with what is fitting, having regard to the part of measurement,
which, as we said, was to be borne in mind.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And yet, not everything is to be judged even with a

view to what is fitting; for we should only want such a length as is
suited to give pleasure, if at all, as a secondary matter; and reason
tells us, that we should be contented to make the ease or rapidity of
an enquiry, not our first, but our second object; the first and highest
of all being to assert the great method of division according to spe-
cies—whether the discourse be shorter or longer is not to the point.
No offence should be taken at length, but the longer and shorter are
to be employed indifferently, according as either of them is better
calculated to sharpen the wits of the auditors. Reason would also
say to him who censures the length of discourses on such occasions
and cannot away with their circumlocution, that he should not be
in such a hurry to have done with them, when he can only com-
plain that they are tedious, but he should prove that if they had
been shorter they would have made those who took part in them
better dialecticians, and more capable of expressing the truth of
things; about any other praise and blame, he need not trouble him-
self—he should pretend not to hear them. But we have had enough
of this, as you will probably agree with me in thinking. Let us re-
turn to our Statesman, and apply to his case the aforesaid example
of weaving.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good;—let us do as you say.

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Statesman

STRANGER: The art of the king has been separated from the simi-
lar arts of shepherds, and, indeed, from all those which have to do
with herds at all. There still remain, however, of the causal and co-
operative arts those which are immediately concerned with States,
and which must first be distinguished from one another.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: You know that these arts cannot easily be divided

into two halves; the reason will be very evident as we proceed.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Then we had better do so.

STRANGER: We must carve them like a victim into members or

limbs, since we cannot bisect them. (Compare Phaedr.) For we cer-
tainly should divide everything into as few parts as possible.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is to be done in this case?

STRANGER: What we did in the example of weaving—all those

arts which furnish the tools were regarded by us as co-operative.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: So now, and with still more reason, all arts which
make any implement in a State, whether great or small, may be
regarded by us as co-operative, for without them neither State nor
Statesmanship would be possible; and yet we are not inclined to say
that any of them is a product of the kingly art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: No, indeed.

STRANGER: The task of separating this class from others is not an

easy one; for there is plausibility in saying that anything in the world
is the instrument of doing something. But there is another class of
possessions in a city, of which I have a word to say.

250
 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: What class do you mean?

STRANGER: A class which may be described as not having this

power; that is to say, not like an instrument, framed for production,
but designed for the preservation of that which is produced.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: To the class of vessels, as they are comprehensively

termed, which are constructed for the preservation of things moist
and dry, of things prepared in the fire or out of the fire; this is a very
large class, and has, if I am not mistaken, literally nothing to do
with the royal art of which we are in search.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: There is also a third class of possessions to be noted,

different from these and very extensive, moving or resting on land
or water, honourable and also dishonourable. The whole of this class
has one name, because it is intended to be sat upon, being always a
seat for something.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: A vehicle, which is certainly not the work of the States-

man, but of the carpenter, potter, and coppersmith.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I understand.

STRANGER: And is there not a fourth class which is again differ-

ent, and in which most of the things formerly mentioned are con-
tained,—every kind of dress, most sorts of arms, walls and enclo-
sures, whether of earth or stone, and ten thousand other things? all
of which being made for the sake of defence, may be truly called
defences, and are for the most part to be regarded as the work of the
builder or of the weaver, rather than of the Statesman.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Shall we add a fifth class, of ornamentation and draw-

ing, and of the imitations produced by drawing and music, which
are designed for amusement only, and may be fairly comprehended
under one name?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: Plaything is the name.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: That one name may be fitly predicated of all of them,

for none of these things have a serious purpose—amusement is their
sole aim.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That again I understand.

STRANGER: Then there is a class which provides materials for all

these, out of which and in which the arts already mentioned fabri-
cate their works;—this manifold class, I say, which is the creation
and offspring of many other arts, may I not rank sixth?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I am referring to gold, silver, and other metals, and

all that wood-cutting and shearing of every sort provides for the art
of carpentry and plaiting; and there is the process of barking and
stripping the cuticle of plants, and the currier’s art, which strips off
the skins of animals, and other similar arts which manufacture corks
and papyri and cords, and provide for the manufacture of compos-
ite species out of simple kinds—the whole class may be termed the
primitive and simple possession of man, and with this the kingly
science has no concern at all.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

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 Plato

STRANGER: The provision of food and of all other things which

mingle their particles with the particles of the human body, and
minister to the body, will form a seventh class, which may be called
by the general term of nourishment, unless you have any better
name to offer. This, however, appertains rather to the husbandman,
huntsman, trainer, doctor, cook, and is not to be assigned to the
Statesman’s art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: These seven classes include nearly every description

of property, with the exception of tame animals. Consider;—there
was the original material, which ought to have been placed first;
next come instruments, vessels, vehicles, defences, playthings, nour-
ishment; small things, which may be included under one of these—
as for example, coins, seals and stamps, are omitted, for they have
not in them the character of any larger kind which includes them;
but some of them may, with a little forcing, be placed among orna-
ments, and others may be made to harmonize with the class of imple-
ments. The art of herding, which has been already divided into parts,
will include all property in tame animals, except slaves.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: The class of slaves and ministers only remains, and I

suspect that in this the real aspirants for the throne, who are the rivals of
the king in the formation of the political web, will be discovered; just as
spinners, carders, and the rest of them, were the rivals of the weaver. All
the others, who were termed co-operators, have been got rid of among
the occupations already mentioned, and separated from the royal and
political science.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I agree.

STRANGER: Let us go a little nearer, in order that we may be more

certain of the complexion of this remaining class.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Let us do so.

STRANGER: We shall find from our present point of view that the
greatest servants are in a case and condition which is the reverse of
what we anticipated.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Who are they?

STRANGER: Those who have been purchased, and have so be-

come possessions; these are unmistakably slaves, and certainly do
not claim royal science.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: Again, freemen who of their own accord become the

servants of the other classes in a State, and who exchange and equalise
the products of husbandry and the other arts, some sitting in the
market-place, others going from city to city by land or sea, and
giving money in exchange for money or for other productions—the
money-changer, the merchant, the ship-owner, the retailer, will not
put in any claim to statecraft or politics?

YOUNG SOCRATES: No; unless, indeed, to the politics of com-

merce.

STRANGER: But surely men whom we see acting as hirelings and

serfs, and too happy to turn their hand to anything, will not profess
to share in royal science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly not.

STRANGER: But what would you say of some other serviceable

officials?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Who are they, and what services do they

perform?

254
 Plato

STRANGER: There are heralds, and scribes perfected by practice,

and divers others who have great skill in various sorts of business
connected with the government of states—what shall we call them?

YOUNG SOCRATES: They are the officials, and servants of the

rulers, as you just now called them, but not themselves rulers.

STRANGER: There may be something strange in any servant pre-

tending to be a ruler, and yet I do not think that I could have been
dreaming when I imagined that the principal claimants to political
science would be found somewhere in this neighbourhood.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Well, let us draw nearer, and try the claims of some
who have not yet been tested: in the first place, there are diviners,
who have a portion of servile or ministerial science, and are thought
to be the interpreters of the gods to men.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: There is also the priestly class, who, as the law declares,
know how to give the gods gifts from men in the form of sacrifices
which are acceptable to them, and to ask on our behalf blessings in
return from them. Now both these are branches of the servile or minis-
terial art.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, clearly.

STRANGER: And here I think that we seem to be getting on the

right track; for the priest and the diviner are swollen with pride and
prerogative, and they create an awful impression of themselves by the
magnitude of their enterprises; in Egypt, the king himself is not al-
lowed to reign, unless he have priestly powers, and if he should be of
another class and has thrust himself in, he must get enrolled in the
priesthood. In many parts of Hellas, the duty of offering the most
solemn propitiatory sacrifices is assigned to the highest magistracies,

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Statesman

and here, at Athens, the most solemn and national of the ancient
sacrifices are supposed to be celebrated by him who has been chosen
by lot to be the King Archon.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Precisely.

STRANGER: But who are these other kings and priests elected by
lot who now come into view followed by their retainers and a vast
throng, as the former class disappears and the scene changes?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Whom can you mean?

STRANGER: They are a strange crew.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why strange?

STRANGER: A minute ago I thought that they were animals of ev-

ery tribe; for many of them are like lions and centaurs, and many
more like satyrs and such weak and shifty creatures;—Protean shapes
quickly changing into one another’s forms and natures; and now,
Socrates, I begin to see who they are.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Who are they? You seem to be gazing on

some strange vision.

STRANGER: Yes; every one looks strange when you do not know
him; and just now I myself fell into this mistake—at first sight,
coming suddenly upon him, I did not recognize the politician and
his troop.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Who is he?

STRANGER: The chief of Sophists and most accomplished of wiz-

ards, who must at any cost be separated from the true king or States-
man, if we are ever to see daylight in the present enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is a hope not lightly to be renounced.

256
 Plato

STRANGER: Never, if I can help it; and, first, let me ask you a
question.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What?

STRANGER: Is not monarchy a recognized form of government?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And, after monarchy, next in order comes the gov-

ernment of the few?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

STRANGER: Is not the third form of government the rule of the

multitude, which is called by the name of democracy?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And do not these three expand in a manner into five,

producing out of themselves two other names?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?

STRANGER: There is a criterion of voluntary and involuntary,

poverty and riches, law and the absence of law, which men now-a-
days apply to them; the two first they subdivide accordingly, and
ascribe to monarchy two forms and two corresponding names, roy-
alty and tyranny.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And the government of the few they distinguish by the

names of aristocracy and oligarchy.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Democracy alone, whether rigidly observing the laws

or not, and whether the multitude rule over the men of property
with their consent or against their consent, always in ordinary lan-
guage has the same name.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But do you suppose that any form of government

which is defined by these characteristics of the one, the few, or the
many, of poverty or wealth, of voluntary or compulsory submis-
sion, of written law or the absence of law, can be a right one?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not?

STRANGER: Reflect; and follow me.

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what direction?

STRANGER: Shall we abide by what we said at first, or shall we

retract our words?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: If I am not mistaken, we said that royal power was a

science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And a science of a peculiar kind, which was selected

out of the rest as having a character which is at once judicial and
authoritative?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And there was one kind of authority over lifeless things

258
 Plato

and another other living animals; and so we proceeded in the divi-

sion step by step up to this point, not losing the idea of science, but
unable as yet to determine the nature of the particular science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Hence we are led to observe that the distinguishing

principle of the State cannot be the few or many, the voluntary or
involuntary, poverty or riches; but some notion of science must en-
ter into it, if we are to be consistent with what has preceded.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And we must be consistent.

STRANGER: Well, then, in which of these various forms of States

may the science of government, which is among the greatest of all
sciences and most difficult to acquire, be supposed to reside? That
we must discover, and then we shall see who are the false politicians
who pretend to be politicians but are not, although they persuade
many, and shall separate them from the wise king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, as the argument has already intimated,

will be our duty.

STRANGER: Do you think that the multitude in a State can attain

political science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.

STRANGER: But, perhaps, in a city of a thousand men, there would

be a hundred, or say fifty, who could?

YOUNG SOCRATES: In that case political science would certainly

be the easiest of all sciences; there could not be found in a city of that
number as many really first-rate draught-players, if judged by the stan-
dard of the rest of Hellas, and there would certainly not be as many
kings. For kings we may truly call those who possess royal science,
whether they rule or not, as was shown in the previous argument.

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Statesman

STRANGER: Thank you for reminding me; and the consequence

is that any true form of government can only be supposed to be the
government of one, two, or, at any rate, of a few.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And these, whether they rule with the will, or against
the will, of their subjects, with written laws or without written laws,
and whether they are poor or rich, and whatever be the nature of their
rule, must be supposed, according to our present view, to rule on some
scientific principle; just as the physician, whether he cures us against
our will or with our will, and whatever be his mode of treatment,—
incision, burning, or the infliction of some other pain,—whether he
practises out of a book or not out of a book, and whether he be rich or
poor, whether he purges or reduces in some other way, or even fattens
his patients, is a physician all the same, so long as he exercises authority
over them according to rules of art, if he only does them good and heals
and saves them. And this we lay down to be the only proper test of the
art of medicine, or of any other art of command.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: Then that can be the only true form of government

in which the governors are really found to possess science, and are
not mere pretenders, whether they rule according to law or without
law, over willing or unwilling subjects, and are rich or poor them-
selves—none of these things can with any propriety be included in
the notion of the ruler.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And whether with a view to the public good they

purge the State by killing some, or exiling some; whether they re-
duce the size of the body corporate by sending out from the hive
swarms of citizens, or, by introducing persons from without, in-
crease it; while they act according to the rules of wisdom and jus-
tice, and use their power with a view to the general security and

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 Plato

improvement, the city over which they rule, and which has these
characteristics, may be described as the only true State. All other
governments are not genuine or real; but only imitations of this,
and some of them are better and some of them are worse; the better
are said to be well governed, but they are mere imitations like the
others.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I agree, Stranger, in the greater part of what

you say; but as to their ruling without laws—the expression has a
harsh sound.

STRANGER: You have been too quick for me, Socrates; I was just
going to ask you whether you objected to any of my statements.
And now I see that we shall have to consider this notion of there
being good government without laws.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: There can be no doubt that legislation is in a manner

the business of a king, and yet the best thing of all is not that the law
should rule, but that a man should rule supposing him to have wis-
dom and royal power. Do you see why this is?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why?

STRANGER: Because the law does not perfectly comprehend what

is noblest and most just for all and therefore cannot enforce what is
best. The differences of men and actions, and the endless irregular
movements of human things, do not admit of any universal and
simple rule. And no art whatsoever can lay down a rule which will
last for all time.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course not.

STRANGER: But the law is always striving to make one;—like an

obstinate and ignorant tyrant, who will not allow anything to be
done contrary to his appointment, or any question to be asked—

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not even in sudden changes of circumstances, when something hap-

pens to be better than what he commanded for some one.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly; the law treats us all precisely in

the manner which you describe.

STRANGER: A perfectly simple principle can never be applied to a state of

things which is the reverse of simple.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Then if the law is not the perfection of right, why are
we compelled to make laws at all? The reason of this has next to be
investigated.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Let me ask, whether you have not meetings for gym-
nastic contests in your city, such as there are in other cities, at which
men compete in running, wrestling, and the like?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; they are very common among us.

STRANGER: And what are the rules which are enforced on their
pupils by professional trainers or by others having similar author-
ity? Can you remember?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: The training-masters do not issue minute rules for

individuals, or give every individual what is exactly suited to his
constitution; they think that they ought to go more roughly to work,
and to prescribe generally the regimen which will benefit the major-
ity.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And therefore they assign equal amounts of exercise

to them all; they send them forth together, and let them rest to-
gether from their running, wrestling, or whatever the form of bodily
exercise may be.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And now observe that the legislator who has to pre-
side over the herd, and to enforce justice in their dealings with one
another, will not be able, in enacting for the general good, to pro-
vide exactly what is suitable for each particular case.

YOUNG SOCRATES: He cannot be expected to do so.

STRANGER: He will lay down laws in a general form for the ma-
jority, roughly meeting the cases of individuals; and some of them
he will deliver in writing, and others will be unwritten; and these
last will be traditional customs of the country.

YOUNG SOCRATES: He will be right.

STRANGER: Yes, quite right; for how can he sit at every man’s side
all through his life, prescribing for him the exact particulars of his
duty? Who, Socrates, would be equal to such a task? No one who
really had the royal science, if he had been able to do this, would
have imposed upon himself the restriction of a written law.

YOUNG SOCRATES: So I should infer from what has now been

said.

STRANGER: Or rather, my good friend, from what is going to be

said.

YOUNG SOCRATES: And what is that?

STRANGER: Let us put to ourselves the case of a physician, or

trainer, who is about to go into a far country, and is expecting to be

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a long time away from his patients—thinking that his instructions

will not be remembered unless they are written down, he will leave
notes of them for the use of his pupils or patients.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: But what would you say, if he came back sooner than
he had intended, and, owing to an unexpected change of the winds or
other celestial influences, something else happened to be better for
them,—would he not venture to suggest this new remedy, although
not contemplated in his former prescription? Would he persist in
observing the original law, neither himself giving any new command-
ments, nor the patient daring to do otherwise than was prescribed,
under the idea that this course only was healthy and medicinal, all oth-
ers noxious and heterodox? Viewed in the light of science and true art,
would not all such enactments be utterly ridiculous?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Utterly.

STRANGER: And if he who gave laws, written or unwritten, de-

termining what was good or bad, honourable or dishonourable, just
or unjust, to the tribes of men who flock together in their several
cities, and are governed in accordance with them; if, I say, the wise
legislator were suddenly to come again, or another like to him, is he
to be prohibited from changing them?—would not this prohibition
be in reality quite as ridiculous as the other?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Do you know a plausible saying of the common

people which is in point?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not recall what you mean at the moment.

STRANGER: They say that if any one knows how the ancient laws
may be improved, he must first persuade his own State of the im-
provement, and then he may legislate, but not otherwise.

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: And are they not right?

STRANGER: I dare say. But supposing that he does use some gentle
violence for their good, what is this violence to be called? Or rather,
before you answer, let me ask the same question in reference to our
previous instances.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: Suppose that a skilful physician has a patient, of

whatever sex or age, whom he compels against his will to do some-
thing for his good which is contrary to the written rules; what is this
compulsion to be called? Would you ever dream of calling it a viola-
tion of the art, or a breach of the laws of health? Nothing could be
more unjust than for the patient to whom such violence is applied,
to charge the physician who practises the violence with wanting
skill or aggravating his disease.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Most true.

STRANGER: In the political art error is not called disease, but evil,
or disgrace, or injustice.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: And when the citizen, contrary to law and custom, is

compelled to do what is juster and better and nobler than he did
before, the last and most absurd thing which he could say about
such violence is that he has incurred disgrace or evil or injustice at
the hands of those who compelled him.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: And shall we say that the violence, if exercised by a

rich man, is just, and if by a poor man, unjust? May not any man,
rich or poor, with or without laws, with the will of the citizens or
against the will of the citizens, do what is for their interest? Is not this

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Statesman

the true principle of government, according to which the wise and

good man will order the affairs of his subjects? As the pilot, by watch-
ing continually over the interests of the ship and of the crew,—not by
laying down rules, but by making his art a law,—preserves the lives of
his fellow-sailors, even so, and in the self-same way, may there not be
a true form of polity created by those who are able to govern in a
similar spirit, and who show a strength of art which is superior to the
law? Nor can wise rulers ever err while they observing the one great
rule of distributing justice to the citizens with intelligence and skill,
are able to preserve them, and, as far as may be, to make them better
from being worse.

YOUNG SOCRATES: No one can deny what has been now said.

STRANGER: Neither, if you consider, can any one deny the other
statement.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What was it?

STRANGER: We said that no great number of persons, whoever

they may be, can attain political knowledge, or order a State wisely,
but that the true government is to be found in a small body, or in an
individual, and that other States are but imitations of this, as we
said a little while ago, some for the better and some for the worse.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean? I cannot have under-

stood your previous remark about imitations.

STRANGER: And yet the mere suggestion which I hastily threw

out is highly important, even if we leave the question where it is,
and do not seek by the discussion of it to expose the error which
prevails in this matter.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: The idea which has to be grasped by us is not easy or

familiar; but we may attempt to express it thus:—Supposing the

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 Plato

government of which I have been speaking to be the only true model,

then the others must use the written laws of this—in no other way
can they be saved; they will have to do what is now generally ap-
proved, although not the best thing in the world.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is this?

STRANGER: No citizen should do anything contrary to the laws,

and any infringement of them should be punished with death and
the most extreme penalties; and this is very right and good when
regarded as the second best thing, if you set aside the first, of which
I was just now speaking. Shall I explain the nature of what I call the
second best?

YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.

STRANGER: I must again have recourse to my favourite images;

through them, and them alone, can I describe kings and rulers.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What images?

STRANGER: The noble pilot and the wise physician, who ‘is worth
many another man’—in the similitude of these let us endeavour to
discover some image of the king.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What sort of an image?

STRANGER: Well, such as this:—Every man will reflect that he

suffers strange things at the hands of both of them; the physician
saves any whom he wishes to save, and any whom he wishes to
maltreat he maltreats—cutting or burning them; and at the same
time requiring them to bring him payments, which are a sort of
tribute, of which little or nothing is spent upon the sick man, and
the greater part is consumed by him and his domestics; and the
finale is that he receives money from the relations of the sick man or
from some enemy of his, and puts him out of the way. And the
pilots of ships are guilty of numberless evil deeds of the same kind;

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Statesman

they intentionally play false and leave you ashore when the hour of
sailing arrives; or they cause mishaps at sea and cast away their freight;
and are guilty of other rogueries. Now suppose that we, bearing all
this in mind, were to determine, after consideration, that neither of
these arts shall any longer be allowed to exercise absolute control
either over freemen or over slaves, but that we will summon an as-
sembly either of all the people, or of the rich only, that anybody
who likes, whatever may be his calling, or even if he have no calling,
may offer an opinion either about seamanship or about diseases—
whether as to the manner in which physic or surgical instruments
are to be applied to the patient, or again about the vessels and the
nautical implements which are required in navigation, and how to
meet the dangers of winds and waves which are incidental to the
voyage, how to behave when encountering pirates, and what is to
be done with the old- fashioned galleys, if they have to fight with
others of a similar build—and that, whatever shall be decreed by
the multitude on these points, upon the advice of persons skilled or
unskilled, shall be written down on triangular tablets and columns,
or enacted although unwritten to be national customs; and that in
all future time vessels shall be navigated and remedies administered
to the patient after this fashion.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What a strange notion!

STRANGER: Suppose further, that the pilots and physicians are

appointed annually, either out of the rich, or out of the whole people,
and that they are elected by lot; and that after their election they
navigate vessels and heal the sick according to the written rules.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Worse and worse.

STRANGER: But hear what follows:—When the year of office has

expired, the pilot or physician has to come before a court of review,
in which the judges are either selected from the wealthy classes or
chosen by lot out of the whole people; and anybody who pleases
may be their accuser, and may lay to their charge, that during the
past year they have not navigated their vessels or healed their pa-

268
 Plato

tients according to the letter of the law and the ancient customs of
their ancestors; and if either of them is condemned, some of the
judges must fix what he is to suffer or pay.

YOUNG SOCRATES: He who is willing to take a command un-

der such conditions, deserves to suffer any penalty.

STRANGER: Yet once more, we shall have to enact that if any one is
detected enquiring into piloting and navigation, or into health and
the true nature of medicine, or about the winds, or other conditions
of the atmosphere, contrary to the written rules, and has any inge-
nious notions about such matters, he is not to be called a pilot or
physician, but a cloudy prating sophist;—further, on the ground that
he is a corrupter of the young, who would persuade them to follow
the art of medicine or piloting in an unlawful manner, and to exercise
an arbitrary rule over their patients or ships, any one who is qualified
by law may inform against him, and indict him in some court, and
then if he is found to be persuading any, whether young or old, to act
contrary to the written law, he is to be punished with the utmost
rigour; for no one should presume to be wiser than the laws; and as
touching healing and health and piloting and navigation, the nature
of them is known to all, for anybody may learn the written laws and
the national customs. If such were the mode of procedure, Socrates,
about these sciences and about generalship, and any branch of hunt-
ing, or about painting or imitation in general, or carpentry, or any
sort of handicraft, or husbandry, or planting, or if we were to see an
art of rearing horses, or tending herds, or divination, or any ministe-
rial service, or draught-playing, or any science conversant with num-
ber, whether simple or square or cube, or comprising motion,—I say,
if all these things were done in this way according to written regula-
tions, and not according to art, what would be the result?

YOUNG SOCRATES: All the arts would utterly perish, and could
never be recovered, because enquiry would be unlawful. And hu-
man life, which is bad enough already, would then become utterly
unendurable.

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Statesman

STRANGER: But what, if while compelling all these operations to

be regulated by written law, we were to appoint as the guardian of
the laws some one elected by a show of hands, or by lot, and he
caring nothing about the laws, were to act contrary to them from
motives of interest or favour, and without knowledge,—would not
this be a still worse evil than the former?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: To go against the laws, which are based upon long

experience, and the wisdom of counsellors who have graciously rec-
ommended them and persuaded the multitude to pass them, would
be a far greater and more ruinous error than any adherence to writ-
ten law?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: Therefore, as there is a danger of this, the next best

thing in legislating is not to allow either the individual or the mul-
titude to break the law in any respect whatever.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: The laws would be copies of the true particulars of

action as far as they admit of being written down from the lips of
those who have knowledge?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they would.

STRANGER: And, as we were saying, he who has knowledge and

is a true Statesman, will do many things within his own sphere of
action by his art without regard to the laws, when he is of opinion
that something other than that which he has written down and en-
joined to be observed during his absence would be better.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we said so.

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 Plato

STRANGER: And any individual or any number of men, having

fixed laws, in acting contrary to them with a view to something
better, would only be acting, as far as they are able, like the true
Statesman?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: If they had no knowledge of what they were doing,

they would imitate the truth, and they would always imitate ill; but
if they had knowledge, the imitation would be the perfect truth,
and an imitation no longer.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: And the principle that no great number of men are

able to acquire a knowledge of any art has been already admitted by
us.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, it has.

STRANGER: Then the royal or political art, if there be such an art,

will never be attained either by the wealthy or by the other mob.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.

STRANGER: Then the nearest approach which these lower forms

of government can ever make to the true government of the one
scientific ruler, is to do nothing contrary to their own written laws
and national customs.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: When the rich imitate the true form, such a govern-
ment is called aristocracy; and when they are regardless of the laws,
oligarchy.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

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Statesman

STRANGER: Or again, when an individual rules according to law

in imitation of him who knows, we call him a king; and if he rules
according to law, we give him the same name, whether he rules with
opinion or with knowledge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: And when an individual truly possessing knowledge

rules, his name will surely be the same—he will be called a king;
and thus the five names of governments, as they are now reckoned,
become one.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is true.

STRANGER: And when an individual ruler governs neither by law

nor by custom, but following in the steps of the true man of science
pretends that he can only act for the best by violating the laws,
while in reality appetite and ignorance are the motives of the imita-
tion, may not such an one be called a tyrant?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And this we believe to be the origin of the tyrant and

the king, of oligarchies, and aristocracies, and democracies,—be-
cause men are offended at the one monarch, and can never be made
to believe that any one can be worthy of such authority, or is able
and willing in the spirit of virtue and knowledge to act justly and
holily to all; they fancy that he will be a despot who will wrong and
harm and slay whom he pleases of us; for if there could be such a
despot as we describe, they would acknowledge that we ought to be
too glad to have him, and that he alone would be the happy ruler of
a true and perfect State.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: But then, as the State is not like a beehive, and has no
natural head who is at once recognized to be the superior both in body

272
 Plato

and in mind, mankind are obliged to meet and make laws, and endeav-
our to approach as nearly as they can to the true form of government.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And when the foundation of politics is in the letter

only and in custom, and knowledge is divorced from action, can we
wonder, Socrates, at the miseries which there are, and always will
be, in States? Any other art, built on such a foundation and thus
conducted, would ruin all that it touched. Ought we not rather to
wonder at the natural strength of the political bond? For States have
endured all this, time out of mind, and yet some of them still re-
main and are not overthrown, though many of them, like ships at
sea, founder from time to time, and perish and have perished and
will hereafter perish, through the badness of their pilots and crews,
who have the worst sort of ignorance of the highest truths—I mean
to say, that they are wholly unaquainted with politics, of which,
above all other sciences, they believe themselves to have acquired
the most perfect knowledge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Then the question arises:—which of these untrue

forms of government is the least oppressive to their subjects, though
they are all oppressive; and which is the worst of them? Here is a
consideration which is beside our present purpose, and yet having
regard to the whole it seems to influence all our actions: we must
examine it.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, we must.

STRANGER: You may say that of the three forms, the same is at
once the hardest and the easiest.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What do you mean?

STRANGER: I am speaking of the three forms of government, which

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Statesman

I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion—monarchy, the

rule of the few, and the rule of the many.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: If we divide each of these we shall have six, from

which the true one may be distinguished as a seventh.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How would you make the division?

STRANGER: Monarchy divides into royalty and tyranny; the rule

of the few into aristocracy, which has an auspicious name, and oli-
garchy; and democracy or the rule of the many, which before was
one, must now be divided.

YOUNG SOCRATES: On what principle of division?

STRANGER: On the same principle as before, although the name

is now discovered to have a twofold meaning. For the distinction of
ruling with law or without law, applies to this as well as to the rest.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: The division made no difference when we were look-

ing for the perfect State, as we showed before. But now that this has
been separated off, and, as we said, the others alone are left for us,
the principle of law and the absence of law will bisect them all.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That would seem to follow, from what has

been said.

STRANGER: Then monarchy, when bound by good prescriptions

or laws, is the best of all the six, and when lawless is the most bitter
and oppressive to the subject.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

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 Plato

STRANGER: The government of the few, which is intermediate

between that of the one and many, is also intermediate in good and
evil; but the government of the many is in every respect weak and
unable to do either any great good or any great evil, when compared
with the others, because the offices are too minutely subdivided and
too many hold them. And this therefore is the worst of all lawful
governments, and the best of all lawless ones. If they are all without
the restraints of law, democracy is the form in which to live is best;
if they are well ordered, then this is the last which you should choose,
as royalty, the first form, is the best, with the exception of the sev-
enth, for that excels them all, and is among States what God is
among men.

YOUNG SOCRATES: You are quite right, and we should choose

that above all.

STRANGER: The members of all these States, with the exception

of the one which has knowledge, may be set aside as being not States-
men but partisans, —upholders of the most monstrous idols, and
themselves idols; and, being the greatest imitators and magicians,
they are also the greatest of Sophists.

YOUNG SOCRATES: The name of Sophist after many windings

in the argument appears to have been most justly fixed upon the
politicians, as they are termed.

STRANGER: And so our satyric drama has been played out; and
the troop of Centaurs and Satyrs, however unwilling to leave the
stage, have at last been separated from the political science.

YOUNG SOCRATES: So I perceive.

STRANGER: There remain, however, natures still more trouble-

some, because they are more nearly akin to the king, and more dif-
ficult to discern; the examination of them may be compared to the
process of refining gold.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is your meaning?

STRANGER: The workmen begin by sifting away the earth and

stones and the like; there remain in a confused mass the valuable
elements akin to gold, which can only be separated by fire,—cop-
per, silver, and other precious metal; these are at last refined away by
the use of tests, until the gold is left quite pure.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is the way in which these things

are said to be done.

STRANGER: In like manner, all alien and uncongenial matter has

been separated from political science, and what is precious and of a
kindred nature has been left; there remain the nobler arts of the
general and the judge, and the higher sort of oratory which is an
ally of the royal art, and persuades men to do justice, and assists in
guiding the helm of States:—How can we best clear away all these,
leaving him whom we seek alone and unalloyed?

YOUNG SOCRATES: That is obviously what has in some way to

be attempted.

STRANGER: If the attempt is all that is wanting, he shall certainly

be brought to light; and I think that the illustration of music may
assist in exhibiting him. Please to answer me a question.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What question?

STRANGER: There is such a thing as learning music or handicraft

arts in general?

YOUNG SOCRATES: There is.

STRANGER: And is there any higher art or science, having power

to decide which of these arts are and are not to be learned;—what
do you say?

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: I should answer that there is.

STRANGER: And do we acknowledge this science to be different

from the others?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: And ought the other sciences to be superior to this,

or no single science to any other? Or ought this science to be the
overseer and governor of all the others?

YOUNG SOCRATES: The latter.

STRANGER: You mean to say that the science which judges whether
we ought to learn or not, must be superior to the science which is
learned or which teaches?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Far superior.

STRANGER: And the science which determines whether we ought

to persuade or not, must be superior to the science which is able to
persuade?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.

STRANGER: Very good; and to what science do we assign the power

of persuading a multitude by a pleasing tale and not by teaching?

YOUNG SOCRATES: That power, I think, must clearly be as-

signed to rhetoric.

STRANGER: And to what science do we give the power of deter-

mining whether we are to employ persuasion or force towards any
one, or to refrain altogether?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To that science which governs the arts of

speech and persuasion.

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Statesman

STRANGER: Which, if I am not mistaken, will be politics?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Rhetoric seems to be quickly distinguished from poli-

tics, being a different species, yet ministering to it.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: But what would you think of another sort of power

or science?

YOUNG SOCRATES: What science?

STRANGER: The science which has to do with military operations

against our enemies—is that to be regarded as a science or not?

YOUNG SOCRATES: How can generalship and military tactics

be regarded as other than a science?

STRANGER: And is the art which is able and knows how to advise
when we are to go to war, or to make peace, the same as this or
different?

YOUNG SOCRATES: If we are to be consistent, we must say dif-

ferent.

STRANGER: And we must also suppose that this rules the other, if
we are not to give up our former notion?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And, considering how great and terrible the whole

art of war is, can we imagine any which is superior to it but the truly
royal?

YOUNG SOCRATES: No other.

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 Plato

STRANGER: The art of the general is only ministerial, and there-

fore not political?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly.

STRANGER: Once more let us consider the nature of the righ-

teous judge.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.

STRANGER: Does he do anything but decide the dealings of men

with one another to be just or unjust in accordance with the standard
which he receives from the king and legislator,—showing his own
peculiar virtue only in this, that he is not perverted by gifts, or fears,
or pity, or by any sort of favour or enmity, into deciding the suits of
men with one another contrary to the appointment of the legislator?

YOUNG SOCRATES: No; his office is such as you describe.

STRANGER: Then the inference is that the power of the judge is

not royal, but only the power of a guardian of the law which minis-
ters to the royal power?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: The review of all these sciences shows that none of

them is political or royal. For the truly royal ought not itself to act,
but to rule over those who are able to act; the king ought to know
what is and what is not a fitting opportunity for taking the initiative
in matters of the greatest importance, whilst others should execute
his orders.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And, therefore, the arts which we have described, as

they have no authority over themselves or one another, but are each
of them concerned with some special action of their own, have, as

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they ought to have, special names corresponding to their several

actions.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I agree.

STRANGER: And the science which is over them all, and has charge
of the laws, and of all matters affecting the State, and truly weaves
them all into one, if we would describe under a name characteristic
of their common nature, most truly we may call politics.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly so.

STRANGER: Then, now that we have discovered the various classes

in a State, shall I analyse politics after the pattern which weaving
supplied?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I greatly wish that you would.

STRANGER: Then I must describe the nature of the royal web,

and show how the various threads are woven into one piece.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Clearly.

STRANGER: A task has to be accomplished, which, although dif-

ficult, appears to be necessary.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly the attempt must be made.

STRANGER: To assume that one part of virtue differs in kind from

another, is a position easily assailable by contentious disputants, who
appeal to popular opinion.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand.

STRANGER: Let me put the matter in another way: I suppose that

you would consider courage to be a part of virtue?

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly I should.

STRANGER: And you would think temperance to be different from

courage; and likewise to be a part of virtue?

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: I shall venture to put forward a strange theory about

them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: That they are two principles which thoroughly hate

one another and are antagonistic throughout a great part of nature.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How singular!

STRANGER: Yes, very—for all the parts of virtue are commonly

said to be friendly to one another.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.

STRANGER: Then let us carefully investigate whether this is uni-

versally true, or whether there are not parts of virtue which are at
war with their kindred in some respect.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me how we shall consider that ques-

tion.

STRANGER: We must extend our enquiry to all those things which

we consider beautiful and at the same time place in two opposite
classes.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Explain; what are they?

STRANGER: Acuteness and quickness, whether in body or soul or

in the movement of sound, and the imitations of them which paint-

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ing and music supply, you must have praised yourself before now,
or been present when others praised them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And do you remember the terms in which they are praised?

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not.

STRANGER: I wonder whether I can explain to you in words the

thought which is passing in my mind.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Why not?

STRANGER: You fancy that this is all so easy: Well, let us consider
these notions with reference to the opposite classes of action under
which they fall. When we praise quickness and energy and acute-
ness, whether of mind or body or sound, we express our praise of
the quality which we admire by one word, and that one word is
manliness or courage.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How?

STRANGER: We speak of an action as energetic and brave, quick

and manly, and vigorous too; and when we apply the name of which
I speak as the common attribute of all these natures, we certainly
praise them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: And do we not often praise the quiet strain of action

also?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To be sure.

STRANGER: And do we not then say the opposite of what we said

of the other?

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?

STRANGER: We exclaim How calm! How temperate! in admira-

tion of the slow and quiet working of the intellect, and of steadiness
and gentleness in action, of smoothness and depth of voice, and of
all rhythmical movement and of music in general, when these have
a proper solemnity. Of all such actions we predicate not courage,
but a name indicative of order.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: But when, on the other hand, either of these is out of

place, the names of either are changed into terms of censure.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?

STRANGER: Too great sharpness or quickness or hardness is termed

violence or madness; too great slowness or gentleness is called cow-
ardice or sluggishness; and we may observe, that for the most part
these qualities, and the temperance and manliness of the opposite
characters, are arrayed as enemies on opposite sides, and do not
mingle with one another in their respective actions; and if we pur-
sue the enquiry, we shall find that men who have these different
qualities of mind differ from one another.

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what respect?

STRANGER: In respect of all the qualities which I mentioned, and

very likely of many others. According to their respective affinities to
either class of actions they distribute praise and blame,—praise to
the actions which are akin to their own, blame to those of the oppo-
site party—and out of this many quarrels and occasions of quarrel
arise among them.

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: The difference between the two classes is often a trivial

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concern; but in a state, and when affecting really important mat-

ters, becomes of all disorders the most hateful.

YOUNG SOCRATES: To what do you refer?

STRANGER: To nothing short of the whole regulation of human

life. For the orderly class are always ready to lead a peaceful life,
quietly doing their own business; this is their manner of behaving
with all men at home, and they are equally ready to find some way
of keeping the peace with foreign States. And on account of this
fondness of theirs for peace, which is often out of season where
their influence prevails, they become by degrees unwarlike, and bring
up their young men to be like themselves; they are at the mercy of
their enemies; whence in a few years they and their children and the
whole city often pass imperceptibly from the condition of freemen
into that of slaves.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What a cruel fate!

STRANGER: And now think of what happens with the more cou-
rageous natures. Are they not always inciting their country to go to
war, owing to their excessive love of the military life? they raise up
enemies against themselves many and mighty, and either utterly
ruin their native-land or enslave and subject it to its foes?

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is true.

STRANGER: Must we not admit, then, that where these two classes
exist, they always feel the greatest antipathy and antagonism to-
wards one another?

YOUNG SOCRATES: We cannot deny it.

STRANGER: And returning to the enquiry with which we began,

have we not found that considerable portions of virtue are at vari-
ance with one another, and give rise to a similar opposition in the
characters who are endowed with them?

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: True.

STRANGER: Let us consider a further point.

YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?

STRANGER: I want to know, whether any constructive art will make

any, even the most trivial thing, out of bad and good materials indiffer-
ently, if this can be helped? does not all art rather reject the bad as far as
possible, and accept the good and fit materials, and from these ele-
ments, whether like or unlike, gathering them all into one, work out
some nature or idea?

YOUNG SOCRATES: To, be sure.

STRANGER: Then the true and natural art of statesmanship will

never allow any State to be formed by a combination of good and bad
men, if this can be avoided; but will begin by testing human natures
in play, and after testing them, will entrust them to proper teachers
who are the ministers of her purposes—she will herself give orders,
and maintain authority; just as the art of weaving continually gives
orders and maintains authority over the carders and all the others
who prepare the material for the work, commanding the subsidiary
arts to execute the works which she deems necessary for making the
web.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: In like manner, the royal science appears to me to be

the mistress of all lawful educators and instructors, and having this
queenly power, will not permit them to train men in what will pro-
duce characters unsuited to the political constitution which she desires
to create, but only in what will produce such as are suitable. Those
which have no share of manliness and temperance, or any other virtu-
ous inclination, and, from the necessity of an evil nature, are violently
carried away to godlessness and insolence and injustice, she gets rid of
by death and exile, and punishes them with the greatest of disgraces.

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YOUNG SOCRATES: That is commonly said.

STRANGER: But those who are wallowing in ignorance and base-

ness she bows under the yoke of slavery.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right.

STRANGER: The rest of the citizens, out of whom, if they have

education, something noble may be made, and who are capable of
being united by the statesman, the kingly art blends and weaves
together; taking on the one hand those whose natures tend rather to
courage, which is the stronger element and may be regarded as the
warp, and on the other hand those which incline to order and gentle-
ness, and which are represented in the figure as spun thick and soft,
after the manner of the woof—these, which are naturally opposed,
she seeks to bind and weave together in the following manner:

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what manner?

STRANGER: First of all, she takes the eternal element of the soul
and binds it with a divine cord, to which it is akin, and then the
animal nature, and binds that with human cords.

YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand what you mean.

STRANGER: The meaning is, that the opinion about the

honourable and the just and good and their opposites, which is true
and confirmed by reason, is a divine principle, and when implanted
in the soul, is implanted, as I maintain, in a nature of heavenly
birth.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; what else should it be?

STRANGER: Only the Statesman and the good legislator, having

the inspiration of the royal muse, can implant this opinion, and he,
only in the rightly educated, whom we were just now describing.

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 Plato

YOUNG SOCRATES: Likely enough.

STRANGER: But him who cannot, we will not designate by any of

the names which are the subject of the present enquiry.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very right.

STRANGER: The courageous soul when attaining this truth be-

comes civilized, and rendered more capable of partaking of justice;
but when not partaking, is inclined to brutality. Is not that true?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.

STRANGER: And again, the peaceful and orderly nature, if shar-

ing in these opinions, becomes temperate and wise, as far as this
may be in a State, but if not, deservedly obtains the ignominious
name of silliness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: Can we say that such a connexion as this will last-

ingly unite the evil with one another or with the good, or that any
science would seriously think of using a bond of this kind to join
such materials?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.

STRANGER: But in those who were originally of a noble nature,

and who have been nurtured in noble ways, and in those only, may
we not say that union is implanted by law, and that this is the medi-
cine which art prescribes for them, and of all the bonds which unite
the dissimilar and contrary parts of virtue is not this, as I was say-
ing, the divinest?

YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.

STRANGER: Where this divine bond exists there is no difficulty in

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imagining, or when you have imagined, in creating the other bonds,

which are human only.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How is that, and what bonds do you mean?

STRANGER: Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed

between States by giving and taking children in marriage, or be-
tween individuals by private betrothals and espousals. For most per-
sons form marriage connexions without due regard to what is best
for the procreation of children.

YOUNG SOCRATES: In what way?

STRANGER: They seek after wealth and power, which in matri-

mony are objects not worthy even of a serious censure.

YOUNG SOCRATES: There is no need to consider them at all.

STRANGER: More reason is there to consider the practice of those

who make family their chief aim, and to indicate their error.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.

STRANGER: They act on no true principle at all; they seek their

ease and receive with open arms those who are like themselves, and
hate those who are unlike them, being too much influenced by feel-
ings of dislike.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How so?

STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own,
and as far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in
this class, and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like
their own, whereas they should both do precisely the opposite.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?

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 Plato

STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered by the gentler

nature during many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen,
but at last bursts forth into downright madness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.

STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of mod-

esty and has no element of courage in many successive generations,
is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed
and useless.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.

STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no

difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the
same opinion about the honourable and good;—indeed, in this single
work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised—never to
allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave
them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments
and honours and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one
another; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to
entrust to them the offices of State.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?

STRANGER: Where one officer only is needed, you must choose a

ruler who has both these qualities—when many, you must mingle
some of each, for the temperate ruler is very careful and just and
safe, but is wanting in thoroughness and go.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly, that is very true.

STRANGER: The character of the courageous, on the other hand,

falls short of the former in justice and caution, but has the power of
action in a remarkable degree, and where either of these two quali-
ties is wanting, there cities cannot altogether prosper either in their
public or private life.

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Statesman

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they cannot.

STRANGER: This then we declare to be the completion of the web

of political action, which is created by a direct intertexture of the
brave and temperate natures, whenever the royal science has drawn
the two minds into communion with one another by unanimity
and friendship, and having perfected the noblest and best of all the
webs which political life admits, and enfolding therein all other in-
habitants of cities, whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one
fabric and governs and presides over them, and, in so far as to be
happy is vouchsafed to a city, in no particular fails to secure their
happiness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Your picture, Stranger, of the king and states-

man, no less than of the Sophist, is quite perfect.

290
 Plato

Philebus
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS

THE PHILEBUS appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in

which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical
element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophi-
cal. In the development of abstract thought great advances have
been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the
Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a
want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue,
and a degree of confusion and incompleteness in the general design.
As in the speeches of Thucydides, the multiplication of ideas seems
to interfere with the power of expression. Instead of the equally
diffused grace and ease of the earlier dialogues there occur two or
three highly-wrought passages; instead of the ever-flowing play of
humour, now appearing, now concealed, but always present, are
inserted a good many bad jests, as we may venture to term them.
We may observe an attempt at artificial ornament, and far-fetched
modes of expression; also clamorous demands on the part of his
companions, that Socrates shall answer his own questions, as well as
other defects of style, which remind us of the Laws. The connection
is often abrupt and inharmonious, and far from clear. Many points
require further explanation; e.g. the reference of pleasure to the in-
definite class, compared with the assertion which almost immedi-
ately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their seat in the

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Philebus

third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled. In like

manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the two
heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that the
divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the final
summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not
appear; though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the high-
est good, the sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in
the fourth class. We seem to have an intimation of a further discus-
sion, in which some topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller
consideration. The various uses of the word ‘mixed,’ for the mixed
life, the mixed class of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of plea-
sure and pain, are a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of
the opinions which Plato is attacking is also an element of obscu-
rity. Many things in a controversy might seem relevant, if we knew
to what they were intended to refer. But no conjecture will enable
us to supply what Plato has not told us; or to explain, from our
fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in which his doctrine
stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or to the theories
of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor are we able to
say how far Plato in the Philebus conceives the finite and infinite
(which occur both in the fragments of Philolaus and in the
Pythagorean table of opposites) in the same manner as contempo-
rary Pythagoreans.
There is little in the characters which is worthy of remark. The
Socrates of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony,
though here, as in the Phaedrus, he twice attributes the flow of his
ideas to a sudden inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son
of Callias, who has been a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as
a disciple of the partisans of pleasure, but is drawn over to the oppo-
site side by the arguments of Socrates. The instincts of ingenuous
youth are easily induced to take the better part. Philebus, who has
withdrawn from the argument, is several times brought back again,
that he may support pleasure, of which he remains to the end the
uncompromising advocate. On the other hand, the youthful group
of listeners by whom he is surrounded, ‘Philebus’ boys’ as they are
termed, whose presence is several times intimated, are described as
all of them at last convinced by the arguments of Socrates. They

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 Plato

bear a very faded resemblance to the interested audiences of the

Charmides, Lysis, or Protagoras. Other signs of relation to external
life in the dialogue, or references to contemporary things and per-
sons, with the single exception of the allusions to the anonymous
enemies of pleasure, and the teachers of the flux, there are none.
The omission of the doctrine of recollection, derived from a pre-
vious state of existence, is a note of progress in the philosophy of
Plato. The transcendental theory of pre-existent ideas, which is chiefly
discussed by him in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus, has
given way to a psychological one. The omission is rendered more
significant by his having occasion to speak of memory as the basis
of desire. Of the ideas he treats in the same sceptical spirit which
appears in his criticism of them in the Parmenides. He touches on
the same difficulties and he gives no answer to them. His mode of
speaking of the analytical and synthetical processes may be com-
pared with his discussion of the same subject in the Phaedrus; here
he dwells on the importance of dividing the genera into all the spe-
cies, while in the Phaedrus he conveys the same truth in a figure,
when he speaks of carving the whole, which is described under the
image of a victim, into parts or members, ‘according to their natural
articulation, without breaking any of them.’ There is also a differ-
ence, which may be noted, between the two dialogues. For whereas
in the Phaedrus, and also in the Symposium, the dialectician is de-
scribed as a sort of enthusiast or lover, in the Philebus, as in all the
later writings of Plato, the element of love is wanting; the topic is
only introduced, as in the Republic, by way of illustration. On other
subjects of which they treat in common, such as the nature and
kinds of pleasure, true and false opinion, the nature of the good, the
order and relation of the sciences, the Republic is less advanced
than the Philebus, which contains, perhaps, more metaphysical truth
more obscurely expressed than any other Platonic dialogue. Here,
as Plato expressly tells us, he is ‘forging weapons of another make,’
i.e. new categories and modes of conception, though ‘some of the
old ones might do again.’
But if superior in thought and dialectical power, the Philebus falls
very far short of the Republic in fancy and feeling. The develop-
ment of the reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the

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Philebus

ideal at which Plato aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic

enthusiasm or rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we at-
tribute this change to the greater feebleness of age, or to the devel-
opment of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato’s
own mind, or perhaps, in some degree, to a carelessness about artis-
tic effect, when he was absorbed in abstract ideas, we can hardly be
wrong in assuming, amid such a variety of indications, derived from
style as well as subject, that the Philebus belongs to the later period
of his life and authorship. But in this, as in all the later writings of
Plato, there are not wanting thoughts and expressions in which he
rises to his highest level.
The plan is complicated, or rather, perhaps, the want of plan ren-
ders the progress of the dialogue difficult to follow. A few leading
ideas seem to emerge: the relation of the one and many, the four
original elements, the kinds of pleasure, the kinds of knowledge,
the scale of goods. These are only partially connected with one an-
other. The dialogue is not rightly entitled ‘Concerning pleasure’ or
‘Concerning good,’ but should rather be described as treating of the
relations of pleasure and knowledge, after they have been duly ana-
lyzed, to the good. (1) The question is asked, whether pleasure or
wisdom is the chief good, or some nature higher than either; and if
the latter, how pleasure and wisdom are related to this higher good.
(2) Before we can reply with exactness, we must know the kinds of
pleasure and the kinds of knowledge. (3) But still we may affirm
generally, that the combined life of pleasure and wisdom or knowl-
edge has more of the character of the good than either of them
when isolated. (4) to determine which of them partakes most of the
higher nature, we must know under which of the four unities or
elements they respectively fall. These are, first, the infinite; secondly,
the finite; thirdly, the union of the two; fourthly, the cause of the
union. Pleasure is of the first, wisdom or knowledge of the third
class, while reason or mind is akin to the fourth or highest.
(5) Pleasures are of two kinds, the mixed and unmixed. Of mixed
pleasures there are three classes—(a) those in which both the plea-
sures and pains are corporeal, as in eating and hunger; (b) those in
which there is a pain of the body and pleasure of the mind, as when
you are hungry and are looking forward to a feast; (c) those in which

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 Plato

the pleasure and pain are both mental. Of unmixed pleasures there
are four kinds: those of sight, hearing, smell, knowledge.
(6) The sciences are likewise divided into two classes, theoretical
and productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure.
The pure part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing.
Arts like carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be re-
garded as higher than music, which for the most part is mere guess-
work. But there is also a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensura-
tion, which is exclusively theoretical; and a dialectical science, which
is higher still and the truest and purest knowledge.
(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect
life. First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; sec-
ondly, the impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have
next to discover what element of goodness is contained in this mix-
ture. There are three criteria of goodness—beauty, symmetry, truth.
These are clearly more akin to reason than to pleasure, and will
enable us to fix the places of both of them in the scale of good. First
in the scale is measure; the second place is assigned to symmetry;
the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to knowledge and true
opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse says ‘Enough.’
‘Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,’ we may now consider
the metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are
(I) the paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or
elements; (III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge;
(V) the conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine
(VI) the relation of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dia-
logues.
I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless
dialectic of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the
one by showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting
the existence of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the
contradiction by well-known examples taken from outward objects.
But Socrates seems to intimate that the time had arrived for dis-
carding these hackneyed illustrations; such difficulties had long been
solved by common sense (‘solvitur ambulando’); the fact of the co-
existence of opposites was a sufficient answer to them. He will leave
them to Cynics and Eristics; the youth of Athens may discourse of

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Philebus

them to their parents. To no rational man could the circumstance

that the body is one, but has many members, be any longer a stum-
bling-block.
Plato’s difficulty seems to begin in the region of ideas. He cannot
understand how an absolute unity, such as the Eleatic Being, can be
broken up into a number of individuals, or be in and out of them at
once. Philosophy had so deepened or intensified the nature of one
or Being, by the thoughts of successive generations, that the mind
could no longer imagine ‘Being’ as in a state of change or division.
To say that the verb of existence is the copula, or that unity is a mere
unit, is to us easy; but to the Greek in a particular stage of thought
such an analysis involved the same kind of difficulty as the concep-
tion of God existing both in and out of the world would to our-
selves. Nor was he assisted by the analogy of sensible objects. The
sphere of mind was dark and mysterious to him; but instead of
being illustrated by sense, the greatest light appeared to be thrown
on the nature of ideas when they were contrasted with sense.
Both here and in the Parmenides, where similar difficulties are raised,
Plato seems prepared to desert his ancient ground. He cannot tell the
relation in which abstract ideas stand to one another, and therefore he
transfers the one and many out of his transcendental world, and pro-
ceeds to lay down practical rules for their application to different
branches of knowledge. As in the Republic he supposes the philoso-
pher to proceed by regular steps, until he arrives at the idea of good;
as in the Sophist and Politicus he insists that in dividing the whole
into its parts we should bisect in the middle in the hope of finding
species; as in the Phaedrus (see above) he would have ‘no limb bro-
ken’ of the organism of knowledge;—so in the Philebus he urges the
necessity of filling up all the intermediate links which occur (compare
Bacon’s ‘media axiomata’) in the passage from unity to infinity. With
him the idea of science may be said to anticipate science; at a time
when the sciences were not yet divided, he wants to impress upon us
the importance of classification; neither neglecting the many indi-
viduals, nor attempting to count them all, but finding the genera and
species under which they naturally fall. Here, then, and in the parallel
passages of the Phaedrus and of the Sophist, is found the germ of the
most fruitful notion of modern science.

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 Plato

Plato describes with ludicrous exaggeration the influence exerted

by the one and many on the minds of young men in their first fervour
of metaphysical enthusiasm (compare Republic). But they are none
the less an everlasting quality of reason or reasoning which never grows
old in us. At first we have but a confused conception of them, analo-
gous to the eyes blinking at the light in the Republic. To this Plato
opposes the revelation from Heaven of the real relations of them,
which some Prometheus, who gave the true fire from heaven, is sup-
posed to have imparted to us. Plato is speaking of two things—(1)
the crude notion of the one and many, which powerfully affects the
ordinary mind when first beginning to think; (2) the same notion
when cleared up by the help of dialectic.
To us the problem of the one and many has lost its chief interest
and perplexity. We readily acknowledge that a whole has many parts,
that the continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense
there is a one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to
analogy to purely intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the mean-
ing of the words, we are compelled to admit that two contradictory
statements are true. But the antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely
observed by us. Our sense of the contradiction, like Plato’s, only
begins in a higher sphere, when we speak of necessity and free-will,
of mind and body, of Three Persons and One Substance, and the
like. The world of knowledge is always dividing more and more;
every truth is at first the enemy of every other truth. Yet without
this division there can be no truth; nor any complete truth without
the reunion of the parts into a whole. And hence the coexistence of
opposites in the unity of the idea is regarded by Hegel as the su-
preme principle of philosophy; and the law of contradiction, which
is affirmed by logicians to be an ultimate principle of the human
mind, is displaced by another law, which asserts the coexistence of
contradictories as imperfect and divided elements of the truth. With-
out entering further into the depths of Hegelianism, we may re-
mark that this and all similar attempts to reconcile antinomies have
their origin in the old Platonic problem of the ‘One and Many.’
II. 1. The first of Plato’s categories or elements is the infinite. This
is the negative of measure or limit; the unthinkable, the unknow-
able; of which nothing can be affirmed; the mixture or chaos which

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preceded distinct kinds in the creation of the world; the first vague
impression of sense; the more or less which refuses to be reduced to
rule, having certain affinities with evil, with pleasure, with igno-
rance, and which in the scale of being is farthest removed from the
beautiful and good. To a Greek of the age of Plato, the idea of an
infinite mind would have been an absurdity. He would have in-
sisted that ‘the good is of the nature of the finite,’ and that the
infinite is a mere negative, which is on the level of sensation, and
not of thought. He was aware that there was a distinction between
the infinitely great and the infinitely small, but he would have equally
denied the claim of either to true existence. Of that positive infin-
ity, or infinite reality, which we attribute to God, he had no concep-
tion.
The Greek conception of the infinite would be more truly de-
scribed, in our way of speaking, as the indefinite. To us, the notion
of infinity is subsequent rather than prior to the finite, expressing
not absolute vacancy or negation, but only the removal of limit or
restraint, which we suppose to exist not before but after we have
already set bounds to thought and matter, and divided them after
their kinds. From different points of view, either the finite or infi-
nite may be looked upon respectively both as positive and negative
(compare ‘Omnis determinatio est negatio’)’ and the conception of
the one determines that of the other. The Greeks and the moderns
seem to be nearly at the opposite poles in their manner of regarding
them. And both are surprised when they make the discovery, as
Plato has done in the Sophist, how large an element negation forms
in the framework of their thoughts.
2, 3. The finite element which mingles with and regulates the
infinite is best expressed to us by the word ‘law.’ It is that which
measures all things and assigns to them their limit; which preserves
them in their natural state, and brings them within the sphere of
human cognition. This is described by the terms harmony, health,
order, perfection, and the like. All things, in as far as they are good,
even pleasures, which are for the most part indefinite, partake of
this element. We should be wrong in attributing to Plato the con-
ception of laws of nature derived from observation and experiment.
And yet he has as intense a conviction as any modern philosopher

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that nature does not proceed by chance. But observing that the
wonderful construction of number and figure, which he had within
himself, and which seemed to be prior to himself, explained a part
of the phenomena of the external world, he extended their prin-
ciples to the whole, finding in them the true type both of human
life and of the order of nature.
Two other points may be noticed respecting the third class. First,
that Plato seems to be unconscious of any interval or chasm which
separates the finite from the infinite. The one is in various ways and
degrees working in the other. Hence he has implicitly answered the
difficulty with which he started, of how the one could remain one
and yet be divided among many individuals, or ‘how ideas could be
in and out of themselves,’ and the like. Secondly, that in this mixed
class we find the idea of beauty. Good, when exhibited under the
aspect of measure or symmetry, becomes beauty. And if we translate
his language into corresponding modern terms, we shall not be far
wrong in saying that here, as well as in the Republic, Plato conceives
beauty under the idea of proportion.
4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause
of the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the
order of the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues
that as there is a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other,
which he identifies with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first
cause of which ‘our ancestors spoke,’ as he says, appealing to tradi-
tion, in the Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The ‘one and many’
is also supposed to have been revealed by tradition. For the mythi-
cal element has not altogether disappeared.
Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distin-
guish the ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.
a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and imper-
sonal. Nor in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to
him, and in speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter
gender, did he seem to himself inconsistent. For the difference be-
tween the personal and impersonal was not marked to him as to
ourselves. We make a fundamental distinction between a thing and
a person, while to Plato, by the help of various intermediate ab-
stractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear almost to meet in

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one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without any reconcili-

ation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time of God
or Gods, and at another time of the Good. So in the Phaedrus he
seems to pass unconsciously from the concrete to the abstract con-
ception of the Ideas in the same dialogue. Nor in the Philebus is he
careful to show in what relation the idea of the divine mind stands
to the supreme principle of measure.
b. Again, to us there is a strongly-marked distinction between a
first cause and a final cause. And we should commonly identify a
first cause with God, and the final cause with the world, which is
His work. But Plato, though not a Pantheist, and very far from
confounding God with the world, tends to identify the first with
the final cause. The cause of the union of the finite and infinite
might be described as a higher law; the final measure which is the
highest expression of the good may also be described as the supreme
law. Both these conceptions are realized chiefly by the help of the
material world; and therefore when we pass into the sphere of ideas
can hardly be distinguished.
The four principles are required for the determination of the rela-
tive places of pleasure and wisdom. Plato has been saying that we
should proceed by regular steps from the one to the many. Accord-
ingly, before assigning the precedence either to good or pleasure, he
must first find out and arrange in order the general principles of
things. Mind is ascertained to be akin to the nature of the cause,
while pleasure is found in the infinite or indefinite class. We may
now proceed to divide pleasure and knowledge after their kinds.
III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a gen-
eration, and in all these points of view as in a category distinct from
good. For again we must repeat, that to the Greek ‘the good is of the
nature of the finite,’ and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly allied to,
knowledge. The modern philosopher would remark that the indefi-
nite is equally real with the definite. Health and mental qualities are
in the concrete undefined; they are nevertheless real goods, and Plato
rightly regards them as falling under the finite class. Again, we are
able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind,
but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can therefore be
reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test of definite-

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ness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being defined
than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we
proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and
passing to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, happi-
ness, and the like.
2. Pleasure is depreciated as relative, while good is exalted as abso-
lute. But this distinction seems to arise from an unfair mode of
regarding them; the abstract idea of the one is compared with the
concrete experience of the other. For all pleasure and all knowledge
may be viewed either abstracted from the mind, or in relation to the
mind (compare Aristot. Nic. Ethics). The first is an idea only, which
may be conceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the ab-
stract idea of pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of
knowledge. But when we come to view either as phenomena of
consciousness, the same defects are for the most part incident to
both of them. Our hold upon them is equally transient and uncer-
tain; the mind cannot be always in a state of intellectual tension,
any more than capable of feeling pleasure always. The knowledge
which is at one time clear and distinct, at another seems to fade
away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness, or of eating after
hunger, soon passes into a neutral state of unconsciousness and in-
difference. Change and alternation are necessary for the mind as
well as for the body; and in this is to be acknowledged, not an ele-
ment of evil, but rather a law of nature. The chief difference be-
tween subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge in respect of
permanence is that the latter, when our feeble faculties are able to
grasp it, still conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which can-
not be got rid of.
3. In the language of ancient philosophy, the relative character of
pleasure is described as becoming or generation. This is relative to
Being or Essence, and from one point of view may be regarded as
the Heraclitean flux in contrast with the Eleatic Being; from an-
other, as the transient enjoyment of eating and drinking compared
with the supposed permanence of intellectual pleasures. But to us
the distinction is unmeaning, and belongs to a stage of philosophy
which has passed away. Plato himself seems to have suspected that
the continuance or life of things is quite as much to be attributed to

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a principle of rest as of motion (compare Charm. Cratyl.). A later

view of pleasure is found in Aristotle, who agrees with Plato in many
points, e.g. in his view of pleasure as a restoration to nature, in his
distinction between bodily and mental, between necessary and non-
necessary pleasures. But he is also in advance of Plato; for he affirms
that pleasure is not in the body at all; and hence not even the bodily
pleasures are to be spoken of as generations, but only as accompa-
nied by generation (Nic. Eth.).
4. Plato attempts to identify vicious pleasures with some form of
error, and insists that the term false may be applied to them: in this
he appears to be carrying out in a confused manner the Socratic
doctrine, that virtue is knowledge, vice ignorance. He will allow of
no distinction between the pleasures and the erroneous opinions on
which they are founded, whether arising out of the illusion of dis-
tance or not. But to this we naturally reply with Protarchus, that the
pleasure is what it is, although the calculation may be false, or the
after-effects painful. It is difficult to acquit Plato, to use his own
language, of being a ‘tyro in dialectics,’ when he overlooks such a
distinction. Yet, on the other hand, we are hardly fair judges of con-
fusions of thought in those who view things differently from our-
selves.
5. There appears also to be an incorrectness in the notion which
occurs both here and in the Gorgias, of the simultaneousness of
merely bodily pleasures and pains. We may, perhaps, admit, though
even this is not free from doubt, that the feeling of pleasureable
hope or recollection is, or rather may be, simultaneous with acute
bodily suffering. But there is no such coexistence of the pain of
thirst with the pleasures of drinking; they are not really simulta-
neous, for the one expels the other. Nor does Plato seem to have
considered that the bodily pleasures, except in certain extreme cases,
are unattended with pain. Few philosophers will deny that a degree
of pleasure attends eating and drinking; and yet surely we might as
well speak of the pains of digestion which follow, as of the pains of
hunger and thirst which precede them. Plato’s conception is derived
partly from the extreme case of a man suffering pain from hunger or
thirst, partly from the image of a full and empty vessel. But the
truth is rather, that while the gratification of our bodily desires con-

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stantly affords some degree of pleasure, the antecedent pains are

scarcely perceived by us, being almost done away with by use and
regularity.
6. The desire to classify pleasures as accompanied or not accom-
panied by antecedent pains, has led Plato to place under one head
the pleasures of smell and sight, as well as those derived from sounds
of music and from knowledge. He would have done better to make
a separate class of the pleasures of smell, having no association of
mind, or perhaps to have divided them into natural and artificial.
The pleasures of sight and sound might then have been regarded as
being the expression of ideas. But this higher and truer point of
view never appears to have occurred to Plato. Nor has he any dis-
tinction between the fine arts and the mechanical; and, neither here
nor anywhere, an adequate conception of the beautiful in external
things.
7. Plato agrees partially with certain ‘surly or fastidious’ philoso-
phers, as he terms them, who defined pleasure to be the absence of
pain. They are also described as eminent in physics. There is unfor-
tunately no school of Greek philosophy known to us which com-
bined these two characteristics. Antisthenes, who was an enemy of
pleasure, was not a physical philosopher; the atomists, who were
physical philosophers, were not enemies of pleasure. Yet such a com-
bination of opinions is far from being impossible. Plato’s omission
to mention them by name has created the same uncertainty respect-
ing them which also occurs respecting the ‘friends of the ideas’ and
the ‘materialists’ in the Sophist.
On the whole, this discussion is one of the least satisfactory in the
dialogues of Plato. While the ethical nature of pleasure is scarcely
considered, and the merely physical phenomenon imperfectly
analysed, too much weight is given to ideas of measure and number,
as the sole principle of good. The comparison of pleasure and knowl-
edge is really a comparison of two elements, which have no com-
mon measure, and which cannot be excluded from each other. Feel-
ing is not opposed to knowledge, and in all consciousness there is
an element of both. The most abstract kinds of knowledge are in-
separable from some pleasure or pain, which accompanies the ac-
quisition or possession of them: the student is liable to grow weary

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of them, and soon discovers that continuous mental energy is not

granted to men. The most sensual pleasure, on the other hand, is
inseparable from the consciousness of pleasure; no man can be happy
who, to borrow Plato’s illustration, is leading the life of an oyster.
Hence (by his own confession) the main thesis is not worth deter-
mining; the real interest lies in the incidental discussion. We can no
more separate pleasure from knowledge in the Philebus than we can
separate justice from happiness in the Republic.
IV. An interesting account is given in the Philebus of the rank and
order of the sciences or arts, which agrees generally with the scheme
of knowledge in the Sixth Book of the Republic. The chief differ-
ence is, that the position of the arts is more exactly defined. They
are divided into an empirical part and a scientific part, of which the
first is mere guess-work, the second is determined by rule and mea-
sure. Of the more empirical arts, music is given as an example; this,
although affirmed to be necessary to human life, is depreciated. Music
is regarded from a point of view entirely opposite to that of the
Republic, not as a sublime science, coordinate with astronomy, but
as full of doubt and conjecture. According to the standard of accu-
racy which is here adopted, it is rightly placed lower in the scale
than carpentering, because the latter is more capable of being re-
duced to measure.
The theoretical element of the arts may also become a purely ab-
stract science, when separated from matter, and is then said to be pure
and unmixed. The distinction which Plato here makes seems to be
the same as that between pure and applied mathematics, and may be
expressed in the modern formula—science is art theoretical, art is
science practical. In the reason which he gives for the superiority of
the pure science of number over the mixed or applied, we can only
agree with him in part. He says that the numbers which the philoso-
pher employs are always the same, whereas the numbers which are
used in practice represent different sizes or quantities. He does not see
that this power of expressing different quantities by the same symbol
is the characteristic and not the defect of numbers, and is due to their
abstract nature;—although we admit of course what Plato seems to
feel in his distinctions between pure and impure knowledge, that the
imperfection of matter enters into the applications of them.

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Above the other sciences, as in the Republic, towers dialectic, which

is the science of eternal Being, apprehended by the purest mind and
reason. The lower sciences, including the mathematical, are akin to
opinion rather than to reason, and are placed together in the fourth
class of goods. The relation in which they stand to dialectic is ob-
scure in the Republic, and is not cleared up in the Philebus.
V. Thus far we have only attained to the vestibule or ante-chamber
of the good; for there is a good exceeding knowledge, exceeding es-
sence, which, like Glaucon in the Republic, we find a difficulty in
apprehending. This good is now to be exhibited to us under various
aspects and gradations. The relative dignity of pleasure and knowl-
edge has been determined; but they have not yet received their exact
position in the scale of goods. Some difficulties occur to us in the
enumeration: First, how are we to distinguish the first from the sec-
ond class of goods, or the second from the third? Secondly, why is
there no mention of the supreme mind? Thirdly, the nature of the
fourth class. Fourthly, the meaning of the allusion to a sixth class,
which is not further investigated.
(I) Plato seems to proceed in his table of goods, from the more
abstract to the less abstract; from the subjective to the objective;
until at the lower end of the scale we fairly descend into the region
of human action and feeling. To him, the greater the abstraction the
greater the truth, and he is always tending to see abstractions within
abstractions; which, like the ideas in the Parmenides, are always
appearing one behind another. Hence we find a difficulty in follow-
ing him into the sphere of thought which he is seeking to attain.
First in his scale of goods he places measure, in which he finds the
eternal nature: this would be more naturally expressed in modern
language as eternal law, and seems to be akin both to the finite and
to the mind or cause, which were two of the elements in the former
table. Like the supreme nature in the Timaeus, like the ideal beauty
in the Symposium or the Phaedrus, or like the ideal good in the
Republic, this is the absolute and unapproachable being. But this
being is manifested in symmetry and beauty everywhere, in the or-
der of nature and of mind, in the relations of men to one another.
For the word ‘measure’ he now substitutes the word ‘symmetry,’ as
if intending to express measure conceived as relation. He then pro-

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ceeds to regard the good no longer in an objective form, but as the

human reason seeking to attain truth by the aid of dialectic; such at
least we naturally infer to be his meaning, when we consider that
both here and in the Republic the sphere of nous or mind is as-
signed to dialectic. (2) It is remarkable (see above) that this personal
conception of mind is confined to the human mind, and not ex-
tended to the divine. (3) If we may be allowed to interpret one
dialogue of Plato by another, the sciences of figure and number are
probably classed with the arts and true opinions, because they pro-
ceed from hypotheses (compare Republic). (4) The sixth class, if a
sixth class is to be added, is playfully set aside by a quotation from
Orpheus: Plato means to say that a sixth class, if there be such a
class, is not worth considering, because pleasure, having only gained
the fifth place in the scale of goods, is already out of the running.
VI. We may now endeavour to ascertain the relation of the Philebus
to the other dialogues. Here Plato shows the same indifference to his
own doctrine of Ideas which he has already manifested in the
Parmenides and the Sophist. The principle of the one and many of
which he here speaks, is illustrated by examples in the Sophist and
Statesman. Notwithstanding the differences of style, many resem-
blances may be noticed between the Philebus and Gorgias. The theory
of the simultaneousness of pleasure and pain is common to both of
them (Phil. Gorg.); there is also a common tendency in them to take
up arms against pleasure, although the view of the Philebus, which is
probably the later of the two dialogues, is the more moderate. There
seems to be an allusion to the passage in the Gorgias, in which Socrates
dilates on the pleasures of itching and scratching. Nor is there any real
discrepancy in the manner in which Gorgias and his art are spoken of
in the two dialogues. For Socrates is far from implying that the art of
rhetoric has a real sphere of practical usefulness: he only means that
the refutation of the claims of Gorgias is not necessary for his present
purpose. He is saying in effect: ‘Admit, if you please, that rhetoric is
the greatest and usefullest of sciences:—this does not prove that dia-
lectic is not the purest and most exact.’ From the Sophist and States-
man we know that his hostility towards the sophists and rhetoricians
was not mitigated in later life; although both in the Statesman and
Laws he admits of a higher use of rhetoric.

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Reasons have been already given for assigning a late date to the
Philebus. That the date is probably later than that of the Republic,
may be further argued on the following grounds:—1. The general
resemblance to the later dialogues and to the Laws: 2. The more
complete account of the nature of good and pleasure: 3. The dis-
tinction between perception, memory, recollection, and opinion
which indicates a great progress in psychology; also between under-
standing and imagination, which is described under the figure of
the scribe and the painter. A superficial notion may arise that Plato
probably wrote shorter dialogues, such as the Philebus, the Sophist,
and the Statesman, as studies or preparations for longer ones. This
view may be natural; but on further reflection is seen to be falla-
cious, because these three dialogues are found to make an advance
upon the metaphysical conceptions of the Republic. And we can
more easily suppose that Plato composed shorter writings after longer
ones, than suppose that he lost hold of further points of view which
he had once attained.
It is more easy to find traces of the Pythagoreans, Eleatics,
Megarians, Cynics, Cyrenaics and of the ideas of Anaxagoras, in the
Philebus, than to say how much is due to each of them. Had we
fuller records of those old philosophers, we should probably find
Plato in the midst of the fray attempting to combine Eleatic and
Pythagorean doctrines, and seeking to find a truth beyond either
Being or number; setting up his own concrete conception of good
against the abstract practical good of the Cynics, or the abstract
intellectual good of the Megarians, and his own idea of classifica-
tion against the denial of plurality in unity which is also attributed
to them; warring against the Eristics as destructive of truth, as he
had formerly fought against the Sophists; taking up a middle posi-
tion between the Cynics and Cyrenaics in his doctrine of pleasure;
asserting with more consistency than Anaxagoras the existence of
an intelligent mind and cause. Of the Heracliteans, whom he is said
by Aristotle to have cultivated in his youth, he speaks in the Philebus,
as in the Theaetetus and Cratylus, with irony and contempt. But we
have not the knowledge which would enable us to pursue further
the line of reflection here indicated; nor can we expect to find per-
fect clearness or order in the first efforts of mankind to understand

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the working of their own minds. The ideas which they are attempt-
ing to analyse, they are also in process of creating; the abstract uni-
versals of which they are seeking to adjust the relations have been
already excluded by them from the category of relation.

* * *

The Philebus, like the Cratylus, is supposed to be the continuation

of a previous discussion. An argument respecting the comparative
claims of pleasure and wisdom to rank as the chief good has been
already carried on between Philebus and Socrates. The argument is
now transferred to Protarchus, the son of Callias, a noble Athenian
youth, sprung from a family which had spent ‘a world of money’ on
the Sophists (compare Apol.; Crat.; Protag.). Philebus, who appears
to be the teacher, or elder friend, and perhaps the lover, of Protarchus,
takes no further part in the discussion beyond asserting in the stron-
gest manner his adherence, under all circumstances, to the cause of
pleasure.
Socrates suggests that they shall have a first and second palm of
victory. For there may be a good higher than either pleasure or wis-
dom, and then neither of them will gain the first prize, but which-
ever of the two is more akin to this higher good will have a right to
the second. They agree, and Socrates opens the game by enlarging
on the diversity and opposition which exists among pleasures. For
there are pleasures of all kinds, good and bad, wise and foolish—
pleasures of the temperate as well as of the intemperate. Protarchus
replies that although pleasures may be opposed in so far as they
spring from opposite sources, nevertheless as pleasures they are alike.
Yes, retorts Socrates, pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure
and colour like colour; yet we all know that there is great variety
among figures and colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this
remark; and Socrates proceeds to ask how he can have a right to
attribute a new predicate (i.e. ‘good’) to pleasures in general, when
he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in
all of them does he mean to indicate by the term ‘good’? If he
continues to assert that there is some trivial sense in which pleasure
is one, Socrates may retort by saying that knowledge is one, but the

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result will be that such merely verbal and trivial conceptions, whether
of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the discussion, and will prove
the incapacity of the two disputants. In order to avoid this danger,
he proposes that they shall beat a retreat, and, before they proceed,
come to an understanding about the ‘high argument’ of the one
and the many.
Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression
that Socrates means to discuss the common question—how a sen-
sible object can be one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as
‘great’ and ‘small,’ ‘light’ and ‘heavy,’ or how there can be many
members in one body, and the like wonders. Socrates has long ceased
to see any wonder in these phenomena; his difficulties begin with
the application of number to abstract unities (e.g.’man,’ ‘good’) and
with the attempt to divide them. For have these unities of idea any
real existence? How, if imperishable, can they enter into the world
of generation? How, as units, can they be divided and dispersed
among different objects? Or do they exist in their entirety in each
object? These difficulties are but imperfectly answered by Socrates
in what follows.
We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of
all things, concerning which a young man often runs wild in his
first metaphysical enthusiasm, talking about analysis and synthesis
to his father and mother and the neighbours, hardly sparing even
his dog. This ‘one in many’ is a revelation of the order of the world,
which some Prometheus first made known to our ancestors; and
they, who were better men and nearer the gods than we are, have
handed it down to us. To know how to proceed by regular steps
from one to many, and from many to one, is just what makes the
difference between eristic and dialectic. And the right way of pro-
ceeding is to look for one idea or class in all things, and when you
have found one to look for more than one, and for all that there are,
and when you have found them all and regularly divided a particu-
lar field of knowledge into classes, you may leave the further con-
sideration of individuals. But you must not pass at once either from
unity to infinity, or from infinity to unity. In music, for example,
you may begin with the most general notion, but this alone will not
make you a musician: you must know also the number and nature

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of the intervals, and the systems which are framed out of them, and
the rhythms of the dance which correspond to them. And when
you have a similar knowledge of any other subject, you may be said
to know that subject. In speech again there are infinite varieties of
sound, and some one who was a wise man, or more than man, com-
prehended them all in the classes of mutes, vowels, and semivowels,
and gave to each of them a name, and assigned them to the art of
grammar.
‘But whither, Socrates, are you going? And what has this to do
with the comparative eligibility of pleasure and wisdom:’ Socrates
replies, that before we can adjust their respective claims, we want to
know the number and kinds of both of them. What are they? He is
requested to answer the question himself. That he will, if he may be
allowed to make one or two preliminary remarks. In the first place
he has a dreamy recollection of hearing that neither pleasure nor
knowledge is the highest good, for the good should be perfect and
sufficient. But is the life of pleasure perfect and sufficient, when
deprived of memory, consciousness, anticipation? Is not this the
life of an oyster? Or is the life of mind sufficient, if devoid of any
particle of pleasure? Must not the union of the two be higher and
more eligible than either separately? And is not the element which
makes this mixed life eligible more akin to mind than to pleasure?
Thus pleasure is rejected and mind is rejected. And yet there may be
a life of mind, not human but divine, which conquers still.
But, if we are to pursue this argument further, we shall require some
new weapons; and by this, I mean a new classification of existence.
(1) There is a finite element of existence, and (2) an infinite, and (3)
the union of the two, and (4) the cause of the union. More may be
added if they are wanted, but at present we can do without them.
And first of the infinite or indefinite:—That is the class which is
denoted by the terms more or less, and is always in a state of compari-
son. All words or ideas to which the words ‘gently,’ ‘extremely,’ and
other comparative expressions are applied, fall under this class. The
infinite would be no longer infinite, if limited or reduced to measure
by number and quantity. The opposite class is the limited or finite,
and includes all things which have number and quantity. And there is
a third class of generation into essence by the union of the finite and

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infinite, in which the finite gives law to the infinite;—under this are
comprehended health, strength, temperate seasons, harmony, beauty,
and the like. The goddess of beauty saw the universal wantonness of
all things, and gave law and order to be the salvation of the soul. But
no effect can be generated without a cause, and therefore there must
be a fourth class, which is the cause of generation; for the cause or
agent is not the same as the patient or effect.
And now, having obtained our classes, we may determine in which
our conqueror life is to be placed: Clearly in the third or mixed
class, in which the finite gives law to the infinite. And in which is
pleasure to find a place? As clearly in the infinite or indefinite,
which alone, as Protarchus thinks (who seems to confuse the infi-
nite with the superlative), gives to pleasure the character of the ab-
solute good. Yes, retorts Socrates, and also to pain the character of
absolute evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that which im-
parts to pleasure the nature of the good. But where shall we place
mind? That is a very serious and awful question, which may be
prefaced by another. Is mind or chance the lord of the universe? All
philosophers will say the first, and yet, perhaps, they may be only
magnifying themselves. And for this reason I should like to con-
sider the matter a little more deeply, even though some lovers of
disorder in the world should ridicule my attempt.
Now the elements earth, air, fire, water, exist in us, and they exist
in the cosmos; but they are purer and fairer in the cosmos than they
are in us, and they come to us from thence. And as we have a soul as
well as a body, in like manner the elements of the finite, the infinite,
the union of the two, and the cause, are found to exist in us. And if
they, like the elements, exist in us, and the three first exist in the
world, must not the fourth or cause which is the noblest of them,
exist in the world? And this cause is wisdom or mind, the royal
mind of Zeus, who is the king of all, as there are other gods who
have other noble attributes. Observe how well this agrees with the
testimony of men of old, who affirmed mind to be the ruler of the
universe. And remember that mind belongs to the class which we
term the cause, and pleasure to the infinite or indefinite class. We
will examine the place and origin of both.
What is the origin of pleasure? Her natural seat is the mixed class,

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in which health and harmony were placed. Pain is the violation,

and pleasure the restoration of limit. There is a natural union of
finite and infinite, which in hunger, thirst, heat, cold, is impaired—
this is painful, but the return to nature, in which the elements are
restored to their normal proportions, is pleasant. Here is our first
class of pleasures. And another class of pleasures and pains are hopes
and fears; these are in the mind only. And inasmuch as the pleasures
are unalloyed by pains and the pains by pleasures, the examination
of them may show us whether all pleasure is to be desired, or whether
this entire desirableness is not rather the attribute of another class.
But if pleasures and pains consist in the violation and restoration of
limit, may there not be a neutral state, in which there is neither
dissolution nor restoration? That is a further question, and admit-
ting, as we must, the possibility of such a state, there seems to be no
reason why the life of wisdom should not exist in this neutral state,
which is, moreover, the state of the gods, who cannot, without in-
decency, be supposed to feel either joy or sorrow.
The second class of pleasures involves memory. There are affec-
tions which are extinguished before they reach the soul, and of these
there is no consciousness, and therefore no memory. And there are
affections which the body and soul feel together, and this feeling is
termed consciousness. And memory is the preservation of conscious-
ness, and reminiscence is the recovery of consciousness. Now the
memory of pleasure, when a man is in pain, is the memory of the
opposite of his actual bodily state, and is therefore not in the body,
but in the mind. And there may be an intermediate state, in which
a person is balanced between pleasure and pain; in his body there is
want which is a cause of pain, but in his mind a sure hope of replen-
ishment, which is pleasant. (But if the hope be converted into de-
spair, he has two pains and not a balance of pain and pleasure.)
Another question is raised: May not pleasures, like opinions, be
true and false? In the sense of being real, both must be admitted to
be true: nor can we deny that to both of them qualities may be
attributed; for pleasures as well as opinions may be described as
good or bad. And though we do not all of us allow that there are
true and false pleasures, we all acknowledge that there are some
pleasures associated with right opinion, and others with falsehood

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and ignorance. Let us endeavour to analyze the nature of this asso-

ciation.
Opinion is based on perception, which may be correct or mis-
taken. You may see a figure at a distance, and say first of all, ‘This is
a man,’ and then say, ‘No, this is an image made by the shepherds.’
And you may affirm this in a proposition to your companion, or
make the remark mentally to yourself. Whether the words are actu-
ally spoken or not, on such occasions there is a scribe within who
registers them, and a painter who paints the images of the things
which the scribe has written down in the soul,—at least that is my
own notion of the process; and the words and images which are
inscribed by them may be either true or false; and they may repre-
sent either past, present, or future. And, representing the future,
they must also represent the pleasures and pains of anticipation—
the visions of gold and other fancies which are never wanting in the
mind of man. Now these hopes, as they are termed, are proposi-
tions, which are sometimes true, and sometimes false; for the good,
who are the friends of the gods, see true pictures of the future, and
the bad false ones. And as there may be opinion about things which
are not, were not, and will not be, which is opinion still, so there
may be pleasure about things which are not, were not, and will not
be, which is pleasure still,—that is to say, false pleasure; and only
when false, can pleasure, like opinion, be vicious. Against this con-
clusion Protarchus reclaims.
Leaving his denial for the present, Socrates proceeds to show that
some pleasures are false from another point of view. In desire, as we
admitted, the body is divided from the soul, and hence pleasures
and pains are often simultaneous. And we further admitted that
both of them belonged to the infinite class. How, then, can we com-
pare them? Are we not liable, or rather certain, as in the case of
sight, to be deceived by distance and relation? In this case the plea-
sures and pains are not false because based upon false opinion, but
are themselves false. And there is another illusion: pain has often
been said by us to arise out of the derangement—pleasure out of
the restoration—of our nature. But in passing from one to the other,
do we not experience neutral states, which although they appear
pleasureable or painful are really neither? For even if we admit,

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with the wise man whom Protarchus loves (and only a wise man
could have ever entertained such a notion), that all things are in a
perpetual flux, still these changes are often unconscious, and devoid
either of pleasure or pain. We assume, then, that there are three
states—pleasureable, painful, neutral; we may embellish a little by
calling them gold, silver, and that which is neither.
But there are certain natural philosophers who will not admit a
third state. Their instinctive dislike to pleasure leads them to affirm
that pleasure is only the absence of pain. They are noble fellows, and,
although we do not agree with them, we may use them as diviners
who will indicate to us the right track. They will say, that the nature
of anything is best known from the examination of extreme cases, e.g.
the nature of hardness from the examination of the hardest things;
and that the nature of pleasure will be best understood from an ex-
amination of the most intense pleasures. Now these are the pleasures
of the body, not of the mind; the pleasures of disease and not of
health, the pleasures of the intemperate and not of the temperate. I
am speaking, not of the frequency or continuance, but only of the
intensity of such pleasures, and this is given them by contrast with the
pain or sickness of body which precedes them. Their morbid nature is
illustrated by the lesser instances of itching and scratching, respecting
which I swear that I cannot tell whether they are a pleasure or a pain.
(1) Some of these arise out of a transition from one state of the body
to another, as from cold to hot; (2) others are caused by the contrast
of an internal pain and an external pleasure in the body: sometimes
the feeling of pain predominates, as in itching and tingling, when
they are relieved by scratching; sometimes the feeling of pleasure: or
the pleasure which they give may be quite overpowering, and is then
accompanied by all sorts of unutterable feelings which have a death
of delights in them. But there are also mixed pleasures which are in
the mind only. For are not love and sorrow as well as anger ‘sweeter
than honey,’ and also full of pain? Is there not a mixture of feelings in
the spectator of tragedy? and of comedy also? ‘I do not understand
that last.’ Well, then, with the view of lighting up the obscurity of
these mixed feelings, let me ask whether envy is painful. ‘Yes.’ And yet
the envious man finds something pleasing in the misfortunes of oth-
ers? ‘True.’ And ignorance is a misfortune? ‘Certainly.’ And one

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form of ignorance is self-conceit—a man may fancy himself richer,

fairer, better, wiser than he is? ‘Yes.’ And he who thus deceives him-
self may be strong or weak? ‘He may.’ And if he is strong we fear him,
and if he is weak we laugh at him, which is a pleasure, and yet we envy
him, which is a pain? These mixed feelings are the rationale of trag-
edy and comedy, and equally the rationale of the greater drama of
human life. (There appears to be some confusion in this passage. There
is no difficulty in seeing that in comedy, as in tragedy, the spectator
may view the performance with mixed feelings of pain as well as of
pleasure; nor is there any difficulty in understanding that envy is a
mixed feeling, which rejoices not without pain at the misfortunes of
others, and laughs at their ignorance of themselves. But Plato seems
to think further that he has explained the feeling of the spectator in
comedy sufficiently by a theory which only applies to comedy in so
far as in comedy we laugh at the conceit or weakness of others. He has
certainly given a very partial explanation of the ridiculous.) Having
shown how sorrow, anger, envy are feelings of a mixed nature, I will
reserve the consideration of the remainder for another occasion.
Next follow the unmixed pleasures; which, unlike the philoso-
phers of whom I was speaking, I believe to be real. These unmixed
pleasures are: (1) The pleasures derived from beauty of form, colour,
sound, smell, which are absolutely pure; and in general those which
are unalloyed with pain: (2) The pleasures derived from the acqui-
sition of knowledge, which in themselves are pure, but may be at-
tended by an accidental pain of forgetting; this, however, arises from
a subsequent act of reflection, of which we need take no account. At
the same time, we admit that the latter pleasures are the property of
a very few. To these pure and unmixed pleasures we ascribe mea-
sure, whereas all others belong to the class of the infinite, and are
liable to every species of excess. And here several questions arise for
consideration:—What is the meaning of pure and impure, of mod-
erate and immoderate? We may answer the question by an illustra-
tion: Purity of white paint consists in the clearness or quality of the
white, and this is distinct from the quantity or amount of white
paint; a little pure white is fairer than a great deal which is impure.
But there is another question:—Pleasure is affirmed by ingenious
philosophers to be a generation; they say that there are two na-

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tures—one self-existent, the other dependent; the one noble and

majestic, the other failing in both these qualities. ‘I do not under-
stand.’ There are lovers and there are loves. ‘Yes, I know, but what is
the application?’ The argument is in play, and desires to intimate
that there are relatives and there are absolutes, and that the relative
is for the sake of the absolute; and generation is for the sake of
essence. Under relatives I class all things done with a view to gen-
eration; and essence is of the class of good. But if essence is of the
class of good, generation must be of some other class; and our friends,
who affirm that pleasure is a generation, would laugh at the notion
that pleasure is a good; and at that other notion, that pleasure is
produced by generation, which is only the alternative of destruc-
tion. Who would prefer such an alternation to the equable life of
pure thought? Here is one absurdity, and not the only one, to which
the friends of pleasure are reduced. For is there not also an absurdity
in affirming that good is of the soul only; or in declaring that the
best of men, if he be in pain, is bad?
And now, from the consideration of pleasure, we pass to that of
knowledge. Let us reflect that there are two kinds of knowledge—
the one creative or productive, and the other educational and philo-
sophical. Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to
knowledge than the other. There is an element of guess-work and
an element of number and measure in them. In music, for example,
especially in flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while
in carpentering there is more application of rule and measure. Of
the creative arts, then, we may make two classes—the less exact and
the more exact. And the exacter part of all of them is really arith-
metic and mensuration. But arithmetic and mensuration again may
be subdivided with reference either to their use in the concrete, or
to their nature in the abstract—as they are regarded popularly in
building and binding, or theoretically by philosophers. And, bor-
rowing the analogy of pleasure, we may say that the philosophical
use of them is purer than the other. Thus we have two arts of arith-
metic, and two of mensuration. And truest of all in the estimation
of every rational man is dialectic, or the science of being, which will
forget and disown us, if we forget and disown her.
‘But, Socrates, I have heard Gorgias say that rhetoric is the great-

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est and usefullest of arts; and I should not like to quarrel either with
him or you.’ Neither is there any inconsistency, Protarchus, with
his statement in what I am now saying; for I am not maintaining
that dialectic is the greatest or usefullest, but only that she is the
truest of arts; my remark is not quantitative but qualitative, and
refers not to the advantage or repetition of either, but to the degree
of truth which they attain—here Gorgias will not care to compete;
this is what we affirm to be possessed in the highest degree by dia-
lectic. And do not let us appeal to Gorgias or Philebus or Socrates,
but ask, on behalf of the argument, what are the highest truths which
the soul has the power of attaining. And is not this the science which
has a firmer grasp of them than any other? For the arts generally are
only occupied with matters of opinion, and with the production
and action and passion of this sensible world. But the highest truth
is that which is eternal and unchangeable. And reason and wisdom
are concerned with the eternal; and these are the very claimants, if
not for the first, at least for the second place, whom I propose as
rivals to pleasure.
And now, having the materials, we may proceed to mix them—
first recapitulating the question at issue.
Philebus affirmed pleasure to be the good, and assumed them to
be one nature; I affirmed that they were two natures, and declared
that knowledge was more akin to the good than pleasure. I said that
the two together were more eligible than either taken singly; and to
this we adhere. Reason intimates, as at first, that we should seek the
good not in the unmixed life, but in the mixed.
The cup is ready, waiting to be mingled, and here are two foun-
tains, one of honey, the other of pure water, out of which to make
the fairest possible mixture. There are pure and impure pleasures—
pure and impure sciences. Let us consider the sections of each which
have the most of purity and truth; to admit them all indiscrimi-
nately would be dangerous. First we will take the pure sciences; but
shall we mingle the impure—the art which uses the false rule and
the false measure? That we must, if we are any of us to find our way
home; man cannot live upon pure mathematics alone. And must I
include music, which is admitted to be guess-work? ‘Yes, you must,
if human life is to have any humanity.’ Well, then, I will open the

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door and let them all in; they shall mingle in an Homeric ‘meeting
of the waters.’ And now we turn to the pleasures; shall I admit
them? ‘Admit first of all the pure pleasures; secondly, the necessary.’
And what shall we say about the rest? First, ask the pleasures—they
will be too happy to dwell with wisdom. Secondly, ask the arts and
sciences—they reply that the excesses of intemperance are the ruin
of them; and that they would rather only have the pleasures of health
and temperance, which are the handmaidens of virtue. But still we
want truth? That is now added; and so the argument is complete,
and may be compared to an incorporeal law, which is to hold fair
rule over a living body. And now we are at the vestibule of the good,
in which there are three chief elements—truth, symmetry, and
beauty. These will be the criterion of the comparative claims of plea-
sure and wisdom.
Which has the greater share of truth? Surely wisdom; for pleasure
is the veriest impostor in the world, and the perjuries of lovers have
passed into a proverb.
Which of symmetry? Wisdom again; for nothing is more im-
moderate than pleasure.
Which of beauty? Once more, wisdom; for pleasure is often un-
seemly, and the greatest pleasures are put out of sight.
Not pleasure, then, ranks first in the scale of good, but measure,
and eternal harmony.
Second comes the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect.
Third, mind and wisdom.
Fourth, sciences and arts and true opinions.
Fifth, painless pleasures.
Of a sixth class, I have no more to say. Thus, pleasure and mind
may both renounce the claim to the first place. But mind is ten
thousand times nearer to the chief good than pleasure. Pleasure ranks
fifth and not first, even though all the animals in the world assert
the contrary.

* * *

From the days of Aristippus and Epicurus to our own times the
nature of pleasure has occupied the attention of philosophers. ‘Is

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pleasure an evil? a good? the only good?’ are the simple forms which
the enquiry assumed among the Socratic schools. But at an early
stage of the controversy another question was asked: ‘Do pleasures
differ in kind? and are some bad, some good, and some neither bad
nor good?’ There are bodily and there are mental pleasures, which
were at first confused but afterwards distinguished. A distinction
was also made between necessary and unnecessary pleasures; and
again between pleasures which had or had not corresponding pains.
The ancient philosophers were fond of asking, in the language of
their age, ‘Is pleasure a “becoming” only, and therefore transient
and relative, or do some pleasures partake of truth and Being?’ To
these ancient speculations the moderns have added a further ques-
tion:—’Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your
neighbour,—of the individual, or of the world?’ This little addition
has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is
now supposed to include two principles as widely different as be-
nevolence and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished
between pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For
the universal test of right actions (how I know them) may not al-
ways be the highest or best motive of them (why I do them).
Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first
drew attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said
by him to act rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in
the language of the Gorgias, ‘did what they would.’ He seems to
have been the first who maintained that the good was the useful
(Mem.). In his eagerness for generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says,
for the universal in Ethics (Metaph.), he took the most obvious
intellectual aspect of human action which occurred to him. He meant
to emphasize, not pleasure, but the calculation of pleasure; neither
is he arguing that pleasure is the chief good, but that we should
have a principle of choice. He did not intend to oppose ‘the useful’
to some higher conception, such as the Platonic ideal, but to chance
and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues the same vein of thought
in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist that
pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and
evil, and that the salvation of human life depends upon a right esti-
mate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and at a distance.

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The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of Plato, and

we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first utilitarian; as
indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which may not with
reason be ascribed to him—he is Cynic and Cyrenaic, Platonist and
Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has already passed
into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather Plato speaking in
his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the exchange of a
less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of virtue. Such virtue
is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of appearance;
they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures of intem-
perance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the philoso-
pher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near or
distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise the
body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will hereafter
be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge are
affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher
so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds.
(Compare a similar argument urged by one of the latest defenders
of Utilitarianism, Mill’s Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, al-
though he regards the enemies of pleasure with complacency, still
further modifies the transcendentalism of the Phaedo. For he is com-
pelled to confess, rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures,
i.e. those which have no antecedent pains, claim a place in the scale
of goods.
There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind
in general have been unwilling to acknowledge that ‘pleasure is the
chief good.’ Either they have heard a voice calling to them out of
another world; or the life and example of some great teacher has
cast their thoughts of right and wrong in another mould; or the
word ‘pleasure’ has been associated in their mind with merely ani-
mal enjoyment. They could not believe that what they were always
striving to overcome, and the power or principle in them which
overcame, were of the same nature. The pleasure of doing good to
others and of bodily self-indulgence, the pleasures of intellect and
the pleasures of sense, are so different:—Why then should they be
called by a common name? Or, if the equivocal or metaphorical use
of the word is justified by custom (like the use of other words which

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at first referred only to the body, and then by a figure have been
transferred to the mind), still, why should we make an ambiguous
word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To the higher thinker
the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at variance
with religion and with any higher conception both of politics and
of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended their
taste. To elevate pleasure, ‘the most fleeting of all things,’ into a
general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not desire
to bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The sim-
plicity of the ‘greatest happiness’ principle has been acceptable to
philosophers, but the better part of the world has been slow to re-
ceive it.
Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will
narrow the field of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few
prejudices, which intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by
this time ‘agreed to discard’. We admit that Utility is coextensive
with right, and that no action can be right which does not tend to
the happiness of mankind; we acknowledge that a large class of ac-
tions are made right or wrong by their consequences only; we say
further that mankind are not too mindful, but that they are far too
regardless of consequences, and that they need to have the doctrine
of utility habitually inculcated on them. We recognize the value of a
principle which can supply a connecting link between Ethics and
Politics, and under which all human actions are or may be included.
The desire to promote happiness is no mean preference of expedi-
ency to right, but one of the highest and noblest motives by which
human nature can be animated. Neither in referring actions to the
test of utility have we to make a laborious calculation, any more
than in trying them by other standards of morals. For long ago they
have been classified sufficiently for all practical purposes by the
thinker, by the legislator, by the opinion of the world. Whatever
may be the hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in
doubtful cases may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very
rarely, if ever, called upon at the moment of performing them to
determine their effect upon the happiness of mankind.
There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley
and others—the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and

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wrong innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another

of those speculations which intelligent men might ‘agree to discard.’
For it has been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally
consistent with a transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system
of ethics, with a greatest happiness principle or with Kant’s law of
duty. Yet to avoid misconception, what appears to be the truth about
the origin of our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as fol-
lows:—To each of us individually our moral ideas come first of all
in childhood through the medium of education, from parents and
teachers, assisted by the unconscious influence of language; they are
impressed upon a mind which at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted
to receive them; but they soon become fixed or set, and in after life
are strengthened, or perhaps weakened by the force of public opin-
ion. They may be corrected and enlarged by experience, they may
be reasoned about, they may be brought home to us by the circum-
stances of our lives, they may be intensified by imagination, by re-
flection, by a course of action likely to confirm them. Under the
influence of religious feeling or by an effort of thought, any one
beginning with the ordinary rules of morality may create out of
them for himself ideals of holiness and virtue. They slumber in the
minds of most men, yet in all of us there remains some tincture of
affection, some desire of good, some sense of truth, some fear of the
law. Of some such state or process each individual is conscious in
himself, and if he compares his own experience with that of others
he will find the witness of their consciences to coincide with that of
his own. All of us have entered into an inheritance which we have
the power of appropriating and making use of. No great effort of
mind is required on our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk,
instinctively, from conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in
a civilized country, in a good home. A well-educated child of ten
years old already knows the essentials of morals: ‘Thou shalt not
steal,’ ‘thou shalt speak the truth,’ ‘thou shalt love thy parents,’ ‘thou
shalt fear God.’ What more does he want?
But whence comes this common inheritance or stock of moral
ideas? Their beginning, like all other beginnings of human things,
is obscure, and is the least important part of them. Imagine, if you
will, that Society originated in the herding of brutes, in their paren-

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tal instincts, in their rude attempts at self-preservation:—Man is

not man in that he resembles, but in that he differs from them. We
must pass into another cycle of existence, before we can discover in
him by any evidence accessible to us even the germs of our moral
ideas. In the history of the world, which viewed from within is the
history of the human mind, they have been slowly created by reli-
gion, by poetry, by law, having their foundation in the natural af-
fections and in the necessity of some degree of truth and justice in a
social state; they have been deepened and enlarged by the efforts of
great thinkers who have idealized and connected them—by the lives
of saints and prophets who have taught and exemplified them. The
schools of ancient philosophy which seem so far from us—Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and a few modern teach-
ers, such as Kant and Bentham, have each of them supplied ‘mo-
ments’ of thought to the world. The life of Christ has embodied a
divine love, wisdom, patience, reasonableness. For his image, how-
ever imperfectly handed down to us, the modern world has received
a standard more perfect in idea than the societies of ancient times,
but also further removed from practice. For there is certainly a greater
interval between the theory and practice of Christians than between
the theory and practice of the Greeks and Romans; the ideal is more
above us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power
to evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolu-
tion, when the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have
become corrupted by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by
despotism, the lower have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense
of religion and right.
We may further remark that our moral ideas, as the world grows
older, perhaps as we grow older ourselves, unless they have been un-
dermined in us by false philosophy or the practice of mental analysis,
or infected by the corruption of society or by some moral disorder in
the individual, are constantly assuming a more natural and necessary
character. The habit of the mind, the opinion of the world, familiar-
izes them to us; and they take more and more the form of immediate
intuition. The moral sense comes last and not first in the order of
their development, and is the instinct which we have inherited or
acquired, not the nobler effort of reflection which created them and

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which keeps them alive. We do not stop to reason about common

honesty. Whenever we are not blinded by self-deceit, as for example
in judging the actions of others, we have no hesitation in determining
what is right and wrong. The principles of morality, when not at
variance with some desire or worldly interest of our own, or with the
opinion of the public, are hardly perceived by us; but in the conflict
of reason and passion they assert their authority and are not overcome
without remorse.
Such is a brief outline of the history of our moral ideas. We have
to distinguish, first of all, the manner in which they have grown up
in the world from the manner in which they have been communi-
cated to each of us. We may represent them to ourselves as flowing
out of the boundless ocean of language and thought in little rills,
which convey them to the heart and brain of each individual. But
neither must we confound the theories or aspects of morality with
the origin of our moral ideas. These are not the roots or ‘origines’ of
morals, but the latest efforts of reflection, the lights in which the
whole moral world has been regarded by different thinkers and suc-
cessive generations of men. If we ask: Which of these many theo-
ries is the true one? we may answer: All of them—moral sense,
innate ideas, a priori, a posteriori notions, the philosophy of experi-
ence, the philosophy of intuition—all of them have added some-
thing to our conception of Ethics; no one of them is the whole
truth. But to decide how far our ideas of morality are derived from
one source or another; to determine what history, what philosophy
has contributed to them; to distinguish the original, simple elements
from the manifold and complex applications of them, would be a
long enquiry too far removed from the question which we are now
pursuing.
Bearing in mind the distinction which we have been seeking to
establish between our earliest and our most mature ideas of moral-
ity, we may now proceed to state the theory of Utility, not exactly in
the words, but in the spirit of one of its ablest and most moderate
supporters (Mill’s Utilitarianism):—’That which alone makes ac-
tions either right or desirable is their utility, or tendency to promote
the happiness of mankind, or, in other words, to increase the sum of
pleasure in the world. But all pleasures are not the same: they differ

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in quality as well as in quantity, and the pleasure which is superior

in quality is incommensurable with the inferior. Neither is the plea-
sure or happiness, which we seek, our own pleasure, but that of
others,—of our family, of our country, of mankind. The desire of
this, and even the sacrifice of our own interest to that of other men,
may become a passion to a rightly educated nature. The Utilitarian
finds a place in his system for this virtue and for every other.’
Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and
only end of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend,
and in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be
explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and
do not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent
on the greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless
in general they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such
an end is proved, as in Aristotle’s time, so in our own, by the univer-
sal fact that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based
upon the social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of
us in some degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and
strengthened. So far from being inconsistent with religion, the great-
est happiness principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For
what can be more reasonable than that God should will the happi-
ness of all his creatures? and in working out their happiness we may
be said to be ‘working together with him.’ Nor is it inconceivable
that a new enthusiasm of the future, far stronger than any old reli-
gion, may be based upon such a conception.
But then for the familiar phrase of the ‘greatest happiness prin-
ciple,’ it seems as if we ought now to read ‘the noblest happiness
principle,’ ‘the happiness of others principle’—the principle not of
the greatest, but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more re-
gard to our own immediate interest than is required by the law of
self-preservation. Transfer the thought of happiness to another life,
dropping the external circumstances which form so large a part of
our idea of happiness in this, and the meaning of the word becomes
indistinguishable from holiness, harmony, wisdom, love. By the slight
addition ‘of others,’ all the associations of the word are altered; we
seem to have passed over from one theory of morals to the opposite.
For allowing that the happiness of others is reflected on ourselves,

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and also that every man must live before he can do good to others,
still the last limitation is a very trifling exception, and the happiness
of another is very far from compensating for the loss of our own.
According to Mr. Mill, he would best carry out the principle of
utility who sacrificed his own pleasure most to that of his fellow-
men. But if so, Hobbes and Butler, Shaftesbury and Hume, are not
so far apart as they and their followers imagine. The thought of self
and the thought of others are alike superseded in the more general
notion of the happiness of mankind at large. But in this composite
good, until society becomes perfected, the friend of man himself
has generally the least share, and may be a great sufferer.
And now what objection have we to urge against a system of moral
philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same
time so practical,—so Christian, as we may say without exaggera-
tion,—and which has the further advantage of resting morality on a
principle intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which
Socrates and Plato ‘grew old in seeking’? Are we not desirous of
happiness, at any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all
mankind? If, as is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first,
we are easily led on to think of others; for we cannot help acknowl-
edging that what is right for us is the right and inheritance of oth-
ers. We feel the advantage of an abstract principle wide enough and
strong enough to override all the particularisms of mankind; which
acknowledges a universal good, truth, right; which is capable of in-
spiring men like a passion, and is the symbol of a cause for which
they are ready to contend to their life’s end.
And if we test this principle by the lives of its professors, it would
certainly appear inferior to none as a rule of action. From the days
of Eudoxus (Arist. Ethics) and Epicurus to our own, the votaries of
pleasure have gained belief for their principles by their practice. Two
of the noblest and most disinterested men who have lived in this
century, Bentham and J. S. Mill, whose lives were a long devotion
to the service of their fellows, have been among the most enthusias-
tic supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some
who were of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in
aspiration than in action, and have been found unequal to the du-
ties of life. Looking back on them now that they are removed from

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the scene, we feel that mankind has been the better for them. The
world was against them while they lived; but this is rather a reason
for admiring than for depreciating them. Nor can any one doubt
that the influence of their philosophy on politics—especially on
foreign politics, on law, on social life, has been upon the whole
beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have justice done to them,
for they do not agree either with the better feeling of the multitude
or with the idealism of more refined thinkers. Without Bentham, a
great word in the history of philosophy would have remained un-
spoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name received with any
mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the ambiguous
memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached
to him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked
his contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this genera-
tion which has reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the
feeling of the last. He was before his own age, and is hardly remem-
bered in this.
While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness
principle has conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have
arrived, not for denying its claims, but for criticizing them and com-
paring them with other principles which equally claim to lie at the
foundation of ethics. Any one who adds a general principle to knowl-
edge has been a benefactor to the world. But there is a danger that,
in his first enthusiasm, he may not recognize the proportions or
limitations to which his truth is subjected; he does not see how far
he has given birth to a truism, or how that which is a truth to him is
a truism to the rest of the world; or may degenerate in the next
generation. He believes that to be the whole which is only a part,—
to be the necessary foundation which is really only a valuable aspect
of the truth. The systems of all philosophers require the criticism of
‘the morrow,’ when the heat of imagination which forged them has
cooled, and they are seen in the temperate light of day. All of them
have contributed to enrich the mind of the civilized world; none of
them occupy that supreme or exclusive place which their authors
would have assigned to them.
We may preface the criticism with a few preliminary remarks:—
Mr. Mill, Mr. Austin, and others, in their eagerness to maintain

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the doctrine of utility, are fond of repeating that we are in a lamen-

table state of uncertainty about morals. While other branches of
knowledge have made extraordinary progress, in moral philosophy
we are supposed by them to be no better than children, and with
few exceptions—that is to say, Bentham and his followers—to be
no further advanced than men were in the age of Socrates and Plato,
who, in their turn, are deemed to be as backward in ethics as they
necessarily were in physics. But this, though often asserted, is re-
canted almost in a breath by the same writers who speak thus depre-
ciatingly of our modern ethical philosophy. For they are the first to
acknowledge that we have not now to begin classifying actions un-
der the head of utility; they would not deny that about the general
conceptions of morals there is a practical agreement. There is no
more doubt that falsehood is wrong than that a stone falls to the
ground, although the first does not admit of the same ocular proof
as the second. There is no greater uncertainty about the duty of
obedience to parents and to the law of the land than about the
properties of triangles. Unless we are looking for a new moral world
which has no marrying and giving in marriage, there is no greater
disagreement in theory about the right relations of the sexes than
about the composition of water. These and a few other simple prin-
ciples, as they have endless applications in practice, so also may be
developed in theory into counsels of perfection.
To what then is to be attributed this opinion which has been of-
ten entertained about the uncertainty of morals? Chiefly to this,—
that philosophers have not always distinguished the theoretical and
the casuistical uncertainty of morals from the practical certainty.
There is an uncertainty about details,—whether, for example, un-
der given circumstances such and such a moral principle is to be
enforced, or whether in some cases there may not be a conflict of
duties: these are the exceptions to the ordinary rules of morality,
important, indeed, but not extending to the one thousandth or one
ten-thousandth part of human actions. This is the domain of casu-
istry. Secondly, the aspects under which the most general principles
of morals may be presented to us are many and various. The mind
of man has been more than usually active in thinking about man.
The conceptions of harmony, happiness, right, freedom, benevo-

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 Plato

lence, self-love, have all of them seemed to some philosopher or

other the truest and most comprehensive expression of morality.
There is no difference, or at any rate no great difference, of opinion
about the right and wrong of actions, but only about the general
notion which furnishes the best explanation or gives the most com-
prehensive view of them. This, in the language of Kant, is the sphere
of the metaphysic of ethics. But these two uncertainties at either
end, en tois malista katholou and en tois kath ekasta, leave space
enough for an intermediate principle which is practically certain.
The rule of human life is not dependent on the theories of phi-
losophers: we know what our duties are for the most part before we
speculate about them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us
what we already know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about
morals in general, to strengthen our conception of the virtues by
showing that they confirm one another, to prove to us, as Socrates
would have said, that they are not many, but one. There is the same
kind of pleasure and use in reducing morals, as in reducing physics,
to a few very simple truths. And not unfrequently the more general
principle may correct prejudices and misconceptions, and enable us
to regard our fellow-men in a larger and more generous spirit.
The two qualities which seem to be most required in first prin-
ciples of ethics are, (1) that they should afford a real explanation of
the facts, (2) that they should inspire the mind,—should harmo-
nize, strengthen, settle us. We can hardly estimate the influence which
a simple principle such as ‘Act so as to promote the happiness of
mankind,’ or ‘Act so that the rule on which thou actest may be
adopted as a law by all rational beings,’ may exercise on the mind of
an individual. They will often seem to open a new world to him,
like the religious conceptions of faith or the spirit of God. The dif-
ficulties of ethics disappear when we do not suffer ourselves to be
distracted between different points of view. But to maintain their
hold on us, the general principles must also be psychologically true—
they must agree with our experience, they must accord with the
habits of our minds.
When we are told that actions are right or wrong only in so far as
they tend towards happiness, we naturally ask what is meant by
‘happiness.’ For the term in the common use of language is only to

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a certain extent commensurate with moral good and evil. We should

hardly say that a good man could be utterly miserable (Arist. Eth-
ics), or place a bad man in the first rank of happiness. But yet, from
various circumstances, the measure of a man’s happiness may be out
of all proportion to his desert. And if we insist on calling the good
man alone happy, we shall be using the term in some new and tran-
scendental sense, as synonymous with well-being. We have already
seen that happiness includes the happiness of others as well as our
own; we must now comprehend unconscious as well as conscious
happiness under the same word. There is no harm in this extension
of the meaning, but a word which admits of such an extension can
hardly be made the basis of a philosophical system. The exactness
which is required in philosophy will not allow us to comprehend
under the same term two ideas so different as the subjective feeling
of pleasure or happiness and the objective reality of a state which
receives our moral approval.
Like Protarchus in the Philebus, we can give no answer to the
question, ‘What is that common quality which in all states of hu-
man life we call happiness? which includes the lower and the higher
kind of happiness, and is the aim of the noblest, as well as of the
meanest of mankind?’ If we say ‘Not pleasure, not virtue, not wis-
dom, nor yet any quality which we can abstract from these’—what
then? After seeming to hover for a time on the verge of a great
truth, we have gained only a truism.
Let us ask the question in another form. What is that which con-
stitutes happiness, over and above the several ingredients of health,
wealth, pleasure, virtue, knowledge, which are included under it?
Perhaps we answer, ‘The subjective feeling of them.’ But this is very
far from being coextensive with right. Or we may reply that happi-
ness is the whole of which the above-mentioned are the parts. Still
the question recurs, ‘In what does the whole differ from all the parts?’
And if we are unable to distinguish them, happiness will be the
mere aggregate of the goods of life.
Again, while admitting that in all right action there is an element
of happiness, we cannot help seeing that the utilitarian theory sup-
plies a much easier explanation of some virtues than of others. Of
many patriotic or benevolent actions we can give a straightforward

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 Plato

account by their tendency to promote happiness. For the explana-

tion of justice, on the other hand, we have to go a long way round.
No man is indignant with a thief because he has not promoted the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, but because he has done
him a wrong. There is an immeasurable interval between a crime
against property or life, and the omission of an act of charity or
benevolence. Yet of this interval the utilitarian theory takes no cog-
nizance. The greatest happiness principle strengthens our sense of
positive duties towards others, but weakens our recognition of their
rights. To promote in every way possible the happiness of others
may be a counsel of perfection, but hardly seems to offer any ground
for a theory of obligation. For admitting that our ideas of obligation
are partly derived from religion and custom, yet they seem also to
contain other essential elements which cannot be explained by the
tendency of actions to promote happiness. Whence comes the ne-
cessity of them? Why are some actions rather than others which
equally tend to the happiness of mankind imposed upon us with
the authority of law? ‘You ought’ and ‘you had better’ are funda-
mental distinctions in human thought; and having such distinc-
tions, why should we seek to efface and unsettle them?
Bentham and Mr. Mill are earnest in maintaining that happiness
includes the happiness of others as well as of ourselves. But what
two notions can be more opposed in many cases than these? Grant-
ing that in a perfect state of the world my own happiness and that
of all other men would coincide, in the imperfect state they often
diverge, and I cannot truly bridge over the difficulty by saying that
men will always find pleasure in sacrificing themselves or in suffer-
ing for others. Upon the greatest happiness principle it is admitted
that I am to have a share, and in consistency I should pursue my
own happiness as impartially as that of my neighbour. But who can
decide what proportion should be mine and what his, except on the
principle that I am most likely to be deceived in my own favour,
and had therefore better give the larger share, if not all, to him?
Further, it is admitted that utility and right coincide, not in par-
ticular instances, but in classes of actions. But is it not distracting to
the conscience of a man to be told that in the particular case they
are opposed? Happiness is said to be the ground of moral obliga-

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tion, yet he must not do what clearly conduces to his own happi-
ness if it is at variance with the good of the whole. Nay, further, he
will be taught that when utility and right are in apparent conflict
any amount of utility does not alter by a hair’s-breadth the morality
of actions, which cannot be allowed to deviate from established law
or usage; and that the non-detection of an immoral act, say of tell-
ing a lie, which may often make the greatest difference in the conse-
quences, not only to himself, but to all the world, makes none what-
ever in the act itself.
Again, if we are concerned not with particular actions but with
classes of actions, is the tendency of actions to happiness a principle
upon which we can classify them? There is a universal law which
imperatively declares certain acts to be right or wrong:—can there
be any universality in the law which measures actions by their ten-
dencies towards happiness? For an act which is the cause of happi-
ness to one person may be the cause of unhappiness to another; or
an act which if performed by one person may increase the happi-
ness of mankind may have the opposite effect if performed by an-
other. Right can never be wrong, or wrong right, that there are no
actions which tend to the happiness of mankind which may not
under other circumstances tend to their unhappiness. Unless we say
not only that all right actions tend to happiness, but that they tend
to happiness in the same degree in which they are right (and in that
case the word ‘right’ is plainer), we weaken the absoluteness of our
moral standard; we reduce differences in kind to differences in de-
gree; we obliterate the stamp which the authority of ages has set
upon vice and crime.
Once more: turning from theory to practice we feel the impor-
tance of retaining the received distinctions of morality. Words such
as truth, justice, honesty, virtue, love, have a simple meaning; they
have become sacred to us,—’the word of God’ written on the hu-
man heart: to no other words can the same associations be attached.
We cannot explain them adequately on principles of utility; in at-
tempting to do so we rob them of their true character. We give them
a meaning often paradoxical and distorted, and generally weaker
than their signification in common language. And as words influ-
ence men’s thoughts, we fear that the hold of morality may also be

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 Plato

weakened, and the sense of duty impaired, if virtue and vice are
explained only as the qualities which do or do not contribute to the
pleasure of the world. In that very expression we seem to detect a
false ring, for pleasure is individual not universal; we speak of eter-
nal and immutable justice, but not of eternal and immutable plea-
sure; nor by any refinement can we avoid some taint of bodily sense
adhering to the meaning of the word.
Again: the higher the view which men take of life, the more they
lose sight of their own pleasure or interest. True religion is not work-
ing for a reward only, but is ready to work equally without a reward. It
is not ‘doing the will of God for the sake of eternal happiness,’ but
doing the will of God because it is best, whether rewarded or
unrewarded. And this applies to others as well as to ourselves. For he
who sacrifices himself for the good of others, does not sacrifice him-
self that they may be saved from the persecution which he endures for
their sakes, but rather that they in their turn may be able to undergo
similar sufferings, and like him stand fast in the truth. To promote
their happiness is not his first object, but to elevate their moral na-
ture. Both in his own case and that of others there may be happiness
in the distance, but if there were no happiness he would equally act as
he does. We are speaking of the highest and noblest natures; and a
passing thought naturally arises in our minds, ‘Whether that can be
the first principle of morals which is hardly regarded in their own case
by the greatest benefactors of mankind?’
The admissions that pleasures differ in kind, and that actions
are already classified; the acknowledgment that happiness includes
the happiness of others, as well as of ourselves; the confusion (not
made by Aristotle) between conscious and unconscious happiness,
or between happiness the energy and happiness the result of the
energy, introduce uncertainty and inconsistency into the whole
enquiry. We reason readily and cheerfully from a greatest happi-
ness principle. But we find that utilitarians do not agree among
themselves about the meaning of the word. Still less can they im-
part to others a common conception or conviction of the nature
of happiness. The meaning of the word is always insensibly slip-
ping away from us, into pleasure, out of pleasure, now appearing
as the motive, now as the test of actions, and sometimes varying

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Philebus

in successive sentences. And as in a mathematical demonstration

an error in the original number disturbs the whole calculation
which follows, this fundamental uncertainty about the word viti-
ates all the applications of it. Must we not admit that a notion so
uncertain in meaning, so void of content, so at variance with com-
mon language and opinion, does not comply adequately with ei-
ther of our two requirements? It can neither strike the imagina-
tive faculty, nor give an explanation of phenomena which is in
accordance with our individual experience. It is indefinite; it sup-
plies only a partial account of human actions: it is one among
many theories of philosophers. It may be compared with other
notions, such as the chief good of Plato, which may be best ex-
pressed to us under the form of a harmony, or with Kant’s obedi-
ence to law, which may be summed up under the word ‘duty,’ or
with the Stoical ‘Follow nature,’ and seems to have no advantage
over them. All of these present a certain aspect of moral truth.
None of them are, or indeed profess to be, the only principle of
morals.
And this brings us to speak of the most serious objection to the
utilitarian system—its exclusiveness. There is no place for Kant or
Hegel, for Plato and Aristotle alongside of it. They do not reject the
greatest happiness principle, but it rejects them. Now the phenom-
ena of moral action differ, and some are best explained upon one
principle and some upon another: the virtue of justice seems to be
naturally connected with one theory of morals, the virtues of tem-
perance and benevolence with another. The characters of men also
differ; and some are more attracted by one aspect of the truth, some
by another. The firm stoical nature will conceive virtue under the
conception of law, the philanthropist under that of doing good, the
quietist under that of resignation, the enthusiast under that of faith
or love. The upright man of the world will desire above all things
that morality should be plain and fixed, and should use language in
its ordinary sense. Persons of an imaginative temperament will gen-
erally be dissatisfied with the words ‘utility’ or ‘pleasure’: their prin-
ciple of right is of a far higher character—what or where to be found
they cannot always distinctly tell;—deduced from the laws of hu-
man nature, says one; resting on the will of God, says another; based

334
 Plato

upon some transcendental idea which animates more worlds than

one, says a third:
on nomoi prokeintai upsipodes, ouranian di aithera teknothentes.
To satisfy an imaginative nature in any degree, the doctrine of
utility must be so transfigured that it becomes altogether different
and loses all simplicity.
But why, since there are different characters among men, should
we not allow them to envisage morality accordingly, and be thank-
ful to the great men who have provided for all of us modes and
instruments of thought? Would the world have been better if there
had been no Stoics or Kantists, no Platonists or Cartesians? No
more than if the other pole of moral philosophy had been excluded.
All men have principles which are above their practice; they admit
premises which, if carried to their conclusions, are a sufficient basis
of morals. In asserting liberty of speculation we are not encouraging
individuals to make right or wrong for themselves, but only con-
ceding that they may choose the form under which they prefer to
contemplate them. Nor do we say that one of these aspects is as true
and good as another; but that they all of them, if they are not mere
sophisms and illusions, define and bring into relief some part of the
truth which would have been obscure without their light. Why
should we endeavour to bind all men within the limits of a single
metaphysical conception? The necessary imperfection of language
seems to require that we should view the same truth under more
than one aspect.
We are living in the second age of utilitarianism, when the charm
of novelty and the fervour of the first disciples has passed away. The
doctrine is no longer stated in the forcible paradoxical manner of
Bentham, but has to be adapted to meet objections; its corners are
rubbed off, and the meaning of its most characteristic expressions is
softened. The array of the enemy melts away when we approach
him. The greatest happiness of the greatest number was a great origi-
nal idea when enunciated by Bentham, which leavened a genera-
tion and has left its mark on thought and civilization in all succeed-
ing times. His grasp of it had the intensity of genius. In the spirit of
an ancient philosopher he would have denied that pleasures dif-
fered in kind, or that by happiness he meant anything but pleasure.

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Philebus

He would perhaps have revolted us by his thoroughness. The ‘guard-

ianship of his doctrine’ has passed into other hands; and now we
seem to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want of exactness
while assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness, its para-
doxical explanation of several of the virtues. No philosophy has ever
stood this criticism of the next generation, though the founders of
all of them have imagined that they were built upon a rock. And the
utilitarian system, like others, has yielded to the inevitable analysis.
Even in the opinion of ‘her admirers she has been terribly damaged’
(Phil.), and is no longer the only moral philosophy, but one among
many which have contributed in various degrees to the intellectual
progress of mankind.
But because the utilitarian philosophy can no longer claim ‘the
prize,’ we must not refuse to acknowledge the great benefits con-
ferred by it on the world. All philosophies are refuted in their turn,
says the sceptic, and he looks forward to all future systems sharing
the fate of the past. All philosophies remain, says the thinker; they
have done a great work in their own day, and they supply posterity
with aspects of the truth and with instruments of thought. Though
they may be shorn of their glory, they retain their place in the or-
ganism of knowledge.
And still there remain many rules of morals which are better ex-
plained and more forcibly inculcated on the principle of utility than
on any other. The question Will such and such an action promote
the happiness of myself, my family, my country, the world? may
check the rising feeling of pride or honour which would cause a
quarrel, an estrangement, a war. ‘How can I contribute to the great-
est happiness of others?’ is another form of the question which will
be more attractive to the minds of many than a deduction of the
duty of benevolence from a priori principles. In politics especially
hardly any other argument can be allowed to have weight except the
happiness of a people. All parties alike profess to aim at this, which
though often used only as the disguise of self-interest has a great
and real influence on the minds of statesmen. In religion, again,
nothing can more tend to mitigate superstition than the belief that
the good of man is also the will of God. This is an easy test to which
the prejudices and superstitions of men may be brought:—what-

336
 Plato

ever does not tend to the good of men is not of God. And the ideal
of the greatest happiness of mankind, especially if believed to be the
will of God, when compared with the actual fact, will be one of the
strongest motives to do good to others.
On the other hand, when the temptation is to speak falsely, to be
dishonest or unjust, or in any way to interfere with the rights of
others, the argument that these actions regarded as a class will not
conduce to the happiness of mankind, though true enough, seems
to have less force than the feeling which is already implanted in the
mind by conscience and authority. To resolve this feeling into the
greatest happiness principle takes away from its sacred and authori-
tative character. The martyr will not go to the stake in order that he
may promote the happiness of mankind, but for the sake of the
truth: neither will the soldier advance to the cannon’s mouth merely
because he believes military discipline to be for the good of man-
kind. It is better for him to know that he will be shot, that he will be
disgraced, if he runs away—he has no need to look beyond military
honour, patriotism, ‘England expects every man to do his duty.’
These are stronger motives than the greatest happiness of the great-
est number, which is the thesis of a philosopher, not the watchword
of an army. For in human actions men do not always require broad
principles; duties often come home to us more when they are lim-
ited and defined, and sanctioned by custom and public opinion.
Lastly, if we turn to the history of ethics, we shall find that our
moral ideas have originated not in utility but in religion, in law, in
conceptions of nature, of an ideal good, and the like. And many
may be inclined to think that this conclusively disproves the claim
of utility to be the basis of morals. But the utilitarian will fairly
reply (see above) that we must distinguish the origin of ethics from
the principles of them—the historical germ from the later growth
of reflection. And he may also truly add that for two thousand years
and more, utility, if not the originating, has been the great correc-
tive principle in law, in politics, in religion, leading men to ask how
evil may be diminished and good increased—by what course of policy
the public interest may be promoted, and to understand that God
wills the happiness, not of some of his creatures and in this world
only, but of all of them and in every stage of their existence.

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Philebus

‘What is the place of happiness or utility in a system of moral

philosophy?’ is analogous to the question asked in the Philebus,
‘What rank does pleasure hold in the scale of goods?’ Admitting
the greatest happiness principle to be true and valuable, and the
necessary foundation of that part of morals which relates to the
consequences of actions, we still have to consider whether this or
some other general notion is the highest principle of human life.
We may try them in this comparison by three tests—definiteness,
comprehensiveness, and motive power.
There are three subjective principles of morals,—sympathy, be-
nevolence, self-love. But sympathy seems to rest morality on feel-
ings which differ widely even in good men; benevolence and self-
love torture one half of our virtuous actions into the likeness of the
other. The greatest happiness principle, which includes both, has
the advantage over all these in comprehensiveness, but the advan-
tage is purchased at the expense of definiteness.
Again, there are the legal and political principles of morals—free-
dom, equality, rights of persons; ‘Every man to count for one and no
man for more than one,’ ‘Every man equal in the eye of the law and of
the legislator.’ There is also the other sort of political morality, which
if not beginning with ‘Might is right,’ at any rate seeks to deduce our
ideas of justice from the necessities of the state and of society. Accord-
ing to this view the greatest good of men is obedience to law: the best
human government is a rational despotism, and the best idea which
we can form of a divine being is that of a despot acting not wholly
without regard to law and order. To such a view the present mixed
state of the world, not wholly evil or wholly good, is supposed to be a
witness. More we might desire to have, but are not permitted. Though
a human tyrant would be intolerable, a divine tyrant is a very toler-
able governor of the universe. This is the doctrine of Thrasymachus
adapted to the public opinion of modern times.
There is yet a third view which combines the two:—freedom is obe-
dience to the law, and the greatest order is also the greatest freedom;
‘Act so that thy action may be the law of every intelligent being.’ This
view is noble and elevating; but it seems to err, like other transcendental
principles of ethics, in being too abstract. For there is the same diffi-
culty in connecting the idea of duty with particular duties as in bridg-

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 Plato

ing the gulf between phainomena and onta; and when, as in the system
of Kant, this universal idea or law is held to be independent of space
and time, such a mataion eidos becomes almost unmeaning.
Once more there are the religious principles of morals:—the will of
God revealed in Scripture and in nature. No philosophy has supplied
a sanction equal in authority to this, or a motive equal in strength to
the belief in another life. Yet about these too we must ask What will of
God? how revealed to us, and by what proofs? Religion, like happi-
ness, is a word which has great influence apart from any consider-
ation of its content: it may be for great good or for great evil. But true
religion is the synthesis of religion and morality, beginning with di-
vine perfection in which all human perfection is embodied. It moves
among ideas of holiness, justice, love, wisdom, truth; these are to
God, in whom they are personified, what the Platonic ideas are to the
idea of good. It is the consciousness of the will of God that all men
should be as he is. It lives in this world and is known to us only
through the phenomena of this world, but it extends to worlds be-
yond. Ordinary religion which is alloyed with motives of this world
may easily be in excess, may be fanatical, may be interested, may be
the mask of ambition, may be perverted in a thousand ways. But of
that religion which combines the will of God with our highest ideas
of truth and right there can never be too much. This impossibility of
excess is the note of divine moderation.
So then, having briefly passed in review the various principles of
moral philosophy, we may now arrange our goods in order, though,
like the reader of the Philebus, we have a difficulty in distinguishing
the different aspects of them from one another, or defining the point
at which the human passes into the divine.
First, the eternal will of God in this world and in another,—justice,
holiness, wisdom, love, without succession of acts (ouch e genesis
prosestin), which is known to us in part only, and reverenced by us as
divine perfection.
Secondly, human perfection, or the fulfilment of the will of God
in this world, and co-operation with his laws revealed to us by rea-
son and experience, in nature, history, and in our own minds.
Thirdly, the elements of human perfection,—virtue, knowledge,
and right opinion.

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Philebus

Fourthly, the external conditions of perfection,—health and the

goods of life.
Fifthly, beauty and happiness,—the inward enjoyment of that
which is best and fairest in this world and in the human soul.

* * *

The Philebus is probably the latest in time of the writings of Plato

with the exception of the Laws. We have in it therefore the last devel-
opment of his philosophy. The extreme and one-sided doctrines of
the Cynics and Cyrenaics are included in a larger whole; the relations
of pleasure and knowledge to each other and to the good are authori-
tatively determined; the Eleatic Being and the Heraclitean Flux no
longer divide the empire of thought; the Mind of Anaxagoras has
become the Mind of God and of the World. The great distinction
between pure and applied science for the first time has a place in
philosophy; the natural claim of dialectic to be the Queen of the Sci-
ences is once more affirmed. This latter is the bond of union which
pervades the whole or nearly the whole of the Platonic writings. And
here as in several other dialogues (Phaedrus, Republic, etc.) it is pre-
sented to us in a manner playful yet also serious, and sometimes as if
the thought of it were too great for human utterance and came down
from heaven direct. It is the organization of knowledge wonderful to
think of at a time when knowledge itself could hardly be said to exist.
It is this more than any other element which distinguishes Plato, not
only from the presocratic philosophers, but from Socrates himself.
We have not yet reached the confines of Aristotle, but we make a
somewhat nearer approach to him in the Philebus than in the ear-
lier Platonic writings. The germs of logic are beginning to appear,
but they are not collected into a whole, or made a separate science
or system. Many thinkers of many different schools have to be in-
terposed between the Parmenides or Philebus of Plato, and the Phys-
ics or Metaphysics of Aristotle. It is this interval upon which we
have to fix our minds if we would rightly understand the character
of the transition from one to the other. Plato and Aristotle do not
dovetail into one another; nor does the one begin where the other
ends; there is a gulf between them not to be measured by time,

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 Plato

which in the fragmentary state of our knowledge it is impossible to

bridge over. It follows that the one cannot be interpreted by the
other. At any rate, it is not Plato who is to be interpreted by Aristotle,
but Aristotle by Plato. Of all philosophy and of all art the true un-
derstanding is to be sought not in the afterthoughts of posterity, but
in the elements out of which they have arisen. For the previous
stage is a tendency towards the ideal at which they are aiming; the
later is a declination or deviation from them, or even a perversion of
them. No man’s thoughts were ever so well expressed by his dis-
ciples as by himself.
But although Plato in the Philebus does not come into any close
connexion with Aristotle, he is now a long way from himself and
from the beginnings of his own philosophy. At the time of his death
he left his system still incomplete; or he may be more truly said to
have had no system, but to have lived in the successive stages or
moments of metaphysical thought which presented themselves from
time to time. The earlier discussions about universal ideas and defi-
nitions seem to have died away; the correlation of ideas has taken
their place. The flowers of rhetoric and poetry have lost their fresh-
ness and charm; and a technical language has begun to supersede
and overgrow them. But the power of thinking tends to increase
with age, and the experience of life to widen and deepen. The good
is summed up under categories which are not summa genera, but
heads or gradations of thought. The question of pleasure and the
relation of bodily pleasures to mental, which is hardly treated of
elsewhere in Plato, is here analysed with great subtlety. The mean or
measure is now made the first principle of good. Some of these
questions reappear in Aristotle, as does also the distinction between
metaphysics and mathematics. But there are many things in Plato
which have been lost in Aristotle; and many things in Aristotle not
to be found in Plato. The most remarkable deficiency in Aristotle is
the disappearance of the Platonic dialectic, which in the Aristote-
lian school is only used in a comparatively unimportant and trivial
sense. The most remarkable additions are the invention of the Syl-
logism, the conception of happiness as the foundation of morals,
the reference of human actions to the standard of the better mind of
the world, or of the one ‘sensible man’ or ‘superior person.’ His

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Philebus

conception of ousia, or essence, is not an advance upon Plato, but a

return to the poor and meagre abstractions of the Eleatic philoso-
phy. The dry attempt to reduce the presocratic philosophy by his
own rather arbitrary standard of the four causes, contrasts
unfavourably with Plato’s general discussion of the same subject
(Sophist). To attempt further to sum up the differences between the
two great philosophers would be out of place here. Any real discus-
sion of their relation to one another must be preceded by an exami-
nation into the nature and character of the Aristotelian writings
and the form in which they have come down to us. This enquiry is
not really separable from an investigation of Theophrastus as well as
Aristotle and of the remains of other schools of philosophy as well
as of the Peripatetics. But, without entering on this wide field, even
a superficial consideration of the logical and metaphysical works
which pass under the name of Aristotle, whether we suppose them
to have come directly from his hand or to be the tradition of his
school, is sufficient to show how great was the mental activity which
prevailed in the latter half of the fourth century B.C.; what eddies
and whirlpools of controversies were surging in the chaos of thought,
what transformations of the old philosophies were taking place ev-
erywhere, what eclecticisms and syncretisms and realisms and
nominalisms were affecting the mind of Hellas. The decline of phi-
losophy during this period is no less remarkable than the loss of
freedom; and the two are not unconnected with each other. But of
the multitudinous sea of opinions which were current in the age of
Aristotle we have no exact account. We know of them from allu-
sions only. And we cannot with advantage fill up the void of our
knowledge by conjecture: we can only make allowance for our ig-
norance.
There are several passages in the Philebus which are very charac-
teristic of Plato, and which we shall do well to consider not only in
their connexion, but apart from their connexion as inspired sayings
or oracles which receive their full interpretation only from the his-
tory of philosophy in later ages. The more serious attacks on tradi-
tional beliefs which are often veiled under an unusual simplicity or
irony are of this kind. Such, for example, is the excessive and more
than human awe which Socrates expresses about the names of the

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gods, which may be not unaptly compared with the importance

attached by mankind to theological terms in other ages; for this also
may be comprehended under the satire of Socrates. Let us observe
the religious and intellectual enthusiasm which shines forth in the
following, ‘The power and faculty of loving the truth, and of doing
all things for the sake of the truth’: or, again, the singular acknowl-
edgment which may be regarded as the anticipation of a new logic,
that ‘In going to war for mind I must have weapons of a different
make from those which I used before, although some of the old
ones may do again.’ Let us pause awhile to reflect on a sentence
which is full of meaning to reformers of religion or to the original
thinker of all ages: ‘Shall we then agree with them of old time, and
merely reassert the notions of others without risk to ourselves; or
shall we venture also to share in the risk and bear the reproach which
will await us’: i.e. if we assert mind to be the author of nature. Let
us note the remarkable words, ‘That in the divine nature of Zeus
there is the soul and mind of a King, because there is in him the
power of the cause,’ a saying in which theology and philosophy are
blended and reconciled; not omitting to observe the deep insight
into human nature which is shown by the repetition of the same
thought ‘All philosophers are agreed that mind is the king of heaven
and earth’ with the ironical addition, ‘in this way truly they mag-
nify themselves.’ Nor let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by
the generous youth at the ‘blasphemy’ of those who say that Chaos
and Chance Medley created the world; or the significance of the
words ‘those who said of old time that mind rules the universe’; or
the pregnant observation that ‘we are not always conscious of what
we are doing or of what happens to us,’ a chance expression to which
if philosophers had attended they would have escaped many errors
in psychology. We may contrast the contempt which is poured upon
the verbal difficulty of the one and many, and the seriousness with
the unity of opposites is regarded from the higher point of view of
abstract ideas: or compare the simple manner in which the ques-
tion of cause and effect and their mutual dependence is regarded by
Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon),
and the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and
Metaphysics of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find

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Philebus

a use in so many centuries. When we consider the backwardness of

knowledge in the age of Plato, the boldness with which he looks
forward into the distance, the many questions of modern philoso-
phy which are anticipated in his writings, may we not truly describe
him in his own words as a ‘spectator of all time and of all existence’?

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 Plato

PHILEBUS
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Protarchus, Philebus.

SOCRATES: Observe, Protarchus, the nature of the position which

you are now going to take from Philebus, and what the other posi-
tion is which I maintain, and which, if you do not approve of it, is
to be controverted by you. Shall you and I sum up the two sides?

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and

delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every
living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and
intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true
reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure for all who
are able to partake of them, and that to all such who are or ever will
be they are the most advantageous of all things. Have I not given,
Philebus, a fair statement of the two sides of the argument?

PHILEBUS: Nothing could be fairer, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And do you, Protarchus, accept the position which is

assigned to you?

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: I cannot do otherwise, since our excellent Philebus

has left the field.

SOCRATES: Surely the truth about these matters ought, by all

means, to be ascertained.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Shall we further agree—

PROTARCHUS: To what?

SOCRATES: That you and I must now try to indicate some state
and disposition of the soul, which has the property of making all
men happy.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, by all means.

SOCRATES: And you say that pleasure, and I say that wisdom, is
such a state?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And what if there be a third state, which is better

than either? Then both of us are vanquished—are we not? But if
this life, which really has the power of making men happy, turn out
to be more akin to pleasure than to wisdom, the life of pleasure may
still have the advantage over the life of wisdom.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Or suppose that the better life is more nearly allied to

wisdom, then wisdom conquers, and pleasure is defeated;—do you
agree?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

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 Plato

SOCRATES: And what do you say, Philebus?

PHILEBUS: I say, and shall always say, that pleasure is easily the
conqueror; but you must decide for yourself, Protarchus.

PROTARCHUS: You, Philebus, have handed over the argument

to me, and have no longer a voice in the matter?

PHILEBUS: True enough. Nevertheless I would clear myself and

deliver my soul of you; and I call the goddess herself to witness that
I now do so.

PROTARCHUS: You may appeal to us; we too will be the wit-

nesses of your words. And now, Socrates, whether Philebus is pleased
or displeased, we will proceed with the argument.

SOCRATES: Then let us begin with the goddess herself, of whom

Philebus says that she is called Aphrodite, but that her real name is
Pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: The awe which I always feel, Protarchus, about the

names of the gods is more than human—it exceeds all other fears.
And now I would not sin against Aphrodite by naming her amiss;
let her be called what she pleases. But Pleasure I know to be mani-
fold, and with her, as I was just now saying, we must begin, and
consider what her nature is. She has one name, and therefore you
would imagine that she is one; and yet surely she takes the most
varied and even unlike forms. For do we not say that the intemper-
ate has pleasure, and that the temperate has pleasure in his very
temperance,—that the fool is pleased when he is full of foolish fan-
cies and hopes, and that the wise man has pleasure in his wisdom?
and how foolish would any one be who affirmed that all these op-
posite pleasures are severally alike!

PROTARCHUS: Why, Socrates, they are opposed in so far as they

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Philebus

spring from opposite sources, but they are not in themselves oppo-
site. For must not pleasure be of all things most absolutely like
pleasure,—that is, like itself?

SOCRATES: Yes, my good friend, just as colour is like colour;—in

so far as colours are colours, there is no difference between them;
and yet we all know that black is not only unlike, but even abso-
lutely opposed to white: or again, as figure is like figure, for all fig-
ures are comprehended under one class; and yet particular figures
may be absolutely opposed to one another, and there is an infinite
diversity of them. And we might find similar examples in many
other things; therefore do not rely upon this argument, which would
go to prove the unity of the most extreme opposites. And I suspect
that we shall find a similar opposition among pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: Very likely; but how will this invalidate the argu-
ment?

SOCRATES: Why, I shall reply, that dissimilar as they are, you

apply to them a new predicate, for you say that all pleasant things
are good; now although no one can argue that pleasure is not plea-
sure, he may argue, as we are doing, that pleasures are oftener bad
than good; but you call them all good, and at the same time are
compelled, if you are pressed, to acknowledge that they are unlike.
And so you must tell us what is the identical quality existing alike in
good and bad pleasures, which makes you designate all of them as
good.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean, Socrates? Do you think that

any one who asserts pleasure to be the good, will tolerate the notion
that some pleasures are good and others bad?

SOCRATES: And yet you will acknowledge that they are different
from one another, and sometimes opposed?

PROTARCHUS: Not in so far as they are pleasures.

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 Plato

SOCRATES: That is a return to the old position, Protarchus, and

so we are to say (are we?) that there is no difference in pleasures, but
that they are all alike; and the examples which have just been cited
do not pierce our dull minds, but we go on arguing all the same,
like the weakest and most inexperienced reasoners? (Probably cor-
rupt.)

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Why, I mean to say, that in self-defence I may, if I

like, follow your example, and assert boldly that the two things most
unlike are most absolutely alike; and the result will be that you and
I will prove ourselves to be very tyros in the art of disputing; and the
argument will be blown away and lost. Suppose that we put back,
and return to the old position; then perhaps we may come to an
understanding with one another.

PROTARCHUS: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: Shall I, Protarchus, have my own question asked of

me by you?

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: Ask me whether wisdom and science and mind, and

those other qualities which I, when asked by you at first what is the
nature of the good, affirmed to be good, are not in the same case
with the pleasures of which you spoke.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: The sciences are a numerous class, and will be found to

present great differences. But even admitting that, like the pleasures,
they are opposite as well as different, should I be worthy of the name
of dialectician if, in order to avoid this difficulty, I were to say (as you
are saying of pleasure) that there is no difference between one science
and another;—would not the argument founder and disappear like

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Philebus

an idle tale, although we might ourselves escape drowning by cling-

ing to a fallacy?

PROTARCHUS: May none of this befal us, except the deliver-

ance! Yet I like the even-handed justice which is applied to both our
arguments. Let us assume, then, that there are many and diverse
pleasures, and many and different sciences.

SOCRATES: And let us have no concealment, Protarchus, of the

differences between my good and yours; but let us bring them to
the light in the hope that, in the process of testing them, they may
show whether pleasure is to be called the good, or wisdom, or some
third quality; for surely we are not now simply contending in order
that my view or that yours may prevail, but I presume that we ought
both of us to be fighting for the truth.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly we ought.

SOCRATES: Then let us have a more definite understanding and

establish the principle on which the argument rests.

PROTARCHUS: What principle?

SOCRATES: A principle about which all men are always in a dif-

ficulty, and some men sometimes against their will.

PROTARCHUS: Speak plainer.

SOCRATES: The principle which has just turned up, which is a

marvel of nature; for that one should be many or many one, are
wonderful propositions; and he who affirms either is very open to
attack.

PROTARCHUS: Do you mean, when a person says that I,

Protarchus, am by nature one and also many, dividing the single
‘me’ into many ‘me’s,’ and even opposing them as great and small,
light and heavy, and in ten thousand other ways?

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 Plato

SOCRATES: Those, Protarchus, are the common and acknowl-

edged paradoxes about the one and many, which I may say that
everybody has by this time agreed to dismiss as childish and obvi-
ous and detrimental to the true course of thought; and no more
favour is shown to that other puzzle, in which a person proves the
members and parts of anything to be divided, and then confessing
that they are all one, says laughingly in disproof of his own words:
Why, here is a miracle, the one is many and infinite, and the many
are only one.

PROTARCHUS: But what, Socrates, are those other marvels con-

nected with this subject which, as you imply, have not yet become
common and acknowledged?

SOCRATES: When, my boy, the one does not belong to the class
of things that are born and perish, as in the instances which we were
giving, for in those cases, and when unity is of this concrete nature,
there is, as I was saying, a universal consent that no refutation is
needed; but when the assertion is made that man is one, or ox is
one, or beauty one, or the good one, then the interest which at-
taches to these and similar unities and the attempt which is made to
divide them gives birth to a controversy.

PROTARCHUS: Of what nature?

SOCRATES: In the first place, as to whether these unities have a

real existence; and then how each individual unity, being always the
same, and incapable either of generation or of destruction, but re-
taining a permanent individuality, can be conceived either as dis-
persed and multiplied in the infinity of the world of generation, or
as still entire and yet divided from itself, which latter would seem to
be the greatest impossibility of all, for how can one and the same
thing be at the same time in one and in many things? These,
Protarchus, are the real difficulties, and this is the one and many to
which they relate; they are the source of great perplexity if ill de-
cided, and the right determination of them is very helpful.

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Then, Socrates, let us begin by clearing up these

questions.

SOCRATES: That is what I should wish.

PROTARCHUS: And I am sure that all my other friends will be

glad to hear them discussed; Philebus, fortunately for us, is not dis-
posed to move, and we had better not stir him up with questions.

SOCRATES: Good; and where shall we begin this great and mul-
tifarious battle, in which such various points are at issue? Shall we
begin thus?

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: We say that the one and many become identified

by thought, and that now, as in time past, they run about to-
gether, in and out of every word which is uttered, and that this
union of them will never cease, and is not now beginning, but is,
as I believe, an everlasting quality of thought itself, which never
grows old. Any young man, when he first tastes these subtleties, is
delighted, and fancies that he has found a treasure of wisdom; in
the first enthusiasm of his joy he leaves no stone, or rather no
thought unturned, now rolling up the many into the one, and
kneading them together, now unfolding and dividing them; he
puzzles himself first and above all, and then he proceeds to puzzle
his neighbours, whether they are older or younger, or of his own
age—that makes no difference; neither father nor mother does he
spare; no human being who has ears is safe from him, hardly even
his dog, and a barbarian would have no chance of escaping him, if
an interpreter could only be found.

PROTARCHUS: Considering, Socrates, how many we are, and

that all of us are young men, is there not a danger that we and
Philebus may all set upon you, if you abuse us? We understand
what you mean; but is there no charm by which we may dispel all
this confusion, no more excellent way of arriving at the truth? If

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 Plato

there is, we hope that you will guide us into that way, and we will do
our best to follow, for the enquiry in which we are engaged, Socrates,
is not unimportant.

SOCRATES: The reverse of unimportant, my boys, as Philebus

calls you, and there neither is nor ever will be a better than my own
favourite way, which has nevertheless already often deserted me and
left me helpless in the hour of need.

PROTARCHUS: Tell us what that is.

SOCRATES: One which may be easily pointed out, but is by no

means easy of application; it is the parent of all the discoveries in
the arts.

PROTARCHUS: Tell us what it is.

SOCRATES: A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods

tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and there-
with a blaze of light; and the ancients, who were our betters and
nearer the gods than we are, handed down the tradition, that what-
ever things are said to be are composed of one and many, and have
the finite and infinite implanted in them: seeing, then, that such
is the order of the world, we too ought in every enquiry to begin
by laying down one idea of that which is the subject of enquiry;
this unity we shall find in everything. Having found it, we may
next proceed to look for two, if there be two, or, if not, then for
three or some other number, subdividing each of these units, until
at last the unity with which we began is seen not only to be one
and many and infinite, but also a definite number; the infinite
must not be suffered to approach the many until the entire num-
ber of the species intermediate between unity and infinity has been
discovered,—then, and not till then, we may rest from division,
and without further troubling ourselves about the endless indi-
viduals may allow them to drop into infinity. This, as I was say-
ing, is the way of considering and learning and teaching one an-
other, which the gods have handed down to us. But the wise men

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Philebus

of our time are either too quick or too slow in conceiving plurality
in unity. Having no method, they make their one and many any-
how, and from unity pass at once to infinity; the intermediate
steps never occur to them. And this, I repeat, is what makes the
difference between the mere art of disputation and true dialectic.

PROTARCHUS: I think that I partly understand you Socrates,

but I should like to have a clearer notion of what you are saying.

SOCRATES: I may illustrate my meaning by the letters of the

alphabet, Protarchus, which you were made to learn as a child.

PROTARCHUS: How do they afford an illustration?

SOCRATES: The sound which passes through the lips whether of

an individual or of all men is one and yet infinite.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And yet not by knowing either that sound is one or

that sound is infinite are we perfect in the art of speech, but the
knowledge of the number and nature of sounds is what makes a
man a grammarian.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And the knowledge which makes a man a musician

is of the same kind.

PROTARCHUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Sound is one in music as well as in grammar?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And there is a higher note and a lower note, and a

note of equal pitch:—may we affirm so much?

354
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: But you would not be a real musician if this was all
that you knew; though if you did not know this you would know
almost nothing of music.

PROTARCHUS: Nothing.

SOCRATES: But when you have learned what sounds are high
and what low, and the number and nature of the intervals and their
limits or proportions, and the systems compounded out of them,
which our fathers discovered, and have handed down to us who are
their descendants under the name of harmonies; and the affections
corresponding to them in the movements of the human body, which
when measured by numbers ought, as they say, to be called rhythms
and measures; and they tell us that the same principle should be
applied to every one and many;—when, I say, you have learned all
this, then, my dear friend, you are perfect; and you may be said to
understand any other subject, when you have a similar grasp of it.
But the infinity of kinds and the infinity of individuals which there
is in each of them, when not classified, creates in every one of us a
state of infinite ignorance; and he who never looks for number in
anything, will not himself be looked for in the number of famous
men.

PROTARCHUS: I think that what Socrates is now saying is excel-

lent, Philebus.

PHILEBUS: I think so too, but how do his words bear upon us

and upon the argument?

SOCRATES: Philebus is right in asking that question of us,

Protarchus.

PROTARCHUS: Indeed he is, and you must answer him.

SOCRATES: I will; but you must let me make one little remark

355
Philebus

first about these matters; I was saying, that he who begins with any
individual unity, should proceed from that, not to infinity, but to a
definite number, and now I say conversely, that he who has to begin
with infinity should not jump to unity, but he should look about
for some number representing a certain quantity, and thus out of all
end in one. And now let us return for an illustration of our prin-
ciple to the case of letters.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Some god or divine man, who in the Egyptian leg-

end is said to have been Theuth, observing that the human voice
was infinite, first distinguished in this infinity a certain number of
vowels, and then other letters which had sound, but were not pure
vowels (i.e., the semivowels); these too exist in a definite number;
and lastly, he distinguished a third class of letters which we now call
mutes, without voice and without sound, and divided these, and
likewise the two other classes of vowels and semivowels, into the
individual sounds, and told the number of them, and gave to each
and all of them the name of letters; and observing that none of us
could learn any one of them and not learn them all, and in consid-
eration of this common bond which in a manner united them, he
assigned to them all a single art, and this he called the art of gram-
mar or letters.

PHILEBUS: The illustration, Protarchus, has assisted me in un-

derstanding the original statement, but I still feel the defect of which
I just now complained.

SOCRATES: Are you going to ask, Philebus, what this has to do

with the argument?

PHILEBUS: Yes, that is a question which Protarchus and I have

been long asking.

SOCRATES: Assuredly you have already arrived at the answer to

the question which, as you say, you have been so long asking?

356
 Plato

PHILEBUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Did we not begin by enquiring into the comparative

eligibility of pleasure and wisdom?

PHILEBUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And we maintain that they are each of them one?

PHILEBUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the precise question to which the previous dis-

cussion desires an answer is, how they are one and also many (i.e.,
how they have one genus and many species), and are not at once
infinite, and what number of species is to be assigned to either of
them before they pass into infinity (i.e. into the infinite number of
individuals).

PROTARCHUS: That is a very serious question, Philebus, to which

Socrates has ingeniously brought us round, and please to consider
which of us shall answer him; there may be something ridiculous in
my being unable to answer, and therefore imposing the task upon
you, when I have undertaken the whole charge of the argument, but
if neither of us were able to answer, the result methinks would be still
more ridiculous. Let us consider, then, what we are to do:—Socrates,
if I understood him rightly, is asking whether there are not kinds of
pleasure, and what is the number and nature of them, and the same
of wisdom.

SOCRATES: Most true, O son of Callias; and the previous argu-

ment showed that if we are not able to tell the kinds of everything
that has unity, likeness, sameness, or their opposites, none of us will
be of the smallest use in any enquiry.

PROTARCHUS: That seems to be very near the truth, Socrates.

Happy would the wise man be if he knew all things, and the next
best thing for him is that he should know himself. Why do I say so

357
Philebus

at this moment? I will tell you. You, Socrates, have granted us this
opportunity of conversing with you, and are ready to assist us in
determining what is the best of human goods. For when Philebus
said that pleasure and delight and enjoyment and the like were the
chief good, you answered—No, not those, but another class of goods;
and we are constantly reminding ourselves of what you said, and
very properly, in order that we may not forget to examine and com-
pare the two. And these goods, which in your opinion are to be
designated as superior to pleasure, and are the true objects of pur-
suit, are mind and knowledge and understanding and art, and the
like. There was a dispute about which were the best, and we play-
fully threatened that you should not be allowed to go home until
the question was settled; and you agreed, and placed yourself at our
disposal. And now, as children say, what has been fairly given can-
not be taken back; cease then to fight against us in this way.

SOCRATES: In what way?

PHILEBUS: Do not perplex us, and keep asking questions of us to

which we have not as yet any sufficient answer to give; let us not
imagine that a general puzzling of us all is to be the end of our
discussion, but if we are unable to answer, do you answer, as you
have promised. Consider, then, whether you will divide pleasure
and knowledge according to their kinds; or you may let the matter
drop, if you are able and willing to find some other mode of clear-
ing up our controversy.

SOCRATES: If you say that, I have nothing to apprehend, for the

words ‘if you are willing’ dispel all my fear; and, moreover, a god
seems to have recalled something to my mind.

PHILEBUS: What is that?

SOCRATES: I remember to have heard long ago certain discus-

sions about pleasure and wisdom, whether awake or in a dream I
cannot tell; they were to the effect that neither the one nor the other
of them was the good, but some third thing, which was different

358
 Plato

from them, and better than either. If this be clearly established,

then pleasure will lose the victory, for the good will cease to be iden-
tified with her:—Am I not right?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And there will cease to be any need of distinguishing

the kinds of pleasures, as I am inclined to think, but this will appear
more clearly as we proceed.

PROTARCHUS: Capital, Socrates; pray go on as you propose.

SOCRATES: But, let us first agree on some little points.

PROTARCHUS: What are they?

SOCRATES: Is the good perfect or imperfect?

PROTARCHUS: The most perfect, Socrates, of all things.

SOCRATES: And is the good sufficient?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly, and in a degree surpassing all other

things.

SOCRATES: And no one can deny that all percipient beings desire
and hunt after good, and are eager to catch and have the good about
them, and care not for the attainment of anything which is not
accompanied by good.

PROTARCHUS: That is undeniable.

SOCRATES: Now let us part off the life of pleasure from the life of
wisdom, and pass them in review.

PROTARCHUS: How do you mean?

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Philebus

SOCRATES: Let there be no wisdom in the life of pleasure, nor

any pleasure in the life of wisdom, for if either of them is the chief
good, it cannot be supposed to want anything, but if either is shown
to want anything, then it cannot really be the chief good.

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: And will you help us to test these two lives?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then answer.

PROTARCHUS: Ask.

SOCRATES: Would you choose, Protarchus, to live all your life

long in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasures?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly I should.

SOCRATES: Would you consider that there was still anything

wanting to you if you had perfect pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Reflect; would you not want wisdom and intelligence

and forethought, and similar qualities? would you not at any rate
want sight?

PROTARCHUS: Why should I? Having pleasure I should have all

things.

SOCRATES: Living thus, you would always throughout your life

enjoy the greatest pleasures?

PROTARCHUS: I should.

360
 Plato

SOCRATES: But if you had neither mind, nor memory, nor knowl-
edge, nor true opinion, you would in the first place be utterly igno-
rant of whether you were pleased or not, because you would be
entirely devoid of intelligence.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And similarly, if you had no memory you would not

recollect that you had ever been pleased, nor would the slightest
recollection of the pleasure which you feel at any moment remain
with you; and if you had no true opinion you would not think that
you were pleased when you were; and if you had no power of calcu-
lation you would not be able to calculate on future pleasure, and
your life would be the life, not of a man, but of an oyster or ‘pulmo
marinus.’ Could this be otherwise?

PROTARCHUS: No.

SOCRATES: But is such a life eligible?

PROTARCHUS: I cannot answer you, Socrates; the argument has

taken away from me the power of speech.

SOCRATES: We must keep up our spirits;—let us now take the

life of mind and examine it in turn.

PROTARCHUS: And what is this life of mind?

SOCRATES: I want to know whether any one of us would consent

to live, having wisdom and mind and knowledge and memory of all
things, but having no sense of pleasure or pain, and wholly unaf-
fected by these and the like feelings?

PROTARCHUS: Neither life, Socrates, appears eligible to me, nor

is likely, as I should imagine, to be chosen by any one else.

SOCRATES: What would you say, Protarchus, to both of these in

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Philebus

one, or to one that was made out of the union of the two?

PROTARCHUS: Out of the union, that is, of pleasure with mind

and wisdom?

SOCRATES: Yes, that is the life which I mean.

PROTARCHUS: There can be no difference of opinion; not some

but all would surely choose this third rather than either of the other
two, and in addition to them.

SOCRATES: But do you see the consequence?

PROTARCHUS: To be sure I do. The consequence is, that two out

of the three lives which have been proposed are neither sufficient
nor eligible for man or for animal.

SOCRATES: Then now there can be no doubt that neither of them

has the good, for the one which had would certainly have been
sufficient and perfect and eligible for every living creature or thing
that was able to live such a life; and if any of us had chosen any
other, he would have chosen contrary to the nature of the truly
eligible, and not of his own free will, but either through ignorance
or from some unhappy necessity.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly that seems to be true.

SOCRATES: And now have I not sufficiently shown that Philebus’

goddess is not to be regarded as identical with the good?

PHILEBUS: Neither is your ‘mind’ the good, Socrates, for that

will be open to the same objections.

SOCRATES: Perhaps, Philebus, you may be right in saying so of

my ‘mind’; but of the true, which is also the divine mind, far other-
wise. However, I will not at present claim the first place for mind as
against the mixed life; but we must come to some understanding

362
 Plato

about the second place. For you might affirm pleasure and I mind
to be the cause of the mixed life; and in that case although neither
of them would be the good, one of them might be imagined to be
the cause of the good. And I might proceed further to argue in
opposition to Philebus, that the element which makes this mixed
life eligible and good, is more akin and more similar to mind than
to pleasure. And if this is true, pleasure cannot be truly said to share
either in the first or second place, and does not, if I may trust my
own mind, attain even to the third.

PROTARCHUS: Truly, Socrates, pleasure appears to me to have

had a fall; in fighting for the palm, she has been smitten by the
argument, and is laid low. I must say that mind would have fallen
too, and may therefore be thought to show discretion in not put-
ting forward a similar claim. And if pleasure were deprived not
only of the first but of the second place, she would be terribly dam-
aged in the eyes of her admirers, for not even to them would she still
appear as fair as before.

SOCRATES: Well, but had we not better leave her now, and not
pain her by applying the crucial test, and finally detecting her?

PROTARCHUS: Nonsense, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Why? because I said that we had better not pain

pleasure, which is an impossibility?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, and more than that, because you do not

seem to be aware that none of us will let you go home until you
have finished the argument.

SOCRATES: Heavens! Protarchus, that will be a tedious business,

and just at present not at all an easy one. For in going to war in the
cause of mind, who is aspiring to the second prize, I ought to have
weapons of another make from those which I used before; some,
however, of the old ones may do again. And must I then finish the
argument?

363
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Of course you must.

SOCRATES: Let us be very careful in laying the foundation.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Let us divide all existing things into two, or rather, if

you do not object, into three classes.

PROTARCHUS: Upon what principle would you make the divi-

sion?

SOCRATES: Let us take some of our newly-found notions.

PROTARCHUS: Which of them?

SOCRATES: Were we not saying that God revealed a finite ele-

ment of existence, and also an infinite?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Let us assume these two principles, and also a third,

which is compounded out of them; but I fear that I am ridiculously
clumsy at these processes of division and enumeration.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean, my good friend?

SOCRATES: I say that a fourth class is still wanted.

PROTARCHUS: What will that be?

SOCRATES: Find the cause of the third or compound, and add

this as a fourth class to the three others.

PROTARCHUS: And would you like to have a fifth class or cause

of resolution as well as a cause of composition?

364
 Plato

SOCRATES: Not, I think, at present; but if I want a fifth at some

future time you shall allow me to have it.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Let us begin with the first three; and as we find two
out of the three greatly divided and dispersed, let us endeavour to
reunite them, and see how in each of them there is a one and many.

PROTARCHUS: If you would explain to me a little more about

them, perhaps I might be able to follow you.

SOCRATES: Well, the two classes are the same which I mentioned
before, one the finite, and the other the infinite; I will first show
that the infinite is in a certain sense many, and the finite may be
hereafter discussed.

PROTARCHUS: I agree.

SOCRATES: And now consider well; for the question to which I

invite your attention is difficult and controverted. When you speak
of hotter and colder, can you conceive any limit in those qualities?
Does not the more and less, which dwells in their very nature, pre-
vent their having any end? for if they had an end, the more and less
would themselves have an end.

PROTARCHUS: That is most true.

SOCRATES: Ever, as we say, into the hotter and the colder there
enters a more and a less.

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then, says the argument, there is never any end of

them, and being endless they must also be infinite.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, Socrates, that is exceedingly true.

365
Philebus

SOCRATES: Yes, my dear Protarchus, and your answer reminds

me that such an expression as ‘exceedingly,’ which you have just
uttered, and also the term ‘gently,’ have the same significance as
more or less; for whenever they occur they do not allow of the exist-
ence of quantity—they are always introducing degrees into actions,
instituting a comparison of a more or a less excessive or a more or a
less gentle, and at each creation of more or less, quantity disappears.
For, as I was just now saying, if quantity and measure did not disap-
pear, but were allowed to intrude in the sphere of more and less and
the other comparatives, these last would be driven out of their own
domain. When definite quantity is once admitted, there can be no
longer a ‘hotter’ or a ‘colder’ (for these are always progressing, and
are never in one stay); but definite quantity is at rest, and has ceased
to progress. Which proves that comparatives, such as the hotter and
the colder, are to be ranked in the class of the infinite.

PROTARCHUS: Your remark certainly has the look of truth,

Socrates; but these subjects, as you were saying, are difficult to fol-
low at first. I think however, that if I could hear the argument re-
peated by you once or twice, there would be a substantial agree-
ment between us.

SOCRATES: Yes, and I will try to meet your wish; but, as I would
rather not waste time in the enumeration of endless particulars, let
me know whether I may not assume as a note of the infinite—

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: I want to know whether such things as appear to us

to admit of more or less, or are denoted by the words ‘exceedingly,’
‘gently,’ ‘extremely,’ and the like, may not be referred to the class of
the infinite, which is their unity, for, as was asserted in the previous
argument, all things that were divided and dispersed should be
brought together, and have the mark or seal of some one nature, if
possible, set upon them—do you remember?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

366
 Plato

SOCRATES: And all things which do not admit of more or less,

but admit their opposites, that is to say, first of all, equality, and the
equal, or again, the double, or any other ratio of number and mea-
sure—all these may, I think, be rightly reckoned by us in the class of
the limited or finite; what do you say?

PROTARCHUS: Excellent, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And now what nature shall we ascribe to the third or

compound kind?

PROTARCHUS: You, I think, will have to tell me that.

SOCRATES: Rather God will tell you, if there be any God who
will listen to my prayers.

PROTARCHUS: Offer up a prayer, then, and think.

SOCRATES: I am thinking, Protarchus, and I believe that some

God has befriended us.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean, and what proof have you to

offer of what you are saying?

SOCRATES: I will tell you, and do you listen to my words.

PROTARCHUS: Proceed.

SOCRATES: Were we not speaking just now of hotter and colder?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Add to them drier, wetter, more, less, swifter, slower,

greater, smaller, and all that in the preceding argument we placed
under the unity of more and less.

PROTARCHUS: In the class of the infinite, you mean?

367
Philebus

SOCRATES: Yes; and now mingle this with the other.

PROTARCHUS: What is the other.

SOCRATES: The class of the finite which we ought to have brought

together as we did the infinite; but, perhaps, it will come to the
same thing if we do so now;—when the two are combined, a third
will appear.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean by the class of the finite?

SOCRATES: The class of the equal and the double, and any class
which puts an end to difference and opposition, and by introducing
number creates harmony and proportion among the different elements.

PROTARCHUS: I understand; you seem to me to mean that the

various opposites, when you mingle with them the class of the fi-
nite, takes certain forms.

SOCRATES: Yes, that is my meaning.

PROTARCHUS: Proceed.

SOCRATES: Does not the right participation in the finite give

health—in disease, for instance?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And whereas the high and low, the swift and the slow
are infinite or unlimited, does not the addition of the principles
aforesaid introduce a limit, and perfect the whole frame of music?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly.

SOCRATES: Or, again, when cold and heat prevail, does not the
introduction of them take away excess and indefiniteness, and in-
fuse moderation and harmony?

368
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And from a like admixture of the finite and infinite

come the seasons, and all the delights of life?

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: I omit ten thousand other things, such as beauty and

health and strength, and the many beauties and high perfections of
the soul: O my beautiful Philebus, the goddess, methinks, seeing
the universal wantonness and wickedness of all things, and that there
was in them no limit to pleasures and self-indulgence, devised the
limit of law and order, whereby, as you say, Philebus, she torments,
or as I maintain, delivers the soul.—What think you, Protarchus?

PROTARCHUS: Her ways are much to my mind, Socrates.

SOCRATES: You will observe that I have spoken of three classes?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, I think that I understand you: you mean to

say that the infinite is one class, and that the finite is a second class
of existences; but what you would make the third I am not so cer-
tain.

SOCRATES: That is because the amazing variety of the third class

is too much for you, my dear friend; but there was not this diffi-
culty with the infinite, which also comprehended many classes, for
all of them were sealed with the note of more and less, and therefore
appeared one.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the finite or limit had not many divisions, and we
readily acknowledged it to be by nature one?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

369
Philebus

SOCRATES: Yes, indeed; and when I speak of the third class, un-
derstand me to mean any offspring of these, being a birth into true
being, effected by the measure which the limit introduces.

PROTARCHUS: I understand.

SOCRATES: Still there was, as we said, a fourth class to be investi-

gated, and you must assist in the investigation; for does not every-
thing which comes into being, of necessity come into being through
a cause?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly; for how can there be anything which

has no cause?

SOCRATES: And is not the agent the same as the cause in all
except name; the agent and the cause may be rightly called one?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the patient, or effect;

we shall find that they too differ, as I was saying, only in name—
shall we not?

PROTARCHUS: We shall.

SOCRATES: The agent or cause always naturally leads, and the

patient or effect naturally follows it?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then the cause and what is subordinate to it in gen-

eration are not the same, but different?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Did not the things which were generated, and the
things out of which they were generated, furnish all the three classes?

370
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the creator or cause of them has been satisfacto-

rily proven to be distinct from them,—and may therefore be called
a fourth principle?

PROTARCHUS: So let us call it.

SOCRATES: Quite right; but now, having distinguished the four,

I think that we had better refresh our memories by recapitulating
each of them in order.

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Then the first I will call the infinite or unlimited,

and the second the finite or limited; then follows the third, an es-
sence compound and generated; and I do not think that I shall be
far wrong in speaking of the cause of mixture and generation as the
fourth.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And now what is the next question, and how came
we hither? Were we not enquiring whether the second place be-
longed to pleasure or wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: We were.

SOCRATES: And now, having determined these points, shall we

not be better able to decide about the first and second place, which
was the original subject of dispute?

PROTARCHUS: I dare say.

SOCRATES: We said, if you remember, that the mixed life of plea-

sure and wisdom was the conqueror—did we not?

371
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And we see what is the place and nature of this life
and to what class it is to be assigned?

PROTARCHUS: Beyond a doubt.

SOCRATES: This is evidently comprehended in the third or mixed

class; which is not composed of any two particular ingredients, but
of all the elements of infinity, bound down by the finite, and may
therefore be truly said to comprehend the conqueror life.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And what shall we say, Philebus, of your life which is

all sweetness; and in which of the aforesaid classes is that to be placed?
Perhaps you will allow me to ask you a question before you answer?

PHILEBUS: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: Have pleasure and pain a limit, or do they belong to

the class which admits of more and less?

PHILEBUS: They belong to the class which admits of more,

Socrates; for pleasure would not be perfectly good if she were not
infinite in quantity and degree.

SOCRATES: Nor would pain, Philebus, be perfectly evil. And there-

fore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to pleasure some
degree of good. But now—admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the
nature of the infinite—in which of the aforesaid classes, O Protarchus
and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge
and mind? And let us be careful, for I think that the danger will be very
serious if we err on this point.

PHILEBUS: You magnify, Socrates, the importance of your favourite

god.

372
 Plato

SOCRATES: And you, my friend, are also magnifying your favourite

goddess; but still I must beg you to answer the question.

PROTARCHUS: Socrates is quite right, Philebus, and we must

submit to him.

PHILEBUS: And did not you, Protarchus, propose to answer in

my place?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly I did; but I am now in a great strait,

and I must entreat you, Socrates, to be our spokesman, and then we
shall not say anything wrong or disrespectful of your favourite.

SOCRATES: I must obey you, Protarchus; nor is the task which

you impose a difficult one; but did I really, as Philebus implies,
disconcert you with my playful solemnity, when I asked the ques-
tion to what class mind and knowledge belong?

PROTARCHUS: You did, indeed, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Yet the answer is easy, since all philosophers assert with one
voice that mind is the king of heaven and earth—in reality they are mag-
nifying themselves. And perhaps they are right. But still I should like to
consider the class of mind, if you do not object, a little more fully.

PHILEBUS: Take your own course, Socrates, and never mind length;
we shall not tire of you.

SOCRATES: Very good; let us begin then, Protarchus, by asking a

question.

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: Whether all this which they call the universe is left to
the guidance of unreason and chance medley, or, on the contrary, as
our fathers have declared, ordered and governed by a marvellous
intelligence and wisdom.

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Wide asunder are the two assertions, illustrious

Socrates, for that which you were just now saying to me appears to
be blasphemy; but the other assertion, that mind orders all things,
is worthy of the aspect of the world, and of the sun, and of the
moon, and of the stars and of the whole circle of the heavens; and
never will I say or think otherwise.

SOCRATES: Shall we then agree with them of old time in main-

taining this doctrine,—not merely reasserting the notions of others,
without risk to ourselves,—but shall we share in the danger, and
take our part of the reproach which will await us, when an inge-
nious individual declares that all is disorder?

PROTARCHUS: That would certainly be my wish.

SOCRATES: Then now please to consider the next stage of the

argument.

PROTARCHUS: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: We see that the elements which enter into the nature
of the bodies of all animals, fire, water, air, and, as the storm-tossed
sailor cries, ‘land’ (i.e., earth), reappear in the constitution of the
world.

PROTARCHUS: The proverb may be applied to us; for truly the

storm gathers over us, and we are at our wit’s end.

SOCRATES: There is something to be remarked about each of

these elements.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: Only a small fraction of any one of them exists in us,

and that of a mean sort, and not in any way pure, or having any
power worthy of its nature. One instance will prove this of all of
them; there is fire within us, and in the universe.

374
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And is not our fire small and weak and mean? But
the fire in the universe is wonderful in quantity and beauty, and in
every power that fire has.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And is the fire in the universe nourished and generated

and ruled by the fire in us, or is the fire in you and me, and in other
animals, dependent on the universal fire?

PROTARCHUS: That is a question which does not deserve an answer.

SOCRATES: Right; and you would say the same, if I am not mis-
taken, of the earth which is in animals and the earth which is in the
universe, and you would give a similar reply about all the other
elements?

PROTARCHUS: Why, how could any man who gave any other be
deemed in his senses?

SOCRATES: I do not think that he could—but now go on to the

next step. When we saw those elements of which we have been speak-
ing gathered up in one, did we not call them a body?

PROTARCHUS: We did.

SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the cosmos, which for
the same reason may be considered to be a body, because made up
of the same elements.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: But is our body nourished wholly by this body, or is

this body nourished by our body, thence deriving and having the
qualities of which we were just now speaking?

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: That again, Socrates, is a question which does

not deserve to be asked.

SOCRATES: Well, tell me, is this question worth asking?

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: May our body be said to have a soul?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And whence comes that soul, my dear Protarchus,

unless the body of the universe, which contains elements like those
in our bodies but in every way fairer, had also a soul? Can there be
another source?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly, Socrates, that is the only source.

SOCRATES: Why, yes, Protarchus; for surely we cannot imagine

that of the four classes, the finite, the infinite, the composition of
the two, and the cause, the fourth, which enters into all things,
giving to our bodies souls, and the art of self-management, and of
healing disease, and operating in other ways to heal and organize,
having too all the attributes of wisdom;—we cannot, I say, imagine
that whereas the self-same elements exist, both in the entire heaven
and in great provinces of the heaven, only fairer and purer, this last
should not also in that higher sphere have designed the noblest and
fairest things?

PROTARCHUS: Such a supposition is quite unreasonable.

SOCRATES: Then if this be denied, should we not be wise in

adopting the other view and maintaining that there is in the uni-
verse a mighty infinite and an adequate limit, of which we have
often spoken, as well as a presiding cause of no mean power, which
orders and arranges years and seasons and months, and may be justly
called wisdom and mind?

376
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Most justly.

SOCRATES: And wisdom and mind cannot exist without soul?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And in the divine nature of Zeus would you not say
that there is the soul and mind of a king, because there is in him the
power of the cause? And other gods have other attributes, by which
they are pleased to be called.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Do not then suppose that these words are rashly spo-
ken by us, O Protarchus, for they are in harmony with the testi-
mony of those who said of old time that mind rules the universe.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And they furnish an answer to my enquiry; for they

imply that mind is the parent of that class of the four which we
called the cause of all; and I think that you now have my answer.

PROTARCHUS: I have indeed, and yet I did not observe that you
had answered.

SOCRATES: A jest is sometimes refreshing, Protarchus, when it

interrupts earnest.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: I think, friend, that we have now pretty clearly set

forth the class to which mind belongs and what is the power of
mind.

PROTARCHUS: True.

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Philebus

SOCRATES: And the class to which pleasure belongs has also been
long ago discovered?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And let us remember, too, of both of them, (1) that

mind was akin to the cause and of this family; and (2) that pleasure
is infinite and belongs to the class which neither has, nor ever will
have in itself, a beginning, middle, or end of its own.

PROTARCHUS: I shall be sure to remember.

SOCRATES: We must next examine what is their place and under

what conditions they are generated. And we will begin with plea-
sure, since her class was first examined; and yet pleasure cannot be
rightly tested apart from pain.

PROTARCHUS: If this is the road, let us take it.

SOCRATES: I wonder whether you would agree with me about

the origin of pleasure and pain.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that their natural seat is in the mixed

class.

PROTARCHUS: And would you tell me again, sweet Socrates,

which of the aforesaid classes is the mixed one?

SOCRATES: I will, my fine fellow, to the best of my ability.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Let us then understand the mixed class to be that

which we placed third in the list of four.

378
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: That which followed the infinite and the finite;

and in which you ranked health, and, if I am not mistaken, harmony.

SOCRATES: Capital; and now will you please to give me your best
attention?

PROTARCHUS: Proceed; I am attending.

SOCRATES: I say that when the harmony in animals is dissolved,

there is also a dissolution of nature and a generation of pain.

PROTARCHUS: That is very probable.

SOCRATES: And the restoration of harmony and return to nature

is the source of pleasure, if I may be allowed to speak in the fewest
and shortest words about matters of the greatest moment.

PROTARCHUS: I believe that you are right, Socrates; but will you
try to be a little plainer?

SOCRATES: Do not obvious and every-day phenomena furnish

the simplest illustration?

PROTARCHUS: What phenomena do you mean?

SOCRATES: Hunger, for example, is a dissolution and a pain.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Whereas eating is a replenishment and a pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Thirst again is a destruction and a pain, but the ef-

fect of moisture replenishing the dry place is a pleasure: once more,
the unnatural separation and dissolution caused by heat is painful,
and the natural restoration and refrigeration is pleasant.

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And the unnatural freezing of the moisture in an

animal is pain, and the natural process of resolution and return
of the elements to their original state is pleasure. And would not
the general proposition seem to you to hold, that the destroying
of the natural union of the finite and infinite, which, as I was
observing before, make up the class of living beings, is pain, and
that the process of return of all things to their own nature is
pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Granted; what you say has a general truth.

SOCRATES: Here then is one kind of pleasures and pains origi-

nating severally in the two processes which we have described?

PROTARCHUS: Good.

SOCRATES: Let us next assume that in the soul herself there is an

antecedent hope of pleasure which is sweet and refreshing, and an
expectation of pain, fearful and anxious.

PROTARCHUS: Yes; this is another class of pleasures and pains,

which is of the soul only, apart from the body, and is produced by
expectation.

SOCRATES: Right; for in the analysis of these, pure, as I suppose

them to be, the pleasures being unalloyed with pain and the pains
with pleasure, methinks that we shall see clearly whether the whole
class of pleasure is to be desired, or whether this quality of entire
desirableness is not rather to be attributed to another of the classes
which have been mentioned; and whether pleasure and pain, like
heat and cold, and other things of the same kind, are not sometimes
to be desired and sometimes not to be desired, as being not in them-
selves good, but only sometimes and in some instances admitting of
the nature of good.

380
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: You say most truly that this is the track which
the investigation should pursue.

SOCRATES: Well, then, assuming that pain ensues on the dissolu-

tion, and pleasure on the restoration of the harmony, let us now ask
what will be the condition of animated beings who are neither in
process of restoration nor of dissolution. And mind what you say: I
ask whether any animal who is in that condition can possibly have
any feeling of pleasure or pain, great or small?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then here we have a third state, over and above that
of pleasure and of pain?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And do not forget that there is such a state; it will

make a great difference in our judgment of pleasure, whether we
remember this or not. And I should like to say a few words about it.

PROTARCHUS: What have you to say?

SOCRATES: Why, you know that if a man chooses the life of wis-
dom, there is no reason why he should not live in this neutral state.

PROTARCHUS: You mean that he may live neither rejoicing nor

sorrowing?

SOCRATES: Yes; and if I remember rightly, when the lives were

compared, no degree of pleasure, whether great or small, was thought
to be necessary to him who chose the life of thought and wisdom.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly, we said so.

SOCRATES: Then he will live without pleasure; and who knows

whether this may not be the most divine of all lives?

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: If so, the gods, at any rate, cannot be supposed

to have either joy or sorrow.

SOCRATES: Certainly not—there would be a great impropriety

in the assumption of either alternative. But whether the gods are or
are not indifferent to pleasure is a point which may be considered
hereafter if in any way relevant to the argument, and whatever is the
conclusion we will place it to the account of mind in her contest for
the second place, should she have to resign the first.

PROTARCHUS: Just so.

SOCRATES: The other class of pleasures, which as we were saying

is purely mental, is entirely derived from memory.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I must first of all analyze memory, or rather percep-

tion which is prior to memory, if the subject of our discussion is
ever to be properly cleared up.

PROTARCHUS: How will you proceed?

SOCRATES: Let us imagine affections of the body which are ex-

tinguished before they reach the soul, and leave her unaffected; and
again, other affections which vibrate through both soul and body,
and impart a shock to both and to each of them.

PROTARCHUS: Granted.

SOCRATES: And the soul may be truly said to be oblivious of the

first but not of the second?

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: When I say oblivious, do not suppose that I mean

forgetfulness in a literal sense; for forgetfulness is the exit of memory,

382
 Plato

which in this case has not yet entered; and to speak of the loss of that
which is not yet in existence, and never has been, is a contradiction;
do you see?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then just be so good as to change the terms.

PROTARCHUS: How shall I change them?

SOCRATES: Instead of the oblivion of the soul, when you are

describing the state in which she is unaffected by the shocks of the
body, say unconsciousness.

PROTARCHUS: I see.

SOCRATES: And the union or communion of soul and body in

one feeling and motion would be properly called consciousness?

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: Then now we know the meaning of the word?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And memory may, I think, be rightly described as

the preservation of consciousness?

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: But do we not distinguish memory from recollection?

PROTARCHUS: I think so.

SOCRATES: And do we not mean by recollection the power which

the soul has of recovering, when by herself, some feeling which she
experienced when in company with the body?

383
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And when she recovers of herself the lost recollection

of some consciousness or knowledge, the recovery is termed recol-
lection and reminiscence?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: There is a reason why I say all this.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: I want to attain the plainest possible notion of plea-

sure and desire, as they exist in the mind only, apart from the body;
and the previous analysis helps to show the nature of both.

PROTARCHUS: Then now, Socrates, let us proceed to the next point.

SOCRATES: There are certainly many things to be considered in

discussing the generation and whole complexion of pleasure. At
the outset we must determine the nature and seat of desire.

PROTARCHUS: Ay; let us enquire into that, for we shall lose

nothing.

SOCRATES: Nay, Protarchus, we shall surely lose the puzzle if we

find the answer.

PROTARCHUS: A fair retort; but let us proceed.

SOCRATES: Did we not place hunger, thirst, and the like, in the
class of desires?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And yet they are very different; what common na-
ture have we in view when we call them by a single name?

384
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: By heavens, Socrates, that is a question which is

not easily answered; but it must be answered.

SOCRATES: Then let us go back to our examples.

PROTARCHUS: Where shall we begin?

SOCRATES: Do we mean anything when we say ‘a man thirsts’?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: We mean to say that he ‘is empty’?

PROTARCHUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: And is not thirst desire?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, of drink.

SOCRATES: Would you say of drink, or of replenishment with

drink?

PROTARCHUS: I should say, of replenishment with drink.

SOCRATES: Then he who is empty desires, as would appear, the

opposite of what he experiences; for he is empty and desires to be
full?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly so.

SOCRATES: But how can a man who is empty for the first time,
attain either by perception or memory to any apprehension of re-
plenishment, of which he has no present or past experience?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: And yet he who desires, surely desires something?

385
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: He does not desire that which he experiences, for he

experiences thirst, and thirst is emptiness; but he desires replenish-
ment?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Then there must be something in the thirsty man

which in some way apprehends replenishment?

PROTARCHUS: There must.

SOCRATES: And that cannot be the body, for the body is sup-
posed to be emptied?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: The only remaining alternative is that the soul appre-

hends the replenishment by the help of memory; as is obvious, for
what other way can there be?

PROTARCHUS: I cannot imagine any other.

SOCRATES: But do you see the consequence?

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: That there is no such thing as desire of the body.

PROTARCHUS: Why so?

SOCRATES: Why, because the argument shows that the endeav-

our of every animal is to the reverse of his bodily state.

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

386
 Plato

SOCRATES: And the impulse which leads him to the opposite of

what he is experiencing proves that he has a memory of the opposite
state.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the argument, having proved that memory at-

tracts us towards the objects of desire, proves also that the impulses
and the desires and the moving principle in every living being have
their origin in the soul.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: The argument will not allow that our body either
hungers or thirsts or has any similar experience.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: Let me make a further observation; the argument

appears to me to imply that there is a kind of life which consists in
these affections.

PROTARCHUS: Of what affections, and of what kind of life, are

you speaking?

SOCRATES: I am speaking of being emptied and replenished, and

of all that relates to the preservation and destruction of living be-
ings, as well as of the pain which is felt in one of these states and of
the pleasure which succeeds to it.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And what would you say of the intermediate state?

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean by ‘intermediate’?

SOCRATES: I mean when a person is in actual suffering and yet

387
Philebus

remembers past pleasures which, if they would only return, would

relieve him; but as yet he has them not. May we not say of him, that
he is in an intermediate state?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Would you say that he was wholly pained or wholly

pleased?

PROTARCHUS: Nay, I should say that he has two pains; in his

body there is the actual experience of pain, and in his soul longing
and expectation.

SOCRATES: What do you mean, Protarchus, by the two pains?

May not a man who is empty have at one time a sure hope of being
filled, and at other times be quite in despair?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And has he not the pleasure of memory when he is

hoping to be filled, and yet in that he is empty is he not at the same
time in pain?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then man and the other animals have at the same
time both pleasure and pain?

PROTARCHUS: I suppose so.

SOCRATES: But when a man is empty and has no hope of being

filled, there will be the double experience of pain. You observed
this and inferred that the double experience was the single case pos-
sible.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true, Socrates.

388
 Plato

SOCRATES: Shall the enquiry into these states of feeling be made

the occasion of raising a question?

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: Whether we ought to say that the pleasures and pains

of which we are speaking are true or false? or some true and some
false?

PROTARCHUS: But how, Socrates, can there be false pleasures

and pains?

SOCRATES: And how, Protarchus, can there be true and false

fears, or true and false expectations, or true and false opinions?

PROTARCHUS: I grant that opinions may be true or false, but

not pleasures.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? I am afraid that we are raising a

very serious enquiry.

PROTARCHUS: There I agree.

SOCRATES: And yet, my boy, for you are one of Philebus’ boys,
the point to be considered, is, whether the enquiry is relevant to the
argument.

PROTARCHUS: Surely.

SOCRATES: No tedious and irrelevant discussion can be allowed;

what is said should be pertinent.

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: I am always wondering at the question which has

now been raised.

389
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Do you deny that some pleasures are false, and oth-
ers true?

PROTARCHUS: To be sure I do.

SOCRATES: Would you say that no one ever seemed to rejoice

and yet did not rejoice, or seemed to feel pain and yet did not feel
pain, sleeping or waking, mad or lunatic?

PROTARCHUS: So we have always held, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But were you right? Shall we enquire into the truth
of your opinion?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we should.

SOCRATES: Let us then put into more precise terms the question
which has arisen about pleasure and opinion. Is there such a thing
as opinion?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And such a thing as pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And an opinion must be of something?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And a man must be pleased by something?

PROTARCHUS: Quite correct.

SOCRATES: And whether the opinion be right or wrong, makes

390
 Plato

no difference; it will still be an opinion?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And he who is pleased, whether he is rightly pleased

or not, will always have a real feeling of pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Yes; that is also quite true.

SOCRATES: Then, how can opinion be both true and false, and
pleasure true only, although pleasure and opinion are both equally
real?

PROTARCHUS: Yes; that is the question.

SOCRATES: You mean that opinion admits of truth and false-

hood, and hence becomes not merely opinion, but opinion of a
certain quality; and this is what you think should be examined?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And further, even if we admit the existence of quali-

ties in other objects, may not pleasure and pain be simple and de-
void of quality?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But there is no difficulty in seeing that pleasure and

pain as well as opinion have qualities, for they are great or small,
and have various degrees of intensity; as was indeed said long ago by
us.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And if badness attaches to any of them, Protarchus,

then we should speak of a bad opinion or of a bad pleasure?

391
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Quite true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And if rightness attaches to any of them, should we

not speak of a right opinion or right pleasure; and in like manner of
the reverse of rightness?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if the thing opined be erroneous, might we not

say that the opinion, being erroneous, is not right or rightly opined?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if we see a pleasure or pain which errs in respect

of its object, shall we call that right or good, or by any honourable
name?

PROTARCHUS: Not if the pleasure is mistaken; how could we?

SOCRATES: And surely pleasure often appears to accompany an

opinion which is not true, but false?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly it does; and in that case, Socrates, as

we were saying, the opinion is false, but no one could call the actual
pleasure false.

SOCRATES: How eagerly, Protarchus, do you rush to the defence

of pleasure!

PROTARCHUS: Nay, Socrates, I only repeat what I hear.

SOCRATES: And is there no difference, my friend, between that

pleasure which is associated with right opinion and knowledge, and
that which is often found in all of us associated with falsehood and
ignorance?

PROTARCHUS: There must be a very great difference, between them.

392
 Plato

SOCRATES: Then, now let us proceed to contemplate this differ-

ence.

PROTARCHUS: Lead, and I will follow.

SOCRATES: Well, then, my view is—

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: We agree—do we not?—that there is such a thing as

false, and also such a thing as true opinion?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And pleasure and pain, as I was just now saying, are
often consequent upon these—upon true and false opinion, I mean.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And do not opinion and the endeavour to form an

opinion always spring from memory and perception?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Might we imagine the process to be something of

this nature?

PROTARCHUS: Of what nature?

SOCRATES: An object may be often seen at a distance not very

clearly, and the seer may want to determine what it is which he sees.

PROTARCHUS: Very likely.

SOCRATES: Soon he begins to interrogate himself.

PROTARCHUS: In what manner?

393
Philebus

SOCRATES: He asks himself—‘What is that which appears to be

standing by the rock under the tree?’ This is the question which he
may be supposed to put to himself when he sees such an appear-
ance.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: To which he may guess the right answer, saying as if

in a whisper to himself—‘It is a man.’

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Or again, he may be misled, and then he will say—

’No, it is a figure made by the shepherds.’

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if he has a companion, he repeats his thought to

him in articulate sounds, and what was before an opinion, has now
become a proposition.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But if he be walking alone when these thoughts oc-

cur to him, he may not unfrequently keep them in his mind for a
considerable time.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Well, now, I wonder whether you would agree in my

explanation of this phenomenon.

PROTARCHUS: What is your explanation?

SOCRATES: I think that the soul at such times is like a book.

PROTARCHUS: How so?

394
 Plato

SOCRATES: Memory and perception meet, and they and their at-
tendant feelings seem to almost to write down words in the soul, and
when the inscribing feeling writes truly, then true opinion and true
propositions which are the expressions of opinion come into our
souls—but when the scribe within us writes falsely, the result is false.

PROTARCHUS: I quite assent and agree to your statement.

SOCRATES: I must bespeak your favour also for another artist,

who is busy at the same time in the chambers of the soul.

PROTARCHUS: Who is he?

SOCRATES: The painter, who, after the scribe has done his work,
draws images in the soul of the things which he has described.

PROTARCHUS: But when and how does he do this?

SOCRATES: When a man, besides receiving from sight or some

other sense certain opinions or statements, sees in his mind the im-
ages of the subjects of them;—is not this a very common mental
phenomenon?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And the images answering to true opinions and words

are true, and to false opinions and words false; are they not?

PROTARCHUS: They are.

SOCRATES: If we are right so far, there arises a further question.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: Whether we experience the feeling of which I am

speaking only in relation to the present and the past, or in relation
to the future also?

395
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: I should say in relation to all times alike.

SOCRATES: Have not purely mental pleasures and pains been

described already as in some cases anticipations of the bodily ones;
from which we may infer that anticipatory pleasures and pains have
to do with the future?

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And do all those writings and paintings which, as we

were saying a little while ago, are produced in us, relate to the past
and present only, and not to the future?

PROTARCHUS: To the future, very much.

SOCRATES: When you say, ‘Very much,’ you mean to imply that
all these representations are hopes about the future, and that man-
kind are filled with hopes in every stage of existence?

PROTARCHUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Answer me another question.

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: A just and pious and good man is the friend of the
gods; is he not?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly he is.

SOCRATES: And the unjust and utterly bad man is the reverse?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And all men, as we were saying just now, are always
filled with hopes?

396
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And these hopes, as they are termed, are propositions

which exist in the minds of each of us?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the fancies of hope are also pictured in us; a

man may often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures ensu-
ing, and in the picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily
rejoicing over his good fortune.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And may we not say that the good, being friends of
the gods, have generally true pictures presented to them, and the
bad false pictures?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: The bad, too, have pleasures painted in their fancy as

well as the good; but I presume that they are false pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: They are.

SOCRATES: The bad then commonly delight in false pleasures,

and the good in true pleasures?

PROTARCHUS: Doubtless.

SOCRATES: Then upon this view there are false pleasures in the
souls of men which are a ludicrous imitation of the true, and there
are pains of a similar character?

PROTARCHUS: There are.

SOCRATES: And did we not allow that a man who had an opinion at

397
Philebus

all had a real opinion, but often about things which had no existence
either in the past, present, or future?

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And this was the source of false opinion and opining;
am I not right?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And must we not attribute to pleasure and pain a

similar real but illusory character?

PROTARCHUS: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that a man must be admitted to have

real pleasure who is pleased with anything or anyhow; and he may
be pleased about things which neither have nor have ever had any
real existence, and, more often than not, are never likely to exist.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, Socrates, that again is undeniable.

SOCRATES: And may not the same be said about fear and anger
and the like; are they not often false?

PROTARCHUS: Quite so.

SOCRATES: And can opinions be good or bad except in as far as

they are true or false?

PROTARCHUS: In no other way.

SOCRATES: Nor can pleasures be conceived to be bad except in

so far as they are false.

PROTARCHUS: Nay, Socrates, that is the very opposite of truth;

for no one would call pleasures and pains bad because they are false,

398
 Plato

but by reason of some other great corruption to which they are

liable.

SOCRATES: Well, of pleasures which are corrupt and caused by

corruption we will hereafter speak, if we care to continue the en-
quiry; for the present I would rather show by another argument
that there are many false pleasures existing or coming into existence
in us, because this may assist our final decision.

PROTARCHUS: Very true; that is to say, if there are such plea-

sures.

SOCRATES: I think that there are, Protarchus; but this is an opin-

ion which should be well assured, and not rest upon a mere asser-
tion.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Then now, like wrestlers, let us approach and grasp

this new argument.

PROTARCHUS: Proceed.

SOCRATES: We were maintaining a little while since, that when

desires, as they are termed, exist in us, then the body has separate
feelings apart from the soul—do you remember?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, I remember that you said so.

SOCRATES: And the soul was supposed to desire the opposite of

the bodily state, while the body was the source of any pleasure or
pain which was experienced.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Then now you may infer what happens in such cases.

399
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: What am I to infer?

SOCRATES: That in such cases pleasures and pains come simulta-

neously; and there is a juxtaposition of the opposite sensations which
correspond to them, as has been already shown.

PROTARCHUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And there is another point to which we have agreed.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: That pleasure and pain both admit of more and less,
and that they are of the class of infinites.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly, we said so.

SOCRATES: But how can we rightly judge of them?

PROTARCHUS: How can we?

SOCRATES: Is it our intention to judge of their comparative im-

portance and intensity, measuring pleasure against pain, and pain
against pain, and pleasure against pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, such is our intention, and we shall judge of

them accordingly.

SOCRATES: Well, take the case of sight. Does not the nearness or
distance of magnitudes obscure their true proportions, and make us
opine falsely; and do we not find the same illusion happening in the
case of pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, Socrates, and in a degree far greater.

SOCRATES: Then what we are now saying is the opposite of what

we were saying before.

400
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: What was that?

SOCRATES: Then the opinions were true and false, and infected
the pleasures and pains with their own falsity.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: But now it is the pleasures which are said to be true

and false because they are seen at various distances, and subjected to
comparison; the pleasures appear to be greater and more vehement
when placed side by side with the pains, and the pains when placed
side by side with the pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly, and for the reason which you men-

tion.

SOCRATES: And suppose you part off from pleasures and pains
the element which makes them appear to be greater or less than
they really are: you will acknowledge that this element is illusory,
and you will never say that the corresponding excess or defect of
pleasure or pain is real or true.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Next let us see whether in another direction we may

not find pleasures and pains existing and appearing in living beings,
which are still more false than these.

PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how shall we find them?

SOCRATES: If I am not mistaken, I have often repeated that pains

and aches and suffering and uneasiness of all sorts arise out of a
corruption of nature caused by concretions, and dissolutions, and
repletions, and evacuations, and also by growth and decay?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that has been often said.

401
Philebus

SOCRATES: And we have also agreed that the restoration of the

natural state is pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: But now let us suppose an interval of time at which

the body experiences none of these changes.

PROTARCHUS: When can that be, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Your question, Protarchus, does not help the argument.

PROTARCHUS: Why not, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Because it does not prevent me from repeating mine.

PROTARCHUS: And what was that?

SOCRATES: Why, Protarchus, admitting that there is no such

interval, I may ask what would be the necessary consequence if there
were?

PROTARCHUS: You mean, what would happen if the body were

not changed either for good or bad?

SOCRATES: Yes.

PROTARCHUS: Why then, Socrates, I should suppose that there

would be neither pleasure nor pain.

SOCRATES: Very good; but still, if I am not mistaken, you do

assert that we must always be experiencing one of them; that is what
the wise tell us; for, say they, all things are ever flowing up and
down.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, and their words are of no mean authority.

402
 Plato

SOCRATES: Of course, for they are no mean authorities them-

selves; and I should like to avoid the brunt of their argument. Shall
I tell you how I mean to escape from them? And you shall be the
partner of my flight.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: To them we will say: ‘Good; but are we, or living

things in general, always conscious of what happens to us—for ex-
ample, of our growth, or the like? Are we not, on the contrary,
almost wholly unconscious of this and similar phenomena?’ You
must answer for them.

PROTARCHUS: The latter alternative is the true one.

SOCRATES: Then we were not right in saying, just now, that

motions going up and down cause pleasures and pains?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: A better and more unexceptionable way of speaking

will be—

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: If we say that the great changes produce pleasures

and pains, but that the moderate and lesser ones do neither.

PROTARCHUS: That, Socrates, is the more correct mode of speaking.

SOCRATES: But if this be true, the life to which I was just now
referring again appears.

PROTARCHUS: What life?

SOCRATES: The life which we affirmed to be devoid either of

pain or of joy.

403
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: We may assume then that there are three lives, one
pleasant, one painful, and the third which is neither; what say you?

PROTARCHUS: I should say as you do that there are three of

them.

SOCRATES: But if so, the negation of pain will not be the same
with pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then when you hear a person saying, that always to

live without pain is the pleasantest of all things, what would you
understand him to mean by that statement?

PROTARCHUS: I think that by pleasure he must mean the nega-

tive of pain.

SOCRATES: Let us take any three things; or suppose that we em-

bellish a little and call the first gold, the second silver, and there
shall be a third which is neither.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Now, can that which is neither be either gold or silver?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: No more can that neutral or middle life be rightly or

reasonably spoken or thought of as pleasant or painful.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And yet, my friend, there are, as we know, persons

who say and think so.

404
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And do they think that they have pleasure when they
are free from pain?

PROTARCHUS: They say so.

SOCRATES: And they must think or they would not say that they
have pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: I suppose not.

SOCRATES: And yet if pleasure and the negation of pain are of

distinct natures, they are wrong.

PROTARCHUS: But they are undoubtedly of distinct natures.

SOCRATES: Then shall we take the view that they are three, as we
were just now saying, or that they are two only—the one being a
state of pain, which is an evil, and the other a cessation of pain,
which is of itself a good, and is called pleasant?

PROTARCHUS: But why, Socrates, do we ask the question at all?

I do not see the reason.

SOCRATES: You, Protarchus, have clearly never heard of certain

enemies of our friend Philebus.

PROTARCHUS: And who may they be?

SOCRATES: Certain persons who are reputed to be masters in

natural philosophy, who deny the very existence of pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Indeed!

SOCRATES: They say that what the school of Philebus calls plea-
sures are all of them only avoidances of pain.

405
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: And would you, Socrates, have us agree with

them?

SOCRATES: Why, no, I would rather use them as a sort of diviners,

who divine the truth, not by rules of art, but by an instinctive repug-
nance and extreme detestation which a noble nature has of the power
of pleasure, in which they think that there is nothing sound, and her
seductive influence is declared by them to be witchcraft, and not plea-
sure. This is the use which you may make of them. And when you have
considered the various grounds of their dislike, you shall hear from me
what I deem to be true pleasures. Having thus examined the nature of
pleasure from both points of view, we will bring her up for judgment.

PROTARCHUS: Well said.

SOCRATES: Then let us enter into an alliance with these philoso-

phers and follow in the track of their dislike. I imagine that they
would say something of this sort; they would begin at the begin-
ning, and ask whether, if we wanted to know the nature of any
quality, such as hardness, we should be more likely to discover it by
looking at the hardest things, rather than at the least hard? You,
Protarchus, shall answer these severe gentlemen as you answer me.

PROTARCHUS: By all means, and I reply to them, that you should

look at the greatest instances.

SOCRATES: Then if we want to see the true nature of pleasures as

a class, we should not look at the most diluted pleasures, but at the
most extreme and most vehement?

PROTARCHUS: In that every one will agree.

SOCRATES: And the obvious instances of the greatest pleasures,

as we have often said, are the pleasures of the body?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

406
 Plato

SOCRATES: And are they felt by us to be or become greater, when

we are sick or when we are in health? And here we must be careful
in our answer, or we shall come to grief.

PROTARCHUS: How will that be?

SOCRATES: Why, because we might be tempted to answer, ‘When

we are in health.’

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is the natural answer.

SOCRATES: Well, but are not those pleasures the greatest of which
mankind have the greatest desires?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And do not people who are in a fever, or any similar

illness, feel cold or thirst or other bodily affections more intensely?
Am I not right in saying that they have a deeper want and greater
pleasure in the satisfaction of their want?

PROTARCHUS: That is obvious as soon as it is said.

SOCRATES: Well, then, shall we not be right in saying, that if a

person would wish to see the greatest pleasures he ought to go and
look, not at health, but at disease? And here you must distinguish:—
do not imagine that I mean to ask whether those who are very ill
have more pleasures than those who are well, but understand that I
am speaking of the magnitude of pleasure; I want to know where
pleasures are found to be most intense. For, as I say, we have to
discover what is pleasure, and what they mean by pleasure who deny
her very existence.

PROTARCHUS: I think I follow you.

SOCRATES: You will soon have a better opportunity of showing

whether you do or not, Protarchus. Answer now, and tell me whether

407
Philebus

you see, I will not say more, but more intense and excessive plea-
sures in wantonness than in temperance? Reflect before you speak.

PROTARCHUS: I understand you, and see that there is a great

difference between them; the temperate are restrained by the wise
man’s aphorism of ‘Never too much,’ which is their rule, but excess
of pleasure possessing the minds of fools and wantons becomes mad-
ness and makes them shout with delight.

SOCRATES: Very good, and if this be true, then the greatest plea-
sures and pains will clearly be found in some vicious state of soul
and body, and not in a virtuous state.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And ought we not to select some of these for exami-

nation, and see what makes them the greatest?

PROTARCHUS: To be sure we ought.

SOCRATES: Take the case of the pleasures which arise out of cer-
tain disorders.

PROTARCHUS: What disorders?

SOCRATES: The pleasures of unseemly disorders, which our se-

vere friends utterly detest.

PROTARCHUS: What pleasures?

SOCRATES: Such, for example, as the relief of itching and other

ailments by scratching, which is the only remedy required. For
what in Heaven’s name is the feeling to be called which is thus pro-
duced in us?—Pleasure or pain?

PROTARCHUS: A villainous mixture of some kind, Socrates, I

should say.

408
 Plato

SOCRATES: I did not introduce the argument, O Protarchus, with

any personal reference to Philebus, but because, without the con-
sideration of these and similar pleasures, we shall not be able to
determine the point at issue.

PROTARCHUS: Then we had better proceed to analyze this fam-

ily of pleasures.

SOCRATES: You mean the pleasures which are mingled with pain?

PROTARCHUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: There are some mixtures which are of the body, and
only in the body, and others which are of the soul, and only in the
soul; while there are other mixtures of pleasures with pains, com-
mon both to soul and body, which in their composite state are called
sometimes pleasures and sometimes pains.

PROTARCHUS: How is that?

SOCRATES: Whenever, in the restoration or in the derangement

of nature, a man experiences two opposite feelings; for example,
when he is cold and is growing warm, or again, when he is hot and
is becoming cool, and he wants to have the one and be rid of the
other;—the sweet has a bitter, as the common saying is, and both
together fasten upon him and create irritation and in time drive
him to distraction.

PROTARCHUS: That description is very true to nature.

SOCRATES: And in these sorts of mixtures the pleasures and pains

are sometimes equal, and sometimes one or other of them predomi-
nates?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Of cases in which the pain exceeds the pleasure, an

409
Philebus

example is afforded by itching, of which we were just now speaking,

and by the tingling which we feel when the boiling and fiery ele-
ment is within, and the rubbing and motion only relieves the sur-
face, and does not reach the parts affected; then if you put them to
the fire, and as a last resort apply cold to them, you may often pro-
duce the most intense pleasure or pain in the inner parts, which
contrasts and mingles with the pain or pleasure, as the case may be,
of the outer parts; and this is due to the forcible separation of what
is united, or to the union of what is separated, and to the juxtaposi-
tion of pleasure and pain.

PROTARCHUS: Quite so.

SOCRATES: Sometimes the element of pleasure prevails in a man,

and the slight undercurrent of pain makes him tingle, and causes a
gentle irritation; or again, the excessive infusion of pleasure creates
an excitement in him,—he even leaps for joy, he assumes all sorts of
attitudes, he changes all manner of colours, he gasps for breath, and
is quite amazed, and utters the most irrational exclamations.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: He will say of himself, and others will say of him,

that he is dying with these delights; and the more dissipated and
good-for-nothing he is, the more vehemently he pursues them in
every way; of all pleasures he declares them to be the greatest; and
he reckons him who lives in the most constant enjoyment of them
to be the happiest of mankind.

PROTARCHUS: That, Socrates, is a very true description of the

opinions of the majority about pleasures.

SOCRATES: Yes, Protarchus, quite true of the mixed pleasures,

which arise out of the communion of external and internal sensa-
tions in the body; there are also cases in which the mind contributes
an opposite element to the body, whether of pleasure or pain, and
the two unite and form one mixture. Concerning these I have al-

410
 Plato

ready remarked, that when a man is empty he desires to be full, and

has pleasure in hope and pain in vacuity. But now I must further
add what I omitted before, that in all these and similar emotions in
which body and mind are opposed (and they are innumerable), plea-
sure and pain coalesce in one.

PROTARCHUS: I believe that to be quite true.

SOCRATES: There still remains one other sort of admixture of

pleasures and pains.

PROTARCHUS: What is that?

SOCRATES: The union which, as we were saying, the mind often

experiences of purely mental feelings.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Why, do we not speak of anger, fear, desire, sorrow,

love, emulation, envy, and the like, as pains which belong to the
soul only?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And shall we not find them also full of the most won-
derful pleasures? need I remind you of the anger

‘Which stirs even a wise man to violence,

And is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb?’

And you remember how pleasures mingle with pains in lamenta-

tion and bereavement?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, there is a natural connexion between them.

SOCRATES: And you remember also how at the sight of tragedies

the spectators smile through their tears?

411
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Certainly I do.

SOCRATES: And are you aware that even at a comedy the soul
experiences a mixed feeling of pain and pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: I do not quite understand you.

SOCRATES: I admit, Protarchus, that there is some difficulty in

recognizing this mixture of feelings at a comedy.

PROTARCHUS: There is, I think.

SOCRATES: And the greater the obscurity of the case the more
desirable is the examination of it, because the difficulty in detecting
other cases of mixed pleasures and pains will be less.

PROTARCHUS: Proceed.

SOCRATES: I have just mentioned envy; would you not call that
a pain of the soul?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And yet the envious man finds something in the

misfortunes of his neighbours at which he is pleased?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And ignorance, and what is termed clownishness, are

surely an evil?

PROTARCHUS: To be sure.

SOCRATES: From these considerations learn to know the nature

of the ridiculous.

PROTARCHUS: Explain.

412
 Plato

SOCRATES: The ridiculous is in short the specific name which is

used to describe the vicious form of a certain habit; and of vice in
general it is that kind which is most at variance with the inscription
at Delphi.

PROTARCHUS: You mean, Socrates, ‘Know thyself.’

SOCRATES: I do; and the opposite would be, ‘Know not thyself.’

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And now, O Protarchus, try to divide this into three.

PROTARCHUS: Indeed I am afraid that I cannot.

SOCRATES: Do you mean to say that I must make the division

for you?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, and what is more, I beg that you will.

SOCRATES: Are there not three ways in which ignorance of self

may be shown?

PROTARCHUS: What are they?

SOCRATES: In the first place, about money; the ignorant may

fancy himself richer than he is.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is a very common error.

SOCRATES: And still more often he will fancy that he is taller or

fairer than he is, or that he has some other advantage of person
which he really has not.

PROTARCHUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: And yet surely by far the greatest number err about

413
Philebus

the goods of the mind; they imagine themselves to be much better

men than they are.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that is by far the commonest delusion.

SOCRATES: And of all the virtues, is not wisdom the one which
the mass of mankind are always claiming, and which most arouses
in them a spirit of contention and lying conceit of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And may not all this be truly called an evil condi-
tion?

PROTARCHUS: Very evil.

SOCRATES: But we must pursue the division a step further,

Protarchus, if we would see in envy of the childish sort a singular
mixture of pleasure and pain.

PROTARCHUS: How can we make the further division which

you suggest?

SOCRATES: All who are silly enough to entertain this lying con-
ceit of themselves may of course be divided, like the rest of man-
kind, into two classes—one having power and might; and the other
the reverse.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Let this, then, be the principle of division; those of

them who are weak and unable to revenge themselves, when they
are laughed at, may be truly called ridiculous, but those who can
defend themselves may be more truly described as strong and for-
midable; for ignorance in the powerul is hateful and horrible, be-
cause hurtful to others both in reality and in fiction, but powerless
ignorance may be reckoned, and in truth is, ridiculous.

414
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: That is very true, but I do not as yet see where is

the admixture of pleasures and pains.

SOCRATES: Well, then, let us examine the nature of envy.

PROTARCHUS: Proceed.

SOCRATES: Is not envy an unrighteous pleasure, and also an un-

righteous pain?

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: There is nothing envious or wrong in rejoicing at the

misfortunes of enemies?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: But to feel joy instead of sorrow at the sight of our

friends’ misfortunes—is not that wrong?

PROTARCHUS: Undoubtedly.

SOCRATES: Did we not say that ignorance was always an evil?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the three kinds of vain conceit in our friends

which we enumerated—the vain conceit of beauty, of wisdom, and
of wealth, are ridiculous if they are weak, and detestable when they
are powerful: May we not say, as I was saying before, that our friends
who are in this state of mind, when harmless to others, are simply
ridiculous?

PROTARCHUS: They are ridiculous.

SOCRATES: And do we not acknowledge this ignorance of theirs

to be a misfortune?

415
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And do we feel pain or pleasure in laughing at it?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly we feel pleasure.

SOCRATES: And was not envy the source of this pleasure which
we feel at the misfortunes of friends?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then the argument shows that when we laugh at the

folly of our friends, pleasure, in mingling with envy, mingles with
pain, for envy has been acknowledged by us to be mental pain, and
laughter is pleasant; and so we envy and laugh at the same instant.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the argument implies that there are combina-

tions of pleasure and pain in lamentations, and in tragedy and com-
edy, not only on the stage, but on the greater stage of human life;
and so in endless other cases.

PROTARCHUS: I do not see how any one can deny what you say,
Socrates, however eager he may be to assert the opposite opinion.

SOCRATES: I mentioned anger, desire, sorrow, fear, love, emula-

tion, envy, and similar emotions, as examples in which we should
find a mixture of the two elements so often named; did I not?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: We may observe that our conclusions hitherto have

had reference only to sorrow and envy and anger.

PROTARCHUS: I see.

416
 Plato

SOCRATES: Then many other cases still remain?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And why do you suppose me to have pointed out to you

the admixture which takes place in comedy? Why but to convince you
that there was no difficulty in showing the mixed nature of fear and
love and similar affections; and I thought that when I had given you the
illustration, you would have let me off, and have acknowledged as a
general truth that the body without the soul, and the soul without the
body, as well as the two united, are susceptible of all sorts of admixtures
of pleasures and pains; and so further discussion would have been un-
necessary. And now I want to know whether I may depart; or will you
keep me here until midnight? I fancy that I may obtain my release
without many words;—if I promise that to-morrow I will give you an
account of all these cases. But at present I would rather sail in another
direction, and go to other matters which remain to be settled, before
the judgment can be given which Philebus demands.

PROTARCHUS: Very good, Socrates; in what remains take your

own course.

SOCRATES: Then after the mixed pleasures the unmixed should

have their turn; this is the natural and necessary order.

PROTARCHUS: Excellent.

SOCRATES: These, in turn, then, I will now endeavour to indi-

cate; for with the maintainers of the opinion that all pleasures are a
cessation of pain, I do not agree, but, as I was saying, I use them as
witnesses, that there are pleasures which seem only and are not, and
there are others again which have great power and appear in many
forms, yet are intermingled with pains, and are partly alleviations of
agony and distress, both of body and mind.

PROTARCHUS: Then what pleasures, Socrates, should we be right

in conceiving to be true?

417
Philebus

SOCRATES: True pleasures are those which are given by beauty of

colour and form, and most of those which arise from smells; those
of sound, again, and in general those of which the want is painless
and unconscious, and of which the fruition is palpable to sense and
pleasant and unalloyed with pain.

PROTARCHUS: Once more, Socrates, I must ask what you mean.

SOCRATES: My meaning is certainly not obvious, and I will en-

deavour to be plainer. I do not mean by beauty of form such beauty
as that of animals or pictures, which the many would suppose to be
my meaning; but, says the argument, understand me to mean straight
lines and circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out
of them by turning-lathes and rulers and measurers of angles; for
these I affirm to be not only relatively beautiful, like other things,
but they are eternally and absolutely beautiful, and they have pecu-
liar pleasures, quite unlike the pleasures of scratching. And there
are colours which are of the same character, and have similar plea-
sures; now do you understand my meaning?

PROTARCHUS: I am trying to understand, Socrates, and I hope

that you will try to make your meaning clearer.

SOCRATES: When sounds are smooth and clear, and have a single
pure tone, then I mean to say that they are not relatively but abso-
lutely beautiful, and have natural pleasures associated with them.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, there are such pleasures.

SOCRATES: The pleasures of smell are of a less ethereal sort, but

they have no necessary admixture of pain; and all pleasures, how-
ever and wherever experienced, which are unattended by pains, I
assign to an analogous class. Here then are two kinds of pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: I understand.

SOCRATES: To these may be added the pleasures of knowledge, if

418
 Plato

no hunger of knowledge and no pain caused by such hunger pre-

cede them.

PROTARCHUS: And this is the case.

SOCRATES: Well, but if a man who is full of knowledge loses his

knowledge, are there not pains of forgetting?

PROTARCHUS: Not necessarily, but there may be times of reflec-

tion, when he feels grief at the loss of his knowledge.

SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, but at present we are enumerating

only the natural perceptions, and have nothing to do with reflec-
tion.

PROTARCHUS: In that case you are right in saying that the loss
of knowledge is not attended with pain.

SOCRATES: These pleasures of knowledge, then, are unmixed with

pain; and they are not the pleasures of the many but of a very few.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And now, having fairly separated the pure pleasures

and those which may be rightly termed impure, let us further add
to our description of them, that the pleasures which are in excess
have no measure, but that those which are not in excess have mea-
sure; the great, the excessive, whether more or less frequent, we shall
be right in referring to the class of the infinite, and of the more and
less, which pours through body and soul alike; and the others we
shall refer to the class which has measure.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Still there is something more to be considered about

pleasures.

419
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: When you speak of purity and clearness, or of excess,

abundance, greatness and sufficiency, in what relation do these terms
stand to truth?

PROTARCHUS: Why do you ask, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Because, Protarchus, I should wish to test pleasure

and knowledge in every possible way, in order that if there be a pure
and impure element in either of them, I may present the pure ele-
ment for judgment, and then they will be more easily judged of by
you and by me and by all of us.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: Let us investigate all the pure kinds; first selecting for
consideration a single instance.

PROTARCHUS: What instance shall we select?

SOCRATES: Suppose that we first of all take whiteness.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: How can there be purity in whiteness, and what pu-

rity? Is that purest which is greatest or most in quantity, or that
which is most unadulterated and freest from any admixture of other
colours?

PROTARCHUS: Clearly that which is most unadulterated.

SOCRATES: True, Protarchus; and so the purest white, and not

the greatest or largest in quantity, is to be deemed truest and most
beautiful?

PROTARCHUS: Right.

420
 Plato

SOCRATES: And we shall be quite right in saying that a little pure

white is whiter and fairer and truer than a great deal that is mixed.

PROTARCHUS: Perfectly right.

SOCRATES: There is no need of adducing many similar examples

in illustration of the argument about pleasure; one such is sufficient
to prove to us that a small pleasure or a small amount of pleasure, if
pure or unalloyed with pain, is always pleasanter and truer and fairer
than a great pleasure or a great amount of pleasure of another kind.

PROTARCHUS: Assuredly; and the instance you have given is

quite sufficient.

SOCRATES: But what do you say of another question:—have we

not heard that pleasure is always a generation, and has no true be-
ing? Do not certain ingenious philosophers teach this doctrine,
and ought not we to be grateful to them?

PROTARCHUS: What do they mean?

SOCRATES: I will explain to you, my dear Protarchus, what they

mean, by putting a question.

PROTARCHUS: Ask, and I will answer.

SOCRATES: I assume that there are two natures, one self-existent,

and the other ever in want of something.

PROTARCHUS: What manner of natures are they?

SOCRATES: The one majestic ever, the other inferior.

PROTARCHUS: You speak riddles.

SOCRATES: You have seen loves good and fair, and also brave
lovers of them.

421
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: I should think so.

SOCRATES: Search the universe for two terms which are like these
two and are present everywhere.

PROTARCHUS: Yet a third time I must say, Be a little plainer,

Socrates.

SOCRATES: There is no difficulty, Protarchus; the argument is

only in play, and insinuates that some things are for the sake of
something else (relatives), and that other things are the ends to which
the former class subserve (absolutes).

PROTARCHUS: Your many repetitions make me slow to under-

stand.

SOCRATES: As the argument proceeds, my boy, I dare say that

the meaning will become clearer.

PROTARCHUS: Very likely.

SOCRATES: Here are two new principles.

PROTARCHUS: What are they?

SOCRATES: One is the generation of all things, and the other is

essence.

PROTARCHUS: I readily accept from you both generation and

essence.

SOCRATES: Very right; and would you say that generation is for
the sake of essence, or essence for the sake of generation?

PROTARCHUS: You want to know whether that which is called

essence is, properly speaking, for the sake of generation?

422
 Plato

SOCRATES: Yes.

PROTARCHUS: By the gods, I wish that you would repeat your

question.

SOCRATES: I mean, O my Protarchus, to ask whether you would

tell me that ship-building is for the sake of ships, or ships for the
sake of ship-building? and in all similar cases I should ask the same
question.

PROTARCHUS: Why do you not answer yourself, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I have no objection, but you must take your part.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: My answer is, that all things instrumental, remedial,

material, are given to us with a view to generation, and that each
generation is relative to, or for the sake of, some being or essence,
and that the whole of generation is relative to the whole of essence.

PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.

SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, must surely be for

the sake of some essence?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And that for the sake of which something else is

done must be placed in the class of good, and that which is done for
the sake of something else, in some other class, my good friend.

PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.

SOCRATES: Then pleasure, being a generation, will be rightly

placed in some other class than that of good?

423
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: Then, as I said at first, we ought to be very grateful to

him who first pointed out that pleasure was a generation only, and
had no true being at all; for he is clearly one who laughs at the
notion of pleasure being a good.

PROTARCHUS: Assuredly.

SOCRATES: And he would surely laugh also at those who make

generation their highest end.

PROTARCHUS: Of whom are you speaking, and what do they mean?

SOCRATES: I am speaking of those who when they are cured of

hunger or thirst or any other defect by some process of generation
are delighted at the process as if it were pleasure; and they say that
they would not wish to live without these and other feelings of a
like kind which might be mentioned.

PROTARCHUS: That is certainly what they appear to think.

SOCRATES: And is not destruction universally admitted to be the

opposite of generation?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then he who chooses thus, would choose generation

and destruction rather than that third sort of life, in which, as we
were saying, was neither pleasure nor pain, but only the purest pos-
sible thought.

PROTARCHUS: He who would make us believe pleasure to be a

good is involved in great absurdities, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Great, indeed; and there is yet another of them.

424
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: Is there not an absurdity in arguing that there is noth-

ing good or noble in the body, or in anything else, but that good is
in the soul only, and that the only good of the soul is pleasure; and
that courage or temperance or understanding, or any other good of
the soul, is not really a good?—and is there not yet a further absur-
dity in our being compelled to say that he who has a feeling of pain
and not of pleasure is bad at the time when he is suffering pain,
even though he be the best of men; and again, that he who has a
feeling of pleasure, in so far as he is pleased at the time when he is
pleased, in that degree excels in virtue?

PROTARCHUS: Nothing, Socrates, can be more irrational than all this.

SOCRATES: And now, having subjected pleasure to every sort of

test, let us not appear to be too sparing of mind and knowledge: let
us ring their metal bravely, and see if there be unsoundness in any
part, until we have found out what in them is of the purest nature;
and then the truest elements both of pleasure and knowledge may
be brought up for judgment.

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: Knowledge has two parts,—the one productive, and

the other educational?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And in the productive or handicraft arts, is not one

part more akin to knowledge, and the other less; and may not the
one part be regarded as the pure, and the other as the impure?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Let us separate the superior or dominant elements in

each of them.

425
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: What are they, and how do you separate them?

SOCRATES: I mean to say, that if arithmetic, mensuration, and

weighing be taken away from any art, that which remains will not
be much.

PROTARCHUS: Not much, certainly.

SOCRATES: The rest will be only conjecture, and the better use of
the senses which is given by experience and practice, in addition to
a certain power of guessing, which is commonly called art, and is
perfected by attention and pains.

PROTARCHUS: Nothing more, assuredly.

SOCRATES: Music, for instance, is full of this empiricism; for

sounds are harmonized, not by measure, but by skilful conjecture;
the music of the flute is always trying to guess the pitch of each
vibrating note, and is therefore mixed up with much that is doubt-
ful and has little which is certain.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And the same will be found to hold good of medi-

cine and husbandry and piloting and generalship.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: The art of the builder, on the other hand, which uses
a number of measures and instruments, attains by their help to a
greater degree of accuracy than the other arts.

PROTARCHUS: How is that?

SOCRATES: In ship-building and house-building, and in other

branches of the art of carpentering, the builder has his rule, lathe,
compass, line, and a most ingenious machine for straightening wood.

426
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: Very true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Then now let us divide the arts of which we were

speaking into two kinds,—the arts which, like music, are less ex-
act in their results, and those which, like carpentering, are more
exact.

PROTARCHUS: Let us make that division.

SOCRATES: Of the latter class, the most exact of all are those
which we just now spoke of as primary.

PROTARCHUS: I see that you mean arithmetic, and the kindred

arts of weighing and measuring.

SOCRATES: Certainly, Protarchus; but are not these also distin-

guishable into two kinds?

PROTARCHUS: What are the two kinds?

SOCRATES: In the first place, arithmetic is of two kinds, one of

which is popular, and the other philosophical.

PROTARCHUS: How would you distinguish them?

SOCRATES: There is a wide difference between them, Protarchus;

some arithmeticians reckon unequal units; as for example, two
armies, two oxen, two very large things or two very small things.
The party who are opposed to them insist that every unit in ten
thousand must be the same as every other unit.

PROTARCHUS: Undoubtedly there is, as you say, a great difference

among the votaries of the science; and there may be reasonably sup-
posed to be two sorts of arithmetic.

SOCRATES: And when we compare the art of mensuration which

is used in building with philosophical geometry, or the art of com-

427
Philebus

putation which is used in trading with exact calculation, shall we

say of either of the pairs that it is one or two?

PROTARCHUS: On the analogy of what has preceded, I should

be of opinion that they were severally two.

SOCRATES: Right; but do you understand why I have discussed

the subject?

PROTARCHUS: I think so, but I should like to be told by you.

SOCRATES: The argument has all along been seeking a parallel to

pleasure, and true to that original design, has gone on to ask whether
one sort of knowledge is purer than another, as one pleasure is purer
than another.

PROTARCHUS: Clearly; that was the intention.

SOCRATES: And has not the argument in what has preceded,

already shown that the arts have different provinces, and vary in
their degrees of certainty?

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And just now did not the argument first designate a
particular art by a common term, thus making us believe in the unity
of that art; and then again, as if speaking of two different things,
proceed to enquire whether the art as pursed by philosophers, or as
pursued by non-philosophers, has more of certainty and purity?

PROTARCHUS: That is the very question which the argument is

asking.

SOCRATES: And how, Protarchus, shall we answer the enquiry?

PROTARCHUS: O Socrates, we have reached a point at which the

difference of clearness in different kinds of knowledge is enormous.

428
 Plato

SOCRATES: Then the answer will be the easier.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly; and let us say in reply, that those arts

into which arithmetic and mensuration enter, far surpass all others;
and that of these the arts or sciences which are animated by the pure
philosophic impulse are infinitely superior in accuracy and truth.

SOCRATES: Then this is your judgment; and this is the answer

which, upon your authority, we will give to all masters of the art of
misinterpretation?

PROTARCHUS: What answer?

SOCRATES: That there are two arts of arithmetic, and two of

mensuration; and also several other arts which in like manner have
this double nature, and yet only one name.

PROTARCHUS: Let us boldly return this answer to the masters of

whom you speak, Socrates, and hope for good luck.

SOCRATES: We have explained what we term the most exact arts

or sciences.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: And yet, Protarchus, dialectic will refuse to acknowl-

edge us, if we do not award to her the first place.

PROTARCHUS: And pray, what is dialectic?

SOCRATES: Clearly the science which has to do with all that knowl-
edge of which we are now speaking; for I am sure that all men who
have a grain of intelligence will admit that the knowledge which has
to do with being and reality, and sameness and unchangeableness, is
by far the truest of all. But how would you decide this question,
Protarchus?

429
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: I have often heard Gorgias maintain, Socrates,

that the art of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says,
is by far the best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by
compulsion, but of their own free will. Now, I should not like to
quarrel either with you or with him.

SOCRATES: You mean to say that you would like to desert, if you
were not ashamed?

PROTARCHUS: As you please.

SOCRATES: May I not have led you into a misapprehension?

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Dear Protarchus, I never asked which was the great-

est or best or usefullest of arts or sciences, but which had clearness
and accuracy, and the greatest amount of truth, however humble
and little useful an art. And as for Gorgias, if you do not deny that
his art has the advantage in usefulness to mankind, he will not quar-
rel with you for saying that the study of which I am speaking is
superior in this particular of essential truth; as in the comparison of
white colours, a little whiteness, if that little be only pure, was said
to be superior in truth to a great mass which is impure. And now let
us give our best attention and consider well, not the comparative
use or reputation of the sciences, but the power or faculty, if there
be such, which the soul has of loving the truth, and of doing all
things for the sake of it; let us search into the pure element of mind
and intelligence, and then we shall be able to say whether the sci-
ence of which I have been speaking is most likely to possess the
faculty, or whether there be some other which has higher claims.

PROTARCHUS: Well, I have been considering, and I can hardly

think that any other science or art has a firmer grasp of the truth
than this.

SOCRATES: Do you say so because you observe that the arts in

430
 Plato

general and those engaged in them make use of opinion, and are
resolutely engaged in the investigation of matters of opinion? Even
he who supposes himself to be occupied with nature is really occu-
pied with the things of this world, how created, how acting or acted
upon. Is not this the sort of enquiry in which his life is spent?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: He is labouring, not after eternal being, but about

things which are becoming, or which will or have become.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And can we say that any of these things which nei-
ther are nor have been nor will be unchangeable, when judged by
the strict rule of truth ever become certain?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: How can anything fixed be concerned with that which

has no fixedness?

PROTARCHUS: How indeed?

SOCRATES: Then mind and science when employed about such

changing things do not attain the highest truth?

PROTARCHUS: I should imagine not.

SOCRATES: And now let us bid farewell, a long farewell, to you

or me or Philebus or Gorgias, and urge on behalf of the argument a
single point.

PROTARCHUS: What point?

SOCRATES: Let us say that the stable and pure and true and un-
alloyed has to do with the things which are eternal and unchange-

431
Philebus

able and unmixed, or if not, at any rate what is most akin to them
has; and that all other things are to be placed in a second or inferior
class.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And of the names expressing cognition, ought not

the fairest to be given to the fairest things?

PROTARCHUS: That is natural.

SOCRATES: And are not mind and wisdom the names which are
to be honoured most?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And these names may be said to have their truest and
most exact application when the mind is engaged in the contempla-
tion of true being?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And these were the names which I adduced of the

rivals of pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Very true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: In the next place, as to the mixture, here are the

ingredients, pleasure and wisdom, and we may be compared to art-
ists who have their materials ready to their hands.

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And now we must begin to mix them?

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

432
 Plato

SOCRATES: But had we not better have a preliminary word and

refresh our memories?

PROTARCHUS: Of what?

SOCRATES: Of that which I have already mentioned. Well says the

proverb, that we ought to repeat twice and even thrice that which is good.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Well then, by Zeus, let us proceed, and I will make

what I believe to be a fair summary of the argument.

PROTARCHUS: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: Philebus says that pleasure is the true end of all living
beings, at which all ought to aim, and moreover that it is the chief
good of all, and that the two names ‘good’ and ‘pleasant’ are cor-
rectly given to one thing and one nature; Socrates, on the other
hand, begins by denying this, and further says, that in nature as in
name they are two, and that wisdom partakes more than pleasure of
the good. Is not and was not this what we were saying, Protarchus?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And is there not and was there not a further point
which was conceded between us?

PROTARCHUS: What was it?

SOCRATES: That the good differs from all other things.

PROTARCHUS: In what respect?

SOCRATES: In that the being who possesses good always every-

where and in all things has the most perfect sufficiency, and is never
in need of anything else.

433
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: And did we not endeavour to make an imaginary

separation of wisdom and pleasure, assigning to each a distinct life,
so that pleasure was wholly excluded from wisdom, and wisdom in
like manner had no part whatever in pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: We did.

SOCRATES: And did we think that either of them alone would be

sufficient?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And if we erred in any point, then let any one who
will, take up the enquiry again and set us right; and assuming memory
and wisdom and knowledge and true opinion to belong to the same
class, let him consider whether he would desire to possess or ac-
quire,—I will not say pleasure, however abundant or intense, if he
has no real perception that he is pleased, nor any consciousness of
what he feels, nor any recollection, however momentary, of the feel-
ing,—but would he desire to have anything at all, if these faculties
were wanting to him? And about wisdom I ask the same question;
can you conceive that any one would choose to have all wisdom
absolutely devoid of pleasure, rather than with a certain degree of
pleasure, or all pleasure devoid of wisdom, rather than with a cer-
tain degree of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly not, Socrates; but why repeat such

questions any more?

SOCRATES: Then the perfect and universally eligible and entirely

good cannot possibly be either of them?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: Then now we must ascertain the nature of the good

434
 Plato

more or less accurately, in order, as we were saying, that the second

place may be duly assigned.

PROTARCHUS: Right.

SOCRATES: Have we not found a road which leads towards the good?

PROTARCHUS: What road?

SOCRATES: Supposing that a man had to be found, and you

could discover in what house he lived, would not that be a great
step towards the discovery of the man himself?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And now reason intimates to us, as at our first begin-

ning, that we should seek the good, not in the unmixed life but in
the mixed.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: There is greater hope of finding that which we are

seeking in the life which is well mixed than in that which is not?

PROTARCHUS: Far greater.

SOCRATES: Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time

offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the
god who presides over the ceremony of mingling.

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: Are not we the cup-bearers? and here are two foun-
tains which are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be
likened to a fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught
in which no wine mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out
of these we must seek to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.

435
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Tell me first;—should we be most likely to succeed if

we mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps we might.

SOCRATES: But I should be afraid of the risk, and I think that I

can show a safer plan.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: One pleasure was supposed by us to be truer than

another, and one art to be more exact than another.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: There was also supposed to be a difference in sci-

ences; some of them regarding only the transient and perishing, and
others the permanent and imperishable and everlasting and immu-
table; and when judged by the standard of truth, the latter, as we
thought, were truer than the former.

PROTARCHUS: Very good and right.

SOCRATES: If, then, we were to begin by mingling the sections of

each class which have the most of truth, will not the union suffice
to give us the loveliest of lives, or shall we still want some elements
of another kind?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we ought to do what you suggest.

SOCRATES: Let us suppose a man who understands justice, and

has reason as well as understanding about the true nature of this
and of all other things.

PROTARCHUS: We will suppose such a man.

436
 Plato

SOCRATES: Will he have enough of knowledge if he is acquainted

only with the divine circle and sphere, and knows nothing of our
human spheres and circles, but uses only divine circles and mea-
sures in the building of a house?

PROTARCHUS: The knowledge which is only superhuman,

Socrates, is ridiculous in man.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Do you mean that you are to

throw into the cup and mingle the impure and uncertain art which
uses the false measure and the false circle?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, we must, if any of us is ever to find his way

home.

SOCRATES: And am I to include music, which, as I was saying

just now, is full of guesswork and imitation, and is wanting in pu-
rity?

PROTARCHUS: Yes, I think that you must, if human life is to be

a life at all.

SOCRATES: Well, then, suppose that I give way, and, like a door-
keeper who is pushed and overborne by the mob, I open the door
wide, and let knowledge of every sort stream in, and the pure mingle
with the impure?

PROTARCHUS: I do not know, Socrates, that any great harm

would come of having them all, if only you have the first sort.

SOCRATES: Well, then, shall I let them all flow into what Homer
poetically terms ‘a meeting of the waters’?

PROTARCHUS: By all means.

SOCRATES: There—I have let them in, and now I must return to
the fountain of pleasure. For we were not permitted to begin by

437
Philebus

mingling in a single stream the true portions of both according to

our original intention; but the love of all knowledge constrained us
to let all the sciences flow in together before the pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: And now the time has come for us to consider about
the pleasures also, whether we shall in like manner let them go all at
once, or at first only the true ones.

PROTARCHUS: It will be by far the safer course to let flow the

true ones first.

SOCRATES: Let them flow, then; and now, if there are any neces-
sary pleasures, as there were arts and sciences necessary, must we
not mingle them?

PROTARCHUS: Yes; the necessary pleasures should certainly be

allowed to mingle.

SOCRATES: The knowledge of the arts has been admitted to be

innocent and useful always; and if we say of pleasures in like man-
ner that all of them are good and innocent for all of us at all times,
we must let them all mingle?

PROTARCHUS: What shall we say about them, and what course

shall we take?

SOCRATES: Do not ask me, Protarchus; but ask the daughters of

pleasure and wisdom to answer for themselves.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Tell us, O beloved—shall we call you pleasures or by

some other name?—would you rather live with or without wisdom?
I am of opinion that they would certainly answer as follows:

438
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: They would answer, as we said before, that for any

single class to be left by itself pure and isolated is not good, nor
altogether possible; and that if we are to make comparisons of one
class with another and choose, there is no better companion than
knowledge of things in general, and likewise the perfect knowledge,
if that may be, of ourselves in every respect.

PROTARCHUS: And our answer will be:—In that ye have spoken

well.

SOCRATES: Very true. And now let us go back and interrogate

wisdom and mind: Would you like to have any pleasures in the
mixture? And they will reply:—‘What pleasures do you mean?’

PROTARCHUS: Likely enough.

SOCRATES: And we shall take up our parable and say: Do you

wish to have the greatest and most vehement pleasures for your com-
panions in addition to the true ones? ‘Why, Socrates,’ they will say,
‘how can we? seeing that they are the source of ten thousand hin-
drances to us; they trouble the souls of men, which are our habita-
tion, with their madness; they prevent us from coming to the birth,
and are commonly the ruin of the children which are born to us,
causing them to be forgotten and unheeded; but the true and pure
pleasures, of which you spoke, know to be of our family, and also
those pleasures which accompany health and temperance, and which
every Virtue, like a goddess, has in her train to follow her about wher-
ever she goes,—mingle these and not the others; there would be great
want of sense in any one who desires to see a fair and perfect mixture,
and to find in it what is the highest good in man and in the universe,
and to divine what is the true form of good—there would be great
want of sense in his allowing the pleasures, which are always in the
company of folly and vice, to mingle with mind in the cup.’—Is not
this a very rational and suitable reply, which mind has made, both on
her own behalf, as well as on the behalf of memory and true opinion?

439
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Most certainly.

SOCRATES: And still there must be something more added, which

is a necessary ingredient in every mixture.

PROTARCHUS: What is that?

SOCRATES: Unless truth enter into the composition, nothing

can truly be created or subsist.

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: Quite impossible; and now you and Philebus must

tell me whether anything is still wanting in the mixture, for to my
way of thinking the argument is now completed, and may be com-
pared to an incorporeal law, which is going to hold fair rule over a
living body.

PROTARCHUS: I agree with you, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And may we not say with reason that we are now at
the vestibule of the habitation of the good?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we are.

SOCRATES: What, then, is there in the mixture which is most

precious, and which is the principal cause why such a state is uni-
versally beloved by all? When we have discovered it, we will pro-
ceed to ask whether this omnipresent nature is more akin to plea-
sure or to mind.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right; in that way we shall be better able to

judge.

SOCRATES: And there is no difficulty in seeing the cause which

renders any mixture either of the highest value or of none at all.

440
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Every man knows it.

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: He knows that any want of measure and symmetry

in any mixture whatever must always of necessity be fatal, both to
the elements and to the mixture, which is then not a mixture, but
only a confused medley which brings confusion on the possessor of
it.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And now the power of the good has retired into the
region of the beautiful; for measure and symmetry are beauty and
virtue all the world over.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Also we said that truth was to form an element in the

mixture.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then, if we are not able to hunt the good with one
idea only, with three we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry,
Truth are the three, and these taken together we may regard as the
single cause of the mixture, and the mixture as being good by rea-
son of the infusion of them.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: And now, Protarchus, any man could decide well

enough whether pleasure or wisdom is more akin to the highest
good, and more honourable among gods and men.

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Philebus

PROTARCHUS: Clearly, and yet perhaps the argument had better

be pursued to the end.

SOCRATES: We must take each of them separately in their rela-

tion to pleasure and mind, and pronounce upon them; for we ought
to see to which of the two they are severally most akin.

PROTARCHUS: You are speaking of beauty, truth, and measure?

SOCRATES: Yes, Protarchus, take truth first, and, after passing in

review mind, truth, pleasure, pause awhile and make answer to your-
self—as to whether pleasure or mind is more akin to truth.

PROTARCHUS: There is no need to pause, for the difference be-

tween them is palpable; pleasure is the veriest impostor in the world;
and it is said that in the pleasures of love, which appear to be the
greatest, perjury is excused by the gods; for pleasures, like children,
have not the least particle of reason in them; whereas mind is either
the same as truth, or the most like truth, and the truest.

SOCRATES: Shall we next consider measure, in like manner, and

ask whether pleasure has more of this than wisdom, or wisdom than
pleasure?

PROTARCHUS: Here is another question which may be easily

answered; for I imagine that nothing can ever be more immoderate
than the transports of pleasure, or more in conformity with mea-
sure than mind and knowledge.

SOCRATES: Very good; but there still remains the third test: Has
mind a greater share of beauty than pleasure, and is mind or plea-
sure the fairer of the two?

PROTARCHUS: No one, Socrates, either awake or dreaming, ever

saw or imagined mind or wisdom to be in aught unseemly, at any
time, past, present, or future.

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 Plato

SOCRATES: Right.

PROTARCHUS: But when we see some one indulging in plea-

sures, perhaps in the greatest of pleasures, the ridiculous or disgraceful
nature of the action makes us ashamed; and so we put them out of
sight, and consign them to darkness, under the idea that they ought
not to meet the eye of day.

SOCRATES: Then, Protarchus, you will proclaim everywhere, by

word of mouth to this company, and by messengers bearing the
tidings far and wide, that pleasure is not the first of possessions, nor
yet the second, but that in measure, and the mean, and the suitable,
and the like, the eternal nature has been found.

PROTARCHUS: Yes, that seems to be the result of what has been

now said.

SOCRATES: In the second class is contained the symmetrical and

beautiful and perfect or sufficient, and all which are of that family.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And if you reckon in the third dass mind and wis-
dom, you will not be far wrong, if I divine aright.

PROTARCHUS: I dare say.

SOCRATES: And would you not put in the fourth class the goods
which we were affirming to appertain specially to the soul—sci-
ences and arts and true opinions as we called them? These come
after the third class, and form the fourth, as they are certainly more
akin to good than pleasure is.

PROTARCHUS: Surely.

SOCRATES: The fifth class are the pleasures which were defined
by us as painless, being the pure pleasures of the soul herself, as we

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Philebus

termed them, which accompany, some the sciences, and some the
senses.

PROTARCHUS: Perhaps.

SOCRATES: And now, as Orpheus says,

‘With the sixth generation cease the glory of my song.’

Here, at the sixth award, let us make an end; all that remains is to
set the crown on our discourse.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Then let us sum up and reassert what has been said,
thus offering the third libation to the saviour Zeus.

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Philebus affirmed that pleasure was always and abso-

lutely the good.

PROTARCHUS: I understand; this third libation, Socrates, of

which you spoke, meant a recapitulation.

SOCRATES: Yes, but listen to the sequel; convinced of what I have

just been saying, and feeling indignant at the doctrine, which is
maintained, not by Philebus only, but by thousands of others, I
affirmed that mind was far better and far more excellent, as an ele-
ment of human life, than pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: But, suspecting that there were other things which

were also better, I went on to say that if there was anything better
than either, then I would claim the second place for mind over plea-
sure, and pleasure would lose the second place as well as the first.

444
 Plato

PROTARCHUS: You did.

SOCRATES: Nothing could be more satisfactorily shown than the

unsatisfactory nature of both of them.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: The claims both of pleasure and mind to be the abso-

lute good have been entirely disproven in this argument, because
they are both wanting in self-sufficiency and also in adequacy and
perfection.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: But, though they must both resign in favour of an-

other, mind is ten thousand times nearer and more akin to the na-
ture of the conqueror than pleasure.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And, according to the judgment which has now been

given, pleasure will rank fifth.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: But not first; no, not even if all the oxen and horses
and animals in the world by their pursuit of enjoyment proclaim
her to be so;—although the many trusting in them, as diviners trust
in birds, determine that pleasures make up the good of life, and
deem the lusts of animals to be better witnesses than the inspira-
tions of divine philosophy.

PROTARCHUS: And now, Socrates, we tell you that the truth of

what you have been saying is approved by the judgment of all of us.

SOCRATES: And will you let me go?

445
Philebus

PROTARCHUS: There is a little which yet remains, and I will

remind you of it, for I am sure that you will not be the first to go
away from an argument.

446
 Plato

TIMAEUS
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Critias, Timaeus,

Hermocrates.

SOCRATES: One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the

fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my
entertainers to-day?

TIMAEUS: He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not will-
ingly have been absent from this gathering.

SOCRATES: Then, if he is not coming, you and the two others

must supply his place.

TIMAEUS: Certainly, and we will do all that we can; having been

handsomely entertained by you yesterday, those of us who remain
should be only too glad to return your hospitality.

SOCRATES: Do you remember what were the points of which I

required you to speak?

TIMAEUS: We remember some of them, and you will be here to

remind us of anything which we have forgotten: or rather, if we are
not troubling you, will you briefly recapitulate the whole, and then
the particulars will be more firmly fixed in our memories?

SOCRATES: To be sure I will: the chief theme of my yesterday’s

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Timaeus

discourse was the State—how constituted and of what citizens com-

posed it would seem likely to be most perfect.

TIMAEUS: Yes, Socrates; and what you said of it was very much to
our mind.

SOCRATES: Did we not begin by separating the husbandmen and

the artisans from the class of defenders of the State?

TIMAEUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And when we had given to each one that single em-
ployment and particular art which was suited to his nature, we spoke
of those who were intended to be our warriors, and said that they
were to be guardians of the city against attacks from within as well
as from without, and to have no other employment; they were to be
merciful in judging their subjects, of whom they were by nature
friends, but fierce to their enemies, when they came across them in
battle.

TIMAEUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: We said, if I am not mistaken, that the guardians

should be gifted with a temperament in a high degree both passion-
ate and philosophical; and that then they would be as they ought to
be, gentle to their friends and fierce with their enemies.

TIMAEUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And what did we say of their education? Were they

not to be trained in gymnastic, and music, and all other sorts of
knowledge which were proper for them?

TIMAEUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And being thus trained they were not to consider gold
or silver or anything else to be their own private property; they were

448
 Plato

to be like hired troops, receiving pay for keeping guard from those
who were protected by them—the pay was to be no more than would
suffice for men of simple life; and they were to spend in common,
and to live together in the continual practice of virtue, which was to
be their sole pursuit.

TIMAEUS: That was also said.

SOCRATES: Neither did we forget the women; of whom we de-

clared, that their natures should be assimilated and brought into
harmony with those of the men, and that common pursuits should
be assigned to them both in time of war and in their ordinary life.

TIMAEUS: That, again, was as you say.

SOCRATES: And what about the procreation of children? Or rather

was not the proposal too singular to be forgotten? for all wives and
children were to be in common, to the intent that no one should
ever know his own child, but they were to imagine that they were all
one family; those who were within a suitable limit of age were to be
brothers and sisters, those who were of an elder generation parents
and grandparents, and those of a younger, children and grandchil-
dren.

TIMAEUS: Yes, and the proposal is easy to remember, as you say.

SOCRATES: And do you also remember how, with a view of secur-

ing as far as we could the best breed, we said that the chief magis-
trates, male and female, should contrive secretly, by the use of cer-
tain lots, so to arrange the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either
sex and the good of either sex might pair with their like; and there
was to be no quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine
that the union was a mere accident, and was to be attributed to the
lot?

TIMAEUS: I remember.

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Timaeus

SOCRATES: And you remember how we said that the children of

the good parents were to be educated, and the children of the bad
secretly dispersed among the inferior citizens; and while they were
all growing up the rulers were to be on the look-out, and to bring
up from below in their turn those who were worthy, and those among
themselves who were unworthy were to take the places of those who
came up?

TIMAEUS: True.

SOCRATES: Then have I now given you all the heads of our
yesterday’s discussion? Or is there anything more, my dear Timaeus,
which has been omitted?

TIMAEUS: Nothing, Socrates; it was just as you have said.

SOCRATES: I should like, before proceeding further, to tell you

how I feel about the State which we have described. I might com-
pare myself to a person who, on beholding beautiful animals either
created by the painter’s art, or, better still, alive but at rest, is seized
with a desire of seeing them in motion or engaged in some struggle
or conflict to which their forms appear suited; this is my feeling
about the State which we have been describing. There are conflicts
which all cities undergo, and I should like to hear some one tell of
our own city carrying on a struggle against her neighbours, and
how she went out to war in a becoming manner, and when at war
showed by the greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her
words in dealing with other cities a result worthy of her training
and education. Now I, Critias and Hermocrates, am conscious that
I myself should never be able to celebrate the city and her citizens in
a befitting manner, and I am not surprised at my own incapacity; to
me the wonder is rather that the poets present as well as past are no
better—not that I mean to depreciate them; but every one can see
that they are a tribe of imitators, and will imitate best and most
easily the life in which they have been brought up; while that which
is beyond the range of a man’s education he finds hard to carry out
in action, and still harder adequately to represent in language. I am

450
 Plato

aware that the Sophists have plenty of brave words and fair con-
ceits, but I am afraid that being only wanderers from one city to
another, and having never had habitations of their own, they may
fail in their conception of philosophers and statesmen, and may not
know what they do and say in time of war, when they are fighting or
holding parley with their enemies. And thus people of your class are
the only ones remaining who are fitted by nature and education to
take part at once both in politics and philosophy. Here is Timaeus,
of Locris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is him-
self in wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has
held the most important and honourable offices in his own state,
and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; and here is
Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the matters
of which we are speaking; and as to Hermocrates, I am assured by
many witnesses that his genius and education qualify him to take
part in any speculation of the kind. And therefore yesterday when I
saw that you wanted me to describe the formation of the State, I
readily assented, being very well aware, that, if you only would,
none were better qualified to carry the discussion further, and that
when you had engaged our city in a suitable war, you of all men
living could best exhibit her playing a fitting part. When I had com-
pleted my task, I in return imposed this other task upon you. You
conferred together and agreed to entertain me to-day, as I had en-
tertained you, with a feast of discourse. Here am I in festive array,
and no man can be more ready for the promised banquet.

HERMOCRATES: And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not

be wanting in enthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying
with your request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-
chamber of Critias, with whom we are staying, or rather on our way
thither, we talked the matter over, and he told us an ancient tradi-
tion, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates, so
that he may help us to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements
or not.

CRITIAS: I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.

451
Timaeus

TIMAEUS: I quite approve.

CRITIAS: Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is

certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of
the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-
grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his
poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who re-
membered and repeated it to us. There were of old, he said, great
and marvellous actions of the Athenian city, which have passed into
oblivion through lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and
one in particular, greater than all the rest. This we will now rehearse.
It will be a fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn
of praise true and worthy of the goddess, on this her day of festival.

SOCRATES: Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of

the Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to
be not a mere legend, but an actual fact?

CRITIAS: I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged

man; for Critias, at the time of telling it, was, as he said, nearly
ninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that day
of the Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which,
according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the
poems of several poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sang
the poems of Solon, which at that time had not gone out of fashion.
One of our tribe, either because he thought so or to please Critias,
said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest of men, but
also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well remember,
brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes, Amynander, if
Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of his
life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him from
Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and
troubles which he found stirring in his own country when he came
home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have
been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet.
And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.
About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which

452
 Plato

ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time
and the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us.
Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from
whom Solon heard this veritable tradition.
He replied:—In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the
river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the dis-
trict of Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and
is the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity
for their foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and
is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene;
they are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some
way related to them. To this city came Solon, and was received there
with great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful in
such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither
he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about
the times of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to
speak of antiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in
our part of the world—about Phoroneus, who is called ‘the first
man,’ and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of
Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descen-
dants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many
years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. There-
upon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon,
Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is
not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he
meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young;
there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradi-
tion, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you
why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of man-
kind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought
about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by
innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have
preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios, having
yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was not able to
drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the
earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has
the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies

453
Timaeus

moving in the heavens around the earth, and a great conflagration

of things upon the earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such
times those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places
are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on
the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-
failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the other hand,
the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in
your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the moun-
tains, but those who, like you, live in cities are carried by the rivers
into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither then nor at any other
time, does the water come down from above on the fields, having
always a tendency to come up from below; for which reason the
traditions preserved here are the most ancient. The fact is, that wher-
ever the extremity of winter frost or of summer sun does not pre-
vent, mankind exist, sometimes in greater, sometimes in lesser
numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours,
or in any other region of which we are informed—if there were any
actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all
been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples.
Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be pro-
vided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the
usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pour-
ing down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters
and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children,
and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among
us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you
just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of
children. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but
there were many previous ones; in the next place, you do not know
that there formerly dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of
men which ever lived, and that you and your whole city are de-
scended from a small seed or remnant of them which survived. And
this was unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survi-
vors of that destruction died, leaving no written word. For there
was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which
now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of
all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have

454
 Plato

had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under

the face of heaven. Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly re-
quested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these
former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said
the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and
above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron
and parent and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a
thousand years before ours (Observe that Plato gives the same date
(9000 years ago) for the foundation of Athens and for the repulse of
the invasion from Atlantis (Crit.).), receiving from the Earth and
Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours,
of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be
8000 years old. As touching your citizens of 9000 years ago, I will
briefly inform you of their laws and of their most famous action;
the exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at
our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare these
very laws with ours you will find that many of ours are the counter-
part of yours as they were in the olden time. In the first place, there
is the caste of priests, which is separated from all the others; next,
there are the artificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves
and do not intermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of
hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too,
that the warriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes, and
are commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military
pursuits; moreover, the weapons which they carry are shields and
spears, a style of equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics
first to us, as in your part of the world first to you. Then as to
wisdom, do you observe how our law from the very first made a
study of the whole order of things, extending even to prophecy and
medicine which gives health, out of these divine elements deriving
what was needful for human life, and adding every sort of knowl-
edge which was akin to them. All this order and arrangement the
goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she
chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw
that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would pro-
duce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover
both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot

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Timaeus

which was the most likely to produce men likest herself. And there
you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones, and ex-
celled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and disciples
of the gods.
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our
histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour.
For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an
expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your
city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for
in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situ-
ated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles;
the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the
way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of
the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea
which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a
narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land
may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of
Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over
the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent,
and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya
within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as
Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to sub-
due at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region
within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the
excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was
pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the
Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to
stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she
defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from sla-
very those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all
the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there oc-
curred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night
of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and
the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the
sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impen-
etrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused
by the subsidence of the island.

456
 Plato

I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias heard from
Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking yesterday
about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeat-
ing to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishment
how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost every
particular with the narrative of Solon; but I did not like to speak at
the moment. For a long time had elapsed, and I had forgotten too
much; I thought that I must first of all run over the narrative in my
own mind, and then I would speak. And so I readily assented to
your request yesterday, considering that in all such cases the chief
difficulty is to find a tale suitable to our purpose, and that with such
a tale we should be fairly well provided.
And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home yes-
terday I at once communicated the tale to my companions as I re-
membered it; and after I left them, during the night by thinking I
recovered nearly the whole of it. Truly, as is often said, the lessons of
our childhood make a wonderful impression on our memories; for I
am not sure that I could remember all the discourse of yesterday, but
I should be much surprised if I forgot any of these things which I
have heard very long ago. I listened at the time with childlike interest
to the old man’s narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked
him again and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible
picture they were branded into my mind. As soon as the day broke, I
rehearsed them as he spoke them to my companions, that they, as
well as myself, might have something to say. And now, Socrates, to
make an end of my preface, I am ready to tell you the whole tale. I
will give you not only the general heads, but the particulars, as they
were told to me. The city and citizens, which you yesterday described
to us in fiction, we will now transfer to the world of reality. It shall be
the ancient city of Athens, and we will suppose that the citizens whom
you imagined, were our veritable ancestors, of whom the priest spoke;
they will perfectly harmonize, and there will be no inconsistency in
saying that the citizens of your republic are these ancient Athenians.
Let us divide the subject among us, and all endeavour according to
our ability gracefully to execute the task which you have imposed
upon us. Consider then, Socrates, if this narrative is suited to the
purpose, or whether we should seek for some other instead.

457
Timaeus

SOCRATES: And what other, Critias, can we find that will be better
than this, which is natural and suitable to the festival of the goddess,
and has the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction?
How or where shall we find another if we abandon this? We cannot,
and therefore you must tell the tale, and good luck to you; and I in
return for my yesterday’s discourse will now rest and be a listener.

CRITIAS: Let me proceed to explain to you, Socrates, the order in

which we have arranged our entertainment. Our intention is, that
Timaeus, who is the most of an astronomer amongst us, and has
made the nature of the universe his special study, should speak first,
beginning with the generation of the world and going down to the
creation of man; next, I am to receive the men whom he has created,
and of whom some will have profited by the excellent education which
you have given them; and then, in accordance with the tale of Solon,
and equally with his law, we will bring them into court and make
them citizens, as if they were those very Athenians whom the sacred
Egyptian record has recovered from oblivion, and thenceforward we
will speak of them as Athenians and fellow-citizens.

SOCRATES: I see that I shall receive in my turn a perfect and splen-

did feast of reason. And now, Timaeus, you, I suppose, should speak
next, after duly calling upon the Gods.

TIMAEUS: All men, Socrates, who have any degree of right feel-
ing, at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great,
always call upon God. And we, too, who are going to discourse of
the nature of the universe, how created or how existing without
creation, if we be not altogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid
of Gods and Goddesses and pray that our words may be acceptable
to them and consistent with themselves. Let this, then, be our invo-
cation of the Gods, to which I add an exhortation of myself to speak
in such manner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most
accord with my own intent.
First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask,
What is that which always is and has no becoming; and what is that
which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended

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by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which
is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without rea-
son, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never
really is. Now everything that becomes or is created must of neces-
sity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be
created. The work of the creator, whenever he looks to the unchange-
able and fashions the form and nature of his work after an unchange-
able pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect; but when he
looks to the created only, and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or
perfect. Was the heaven then or the world, whether called by this or
by any other more appropriate name—assuming the name, I am
asking a question which has to be asked at the beginning of an
enquiry about anything—was the world, I say, always in existence
and without beginning? or created, and had it a beginning? Cre-
ated, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and there-
fore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion
and sense and are in a process of creation and created. Now that
which is created must, as we affirm, of necessity be created by a
cause. But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding
out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be
impossible. And there is still a question to be asked about him: Which
of the patterns had the artificer in view when he made the world—
the pattern of the unchangeable, or of that which is created? If the
world be indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he
must have looked to that which is eternal; but if what cannot be
said without blasphemy is true, then to the created pattern. Every
one will see that he must have looked to the eternal; for the world is
the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes. And having been
created in this way, the world has been framed in the likeness of that
which is apprehended by reason and mind and is unchangeable,
and must therefore of necessity, if this is admitted, be a copy of
something. Now it is all-important that the beginning of every-
thing should be according to nature. And in speaking of the copy
and the original we may assume that words are akin to the matter
which they describe; when they relate to the lasting and permanent
and intelligible, they ought to be lasting and unalterable, and, as far
as their nature allows, irrefutable and immovable—nothing less. But

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when they express only the copy or likeness and not the eternal
things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the
real words. As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief. If then,
Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the genera-
tion of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are alto-
gether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another,
do not be surprised. Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely as
any others; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and
you who are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to ac-
cept the tale which is probable and enquire no further.

SOCRATES: Excellent, Timaeus; and we will do precisely as you

bid us. The prelude is charming, and is already accepted by us—
may we beg of you to proceed to the strain?

TIMAEUS: Let me tell you then why the creator made this world
of generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jeal-
ousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all
things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the
truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do
well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired that all
things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attain-
able. Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but
moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he
brought order, considering that this was in every way better than
the other. Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been
other than the fairest; and the creator, reflecting on the things which
are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a
whole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole; and that in-
telligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of
soul. For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he put
intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator
of a work which was by nature fairest and best. Wherefore, using
the language of probability, we may say that the world became a
living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the provi-
dence of God.
This being supposed, let us proceed to the next stage: In the like-

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 Plato

ness of what animal did the Creator make the world? It would be an
unworthy thing to liken it to any nature which exists as a part only;
for nothing can be beautiful which is like any imperfect thing; but let
us suppose the world to be the very image of that whole of which all
other animals both individually and in their tribes are portions. For
the original of the universe contains in itself all intelligible beings, just
as this world comprehends us and all other visible creatures. For the
Deity, intending to make this world like the fairest and most perfect
of intelligible beings, framed one visible animal comprehending
within itself all other animals of a kindred nature. Are we right in
saying that there is one world, or that they are many and infinite?
There must be one only, if the created copy is to accord with the
original. For that which includes all other intelligible creatures can-
not have a second or companion; in that case there would be need
of another living being which would include both, and of which
they would be parts, and the likeness would be more truly said to
resemble not them, but that other which included them. In order
then that the world might be solitary, like the perfect animal, the
creator made not two worlds or an infinite number of them; but
there is and ever will be one only-begotten and created heaven.
Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and also vis-
ible and tangible. And nothing is visible where there is no fire, or
tangible which has no solidity, and nothing is solid without earth.
Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation made the body of
the universe to consist of fire and earth. But two things cannot be
rightly put together without a third; there must be some bond of
union between them. And the fairest bond is that which makes the
most complete fusion of itself and the things which it combines;
and proportion is best adapted to effect such a union. For whenever
in any three numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean,
which is to the last term what the first term is to it; and again, when
the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean—then
the mean becoming first and last, and the first and last both becom-
ing means, they will all of them of necessity come to be the same,
and having become the same with one another will be all one. If the
universal frame had been created a surface only and having no depth,
a single mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the

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other terms; but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies
are always compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed
water and air in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to
have the same proportion so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is
air to water, and as air is to water so is water to earth); and thus he
bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven. And for these
reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the
body of the world was created, and it was harmonized by propor-
tion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship; and having been
reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by the hand of any other
than the framer.
Now the creation took up the whole of each of the four ele-
ments; for the Creator compounded the world out of all the fire
and all the water and all the air and all the earth, leaving no part of
any of them nor any power of them outside. His intention was, in
the first place, that the animal should be as far as possible a perfect
whole and of perfect parts: secondly, that it should be one, leav-
ing no remnants out of which another such world might be cre-
ated: and also that it should be free from old age and unaffected
by disease. Considering that if heat and cold and other powerful
forces which unite bodies surround and attack them from without
when they are unprepared, they decompose them, and by bring-
ing diseases and old age upon them, make them waste away—for
this cause and on these grounds he made the world one whole,
having every part entire, and being therefore perfect and not li-
able to old age and disease. And he gave to the world the figure
which was suitable and also natural. Now to the animal which was
to comprehend all animals, that figure was suitable which com-
prehends within itself all other figures. Wherefore he made the
world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its
extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most
perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered that
the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This he finished off,
making the surface smooth all round for many reasons; in the first
place, because the living being had no need of eyes when there
was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when
there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding at-

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 Plato

mosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of

organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of
what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went
from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of
design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food,
and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For
the Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would
be far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he
had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one,
the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands:
nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walk-
ing; but the movement suited to his spherical form was assigned
to him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to
mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same
manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in
a circle. All the other six motions were taken away from him, and
he was made not to partake of their deviations. And as this circu-
lar movement required no feet, the universe was created without
legs and without feet.
Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that
was to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and
even, having a surface in every direction equidistant from the cen-
tre, a body entire and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies.
And in the centre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the
body, making it also to be the exterior environment of it; and he
made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet
by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needing
no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view
he created the world a blessed god.
Now God did not make the soul after the body, although we are
speaking of them in this order; for having brought them together he
would never have allowed that the elder should be ruled by the
younger; but this is a random manner of speaking which we have,
because somehow we ourselves too are very much under the domin-
ion of chance. Whereas he made the soul in origin and excellence
prior to and older than the body, to be the ruler and mistress, of
whom the body was to be the subject. And he made her out of the

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following elements and on this wise: Out of the indivisible and un-
changeable, and also out of that which is divisible and has to do
with material bodies, he compounded a third and intermediate kind
of essence, partaking of the nature of the same and of the other, and
this compound he placed accordingly in a mean between the indi-
visible, and the divisible and material. He took the three elements
of the same, the other, and the essence, and mingled them into one
form, compressing by force the reluctant and unsociable nature of
the other into the same. When he had mingled them with the es-
sence and out of three made one, he again divided this whole into as
many portions as was fitting, each portion being a compound of the
same, the other, and the essence. And he proceeded to divide after
this manner:—First of all, he took away one part of the whole (1),
and then he separated a second part which was double the first (2),
and then he took away a third part which was half as much again as
the second and three times as much as the first (3), and then he
took a fourth part which was twice as much as the second (4), and a
fifth part which was three times the third (9), and a sixth part which
was eight times the first (8), and a seventh part which was twenty-
seven times the first (27). After this he filled up the double intervals
(i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8) and the triple (i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27)
cutting off yet other portions from the mixture and placing them in
the intervals, so that in each interval there were two kinds of means,
the one exceeding and exceeded by equal parts of its extremes (as for
example 1, 4/3, 2, in which the mean 4/3 is one-third of 1 more
than 1, and one-third of 2 less than 2), the other being that kind of
mean which exceeds and is exceeded by an equal number (e.g. -
over 1, 4/3, 3/2, - over 2, 8/3, 3, - over 4, 16/3, 6, - over 8: and -
over 1, 3/2, 2, - over 3, 9/2, 6, - over 9, 27/2, 18, - over 27.).
Where there were intervals of 3/2 and of 4/3 and of 9/8, made by
the connecting terms in the former intervals, he filled up all the
intervals of 4/3 with the interval of 9/8, leaving a fraction over; and
the interval which this fraction expressed was in the ratio of 256 to
243 (e.g. 243:256::81/64:4/3::243/128:2::81/32:8/3::243/64:4::81/
16:16/3::242/32:8.).
And thus the whole mixture out of which he cut these portions
was all exhausted by him. This entire compound he divided length-

464
 Plato

ways into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre
like the letter X, and bent them into a circular form, connecting
them with themselves and each other at the point opposite to their
original meeting-point; and, comprehending them in a uniform
revolution upon the same axis, he made the one the outer and the
other the inner circle. Now the motion of the outer circle he called
the motion of the same, and the motion of the inner circle the mo-
tion of the other or diverse. The motion of the same he carried
round by the side (i.e. of the rectangular figure supposed to be in-
scribed in the circle of the Same.) to the right, and the motion of
the diverse diagonally (i.e. across the rectangular figure from corner
to corner.) to the left. And he gave dominion to the motion of the
same and like, for that he left single and undivided; but the inner
motion he divided in six places and made seven unequal circles hav-
ing their intervals in ratios of two and and three, three of each, and
bade the orbits proceed in a direction opposite to one another; and
three (Sun, Mercury, Venus) he made to move with equal swiftness,
and the remaining four (Moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter) to move with
unequal swiftness to the three and to one another, but in due pro-
portion.
Now when the Creator had framed the soul according to his will,
he formed within her the corporeal universe, and brought the two
together, and united them centre to centre. The soul, interfused
everywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven, of which
also she is the external envelopment, herself turning in herself, be-
gan a divine beginning of never-ceasing and rational life enduring
throughout all time. The body of heaven is visible, but the soul is
invisible, and partakes of reason and harmony, and being made by
the best of intellectual and everlasting natures, is the best of things
created. And because she is composed of the same and of the other
and of the essence, these three, and is divided and united in due
proportion, and in her revolutions returns upon herself, the soul,
when touching anything which has essence, whether dispersed in
parts or undivided, is stirred through all her powers, to declare the
sameness or difference of that thing and some other; and to what
individuals are related, and by what affected, and in what way and
how and when, both in the world of generation and in the world of

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immutable being. And when reason, which works with equal truth,
whether she be in the circle of the diverse or of the same—in voice-
less silence holding her onward course in the sphere of the self-
moved—when reason, I say, is hovering around the sensible world
and when the circle of the diverse also moving truly imparts the
intimations of sense to the whole soul, then arise opinions and be-
liefs sure and certain. But when reason is concerned with the ratio-
nal, and the circle of the same moving smoothly declares it, then
intelligence and knowledge are necessarily perfected. And if any one
affirms that in which these two are found to be other than the soul,
he will say the very opposite of the truth.
When the father and creator saw the creature which he had made
moving and living, the created image of the eternal gods, he re-
joiced, and in his joy determined to make the copy still more like
the original; and as this was eternal, he sought to make the universe
eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was
everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fulness upon a crea-
ture was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image
of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image
eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests
in unity; and this image we call time. For there were no days and
nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but
when he constructed the heaven he created them also. They are all
parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time,
which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence;
for we say that he ‘was,’ he ‘is,’ he ‘will be,’ but the truth is that ‘is’
alone is properly attributed to him, and that ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are
only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but
that which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger
by time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter will be, older or
younger, nor is subject at all to any of those states which affect mov-
ing and sensible things and of which generation is the cause. These
are the forms of time, which imitates eternity and revolves accord-
ing to a law of number. Moreover, when we say that what has be-
come is become and what becomes is becoming, and that what will
become is about to become and that the non-existent is non-exis-
tent—all these are inaccurate modes of expression (compare

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 Plato

Parmen.). But perhaps this whole subject will be more suitably dis-
cussed on some other occasion.
Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant
in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a
dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was framed
after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might resemble this as
far as was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, and the cre-
ated heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time. Such was the
mind and thought of God in the creation of time. The sun and
moon and five other stars, which are called the planets, were created
by him in order to distinguish and preserve the numbers of time;
and when he had made their several bodies, he placed them in the
orbits in which the circle of the other was revolving,—in seven or-
bits seven stars. First, there was the moon in the orbit nearest the
earth, and next the sun, in the second orbit above the earth; then
came the morning star and the star sacred to Hermes, moving in
orbits which have an equal swiftness with the sun, but in an oppo-
site direction; and this is the reason why the sun and Hermes and
Lucifer overtake and are overtaken by each other. To enumerate the
places which he assigned to the other stars, and to give all the rea-
sons why he assigned them, although a secondary matter, would
give more trouble than the primary. These things at some future
time, when we are at leisure, may have the consideration which
they deserve, but not at present.
Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of
time had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become liv-
ing creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their
appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which is di-
agonal, and passes through and is governed by the motion of the
same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit—
those which had the lesser orbit revolving faster, and those which
had the larger more slowly. Now by reason of the motion of the
same, those which revolved fastest appeared to be overtaken by those
which moved slower although they really overtook them; for the
motion of the same made them all turn in a spiral, and, because
some went one way and some another, that which receded most
slowly from the sphere of the same, which was the swiftest, ap-

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Timaeus

peared to follow it most nearly. That there might be some visible

measure of their relative swiftness and slowness as they proceeded
in their eight courses, God lighted a fire, which we now call the sun,
in the second from the earth of these orbits, that it might give light
to the whole of heaven, and that the animals, as many as nature
intended, might participate in number, learning arithmetic from
the revolution of the same and the like. Thus then, and for this
reason the night and the day were created, being the period of the
one most intelligent revolution. And the month is accomplished
when the moon has completed her orbit and overtaken the sun, and
the year when the sun has completed his own orbit. Mankind, with
hardly an exception, have not remarked the periods of the other
stars, and they have no name for them, and do not measure them
against one another by the help of number, and hence they can
scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in
number and admirable for their variety, make up time. And yet
there is no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfils
the perfect year when all the eight revolutions, having their relative
degrees of swiftness, are accomplished together and attain their
completion at the same time, measured by the rotation of the same
and equally moving. After this manner, and for these reasons, came
into being such of the stars as in their heavenly progress received
reversals of motion, to the end that the created heaven might imi-
tate the eternal nature, and be as like as possible to the perfect and
intelligible animal.
Thus far and until the birth of time the created universe was made
in the likeness of the original, but inasmuch as all animals were not
yet comprehended therein, it was still unlike. What remained, the
creator then proceeded to fashion after the nature of the pattern.
Now as in the ideal animal the mind perceives ideas or species of a
certain nature and number, he thought that this created animal ought
to have species of a like nature and number. There are four such;
one of them is the heavenly race of the gods; another, the race of
birds whose way is in the air; the third, the watery species; and the
fourth, the pedestrian and land creatures. Of the heavenly and di-
vine, he created the greater part out of fire, that they might be the
brightest of all things and fairest to behold, and he fashioned them

468
 Plato

after the likeness of the universe in the figure of a circle, and made
them follow the intelligent motion of the supreme, distributing them
over the whole circumference of heaven, which was to be a true
cosmos or glorious world spangled with them all over. And he gave
to each of them two movements: the first, a movement on the same
spot after the same manner, whereby they ever continue to think
consistently the same thoughts about the same things; the second, a
forward movement, in which they are controlled by the revolution
of the same and the like; but by the other five motions they were
unaffected, in order that each of them might attain the highest per-
fection. And for this reason the fixed stars were created, to be divine
and eternal animals, ever-abiding and revolving after the same man-
ner and on the same spot; and the other stars which reverse their
motion and are subject to deviations of this kind, were created in
the manner already described. The earth, which is our nurse, cling-
ing (or ‘circling’) around the pole which is extended through the
universe, he framed to be the guardian and artificer of night and
day, first and eldest of gods that are in the interior of heaven. Vain
would be the attempt to tell all the figures of them circling as in
dance, and their juxtapositions, and the return of them in their revo-
lutions upon themselves, and their approximations, and to say which
of these deities in their conjunctions meet, and which of them are
in opposition, and in what order they get behind and before one
another, and when they are severally eclipsed to our sight and again
reappear, sending terrors and intimations of the future to those who
cannot calculate their movements—to attempt to tell of all this with-
out a visible representation of the heavenly system would be labour
in vain. Enough on this head; and now let what we have said about
the nature of the created and visible gods have an end.
To know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond us,
and we must accept the traditions of the men of old time who
affirm themselves to be the offspring of the gods—that is what
they say—and they must surely have known their own ancestors.
How can we doubt the word of the children of the gods? Although
they give no probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare that
they are speaking of what took place in their own family, we must
conform to custom and believe them. In this manner, then, ac-

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cording to them, the genealogy of these gods is to be received and

set forth.
Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and
from these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that gen-
eration; and from Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and all
those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were the
children of these.
Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear in their
revolutions as well as those other gods who are of a more retiring
nature, had come into being, the creator of the universe addressed
them in these words: ‘Gods, children of gods, who are my works,
and of whom I am the artificer and father, my creations are indis-
soluble, if so I will. All that is bound may be undone, but only an
evil being would wish to undo that which is harmonious and happy.
Wherefore, since ye are but creatures, ye are not altogether immor-
tal and indissoluble, but ye shall certainly not be dissolved, nor be
liable to the fate of death, having in my will a greater and mightier
bond than those with which ye were bound at the time of your
birth. And now listen to my instructions:—Three tribes of mortal
beings remain to be created—without them the universe will be
incomplete, for it will not contain every kind of animal which it
ought to contain, if it is to be perfect. On the other hand, if they
were created by me and received life at my hands, they would be on
an equality with the gods. In order then that they may be mortal,
and that this universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to
your natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitat-
ing the power which was shown by me in creating you. The part of
them worthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is
the guiding principle of those who are willing to follow justice and
you—of that divine part I will myself sow the seed, and having
made a beginning, I will hand the work over to you. And do ye then
interweave the mortal with the immortal, and make and beget liv-
ing creatures, and give them food, and make them to grow, and
receive them again in death.’
Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had previ-
ously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the
elements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they were

470
 Plato

not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third
degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls
equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; and
having there placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature
of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to
which their first birth would be one and the same for all,—no one
should suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in the
instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the
most religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the
superior race would hereafter be called man. Now, when they should
be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing
some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it would be
necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty
of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions; in the second place,
they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and
anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them; if they
conquered these they would live righteously, and if they were con-
quered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during his ap-
pointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he
would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in at-
taining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if,
when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would
continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the
evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils
and transformations until he followed the revolution of the same and
the like within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent
and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air and
water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state.
Having given all these laws to his creatures, that he might be guiltless
of future evil in any of them, the creator sowed some of them in the
earth, and some in the moon, and some in the other instruments of
time; and when he had sown them he committed to the younger gods
the fashioning of their mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish
what was still lacking to the human soul, and having made all the
suitable additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal
in the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him
all but self-inflicted evils.

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When the creator had made all these ordinances he remained in

his own accustomed nature, and his children heard and were obedi-
ent to their father’s word, and receiving from him the immortal
principle of a mortal creature, in imitation of their own creator they
borrowed portions of fire, and earth, and water, and air from the
world, which were hereafter to be restored—these they took and
welded them together, not with the indissoluble chains by which
they were themselves bound, but with little pegs too small to be
visible, making up out of all the four elements each separate body,
and fastening the courses of the immortal soul in a body which was
in a state of perpetual influx and efflux. Now these courses, de-
tained as in a vast river, neither overcame nor were overcome; but
were hurrying and hurried to and fro, so that the whole animal was
moved and progressed, irregularly however and irrationally and any-
how, in all the six directions of motion, wandering backwards and
forwards, and right and left, and up and down, and in all the six
directions. For great as was the advancing and retiring flood which
provided nourishment, the affections produced by external contact
caused still greater tumult—when the body of any one met and
came into collision with some external fire, or with the solid earth
or the gliding waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air,
and the motions produced by any of these impulses were carried
through the body to the soul. All such motions have consequently
received the general name of ‘sensations,’ which they still retain.
And they did in fact at that time create a very great and mighty
movement; uniting with the ever-flowing stream in stirring up and
violently shaking the courses of the soul, they completely stopped
the revolution of the same by their opposing current, and hindered
it from predominating and advancing; and they so disturbed the
nature of the other or diverse, that the three double intervals (i.e.
between 1, 2, 4, 8), and the three triple intervals (i.e. between 1, 3,
9, 27), together with the mean terms and connecting links which
are expressed by the ratios of 3:2, and 4:3, and of 9:8—these, al-
though they cannot be wholly undone except by him who united
them, were twisted by them in all sorts of ways, and the circles were
broken and disordered in every possible manner, so that when they
moved they were tumbling to pieces, and moved irrationally, at one

472
 Plato

time in a reverse direction, and then again obliquely, and then up-
side down, as you might imagine a person who is upside down and
has his head leaning upon the ground and his feet up against some-
thing in the air; and when he is in such a position, both he and the
spectator fancy that the right of either is his left, and the left right.
If, when powerfully experiencing these and similar effects, the revo-
lutions of the soul come in contact with some external thing, either
of the class of the same or of the other, they speak of the same or of
the other in a manner the very opposite of the truth; and they be-
come false and foolish, and there is no course or revolution in them
which has a guiding or directing power; and if again any sensations
enter in violently from without and drag after them the whole ves-
sel of the soul, then the courses of the soul, though they seem to
conquer, are really conquered.
And by reason of all these affections, the soul, when encased in a
mortal body, now, as in the beginning, is at first without intelli-
gence; but when the flood of growth and nutriment abates, and the
courses of the soul, calming down, go their own way and become
steadier as time goes on, then the several circles return to their natu-
ral form, and their revolutions are corrected, and they call the same
and the other by their right names, and make the possessor of them
to become a rational being. And if these combine in him with any
true nurture or education, he attains the fulness and health of the
perfect man, and escapes the worst disease of all; but if he neglects
education he walks lame to the end of his life, and returns imperfect
and good for nothing to the world below. This, however, is a later
stage; at present we must treat more exactly the subject before us,
which involves a preliminary enquiry into the generation of the body
and its members, and as to how the soul was created—for what
reason and by what providence of the gods; and holding fast to
probability, we must pursue our way.
First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the uni-
verse, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that,
namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of
us and the lord of all that is in us: to this the gods, when they put
together the body, gave all the other members to be servants, con-
sidering that it partook of every sort of motion. In order then that it

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Timaeus

might not tumble about among the high and deep places of the
earth, but might be able to get over the one and out of the other,
they provided the body to be its vehicle and means of locomotion;
which consequently had length and was furnished with four limbs
extended and flexible; these God contrived to be instruments of
locomotion with which it might take hold and find support, and so
be able to pass through all places, carrying on high the dwelling-
place of the most sacred and divine part of us. Such was the origin
of legs and hands, which for this reason were attached to every man;
and the gods, deeming the front part of man to be more honourable
and more fit to command than the hinder part, made us to move
mostly in a forward direction. Wherefore man must needs have his
front part unlike and distinguished from the rest of his body.
And so in the vessel of the head, they first of all put a face in
which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the provi-
dence of the soul, and they appointed this part, which has author-
ity, to be by nature the part which is in front. And of the organs
they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle accord-
ing to which they were inserted was as follows: So much of fire as
would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a sub-
stance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is
within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in
a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and espe-
cially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser
nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element. When the light
of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and
they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line
of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an
external object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly af-
fected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches
or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the soul,
causing that perception which we call sight. But when night comes
on and the external and kindred fire departs, then the stream of
vision is cut off; for going forth to an unlike element it is changed
and extinguished, being no longer of one nature with the surround-
ing atmosphere which is now deprived of fire: and so the eye no
longer sees, and we feel disposed to sleep. For when the eyelids,

474
 Plato

which the gods invented for the preservation of sight, are closed,
they keep in the internal fire; and the power of the fire diffuses and
equalizes the inward motions; when they are equalized, there is rest,
and when the rest is profound, sleep comes over us scarce disturbed
by dreams; but where the greater motions still remain, of whatever
nature and in whatever locality, they engender corresponding vi-
sions in dreams, which are remembered by us when we are awake
and in the external world. And now there is no longer any difficulty
in understanding the creation of images in mirrors and all smooth
and bright surfaces. For from the communion of the internal and
external fires, and again from the union of them and their numer-
ous transformations when they meet in the mirror, all these appear-
ances of necessity arise, when the fire from the face coalesces with
the fire from the eye on the bright and smooth surface. And right
appears left and left right, because the visual rays come into contact
with the rays emitted by the object in a manner contrary to the
usual mode of meeting; but the right appears right, and the left left,
when the position of one of the two concurring lights is reversed;
and this happens when the mirror is concave and its smooth surface
repels the right stream of vision to the left side, and the left to the
right (He is speaking of two kinds of mirrors, first the plane, sec-
ondly the concave; and the latter is supposed to be placed, first hori-
zontally, and then vertically.). Or if the mirror be turned vertically,
then the concavity makes the countenance appear to be all upside
down, and the lower rays are driven upwards and the upper down-
wards.
All these are to be reckoned among the second and co-operative
causes which God, carrying into execution the idea of the best as far
as possible, uses as his ministers. They are thought by most men not
to be the second, but the prime causes of all things, because they
freeze and heat, and contract and dilate, and the like. But they are
not so, for they are incapable of reason or intellect; the only being
which can properly have mind is the invisible soul, whereas fire and
water, and earth and air, are all of them visible bodies. The lover of
intellect and knowledge ought to explore causes of intelligent na-
ture first of all, and, secondly, of those things which, being moved
by others, are compelled to move others. And this is what we too

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Timaeus

must do. Both kinds of causes should be acknowledged by us, but a

distinction should be made between those which are endowed with
mind and are the workers of things fair and good, and those which
are deprived of intelligence and always produce chance effects with-
out order or design. Of the second or co-operative causes of sight,
which help to give to the eyes the power which they now possess,
enough has been said. I will therefore now proceed to speak of the
higher use and purpose for which God has given them to us. The
sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for
had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of
the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever
have been uttered. But now the sight of day and night, and the
months and the revolutions of the years, have created number, and
have given us a conception of time, and the power of enquiring
about the nature of the universe; and from this source we have de-
rived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was or will be
given by the gods to mortal man. This is the greatest boon of sight:
and of the lesser benefits why should I speak? even the ordinary
man if he were deprived of them would bewail his loss, but in vain.
Thus much let me say however: God invented and gave us sight to
the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the
heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which
are akin to them, the unperturbed to the perturbed; and that we,
learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason, might
imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our
own vagaries. The same may be affirmed of speech and hearing:
they have been given by the gods to the same end and for a like
reason. For this is the principal end of speech, whereto it most con-
tributes. Moreover, so much of music as is adapted to the sound of
the voice and to the sense of hearing is granted to us for the sake of
harmony; and harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions
of our souls, is not regarded by the intelligent votary of the Muses as
given by them with a view to irrational pleasure, which is deemed to
be the purpose of it in our day, but as meant to correct any discord
which may have arisen in the courses of the soul, and to be our ally
in bringing her into harmony and agreement with herself; and
rhythm too was given by them for the same reason, on account of

476
 Plato

the irregular and graceless ways which prevail among mankind gen-
erally, and to help us against them.
Thus far in what we have been saying, with small exception, the
works of intelligence have been set forth; and now we must place by
the side of them in our discourse the things which come into being
through necessity—for the creation is mixed, being made up of ne-
cessity and mind. Mind, the ruling power, persuaded necessity to
bring the greater part of created things to perfection, and thus and
after this manner in the beginning, when the influence of reason
got the better of necessity, the universe was created. But if a person
will truly tell of the way in which the work was accomplished, he
must include the other influence of the variable cause as well. Where-
fore, we must return again and find another suitable beginning, as
about the former matters, so also about these. To which end we
must consider the nature of fire, and water, and air, and earth, such
as they were prior to the creation of the heaven, and what was hap-
pening to them in this previous state; for no one has as yet explained
the manner of their generation, but we speak of fire and the rest of
them, whatever they mean, as though men knew their natures, and
we maintain them to be the first principles and letters or elements
of the whole, when they cannot reasonably be compared by a man
of any sense even to syllables or first compounds. And let me say
thus much: I will not now speak of the first principle or principles
of all things, or by whatever name they are to be called, for this
reason—because it is difficult to set forth my opinion according to
the method of discussion which we are at present employing. Do
not imagine, any more than I can bring myself to imagine, that I
should be right in undertaking so great and difficult a task. Re-
membering what I said at first about probability, I will do my best
to give as probable an explanation as any other—or rather, more
probable; and I will first go back to the beginning and try to speak
of each thing and of all. Once more, then, at the commencement of
my discourse, I call upon God, and beg him to be our saviour out of
a strange and unwonted enquiry, and to bring us to the haven of
probability. So now let us begin again.
This new beginning of our discussion of the universe requires a
fuller division than the former; for then we made two classes, now a

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Timaeus

third must be revealed. The two sufficed for the former discussion:
one, which we assumed, was a pattern intelligible and always the
same; and the second was only the imitation of the pattern, gener-
ated and visible. There is also a third kind which we did not distin-
guish at the time, conceiving that the two would be enough. But
now the argument seems to require that we should set forth in words
another kind, which is difficult of explanation and dimly seen. What
nature are we to attribute to this new kind of being? We reply, that
it is the receptacle, and in a manner the nurse, of all generation. I
have spoken the truth; but I must express myself in clearer lan-
guage, and this will be an arduous task for many reasons, and in
particular because I must first raise questions concerning fire and
the other elements, and determine what each of them is; for to say,
with any probability or certitude, which of them should be called
water rather than fire, and which should be called any of them rather
than all or some one of them, is a difficult matter. How, then, shall
we settle this point, and what questions about the elements may be
fairly raised?
In the first place, we see that what we just now called water, by
condensation, I suppose, becomes stone and earth; and this same
element, when melted and dispersed, passes into vapour and air.
Air, again, when inflamed, becomes fire; and again fire, when con-
densed and extinguished, passes once more into the form of air; and
once more, air, when collected and condensed, produces cloud and
mist; and from these, when still more compressed, comes flowing
water, and from water comes earth and stones once more; and thus
generation appears to be transmitted from one to the other in a
circle. Thus, then, as the several elements never present themselves
in the same form, how can any one have the assurance to assert
positively that any of them, whatever it may be, is one thing rather
than another? No one can. But much the safest plan is to speak of
them as follows:—Anything which we see to be continually chang-
ing, as, for example, fire, we must not call ‘this’ or ‘that,’ but rather
say that it is ‘of such a nature’; nor let us speak of water as ‘this’; but
always as ‘such’; nor must we imply that there is any stability in any
of those things which we indicate by the use of the words ‘this’ and
‘that,’ supposing ourselves to signify something thereby; for they

478
 Plato

are too volatile to be detained in any such expressions as ‘this,’ or

‘that,’ or ‘relative to this,’ or any other mode of speaking which
represents them as permanent. We ought not to apply ‘this’ to any
of them, but rather the word ‘such’; which expresses the similar prin-
ciple circulating in each and all of them; for example, that should be
called ‘fire’ which is of such a nature always, and so of everything
that has generation. That in which the elements severally grow up,
and appear, and decay, is alone to be called by the name ‘this’ or
‘that’; but that which is of a certain nature, hot or white, or any-
thing which admits of opposite qualities, and all things that are
compounded of them, ought not to be so denominated. Let me
make another attempt to explain my meaning more clearly. Sup-
pose a person to make all kinds of figures of gold and to be always
transmuting one form into all the rest;—somebody points to one of
them and asks what it is. By far the safest and truest answer is, That
is gold; and not to call the triangle or any other figures which are
formed in the gold ‘these,’ as though they had existence, since they
are in process of change while he is making the assertion; but if the
questioner be willing to take the safe and indefinite expression, ‘such,’
we should be satisfied. And the same argument applies to the uni-
versal nature which receives all bodies—that must be always called
the same; for, while receiving all things, she never departs at all from
her own nature, and never in any way, or at any time, assumes a
form like that of any of the things which enter into her; she is the
natural recipient of all impressions, and is stirred and informed by
them, and appears different from time to time by reason of them.
But the forms which enter into and go out of her are the likenesses
of real existences modelled after their patterns in a wonderful and
inexplicable manner, which we will hereafter investigate. For the
present we have only to conceive of three natures: first, that which
is in process of generation; secondly, that in which the generation
takes place; and thirdly, that of which the thing generated is a re-
semblance. And we may liken the receiving principle to a mother,
and the source or spring to a father, and the intermediate nature to
a child; and may remark further, that if the model is to take every
variety of form, then the matter in which the model is fashioned
will not be duly prepared, unless it is formless, and free from the

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Timaeus

impress of any of those shapes which it is hereafter to receive from

without. For if the matter were like any of the supervening forms,
then whenever any opposite or entirely different nature was stamped
upon its surface, it would take the impression badly, because it would
intrude its own shape. Wherefore, that which is to receive all forms
should have no form; as in making perfumes they first contrive that
the liquid substance which is to receive the scent shall be as inodorous
as possible; or as those who wish to impress figures on soft sub-
stances do not allow any previous impression to remain, but begin
by making the surface as even and smooth as possible. In the same
way that which is to receive perpetually and through its whole ex-
tent the resemblances of all eternal beings ought to be devoid of any
particular form. Wherefore, the mother and receptacle of all created
and visible and in any way sensible things, is not to be termed earth,
or air, or fire, or water, or any of their compounds or any of the
elements from which these are derived, but is an invisible and form-
less being which receives all things and in some mysterious way
partakes of the intelligible, and is most incomprehensible. In saying
this we shall not be far wrong; as far, however, as we can attain to a
knowledge of her from the previous considerations, we may truly
say that fire is that part of her nature which from time to time is
inflamed, and water that which is moistened, and that the mother
substance becomes earth and air, in so far as she receives the impres-
sions of them.
Let us consider this question more precisely. Is there any self-
existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent ex-
ist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive
through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever be-
sides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence noth-
ing at all, and only a name? Here is a question which we must not
leave unexamined or undetermined, nor must we affirm too confi-
dently that there can be no decision; neither must we interpolate in
our present long discourse a digression equally long, but if it is pos-
sible to set forth a great principle in a few words, that is just what we
want.
Thus I state my view:—If mind and true opinion are two distinct
classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas

480
 Plato

unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, how-

ever, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then
everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as
most real and certain. But we must affirm them to be distinct, for
they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is
implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is
always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the
one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly,
every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the
attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must
acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the
same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into
itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible
and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is
granted to intelligence only. And there is another nature of the same
name with it, and like to it, perceived by sense, created, always in
motion, becoming in place and again vanishing out of place, which
is apprehended by opinion and sense. And there is a third nature,
which is space, and is eternal, and admits not of destruction and
provides a home for all created things, and is apprehended without
the help of sense, by a kind of spurious reason, and is hardly real;
which we beholding as in a dream, say of all existence that it must
of necessity be in some place and occupy a space, but that what is
neither in heaven nor in earth has no existence. Of these and other
things of the same kind, relating to the true and waking reality of
nature, we have only this dreamlike sense, and we are unable to cast
off sleep and determine the truth about them. For an image, since
the reality, after which it is modelled, does not belong to it, and it
exists ever as the fleeting shadow of some other, must be inferred to
be in another (i.e. in space), grasping existence in some way or other,
or it could not be at all. But true and exact reason, vindicating the
nature of true being, maintains that while two things (i.e. the image
and space) are different they cannot exist one of them in the other
and so be one and also two at the same time.
Thus have I concisely given the result of my thoughts; and my
verdict is that being and space and generation, these three, existed
in their three ways before the heaven; and that the nurse of genera-

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Timaeus

tion, moistened by water and inflamed by fire, and receiving the

forms of earth and air, and experiencing all the affections which
accompany these, presented a strange variety of appearances; and
being full of powers which were neither similar nor equally bal-
anced, was never in any part in a state of equipoise, but swaying
unevenly hither and thither, was shaken by them, and by its motion
again shook them; and the elements when moved were separated
and carried continually, some one way, some another; as, when grain
is shaken and winnowed by fans and other instruments used in the
threshing of corn, the close and heavy particles are borne away and
settle in one direction, and the loose and light particles in another.
In this manner, the four kinds or elements were then shaken by the
receiving vessel, which, moving like a winnowing machine, scat-
tered far away from one another the elements most unlike, and forced
the most similar elements into close contact. Wherefore also the
various elements had different places before they were arranged so
as to form the universe. At first, they were all without reason and
measure. But when the world began to get into order, fire and water
and earth and air had only certain faint traces of themselves, and
were altogether such as everything might be expected to be in the
absence of God; this, I say, was their nature at that time, and God
fashioned them by form and number. Let it be consistently main-
tained by us in all that we say that God made them as far as possible
the fairest and best, out of things which were not fair and good.
And now I will endeavour to show you the disposition and genera-
tion of them by an unaccustomed argument, which I am compelled
to use; but I believe that you will be able to follow me, for your
education has made you familiar with the methods of science.
In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth and
water and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses solidity,
and every solid must necessarily be contained in planes; and every
plane rectilinear figure is composed of triangles; and all triangles
are originally of two kinds, both of which are made up of one right
and two acute angles; one of them has at either end of the base the
half of a divided right angle, having equal sides, while in the other
the right angle is divided into unequal parts, having unequal sides.
These, then, proceeding by a combination of probability with dem-

482
 Plato

onstration, we assume to be the original elements of fire and the

other bodies; but the principles which are prior to these God only
knows, and he of men who is the friend of God. And next we have
to determine what are the four most beautiful bodies which are
unlike one another, and of which some are capable of resolution
into one another; for having discovered thus much, we shall know
the true origin of earth and fire and of the proportionate and inter-
mediate elements. And then we shall not be willing to allow that
there are any distinct kinds of visible bodies fairer than these. Where-
fore we must endeavour to construct the four forms of bodies which
excel in beauty, and then we shall be able to say that we have suffi-
ciently apprehended their nature. Now of the two triangles, the isos-
celes has one form only; the scalene or unequal-sided has an infinite
number. Of the infinite forms we must select the most beautiful, if
we are to proceed in due order, and any one who can point out a
more beautiful form than ours for the construction of these bodies,
shall carry off the palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend. Now, the
one which we maintain to be the most beautiful of all the many
triangles (and we need not speak of the others) is that of which the
double forms a third triangle which is equilateral; the reason of this
would be long to tell; he who disproves what we are saying, and
shows that we are mistaken, may claim a friendly victory. Then let
us choose two triangles, out of which fire and the other elements
have been constructed, one isosceles, the other having the square of
the longer side equal to three times the square of the lesser side.
Now is the time to explain what was before obscurely said: there
was an error in imagining that all the four elements might be gener-
ated by and into one another; this, I say, was an erroneous supposi-
tion, for there are generated from the triangles which we have se-
lected four kinds—three from the one which has the sides unequal;
the fourth alone is framed out of the isosceles triangle. Hence they
cannot all be resolved into one another, a great number of small
bodies being combined into a few large ones, or the converse. But
three of them can be thus resolved and compounded, for they all
spring from one, and when the greater bodies are broken up, many
small bodies will spring up out of them and take their own proper
figures; or, again, when many small bodies are dissolved into their

483
Timaeus

triangles, if they become one, they will form one large mass of an-
other kind. So much for their passage into one another. I have now
to speak of their several kinds, and show out of what combinations
of numbers each of them was formed. The first will be the simplest
and smallest construction, and its element is that triangle which has
its hypotenuse twice the lesser side. When two such triangles are
joined at the diagonal, and this is repeated three times, and the
triangles rest their diagonals and shorter sides on the same point as
a centre, a single equilateral triangle is formed out of six triangles;
and four equilateral triangles, if put together, make out of every
three plane angles one solid angle, being that which is nearest to the
most obtuse of plane angles; and out of the combination of these
four angles arises the first solid form which distributes into equal
and similar parts the whole circle in which it is inscribed. The sec-
ond species of solid is formed out of the same triangles, which unite
as eight equilateral triangles and form one solid angle out of four
plane angles, and out of six such angles the second body is com-
pleted. And the third body is made up of 120 triangular elements,
forming twelve solid angles, each of them included in five plane
equilateral triangles, having altogether twenty bases, each of which
is an equilateral triangle. The one element (that is, the triangle which
has its hypotenuse twice the lesser side) having generated these fig-
ures, generated no more; but the isosceles triangle produced the
fourth elementary figure, which is compounded of four such tri-
angles, joining their right angles in a centre, and forming one equi-
lateral quadrangle. Six of these united form eight solid angles, each
of which is made by the combination of three plane right angles;
the figure of the body thus composed is a cube, having six plane
quadrangular equilateral bases. There was yet a fifth combination
which God used in the delineation of the universe.
Now, he who, duly reflecting on all this, enquires whether the worlds
are to be regarded as indefinite or definite in number, will be of opin-
ion that the notion of their indefiniteness is characteristic of a sadly
indefinite and ignorant mind. He, however, who raises the question
whether they are to be truly regarded as one or five, takes up a more
reasonable position. Arguing from probabilities, I am of opinion that
they are one; another, regarding the question from another point of

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view, will be of another mind. But, leaving this enquiry, let us proceed
to distribute the elementary forms, which have now been created in
idea, among the four elements.
To earth, then, let us assign the cubical form; for earth is the most
immoveable of the four and the most plastic of all bodies, and that
which has the most stable bases must of necessity be of such a na-
ture. Now, of the triangles which we assumed at first, that which
has two equal sides is by nature more firmly based than that which
has unequal sides; and of the compound figures which are formed
out of either, the plane equilateral quadrangle has necessarily a more
stable basis than the equilateral triangle, both in the whole and in
the parts. Wherefore, in assigning this figure to earth, we adhere to
probability; and to water we assign that one of the remaining forms
which is the least moveable; and the most moveable of them to fire;
and to air that which is intermediate. Also we assign the smallest
body to fire, and the greatest to water, and the intermediate in size
to air; and, again, the acutest body to fire, and the next in acuteness
to, air, and the third to water. Of all these elements, that which has
the fewest bases must necessarily be the most moveable, for it must
be the acutest and most penetrating in every way, and also the light-
est as being composed of the smallest number of similar particles:
and the second body has similar properties in a second degree, and
the third body in the third degree. Let it be agreed, then, both ac-
cording to strict reason and according to probability, that the pyra-
mid is the solid which is the original element and seed of fire; and
let us assign the element which was next in the order of generation
to air, and the third to water. We must imagine all these to be so
small that no single particle of any of the four kinds is seen by us on
account of their smallness: but when many of them are collected
together their aggregates are seen. And the ratios of their numbers,
motions, and other properties, everywhere God, as far as necessity
allowed or gave consent, has exactly perfected, and harmonized in
due proportion.
From all that we have just been saying about the elements or
kinds, the most probable conclusion is as follows:—earth, when
meeting with fire and dissolved by its sharpness, whether the disso-
lution take place in the fire itself or perhaps in some mass of air or

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water, is borne hither and thither, until its parts, meeting together
and mutually harmonising, again become earth; for they can never
take any other form. But water, when divided by fire or by air, on
re-forming, may become one part fire and two parts air; and a single
volume of air divided becomes two of fire. Again, when a small
body of fire is contained in a larger body of air or water or earth,
and both are moving, and the fire struggling is overcome and bro-
ken up, then two volumes of fire form one volume of air; and when
air is overcome and cut up into small pieces, two and a half parts of
air are condensed into one part of water. Let us consider the matter
in another way. When one of the other elements is fastened upon
by fire, and is cut by the sharpness of its angles and sides, it coa-
lesces with the fire, and then ceases to be cut by them any longer.
For no element which is one and the same with itself can be changed
by or change another of the same kind and in the same state. But so
long as in the process of transition the weaker is fighting against the
stronger, the dissolution continues. Again, when a few small par-
ticles, enclosed in many larger ones, are in process of decomposi-
tion and extinction, they only cease from their tendency to extinc-
tion when they consent to pass into the conquering nature, and fire
becomes air and air water. But if bodies of another kind go and
attack them (i.e. the small particles), the latter continue to be dis-
solved until, being completely forced back and dispersed, they make
their escape to their own kindred, or else, being overcome and as-
similated to the conquering power, they remain where they are and
dwell with their victors, and from being many become one. And
owing to these affections, all things are changing their place, for by
the motion of the receiving vessel the bulk of each class is distrib-
uted into its proper place; but those things which become unlike
themselves and like other things, are hurried by the shaking into the
place of the things to which they grow like.
Now all unmixed and primary bodies are produced by such causes
as these. As to the subordinate species which are included in the
greater kinds, they are to be attributed to the varieties in the struc-
ture of the two original triangles. For either structure did not origi-
nally produce the triangle of one size only, but some larger and
some smaller, and there are as many sizes as there are species of the

486
 Plato

four elements. Hence when they are mingled with themselves and
with one another there is an endless variety of them, which those
who would arrive at the probable truth of nature ought duly to
consider.
Unless a person comes to an understanding about the nature and
conditions of rest and motion, he will meet with many difficulties
in the discussion which follows. Something has been said of this
matter already, and something more remains to be said, which is,
that motion never exists in what is uniform. For to conceive that
anything can be moved without a mover is hard or indeed impos-
sible, and equally impossible to conceive that there can be a mover
unless there be something which can be moved—motion cannot
exist where either of these are wanting, and for these to be uniform
is impossible; wherefore we must assign rest to uniformity and mo-
tion to the want of uniformity. Now inequality is the cause of the
nature which is wanting in uniformity; and of this we have already
described the origin. But there still remains the further point—why
things when divided after their kinds do not cease to pass through
one another and to change their place—which we will now proceed
to explain. In the revolution of the universe are comprehended all
the four elements, and this being circular and having a tendency to
come together, compresses everything and will not allow any place
to be left void. Wherefore, also, fire above all things penetrates ev-
erywhere, and air next, as being next in rarity of the elements; and
the two other elements in like manner penetrate according to their
degrees of rarity. For those things which are composed of the largest
particles have the largest void left in their compositions, and those
which are composed of the smallest particles have the least. And the
contraction caused by the compression thrusts the smaller particles
into the interstices of the larger. And thus, when the small parts are
placed side by side with the larger, and the lesser divide the greater
and the greater unite the lesser, all the elements are borne up and
down and hither and thither towards their own places; for the change
in the size of each changes its position in space. And these causes
generate an inequality which is always maintained, and is continu-
ally creating a perpetual motion of the elements in all time.
In the next place we have to consider that there are divers kinds of

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fire. There are, for example, first, flame; and secondly, those emana-
tions of flame which do not burn but only give light to the eyes;
thirdly, the remains of fire, which are seen in red-hot embers after
the flame has been extinguished. There are similar differences in the
air; of which the brightest part is called the aether, and the most
turbid sort mist and darkness; and there are various other nameless
kinds which arise from the inequality of the triangles. Water, again,
admits in the first place of a division into two kinds; the one liquid
and the other fusile. The liquid kind is composed of the small and
unequal particles of water; and moves itself and is moved by other
bodies owing to the want of uniformity and the shape of its par-
ticles; whereas the fusile kind, being formed of large and uniform
particles, is more stable than the other, and is heavy and compact by
reason of its uniformity. But when fire gets in and dissolves the
particles and destroys the uniformity, it has greater mobility, and
becoming fluid is thrust forth by the neighbouring air and spreads
upon the earth; and this dissolution of the solid masses is called
melting, and their spreading out upon the earth flowing. Again,
when the fire goes out of the fusile substance, it does not pass into a
vacuum, but into the neighbouring air; and the air which is dis-
placed forces together the liquid and still moveable mass into the
place which was occupied by the fire, and unites it with itself. Thus
compressed the mass resumes its equability, and is again at unity
with itself, because the fire which was the author of the inequality
has retreated; and this departure of the fire is called cooling, and the
coming together which follows upon it is termed congealment. Of
all the kinds termed fusile, that which is the densest and is formed
out of the finest and most uniform parts is that most precious pos-
session called gold, which is hardened by filtration through rock;
this is unique in kind, and has both a glittering and a yellow colour.
A shoot of gold, which is so dense as to be very hard, and takes a
black colour, is termed adamant. There is also another kind which
has parts nearly like gold, and of which there are several species; it is
denser than gold, and it contains a small and fine portion of earth,
and is therefore harder, yet also lighter because of the great inter-
stices which it has within itself; and this substance, which is one of
the bright and denser kinds of water, when solidified is called cop-

488
 Plato

per. There is an alloy of earth mingled with it, which, when the two
parts grow old and are disunited, shows itself separately and is called
rust. The remaining phenomena of the same kind there will be no
difficulty in reasoning out by the method of probabilities. A man
may sometimes set aside meditations about eternal things, and for
recreation turn to consider the truths of generation which are prob-
able only; he will thus gain a pleasure not to be repented of, and
secure for himself while he lives a wise and moderate pastime. Let
us grant ourselves this indulgence, and go through the probabilities
relating to the same subjects which follow next in order.
Water which is mingled with fire, so much as is fine and liquid
(being so called by reason of its motion and the way in which it rolls
along the ground), and soft, because its bases give way and are less
stable than those of earth, when separated from fire and air and
isolated, becomes more uniform, and by their retirement is com-
pressed into itself; and if the condensation be very great, the water
above the earth becomes hail, but on the earth, ice; and that which
is congealed in a less degree and is only half solid, when above the
earth is called snow, and when upon the earth, and condensed from
dew, hoar-frost. Then, again, there are the numerous kinds of water
which have been mingled with one another, and are distilled through
plants which grow in the earth; and this whole class is called by the
name of juices or saps. The unequal admixture of these fluids cre-
ates a variety of species; most of them are nameless, but four which
are of a fiery nature are clearly distinguished and have names. First,
there is wine, which warms the soul as well as the body: secondly,
there is the oily nature, which is smooth and divides the visual ray,
and for this reason is bright and shining and of a glistening appear-
ance, including pitch, the juice of the castor berry, oil itself, and
other things of a like kind: thirdly, there is the class of substances
which expand the contracted parts of the mouth, until they return
to their natural state, and by reason of this property create sweet-
ness;—these are included under the general name of honey: and,
lastly, there is a frothy nature, which differs from all juices, having a
burning quality which dissolves the flesh; it is called opos (a veg-
etable acid).
As to the kinds of earth, that which is filtered through water passes

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into stone in the following manner:—The water which mixes with

the earth and is broken up in the process changes into air, and tak-
ing this form mounts into its own place. But as there is no sur-
rounding vacuum it thrusts away the neighbouring air, and this being
rendered heavy, and, when it is displaced, having been poured around
the mass of earth, forcibly compresses it and drives it into the va-
cant space whence the new air had come up; and the earth when
compressed by the air into an indissoluble union with water be-
comes rock. The fairer sort is that which is made up of equal and
similar parts and is transparent; that which has the opposite quali-
ties is inferior. But when all the watery part is suddenly drawn out
by fire, a more brittle substance is formed, to which we give the
name of pottery. Sometimes also moisture may remain, and the earth
which has been fused by fire becomes, when cool, a certain stone of
a black colour. A like separation of the water which had been copi-
ously mingled with them may occur in two substances composed of
finer particles of earth and of a briny nature; out of either of them a
half solid-body is then formed, soluble in water—the one, soda,
which is used for purging away oil and earth, the other, salt, which
harmonizes so well in combinations pleasing to the palate, and is, as
the law testifies, a substance dear to the gods. The compounds of
earth and water are not soluble by water, but by fire only, and for
this reason:—Neither fire nor air melt masses of earth; for their
particles, being smaller than the interstices in its structure, have plenty
of room to move without forcing their way, and so they leave the
earth unmelted and undissolved; but particles of water, which are
larger, force a passage, and dissolve and melt the earth. Wherefore
earth when not consolidated by force is dissolved by water only;
when consolidated, by nothing but fire; for this is the only body
which can find an entrance. The cohesion of water again, when
very strong, is dissolved by fire only—when weaker, then either by
air or fire—the former entering the interstices, and the latter pen-
etrating even the triangles. But nothing can dissolve air, when strongly
condensed, which does not reach the elements or triangles; or if not
strongly condensed, then only fire can dissolve it. As to bodies com-
posed of earth and water, while the water occupies the vacant inter-
stices of the earth in them which are compressed by force, the par-

490
 Plato

ticles of water which approach them from without, finding no en-

trance, flow around the entire mass and leave it undissolved; but the
particles of fire, entering into the interstices of the water, do to the
water what water does to earth and fire to air (The text seems to be
corrupt.), and are the sole causes of the compound body of earth
and water liquefying and becoming fluid. Now these bodies are of
two kinds; some of them, such as glass and the fusible sort of stones,
have less water than they have earth; on the other hand, substances
of the nature of wax and incense have more of water entering into
their composition.
I have thus shown the various classes of bodies as they are diversi-
fied by their forms and combinations and changes into one an-
other, and now I must endeavour to set forth their affections and
the causes of them. In the first place, the bodies which I have been
describing are necessarily objects of sense. But we have not yet con-
sidered the origin of flesh, or what belongs to flesh, or of that part
of the soul which is mortal. And these things cannot be adequately
explained without also explaining the affections which are concerned
with sensation, nor the latter without the former: and yet to explain
them together is hardly possible; for which reason we must assume
first one or the other and afterwards examine the nature of our hy-
pothesis. In order, then, that the affections may follow regularly
after the elements, let us presuppose the existence of body and soul.
First, let us enquire what we mean by saying that fire is hot; and
about this we may reason from the dividing or cutting power which
it exercises on our bodies. We all of us feel that fire is sharp; and we
may further consider the fineness of the sides, and the sharpness of
the angles, and the smallness of the particles, and the swiftness of
the motion—all this makes the action of fire violent and sharp, so
that it cuts whatever it meets. And we must not forget that the
original figure of fire (i.e. the pyramid), more than any other form,
has a dividing power which cuts our bodies into small pieces
(Kepmatizei), and thus naturally produces that affection which we
call heat; and hence the origin of the name (thepmos, Kepma). Now,
the opposite of this is sufficiently manifest; nevertheless we will not
fail to describe it. For the larger particles of moisture which sur-
round the body, entering in and driving out the lesser, but not be-

491
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ing able to take their places, compress the moist principle in us; and
this from being unequal and disturbed, is forced by them into a
state of rest, which is due to equability and compression. But things
which are contracted contrary to nature are by nature at war, and
force themselves apart; and to this war and convulsion the name of
shivering and trembling is given; and the whole affection and the
cause of the affection are both termed cold. That is called hard to
which our flesh yields, and soft which yields to our flesh; and things
are also termed hard and soft relatively to one another. That which
yields has a small base; but that which rests on quadrangular bases is
firmly posed and belongs to the class which offers the greatest resis-
tance; so too does that which is the most compact and therefore
most repellent. The nature of the light and the heavy will be best
understood when examined in connexion with our notions of above
and below; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that the universe is
parted into two regions, separate from and opposite to each other,
the one a lower to which all things tend which have any bulk, and
an upper to which things only ascend against their will. For as the
universe is in the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidis-
tant from the centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which
is equidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite
of them all. Such being the nature of the world, when a person says
that any of these points is above or below, may he not be justly
charged with using an improper expression? For the centre of the
world cannot be rightly called either above or below, but is the cen-
tre and nothing else; and the circumference is not the centre, and
has in no one part of itself a different relation to the centre from
what it has in any of the opposite parts. Indeed, when it is in every
direction similar, how can one rightly give to it names which imply
opposition? For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the
centre of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this
extreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar; and if
a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often,
when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the
same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to
speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one
part above and another below is not like a sensible man. The reason

492
 Plato

why these names are used, and the circumstances under which they
are ordinarily applied by us to the division of the heavens, may be
elucidated by the following supposition:—if a person were to stand
in that part of the universe which is the appointed place of fire, and
where there is the great mass of fire to which fiery bodies gather—
if, I say, he were to ascend thither, and, having the power to do this,
were to abstract particles of fire and put them in scales and weigh
them, and then, raising the balance, were to draw the fire by force
towards the uncongenial element of the air, it would be very evident
that he could compel the smaller mass more readily than the larger;
for when two things are simultaneously raised by one and the same
power, the smaller body must necessarily yield to the superior power
with less reluctance than the larger; and the larger body is called
heavy and said to tend downwards, and the smaller body is called
light and said to tend upwards. And we may detect ourselves who
are upon the earth doing precisely the same thing. For we often
separate earthy natures, and sometimes earth itself, and draw them
into the uncongenial element of air by force and contrary to nature,
both clinging to their kindred elements. But that which is smaller
yields to the impulse given by us towards the dissimilar element
more easily than the larger; and so we call the former light, and the
place towards which it is impelled we call above, and the contrary
state and place we call heavy and below respectively. Now the rela-
tions of these must necessarily vary, because the principal masses of
the different elements hold opposite positions; for that which is
light, heavy, below or above in one place will be found to be and
become contrary and transverse and every way diverse in relation to
that which is light, heavy, below or above in an opposite place. And
about all of them this has to be considered:—that the tendency of
each towards its kindred element makes the body which is moved
heavy, and the place towards which the motion tends below, but
things which have an opposite tendency we call by an opposite name.
Such are the causes which we assign to these phenomena. As to the
smooth and the rough, any one who sees them can explain the rea-
son of them to another. For roughness is hardness mingled with
irregularity, and smoothness is produced by the joint effect of uni-
formity and density.

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The most important of the affections which concern the whole

body remains to be considered—that is, the cause of pleasure and
pain in the perceptions of which I have been speaking, and in all
other things which are perceived by sense through the parts of the
body, and have both pains and pleasures attendant on them. Let us
imagine the causes of every affection, whether of sense or not, to be
of the following nature, remembering that we have already distin-
guished between the nature which is easy and which is hard to move;
for this is the direction in which we must hunt the prey which we
mean to take. A body which is of a nature to be easily moved, on
receiving an impression however slight, spreads abroad the motion
in a circle, the parts communicating with each other, until at last,
reaching the principle of mind, they announce the quality of the
agent. But a body of the opposite kind, being immobile, and not
extending to the surrounding region, merely receives the impres-
sion, and does not stir any of the neighbouring parts; and since the
parts do not distribute the original impression to other parts, it has
no effect of motion on the whole animal, and therefore produces no
effect on the patient. This is true of the bones and hair and other
more earthy parts of the human body; whereas what was said above
relates mainly to sight and hearing, because they have in them the
greatest amount of fire and air. Now we must conceive of pleasure
and pain in this way. An impression produced in us contrary to
nature and violent, if sudden, is painful; and, again, the sudden
return to nature is pleasant; but a gentle and gradual return is im-
perceptible and vice versa. On the other hand the impression of
sense which is most easily produced is most readily felt, but is not
accompanied by pleasure or pain; such, for example, are the affec-
tions of the sight, which, as we said above, is a body naturally unit-
ing with our body in the day-time; for cuttings and burnings and
other affections which happen to the sight do not give pain, nor is
there pleasure when the sight returns to its natural state; but the
sensations are clearest and strongest according to the manner in
which the eye is affected by the object, and itself strikes and touches
it; there is no violence either in the contraction or dilation of the
eye. But bodies formed of larger particles yield to the agent only
with a struggle; and then they impart their motions to the whole

494
 Plato

and cause pleasure and pain—pain when alienated from their natu-
ral conditions, and pleasure when restored to them. Things which
experience gradual withdrawings and emptyings of their nature, and
great and sudden replenishments, fail to perceive the emptying, but
are sensible of the replenishment; and so they occasion no pain, but
the greatest pleasure, to the mortal part of the soul, as is manifest in
the case of perfumes. But things which are changed all of a sudden,
and only gradually and with difficulty return to their own nature,
have effects in every way opposite to the former, as is evident in the
case of burnings and cuttings of the body.
Thus have we discussed the general affections of the whole body,
and the names of the agents which produce them. And now I will
endeavour to speak of the affections of particular parts, and the
causes and agents of them, as far as I am able. In the first place let us
set forth what was omitted when we were speaking of juices, con-
cerning the affections peculiar to the tongue. These too, like most
of the other affections, appear to be caused by certain contractions
and dilations, but they have besides more of roughness and smooth-
ness than is found in other affections; for whenever earthy particles
enter into the small veins which are the testing instruments of the
tongue, reaching to the heart, and fall upon the moist, delicate por-
tions of flesh—when, as they are dissolved, they contract and dry
up the little veins, they are astringent if they are rougher, but if not
so rough, then only harsh. Those of them which are of an abster-
gent nature, and purge the whole surface of the tongue, if they do it
in excess, and so encroach as to consume some part of the flesh
itself, like potash and soda, are all termed bitter. But the particles
which are deficient in the alkaline quality, and which cleanse only
moderately, are called salt, and having no bitterness or roughness,
are regarded as rather agreeable than otherwise. Bodies which share
in and are made smooth by the heat of the mouth, and which are
inflamed, and again in turn inflame that which heats them, and
which are so light that they are carried upwards to the sensations of
the head, and cut all that comes in their way, by reason of these
qualities in them, are all termed pungent. But when these same
particles, refined by putrefaction, enter into the narrow veins, and
are duly proportioned to the particles of earth and air which are

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there, they set them whirling about one another, and while they are
in a whirl cause them to dash against and enter into one another,
and so form hollows surrounding the particles that enter—which
watery vessels of air (for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy, some-
times pure, is spread around the air) are hollow spheres of water;
and those of them which are pure, are transparent, and are called
bubbles, while those composed of the earthy liquid, which is in a
state of general agitation and effervescence, are said to boil or fer-
ment—of all these affections the cause is termed acid. And there is
the opposite affection arising from an opposite cause, when the mass
of entering particles, immersed in the moisture of the mouth, is
congenial to the tongue, and smooths and oils over the roughness,
and relaxes the parts which are unnaturally contracted, and con-
tracts the parts which are relaxed, and disposes them all according
to their nature;—that sort of remedy of violent affections is pleas-
ant and agreeable to every man, and has the name sweet. But enough
of this.
The faculty of smell does not admit of differences of kind; for all
smells are of a half-formed nature, and no element is so propor-
tioned as to have any smell. The veins about the nose are too narrow
to admit earth and water, and too wide to detain fire and air; and
for this reason no one ever perceives the smell of any of them; but
smells always proceed from bodies that are damp, or putrefying, or
liquefying, or evaporating, and are perceptible only in the interme-
diate state, when water is changing into air and air into water; and
all of them are either vapour or mist. That which is passing out of
air into water is mist, and that which is passing from water into air
is vapour; and hence all smells are thinner than water and thicker
than air. The proof of this is, that when there is any obstruction to
the respiration, and a man draws in his breath by force, then no
smell filters through, but the air without the smell alone penetrates.
Wherefore the varieties of smell have no name, and they have not
many, or definite and simple kinds; but they are distinguished only
as painful and pleasant, the one sort irritating and disturbing the
whole cavity which is situated between the head and the navel, the
other having a soothing influence, and restoring this same region to
an agreeable and natural condition.

496
 Plato

In considering the third kind of sense, hearing, we must speak of

the causes in which it originates. We may in general assume sound
to be a blow which passes through the ears, and is transmitted by
means of the air, the brain, and the blood, to the soul, and that
hearing is the vibration of this blow, which begins in the head and
ends in the region of the liver. The sound which moves swiftly is
acute, and the sound which moves slowly is grave, and that which is
regular is equable and smooth, and the reverse is harsh. A great
body of sound is loud, and a small body of sound the reverse. Re-
specting the harmonies of sound I must hereafter speak.
There is a fourth class of sensible things, having many intricate
varieties, which must now be distinguished. They are called by the
general name of colours, and are a flame which emanates from ev-
ery sort of body, and has particles corresponding to the sense of
sight. I have spoken already, in what has preceded, of the causes
which generate sight, and in this place it will be natural and suitable
to give a rational theory of colours.
Of the particles coming from other bodies which fall upon the
sight, some are smaller and some are larger, and some are equal to
the parts of the sight itself. Those which are equal are impercep-
tible, and we call them transparent. The larger produce contraction,
the smaller dilation, in the sight, exercising a power akin to that of
hot and cold bodies on the flesh, or of astringent bodies on the
tongue, or of those heating bodies which we termed pungent. White
and black are similar effects of contraction and dilation in another
sphere, and for this reason have a different appearance. Wherefore,
we ought to term white that which dilates the visual ray, and the
opposite of this is black. There is also a swifter motion of a different
sort of fire which strikes and dilates the ray of sight until it reaches
the eyes, forcing a way through their passages and melting them,
and eliciting from them a union of fire and water which we call
tears, being itself an opposite fire which comes to them from an
opposite direction—the inner fire flashes forth like lightning, and
the outer finds a way in and is extinguished in the moisture, and all
sorts of colours are generated by the mixture. This affection is termed
dazzling, and the object which produces it is called bright and flash-
ing. There is another sort of fire which is intermediate, and which

497
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reaches and mingles with the moisture of the eye without flashing;
and in this, the fire mingling with the ray of the moisture, produces
a colour like blood, to which we give the name of red. A bright hue
mingled with red and white gives the colour called auburn. The law
of proportion, however, according to which the several colours are
formed, even if a man knew he would be foolish in telling, for he
could not give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerable or
probable explanation of them. Again, red, when mingled with black
and white, becomes purple, but it becomes umber when the colours
are burnt as well as mingled and the black is more thoroughly mixed
with them. Flame-colour is produced by a union of auburn and
dun, and dun by an admixture of black and white; pale yellow, by
an admixture of white and auburn. White and bright meeting, and
falling upon a full black, become dark blue, and when dark blue
mingles with white, a light blue colour is formed, as flame-colour
with black makes leek green. There will be no difficulty in seeing
how and by what mixtures the colours derived from these are made
according to the rules of probability. He, however, who should at-
tempt to verify all this by experiment, would forget the difference
of the human and divine nature. For God only has the knowledge
and also the power which are able to combine many things into one
and again resolve the one into many. But no man either is or ever
will be able to accomplish either the one or the other operation.
These are the elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which
the creator of the fairest and best of created things associated with
himself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect God,
using the necessary causes as his ministers in the accomplishment
of his work, but himself contriving the good in all his creations.
Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of causes, the one divine
and the other necessary, and may seek for the divine in all things,
as far as our nature admits, with a view to the blessed life; but the
necessary kind only for the sake of the divine, considering that
without them and when isolated from them, these higher things
for which we look cannot be apprehended or received or in any
way shared by us.
Seeing, then, that we have now prepared for our use the various
classes of causes which are the material out of which the remainder

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 Plato

of our discourse must be woven, just as wood is the material of the

carpenter, let us revert in a few words to the point at which we
began, and then endeavour to add on a suitable ending to the be-
ginning of our tale.
As I said at first, when all things were in disorder God created in
each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relation to each
other, all the measures and harmonies which they could possibly
receive. For in those days nothing had any proportion except by
accident; nor did any of the things which now have names deserve
to be named at all—as, for example, fire, water, and the rest of the
elements. All these the creator first set in order, and out of them he
constructed the universe, which was a single animal comprehend-
ing in itself all other animals, mortal and immortal. Now of the
divine, he himself was the creator, but the creation of the mortal he
committed to his offspring. And they, imitating him, received from
him the immortal principle of the soul; and around this they pro-
ceeded to fashion a mortal body, and made it to be the vehicle of the
soul, and constructed within the body a soul of another nature which
was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible affections,—first of
all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil; then, pain, which de-
ters from good; also rashness and fear, two foolish counsellors, an-
ger hard to be appeased, and hope easily led astray;—these they
mingled with irrational sense and with all-daring love according to
necessary laws, and so framed man. Wherefore, fearing to pollute
the divine any more than was absolutely unavoidable, they gave to
the mortal nature a separate habitation in another part of the body,
placing the neck between them to be the isthmus and boundary,
which they constructed between the head and breast, to keep them
apart. And in the breast, and in what is termed the thorax, they
encased the mortal soul; and as the one part of this was superior and
the other inferior they divided the cavity of the thorax into two
parts, as the women’s and men’s apartments are divided in houses,
and placed the midriff to be a wall of partition between them. That
part of the inferior soul which is endowed with courage and passion
and loves contention they settled nearer the head, midway between
the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be under the rule of
reason and might join with it in controlling and restraining the

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desires when they are no longer willing of their own accord to obey
the word of command issuing from the citadel.
The heart, the knot of the veins and the fountain of the blood
which races through all the limbs, was set in the place of guard, that
when the might of passion was roused by reason making proclama-
tion of any wrong assailing them from without or being perpetrated
by the desires within, quickly the whole power of feeling in the
body, perceiving these commands and threats, might obey and fol-
low through every turn and alley, and thus allow the principle of the
best to have the command in all of them. But the gods, foreknow-
ing that the palpitation of the heart in the expectation of danger
and the swelling and excitement of passion was caused by fire, formed
and implanted as a supporter to the heart the lung, which was, in
the first place, soft and bloodless, and also had within hollows like
the pores of a sponge, in order that by receiving the breath and the
drink, it might give coolness and the power of respiration and al-
leviate the heat. Wherefore they cut the air-channels leading to the
lung, and placed the lung about the heart as a soft spring, that,
when passion was rife within, the heart, beating against a yielding
body, might be cooled and suffer less, and might thus become more
ready to join with passion in the service of reason.
The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the other
things of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, they
placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel, contriv-
ing in all this region a sort of manger for the food of the body; and
there they bound it down like a wild animal which was chained up
with man, and must be nourished if man was to exist. They ap-
pointed this lower creation his place here in order that he might be
always feeding at the manger, and have his dwelling as far as might
be from the council-chamber, making as little noise and disturbance
as possible, and permitting the best part to advise quietly for the
good of the whole. And knowing that this lower principle in man
would not comprehend reason, and even if attaining to some de-
gree of perception would never naturally care for rational notions,
but that it would be led away by phantoms and visions night and
day,—to be a remedy for this, God combined with it the liver, and
placed it in the house of the lower nature, contriving that it should

500
 Plato

be solid and smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a
bitter quality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds
from the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives
likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to the sight; and
so might strike terror into the desires, when, making use of the
bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes threatening and
invading, and diffusing this bitter element swiftly through the whole
liver produces colours like bile, and contracting every part makes it
wrinkled and rough; and twisting out of its right place and contort-
ing the lobe and closing and shutting up the vessels and gates, causes
pain and loathing. And the converse happens when some gentle
inspiration of the understanding pictures images of an opposite char-
acter, and allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir or touch
the nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the natural sweet-
ness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be right and
smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul which resides
about the liver happy and joyful, enabling it to pass the night in
peace, and to practise divination in sleep, inasmuch as it has no
share in mind and reason. For the authors of our being, remember-
ing the command of their father when he bade them create the
human race as good as they could, that they might correct our infe-
rior parts and make them to attain a measure of truth, placed in the
liver the seat of divination. And herein is a proof that God has given
the art of divination not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of
man. No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspi-
ration; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelli-
gence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or
possession. And he who would understand what he remembers to
have been said, whether in a dream or when he was awake, by the
prophetic and inspired nature, or would determine by reason the
meaning of the apparitions which he has seen, and what indications
they afford to this man or that, of past, present or future good and
evil, must first recover his wits. But, while he continues demented,
he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he
utters; the ancient saying is very true, that ‘only a man who has his
wits can act or judge about himself and his own affairs.’ And for this
reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be judges of the

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true inspiration. Some persons call them prophets; they are quite
unaware that they are only the expositors of dark sayings and vi-
sions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters
of prophecy.
Such is the nature of the liver, which is placed as we have de-
scribed in order that it may give prophetic intimations. During the
life of each individual these intimations are plainer, but after his
death the liver becomes blind, and delivers oracles too obscure to be
intelligible. The neighbouring organ (the spleen) is situated on the
left-hand side, and is constructed with a view of keeping the liver
bright and pure,—like a napkin, always ready prepared and at hand
to clean the mirror. And hence, when any impurities arise in the
region of the liver by reason of disorders of the body, the loose na-
ture of the spleen, which is composed of a hollow and bloodless
tissue, receives them all and clears them away, and when filled with
the unclean matter, swells and festers, but, again, when the body is
purged, settles down into the same place as before, and is humbled.
Concerning the soul, as to which part is mortal and which di-
vine, and how and why they are separated, and where located, if
God acknowledges that we have spoken the truth, then, and then
only, can we be confident; still, we may venture to assert that what
has been said by us is probable, and will be rendered more probable
by investigation. Let us assume thus much.
The creation of the rest of the body follows next in order, and this
we may investigate in a similar manner. And it appears to be very
meet that the body should be framed on the following principles:—
The authors of our race were aware that we should be intemperate
in eating and drinking, and take a good deal more than was necessary
or proper, by reason of gluttony. In order then that disease might not
quickly destroy us, and lest our mortal race should perish without
fulfilling its end—intending to provide against this, the gods made
what is called the lower belly, to be a receptacle for the superfluous
meat and drink, and formed the convolution of the bowels, so that
the food might be prevented from passing quickly through and com-
pelling the body to require more food, thus producing insatiable glut-
tony, and making the whole race an enemy to philosophy and music,
and rebellious against the divinest element within us.

502
 Plato

The bones and flesh, and other similar parts of us, were made as
follows. The first principle of all of them was the generation of the
marrow. For the bonds of life which unite the soul with the body
are made fast there, and they are the root and foundation of the
human race. The marrow itself is created out of other materials:
God took such of the primary triangles as were straight and smooth,
and were adapted by their perfection to produce fire and water, and
air and earth—these, I say, he separated from their kinds, and min-
gling them in due proportions with one another, made the marrow
out of them to be a universal seed of the whole race of mankind;
and in this seed he then planted and enclosed the souls, and in the
original distribution gave to the marrow as many and various forms
as the different kinds of souls were hereafter to receive. That which,
like a field, was to receive the divine seed, he made round every way,
and called that portion of the marrow, brain, intending that, when
an animal was perfected, the vessel containing this substance should
be the head; but that which was intended to contain the remaining
and mortal part of the soul he distributed into figures at once round
and elongated, and he called them all by the name ‘marrow’; and to
these, as to anchors, fastening the bonds of the whole soul, he pro-
ceeded to fashion around them the entire framework of our body,
constructing for the marrow, first of all a complete covering of bone.
Bone was composed by him in the following manner. Having
sifted pure and smooth earth he kneaded it and wetted it with mar-
row, and after that he put it into fire and then into water, and once
more into fire and again into water—in this way by frequent trans-
fers from one to the other he made it insoluble by either. Out of this
he fashioned, as in a lathe, a globe made of bone, which he placed
around the brain, and in this he left a narrow opening; and around
the marrow of the neck and back he formed vertebrae which he
placed under one another like pivots, beginning at the head and
extending through the whole of the trunk. Thus wishing to pre-
serve the entire seed, he enclosed it in a stone-like casing, inserting
joints, and using in the formation of them the power of the other or
diverse as an intermediate nature, that they might have motion and
flexure. Then again, considering that the bone would be too brittle
and inflexible, and when heated and again cooled would soon mor-

503
Timaeus

tify and destroy the seed within—having this in view, he contrived

the sinews and the flesh, that so binding all the members together
by the sinews, which admitted of being stretched and relaxed about
the vertebrae, he might thus make the body capable of flexion and
extension, while the flesh would serve as a protection against the
summer heat and against the winter cold, and also against falls, softly
and easily yielding to external bodies, like articles made of felt; and
containing in itself a warm moisture which in summer exudes and
makes the surface damp, would impart a natural coolness to the
whole body; and again in winter by the help of this internal warmth
would form a very tolerable defence against the frost which sur-
rounds it and attacks it from without. He who modelled us, consid-
ering these things, mixed earth with fire and water and blended
them; and making a ferment of acid and salt, he mingled it with
them and formed soft and succulent flesh. As for the sinews, he
made them of a mixture of bone and unfermented flesh, attempered
so as to be in a mean, and gave them a yellow colour; wherefore the
sinews have a firmer and more glutinous nature than flesh, but a
softer and moister nature than the bones. With these God covered
the bones and marrow, binding them together by sinews, and then
enshrouded them all in an upper covering of flesh. The more living
and sensitive of the bones he enclosed in the thinnest film of flesh,
and those which had the least life within them in the thickest and
most solid flesh. So again on the joints of the bones, where reason
indicated that no more was required, he placed only a thin covering
of flesh, that it might not interfere with the flexion of our bodies
and make them unwieldy because difficult to move; and also that it
might not, by being crowded and pressed and matted together, de-
stroy sensation by reason of its hardness, and impair the memory
and dull the edge of intelligence. Wherefore also the thighs and the
shanks and the hips, and the bones of the arms and the forearms,
and other parts which have no joints, and the inner bones, which
on account of the rarity of the soul in the marrow are destitute of
reason—all these are abundantly provided with flesh; but such as
have mind in them are in general less fleshy, except where the cre-
ator has made some part solely of flesh in order to give sensation,—
as, for example, the tongue. But commonly this is not the case. For

504
 Plato

the nature which comes into being and grows up in us by a law of

necessity, does not admit of the combination of solid bone and much
flesh with acute perceptions. More than any other part the frame-
work of the head would have had them, if they could have co-ex-
isted, and the human race, having a strong and fleshy and sinewy
head, would have had a life twice or many times as long as it now
has, and also more healthy and free from pain. But our creators,
considering whether they should make a longer-lived race which
was worse, or a shorter-lived race which was better, came to the
conclusion that every one ought to prefer a shorter span of life,
which was better, to a longer one, which was worse; and therefore
they covered the head with thin bone, but not with flesh and sin-
ews, since it had no joints; and thus the head was added, having
more wisdom and sensation than the rest of the body, but also be-
ing in every man far weaker. For these reasons and after this manner
God placed the sinews at the extremity of the head, in a circle round
the neck, and glued them together by the principle of likeness and
fastened the extremities of the jawbones to them below the face,
and the other sinews he dispersed throughout the body, fastening
limb to limb. The framers of us framed the mouth, as now arranged,
having teeth and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and
the good contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the way out
for the best purposes; for that is necessary which enters in and gives
food to the body; but the river of speech, which flows out of a man
and ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest of all
streams. Still the head could neither be left a bare frame of bones,
on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the different seasons,
nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and so become dull and
senseless by reason of an overgrowth of flesh. The fleshy nature was
not therefore wholly dried up, but a large sort of peel was parted off
and remained over, which is now called the skin. This met and grew
by the help of the cerebral moisture, and became the circular envel-
opment of the head. And the moisture, rising up under the sutures,
watered and closed in the skin upon the crown, forming a sort of
knot. The diversity of the sutures was caused by the power of the
courses of the soul and of the food, and the more these struggled
against one another the more numerous they became, and fewer if

505
Timaeus

the struggle were less violent. This skin the divine power pierced all
round with fire, and out of the punctures which were thus made the
moisture issued forth, and the liquid and heat which was pure came
away, and a mixed part which was composed of the same material as
the skin, and had a fineness equal to the punctures, was borne up by
its own impulse and extended far outside the head, but being too
slow to escape, was thrust back by the external air, and rolled up
underneath the skin, where it took root. Thus the hair sprang up in
the skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of leather, but
rendered harder and closer through the pressure of the cold, by which
each hair, while in process of separation from the skin, is compressed
and cooled. Wherefore the creator formed the head hairy, making
use of the causes which I have mentioned, and reflecting also that
instead of flesh the brain needed the hair to be a light covering or
guard, which would give shade in summer and shelter in winter,
and at the same time would not impede our quickness of percep-
tion. From the combination of sinew, skin, and bone, in the struc-
ture of the finger, there arises a triple compound, which, when dried
up, takes the form of one hard skin partaking of all three natures,
and was fabricated by these second causes, but designed by mind
which is the principal cause with an eye to the future. For our cre-
ators well knew that women and other animals would some day be
framed out of men, and they further knew that many animals would
require the use of nails for many purposes; wherefore they fash-
ioned in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails. For this
purpose and for these reasons they caused skin, hair, and nails to
grow at the extremities of the limbs.
And now that all the parts and members of the mortal animal
had come together, since its life of necessity consisted of fire and
breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolution and depletion,
the gods contrived the following remedy: They mingled a nature
akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions, and thus
created another kind of animal. These are the trees and plants and
seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are now domes-
ticated among us; anciently there were only the wild kinds, which
are older than the cultivated. For everything that partakes of life
may be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are

506
 Plato

now speaking partakes of the third kind of soul, which is said to be

seated between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion
or reason or mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the
desires which accompany them. For this nature is always in a pas-
sive state, revolving in and about itself, repelling the motion from
without and using its own, and accordingly is not endowed by na-
ture with the power of observing or reflecting on its own concerns.
Wherefore it lives and does not differ from a living being, but is
fixed and rooted in the same spot, having no power of self-motion.
Now after the superior powers had created all these natures to be
food for us who are of the inferior nature, they cut various channels
through the body as through a garden, that it might be watered as
from a running stream. In the first place, they cut two hidden chan-
nels or veins down the back where the skin and the flesh join, which
answered severally to the right and left side of the body. These they
let down along the backbone, so as to have the marrow of genera-
tion between them, where it was most likely to flourish, and in
order that the stream coming down from above might flow freely to
the other parts, and equalize the irrigation. In the next place, they
divided the veins about the head, and interlacing them, they sent
them in opposite directions; those coming from the right side they
sent to the left of the body, and those from the left they diverted
towards the right, so that they and the skin might together form a
bond which should fasten the head to the body, since the crown of
the head was not encircled by sinews; and also in order that the
sensations from both sides might be distributed over the whole body.
And next, they ordered the water-courses of the body in a manner
which I will describe, and which will be more easily understood if
we begin by admitting that all things which have lesser parts retain
the greater, but the greater cannot retain the lesser. Now of all na-
tures fire has the smallest parts, and therefore penetrates through
earth and water and air and their compounds, nor can anything
hold it. And a similar principle applies to the human belly; for when
meats and drinks enter it, it holds them, but it cannot hold air and
fire, because the particles of which they consist are smaller than its
own structure.
These elements, therefore, God employed for the sake of distrib-

507
Timaeus

uting moisture from the belly into the veins, weaving together a
network of fire and air like a weel, having at the entrance two lesser
weels; further he constructed one of these with two openings, and
from the lesser weels he extended cords reaching all round to the
extremities of the network. All the interior of the net he made of
fire, but the lesser weels and their cavity, of air. The network he took
and spread over the newly-formed animal in the following man-
ner:—He let the lesser weels pass into the mouth; there were two of
them, and one he let down by the air-pipes into the lungs, the other
by the side of the air-pipes into the belly. The former he divided
into two branches, both of which he made to meet at the channels
of the nose, so that when the way through the mouth did not act,
the streams of the mouth as well were replenished through the nose.
With the other cavity (i.e. of the greater weel) he enveloped the
hollow parts of the body, and at one time he made all this to flow
into the lesser weels, quite gently, for they are composed of air, and
at another time he caused the lesser weels to flow back again; and
the net he made to find a way in and out through the pores of the
body, and the rays of fire which are bound fast within followed the
passage of the air either way, never at any time ceasing so long as the
mortal being holds together. This process, as we affirm, the name-
giver named inspiration and expiration. And all this movement, active
as well as passive, takes place in order that the body, being watered
and cooled, may receive nourishment and life; for when the respira-
tion is going in and out, and the fire, which is fast bound within,
follows it, and ever and anon moving to and fro, enters through the
belly and reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and divid-
ing them into small portions and guiding them through the pas-
sages where it goes, pumps them as from a fountain into the chan-
nels of the veins, and makes the stream of the veins flow through
the body as through a conduit.
Let us once more consider the phenomena of respiration, and
enquire into the causes which have made it what it is. They are as
follows:—Seeing that there is no such thing as a vacuum into which
any of those things which are moved can enter, and the breath is
carried from us into the external air, the next point is, as will be
clear to every one, that it does not go into a vacant space, but pushes

508
 Plato

its neighbour out of its place, and that which is thrust out in turn
drives out its neighbour; and in this way everything of necessity at
last comes round to that place from whence the breath came forth,
and enters in there, and following the breath, fills up the vacant
space; and this goes on like the rotation of a wheel, because there
can be no such thing as a vacuum. Wherefore also the breast and
the lungs, when they emit the breath, are replenished by the air
which surrounds the body and which enters in through the pores of
the flesh and is driven round in a circle; and again, the air which is
sent away and passes out through the body forces the breath in-
wards through the passage of the mouth and the nostrils. Now the
origin of this movement may be supposed to be as follows. In the
interior of every animal the hottest part is that which is around the
blood and veins; it is in a manner an internal fountain of fire, which
we compare to the network of a creel, being woven all of fire and
extended through the centre of the body, while the outer parts are
composed of air. Now we must admit that heat naturally proceeds
outward to its own place and to its kindred element; and as there
are two exits for the heat, the one out through the body, and the
other through the mouth and nostrils, when it moves towards the
one, it drives round the air at the other, and that which is driven
round falls into the fire and becomes warm, and that which goes
forth is cooled. But when the heat changes its place, and the par-
ticles at the other exit grow warmer, the hotter air inclining in that
direction and carried towards its native element, fire, pushes round
the air at the other; and this being affected in the same way and
communicating the same impulse, a circular motion swaying to and
fro is produced by the double process, which we call inspiration and
expiration.
The phenomena of medical cupping-glasses and of the swallow-
ing of drink and of the projection of bodies, whether discharged in
the air or bowled along the ground, are to be investigated on a simi-
lar principle; and swift and slow sounds, which appear to be high
and low, and are sometimes discordant on account of their inequal-
ity, and then again harmonical on account of the equality of the
motion which they excite in us. For when the motions of the ante-
cedent swifter sounds begin to pause and the two are equalized, the

509
Timaeus

slower sounds overtake the swifter and then propel them. When
they overtake them they do not intrude a new and discordant mo-
tion, but introduce the beginnings of a slower, which answers to the
swifter as it dies away, thus producing a single mixed expression out
of high and low, whence arises a pleasure which even the unwise
feel, and which to the wise becomes a higher sort of delight, being
an imitation of divine harmony in mortal motions. Moreover, as to
the flowing of water, the fall of the thunderbolt, and the marvels
that are observed about the attraction of amber and the Heraclean
stones,—in none of these cases is there any attraction; but he who
investigates rightly, will find that such wonderful phenomena are
attributable to the combination of certain conditions—the non-
existence of a vacuum, the fact that objects push one another round,
and that they change places, passing severally into their proper po-
sitions as they are divided or combined.
Such as we have seen, is the nature and such are the causes of
respiration, —the subject in which this discussion originated. For
the fire cuts the food and following the breath surges up within, fire
and breath rising together and filling the veins by drawing up out of
the belly and pouring into them the cut portions of the food; and so
the streams of food are kept flowing through the whole body in all
animals. And fresh cuttings from kindred substances, whether the
fruits of the earth or herb of the field, which God planted to be our
daily food, acquire all sorts of colours by their inter-mixture; but
red is the most pervading of them, being created by the cutting
action of fire and by the impression which it makes on a moist
substance; and hence the liquid which circulates in the body has a
colour such as we have described. The liquid itself we call blood,
which nourishes the flesh and the whole body, whence all parts are
watered and empty places filled.
Now the process of repletion and evacuation is effected after the
manner of the universal motion by which all kindred substances are
drawn towards one another. For the external elements which sur-
round us are always causing us to consume away, and distributing
and sending off like to like; the particles of blood, too, which are
divided and contained within the frame of the animal as in a sort of
heaven, are compelled to imitate the motion of the universe. Each,

510
 Plato

therefore, of the divided parts within us, being carried to its kindred
nature, replenishes the void. When more is taken away than flows
in, then we decay, and when less, we grow and increase.
The frame of the entire creature when young has the triangles of
each kind new, and may be compared to the keel of a vessel which is
just off the stocks; they are locked firmly together and yet the whole
mass is soft and delicate, being freshly formed of marrow and nur-
tured on milk. Now when the triangles out of which meats and
drinks are composed come in from without, and are comprehended
in the body, being older and weaker than the triangles already there,
the frame of the body gets the better of them and its newer triangles
cut them up, and so the animal grows great, being nourished by a
multitude of similar particles. But when the roots of the triangles
are loosened by having undergone many conflicts with many things
in the course of time, they are no longer able to cut or assimilate the
food which enters, but are themselves easily divided by the bodies
which come in from without. In this way every animal is overcome
and decays, and this affection is called old age. And at last, when
the bonds by which the triangles of the marrow are united no longer
hold, and are parted by the strain of existence, they in turn loosen
the bonds of the soul, and she, obtaining a natural release, flies away
with joy. For that which takes place according to nature is pleasant,
but that which is contrary to nature is painful. And thus death, if
caused by disease or produced by wounds, is painful and violent;
but that sort of death which comes with old age and fulfils the debt of
nature is the easiest of deaths, and is accompanied with pleasure rather
than with pain.
Now every one can see whence diseases arise. There are four na-
tures out of which the body is compacted, earth and fire and water
and air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, or the change of
any of them from its own natural place into another, or—since there
are more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements—the
assumption by any of these of a wrong kind, or any similar irregu-
larity, produces disorders and diseases; for when any of them is pro-
duced or changed in a manner contrary to nature, the parts which
were previously cool grow warm, and those which were dry become
moist, and the light become heavy, and the heavy light; all sorts of

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changes occur. For, as we affirm, a thing can only remain the same
with itself, whole and sound, when the same is added to it, or sub-
tracted from it, in the same respect and in the same manner and in
due proportion; and whatever comes or goes away in violation of
these laws causes all manner of changes and infinite diseases and
corruptions. Now there is a second class of structures which are also
natural, and this affords a second opportunity of observing diseases
to him who would understand them. For whereas marrow and bone
and flesh and sinews are composed of the four elements, and the
blood, though after another manner, is likewise formed out of them,
most diseases originate in the way which I have described; but the
worst of all owe their severity to the fact that the generation of these
substances proceeds in a wrong order; they are then destroyed. For
the natural order is that the flesh and sinews should be made of
blood, the sinews out of the fibres to which they are akin, and the
flesh out of the clots which are formed when the fibres are sepa-
rated. And the glutinous and rich matter which comes away from
the sinews and the flesh, not only glues the flesh to the bones, but
nourishes and imparts growth to the bone which surrounds the
marrow; and by reason of the solidity of the bones, that which fil-
ters through consists of the purest and smoothest and oiliest sort of
triangles, dropping like dew from the bones and watering the mar-
row. Now when each process takes place in this order, health com-
monly results; when in the opposite order, disease. For when the
flesh becomes decomposed and sends back the wasting substance
into the veins, then an over-supply of blood of diverse kinds, min-
gling with air in the veins, having variegated colours and bitter prop-
erties, as well as acid and saline qualities, contains all sorts of bile
and serum and phlegm. For all things go the wrong way, and having
become corrupted, first they taint the blood itself, and then ceasing
to give nourishment to the body they are carried along the veins in
all directions, no longer preserving the order of their natural courses,
but at war with themselves, because they receive no good from one
another, and are hostile to the abiding constitution of the body,
which they corrupt and dissolve. The oldest part of the flesh which
is corrupted, being hard to decompose, from long burning grows
black, and from being everywhere corroded becomes bitter, and is

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 Plato

injurious to every part of the body which is still uncorrupted. Some-

times, when the bitter element is refined away, the black part as-
sumes an acidity which takes the place of the bitterness; at other
times the bitterness being tinged with blood has a redder colour;
and this, when mixed with black, takes the hue of grass; and again,
an auburn colour mingles with the bitter matter when new flesh is
decomposed by the fire which surrounds the internal flame;—to all
which symptoms some physician perhaps, or rather some philoso-
pher, who had the power of seeing in many dissimilar things one
nature deserving of a name, has assigned the common name of bile.
But the other kinds of bile are variously distinguished by their colours.
As for serum, that sort which is the watery part of blood is inno-
cent, but that which is a secretion of black and acid bile is malig-
nant when mingled by the power of heat with any salt substance,
and is then called acid phlegm. Again, the substance which is formed
by the liquefaction of new and tender flesh when air is present, if
inflated and encased in liquid so as to form bubbles, which sepa-
rately are invisible owing to their small size, but when collected are
of a bulk which is visible, and have a white colour arising out of the
generation of foam—all this decomposition of tender flesh when
intermingled with air is termed by us white phlegm. And the whey
or sediment of newly-formed phlegm is sweat and tears, and in-
cludes the various daily discharges by which the body is purified.
Now all these become causes of disease when the blood is not re-
plenished in a natural manner by food and drink but gains bulk
from opposite sources in violation of the laws of nature. When the
several parts of the flesh are separated by disease, if the foundation
remains, the power of the disorder is only half as great, and there is
still a prospect of an easy recovery; but when that which binds the
flesh to the bones is diseased, and no longer being separated from
the muscles and sinews, ceases to give nourishment to the bone and
to unite flesh and bone, and from being oily and smooth and gluti-
nous becomes rough and salt and dry, owing to bad regimen, then
all the substance thus corrupted crumbles away under the flesh and
the sinews, and separates from the bone, and the fleshy parts fall
away from their foundation and leave the sinews bare and full of
brine, and the flesh again gets into the circulation of the blood and

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makes the previously-mentioned disorders still greater. And if these

bodily affections be severe, still worse are the prior disorders; as when
the bone itself, by reason of the density of the flesh, does not obtain
sufficient air, but becomes mouldy and hot and gangrened and re-
ceives no nutriment, and the natural process is inverted, and the
bone crumbling passes into the food, and the food into the flesh,
and the flesh again falling into the blood makes all maladies that
may occur more virulent than those already mentioned. But the
worst case of all is when the marrow is diseased, either from excess
or defect; and this is the cause of the very greatest and most fatal
disorders, in which the whole course of the body is reversed.
There is a third class of diseases which may be conceived of as
arising in three ways; for they are produced sometimes by wind,
and sometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile. When the lung,
which is the dispenser of the air to the body, is obstructed by rheums
and its passages are not free, some of them not acting, while through
others too much air enters, then the parts which are unrefreshed by
air corrode, while in other parts the excess of air forcing its way
through the veins distorts them and decomposing the body is en-
closed in the midst of it and occupies the midriff; thus numberless
painful diseases are produced, accompanied by copious sweats. And
oftentimes when the flesh is dissolved in the body, wind, generated
within and unable to escape, is the source of quite as much pain as
the air coming in from without; but the greatest pain is felt when
the wind gets about the sinews and the veins of the shoulders, and
swells them up, and so twists back the great tendons and the sinews
which are connected with them. These disorders are called tetanus
and opisthotonus, by reason of the tension which accompanies them.
The cure of them is difficult; relief is in most cases given by fever
supervening. The white phlegm, though dangerous when detained
within by reason of the air-bubbles, yet if it can communicate with
the outside air, is less severe, and only discolours the body, generat-
ing leprous eruptions and similar diseases. When it is mingled with
black bile and dispersed about the courses of the head, which are
the divinest part of us, the attack if coming on in sleep, is not so
severe; but when assailing those who are awake it is hard to be got
rid of, and being an affection of a sacred part, is most justly called

514
 Plato

sacred. An acid and salt phlegm, again, is the source of all those
diseases which take the form of catarrh, but they have many names
because the places into which they flow are manifold.
Inflammations of the body come from burnings and inflamings,
and all of them originate in bile. When bile finds a means of dis-
charge, it boils up and sends forth all sorts of tumours; but when
imprisoned within, it generates many inflammatory diseases, above
all when mingled with pure blood; since it then displaces the fibres
which are scattered about in the blood and are designed to maintain
the balance of rare and dense, in order that the blood may not be so
liquefied by heat as to exude from the pores of the body, nor again
become too dense and thus find a difficulty in circulating through
the veins. The fibres are so constituted as to maintain this balance;
and if any one brings them all together when the blood is dead and
in process of cooling, then the blood which remains becomes fluid,
but if they are left alone, they soon congeal by reason of the sur-
rounding cold. The fibres having this power over the blood, bile,
which is only stale blood, and which from being flesh is dissolved
again into blood, at the first influx coming in little by little, hot and
liquid, is congealed by the power of the fibres; and so congealing
and made to cool, it produces internal cold and shuddering. When
it enters with more of a flood and overcomes the fibres by its heat,
and boiling up throws them into disorder, if it have power enough
to maintain its supremacy, it penetrates the marrow and burns up
what may be termed the cables of the soul, and sets her free; but
when there is not so much of it, and the body though wasted still
holds out, the bile is itself mastered, and is either utterly banished,
or is thrust through the veins into the lower or upper belly, and is
driven out of the body like an exile from a state in which there has
been civil war; whence arise diarrhoeas and dysenteries, and all such
disorders. When the constitution is disordered by excess of fire, con-
tinuous heat and fever are the result; when excess of air is the cause,
then the fever is quotidian; when of water, which is a more sluggish
element than either fire or air, then the fever is a tertian; when of
earth, which is the most sluggish of the four, and is only purged
away in a four-fold period, the result is a quartan fever, which can
with difficulty be shaken off.

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Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise; the disor-
ders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows.
We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelli-
gence; and of this there are two kinds; to wit, madness and igno-
rance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, that state
may be called disease; and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to
be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a
man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unseasonable eager-
ness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to
hear anything rightly; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly inca-
pable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the
spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen
with fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his
desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life de-
ranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great; his soul is
rendered foolish and disordered by his body; yet he is regarded not
as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mis-
take. The truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of the
soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced in
one of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones. And in
general, all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure and is
deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do
wrong is not justly a matter for reproach. For no man is voluntarily
bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the
body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and
happen to him against his will. And in the case of pain too in like
manner the soul suffers much evil from the body. For where the
acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wan-
der about in the body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up
within and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul,
and are blended with them, they produce all sorts of diseases, more
or fewer, and in every degree of intensity; and being carried to the
three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they
create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of rashness
and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when
to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added
and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no

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 Plato

sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us

who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely be-
yond our control. In such cases the planters are to blame rather
than the plants, the educators rather than the educated. But how-
ever that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by educa-
tion, and studies, and learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue; this,
however, is part of another subject.
There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treat-
ment by which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about
which it is meet and right that I should say a word in turn; for it is
more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil. Everything
that is good is fair, and the fair is not without proportion, and the
animal which is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we
perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them,
but of the highest and greatest we take no heed; for there is no
proportion or disproportion more productive of health and dis-
ease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul and body. This
however we do not perceive, nor do we reflect that when a weak or
small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul, or conversely,
when a little soul is encased in a large body, then the whole animal
is not fair, for it lacks the most important of all symmetries; but
the due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of
all sights to him who has the seeing eye. Just as a body which has
a leg too long, or which is unsymmetrical in some other respect, is
an unpleasant sight, and also, when doing its share of work, is
much distressed and makes convulsive efforts, and often stumbles
through awkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own
self—in like manner we should conceive of the double nature which
we call the living being; and when in this compound there is an
impassioned soul more powerful than the body, that soul, I say,
convulses and fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man;
and when eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study,
causes wasting; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or
in public, and strifes and controversies arise, inflames and dis-
solves the composite frame of man and introduces rheums; and
the nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most profes-
sors of medicine, who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause.

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Timaeus

And once more, when a body large and too strong for the soul is
united to a small and weak intelligence, then inasmuch as there
are two desires natural to man,—one of food for the sake of the
body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the diviner part of us—
then, I say, the motions of the stronger, getting the better and
increasing their own power, but making the soul dull, and stupid,
and forgetful, engender ignorance, which is the greatest of dis-
eases. There is one protection against both kinds of dispropor-
tion:—that we should not move the body without the soul or the
soul without the body, and thus they will be on their guard against
each other, and be healthy and well balanced. And therefore the
mathematician or any one else whose thoughts are much absorbed
in some intellectual pursuit, must allow his body also to have due
exercise, and practise gymnastic; and he who is careful to fashion
the body, should in turn impart to the soul its proper motions,
and should cultivate music and all philosophy, if he would deserve
to be called truly fair and truly good. And the separate parts should
be treated in the same manner, in imitation of the pattern of the
universe; for as the body is heated and also cooled within by the
elements which enter into it, and is again dried up and moistened
by external things, and experiences these and the like affections
from both kinds of motions, the result is that the body if given up
to motion when in a state of quiescence is overmastered and per-
ishes; but if any one, in imitation of that which we call the foster-
mother and nurse of the universe, will not allow the body ever to
be inactive, but is always producing motions and agitations through
its whole extent, which form the natural defence against other
motions both internal and external, and by moderate exercise re-
duces to order according to their affinities the particles and affec-
tions which are wandering about the body, as we have already said
when speaking of the universe, he will not allow enemy placed by
the side of enemy to stir up wars and disorders in the body, but he
will place friend by the side of friend, so as to create health. Now
of all motions that is the best which is produced in a thing by
itself, for it is most akin to the motion of thought and of the uni-
verse; but that motion which is caused by others is not so good,
and worst of all is that which moves the body, when at rest, in

518
 Plato

parts only and by some external agency. Wherefore of all modes of

purifying and re-uniting the body the best is gymnastic; the next
best is a surging motion, as in sailing or any other mode of con-
veyance which is not fatiguing; the third sort of motion may be of
use in a case of extreme necessity, but in any other will be adopted
by no man of sense: I mean the purgative treatment of physicians;
for diseases unless they are very dangerous should not be irritated
by medicines, since every form of disease is in a manner akin to
the living being, whose complex frame has an appointed term of
life. For not the whole race only, but each individual—barring
inevitable accidents—comes into the world having a fixed span,
and the triangles in us are originally framed with power to last for
a certain time, beyond which no man can prolong his life. And
this holds also of the constitution of diseases; if any one regardless
of the appointed time tries to subdue them by medicine, he only
aggravates and multiplies them. Wherefore we ought always to
manage them by regimen, as far as a man can spare the time, and
not provoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines.
Enough of the composite animal, and of the body which is a part
of him, and of the manner in which a man may train and be trained
by himself so as to live most according to reason: and we must above
and before all provide that the element which is to train him shall
be the fairest and best adapted to that purpose. A minute discussion
of this subject would be a serious task; but if, as before, I am to give
only an outline, the subject may not unfitly be summed up as fol-
lows.
I have often remarked that there are three kinds of soul located
within us, having each of them motions, and I must now repeat in
the fewest words possible, that one part, if remaining inactive and
ceasing from its natural motion, must necessarily become very weak,
but that which is trained and exercised, very strong. Wherefore we
should take care that the movements of the different parts of the
soul should be in due proportion.
And we should consider that God gave the sovereign part of the
human soul to be the divinity of each one, being that part which, as
we say, dwells at the top of the body, and inasmuch as we are a plant
not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth, raises us from earth to

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our kindred who are in heaven. And in this we say truly; for the
divine power suspended the head and root of us from that place
where the generation of the soul first began, and thus made the
whole body upright. When a man is always occupied with the
cravings of desire and ambition, and is eagerly striving to satisfy
them, all his thoughts must be mortal, and, as far as it is possible
altogether to become such, he must be mortal every whit, because
he has cherished his mortal part. But he who has been earnest in the
love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intel-
lect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal
and divine, if he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is ca-
pable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal;
and since he is ever cherishing the divine power, and has the divin-
ity within him in perfect order, he will be perfectly happy. Now
there is only one way of taking care of things, and this is to give to
each the food and motion which are natural to it. And the motions
which are naturally akin to the divine principle within us are the
thoughts and revolutions of the universe. These each man should
follow, and correct the courses of the head which were corrupted at
our birth, and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the
universe, should assimilate the thinking being to the thought, re-
newing his original nature, and having assimilated them should at-
tain to that perfect life which the gods have set before mankind,
both for the present and the future.
Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down
to the creation of man is nearly completed. A brief mention may be
made of the generation of other animals, so far as the subject admits
of brevity; in this manner our argument will best attain a due pro-
portion. On the subject of animals, then, the following remarks
may be offered. Of the men who came into the world, those who
were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed
to have changed into the nature of women in the second genera-
tion. And this was the reason why at that time the gods created in us
the desire of sexual intercourse, contriving in man one animated
substance, and in woman another, which they formed respectively
in the following manner. The outlet for drink by which liquids pass
through the lung under the kidneys and into the bladder, which

520
 Plato

receives and then by the pressure of the air emits them, was so fash-
ioned by them as to penetrate also into the body of the marrow,
which passes from the head along the neck and through the back,
and which in the preceding discourse we have named the seed. And
the seed having life, and becoming endowed with respiration, pro-
duces in that part in which it respires a lively desire of emission, and
thus creates in us the love of procreation. Wherefore also in men the
organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an ani-
mal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust,
seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-
called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desir-
ous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long
beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and wander-
ing in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of
the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives them to extrem-
ity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length the desire and love
of the man and the woman, bringing them together and as it were
plucking the fruit from the tree, sow in the womb, as in a field,
animals unseen by reason of their smallness and without form; these
again are separated and matured within; they are then finally brought
out into the light, and thus the generation of animals is completed.
Thus were created women and the female sex in general. But the
race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who,
although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in
their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above
was to be obtained by sight; these were remodelled and transformed
into birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair. The race of wild
pedestrian animals, again, came from those who had no philosophy
in any of their thoughts, and never considered at all about the na-
ture of the heavens, because they had ceased to use the courses of
the head, but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which
are in the breast. In consequence of these habits of theirs they had
their front-legs and their heads resting upon the earth to which they
were drawn by natural affinity; and the crowns of their heads were
elongated and of all sorts of shapes, into which the courses of the
soul were crushed by reason of disuse. And this was the reason why
they were created quadrupeds and polypods: God gave the more

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Timaeus

senseless of them the more support that they might be more at-
tracted to the earth. And the most foolish of them, who trail their
bodies entirely upon the ground and have no longer any need of
feet, he made without feet to crawl upon the earth. The fourth class
were the inhabitants of the water: these were made out of the most
entirely senseless and ignorant of all, whom the transformers did
not think any longer worthy of pure respiration, because they pos-
sessed a soul which was made impure by all sorts of transgression;
and instead of the subtle and pure medium of air, they gave them
the deep and muddy sea to be their element of respiration; and
hence arose the race of fishes and oysters, and other aquatic ani-
mals, which have received the most remote habitations as a punish-
ment of their outlandish ignorance. These are the laws by which
animals pass into one another, now, as ever, changing as they lose or
gain wisdom and folly.
We may now say that our discourse about the nature of the uni-
verse has an end. The world has received animals, mortal and im-
mortal, and is fulfilled with them, and has become a visible animal
containing the visible—the sensible God who is the image of the
intellectual, the greatest, best, fairest, most perfect—the one only-
begotten heaven.

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 Plato

Critias
by

Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS

THE CRITIAS is a fragment which breaks off in the middle of a sen-

tence. It was designed to be the second part of a trilogy, which, like
the other great Platonic trilogy of the Sophist, Statesman, Philoso-
pher, was never completed. Timaeus had brought down the origin
of the world to the creation of man, and the dawn of history was
now to succeed the philosophy of nature. The Critias is also con-
nected with the Republic. Plato, as he has already told us (Tim.),
intended to represent the ideal state engaged in a patriotic conflict.
This mythical conflict is prophetic or symbolical of the struggle of
Athens and Persia, perhaps in some degree also of the wars of the
Greeks and Carthaginians, in the same way that the Persian is pre-
figured by the Trojan war to the mind of Herodotus, or as the nar-
rative of the first part of the Aeneid is intended by Virgil to fore-
shadow the wars of Carthage and Rome. The small number of the
primitive Athenian citizens (20,000), ‘which is about their present
number’ (Crit.), is evidently designed to contrast with the myriads
and barbaric array of the Atlantic hosts. The passing remark in the
Timaeus that Athens was left alone in the struggle, in which she
conquered and became the liberator of Greece, is also an allusion to
the later history. Hence we may safely conclude that the entire nar-
rative is due to the imagination of Plato, who has used the name of
Solon and introduced the Egyptian priests to give verisimilitude to

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Critias

his story. To the Greek such a tale, like that of the earth-born men,
would have seemed perfectly accordant with the character of his
mythology, and not more marvellous than the wonders of the East
narrated by Herodotus and others: he might have been deceived
into believing it. But it appears strange that later ages should have
been imposed upon by the fiction. As many attempts have been
made to find the great island of Atlantis, as to discover the country
of the lost tribes. Without regard to the description of Plato, and
without a suspicion that the whole narrative is a fabrication, inter-
preters have looked for the spot in every part of the globe, America,
Arabia Felix, Ceylon, Palestine, Sardinia, Sweden.
Timaeus concludes with a prayer that his words may be accept-
able to the God whom he has revealed, and Critias, whose turn
follows, begs that a larger measure of indulgence may be conceded
to him, because he has to speak of men whom we know and not of
gods whom we do not know. Socrates readily grants his request, and
anticipating that Hermocrates will make a similar petition, extends
by anticipation a like indulgence to him.
Critias returns to his story, professing only to repeat what Solon
was told by the priests. The war of which he was about to speak had
occurred 9000 years ago. One of the combatants was the city of
Athens, the other was the great island of Atlantis. Critias proposes
to speak of these rival powers first of all, giving to Athens the prece-
dence; the various tribes of Greeks and barbarians who took part in
the war will be dealt with as they successively appear on the scene.
In the beginning the gods agreed to divide the earth by lot in a
friendly manner, and when they had made the allotment they settled
their several countries, and were the shepherds or rather the pilots
of mankind, whom they guided by persuasion, and not by force.
Hephaestus and Athena, brother and sister deities, in mind and art
united, obtained as their lot the land of Attica, a land suited to the
growth of virtue and wisdom; and there they settled a brave race of
children of the soil, and taught them how to order the state. Some
of their names, such as Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, and
Erysichthon, were preserved and adopted in later times, but the
memory of their deeds has passed away; for there have since been
many deluges, and the remnant who survived in the mountains were

524
 Plato

ignorant of the art of writing, and during many generations were

wholly devoted to acquiring the means of life…. And the armed
image of the goddess which was dedicated by the ancient Athenians
is an evidence to other ages that men and women had in those days,
as they ought always to have, common virtues and pursuits. There
were various classes of citizens, including handicraftsmen and hus-
bandmen and a superior class of warriors who dwelt apart, and were
educated, and had all things in common, like our guardians. Attica
in those days extended southwards to the Isthmus, and inland to
the heights of Parnes and Cithaeron, and between them and the sea
included the district of Oropus. The country was then, as what re-
mains of it still is, the most fertile in the world, and abounded in
rich plains and pastures. But in the course of ages much of the soil
was washed away and disappeared in the deep sea. And the inhabit-
ants of this fair land were endowed with intelligence and the love of
beauty.
The Acropolis of the ancient Athens extended to the Ilissus and
Eridanus, and included the Pnyx, and the Lycabettus on the oppo-
site side to the Pnyx, having a level surface and deep soil. The side of
the hill was inhabited by craftsmen and husbandmen; and the war-
riors dwelt by themselves on the summit, around the temples of
Hephaestus and Athene, in an enclosure which was like the garden
of a single house. In winter they retired into houses on the north of
the hill, in which they held their syssitia. These were modest dwell-
ings, which they bequeathed unaltered to their children’s children.
In summer time the south side was inhabited by them, and then
they left their gardens and dining-halls. In the midst of the Acropo-
lis was a fountain, which gave an abundant supply of cool water in
summer and warm in winter; of this there are still some traces. They
were careful to preserve the number of fighting men and women at
20,000, which is equal to that of the present military force. And so
they passed their lives as guardians of the citizens and leaders of the
Hellenes. They were a just and famous race, celebrated for their
beauty and virtue all over Europe and Asia.
And now I will speak to you of their adversaries, but first I ought
to explain that the Greek names were given to Solon in an Egyptian
form, and he enquired their meaning and translated them. His

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manuscript was left with my grandfather Dropides, and is now in

my possession...In the division of the earth Poseidon obtained as
his portion the island of Atlantis, and there he begat children whose
mother was a mortal. Towards the sea and in the centre of the island
there was a very fair and fertile plain, and near the centre, about
fifty stadia from the plain, there was a low mountain in which dwelt
a man named Evenor and his wife Leucippe, and their daughter
Cleito, of whom Poseidon became enamoured. He to secure his
love enclosed the mountain with rings or zones varying in size, two
of land and three of sea, which his divine power readily enabled him
to excavate and fashion, and, as there was no shipping in those days,
no man could get into the place. To the interior island he conveyed
under the earth springs of water hot and cold, and supplied the land
with all things needed for the life of man. Here he begat a family
consisting of five pairs of twin male children. The eldest was Atlas,
and him he made king of the centre island, while to his twin brother,
Eumelus, or Gadeirus, he assigned that part of the country which
was nearest the Straits. The other brothers he made chiefs over the
rest of the island. And their kingdom extended as far as Egypt and
Tyrrhenia. Now Atlas had a fair posterity, and great treasures de-
rived from mines—among them that precious metal orichalcum;
and there was abundance of wood, and herds of elephants, and pas-
tures for animals of all kinds, and fragrant herbs, and grasses, and
trees bearing fruit. These they used, and employed themselves in
constructing their temples, and palaces, and harbours, and docks,
in the following manner:—First, they bridged over the zones of sea,
and made a way to and from the royal palace which they built in the
centre island. This ancient palace was ornamented by successive
generations; and they dug a canal which passed through the zones
of land from the island to the sea. The zones of earth were sur-
rounded by walls made of stone of divers colours, black and white
and red, which they sometimes intermingled for the sake of orna-
ment; and as they quarried they hollowed out beneath the edges of
the zones double docks having roofs of rock. The outermost of the
walls was coated with brass, the second with tin, and the third, which
was the wall of the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
In the interior of the citadel was a holy temple, dedicated to Cleito

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 Plato

and Poseidon, and surrounded by an enclosure of gold, and there

was Poseidon’s own temple, which was covered with silver, and the
pinnacles with gold. The roof was of ivory, adorned with gold and
silver and orichalcum, and the rest of the interior was lined with
orichalcum. Within was an image of the god standing in a chariot
drawn by six winged horses, and touching the roof with his head;
around him were a hundred Nereids, riding on dolphins. Outside
the temple were placed golden statues of all the descendants of the
ten kings and of their wives; there was an altar too, and there were
palaces, corresponding to the greatness and glory both of the king-
dom and of the temple.
Also there were fountains of hot and cold water, and suitable build-
ings surrounding them, and trees, and there were baths both of the
kings and of private individuals, and separate baths for women, and
also for cattle. The water from the baths was carried to the grove of
Poseidon, and by aqueducts over the bridges to the outer circles.
And there were temples in the zones, and in the larger of the two
there was a racecourse for horses, which ran all round the island.
The guards were distributed in the zones according to the trust re-
posed in them; the most trusted of them were stationed in the cita-
del. The docks were full of triremes and stores. The land between
the harbour and the sea was surrounded by a wall, and was crowded
with dwellings, and the harbour and canal resounded with the din
of human voices.
The plain around the city was highly cultivated and sheltered from
the north by mountains; it was oblong, and where falling out of the
straight line followed the circular ditch, which was of an incredible
depth. This depth received the streams which came down from the
mountains, as well as the canals of the interior, and found a way to
the sea. The entire country was divided into sixty thousand lots,
each of which was a square of ten stadia; and the owner of a lot was
bound to furnish the sixth part of a war-chariot, so as to make up
ten thousand chariots, two horses and riders upon them, a pair of
chariot-horses without a seat, and an attendant and charioteer, two
hoplites, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters, three jav-
elin-men, and four sailors to make up the complement of twelve
hundred ships.

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Critias

Each of the ten kings was absolute in his own city and kingdom.
The relations of the different governments to one another were de-
termined by the injunctions of Poseidon, which had been inscribed
by the first kings on a column of orichalcum in the temple of
Poseidon, at which the kings and princes gathered together and held
a festival every fifth and every sixth year alternately. Around the
temple ranged the bulls of Poseidon, one of which the ten kings
caught and sacrificed, shedding the blood of the victim over the
inscription, and vowing not to transgress the laws of their father
Poseidon. When night came, they put on azure robes and gave judg-
ment against offenders. The most important of their laws related to
their dealings with one another. They were not to take up arms
against one another, and were to come to the rescue if any of their
brethren were attacked. They were to deliberate in common about
war, and the king was not to have the power of life and death over
his kinsmen, unless he had the assent of the majority.
For many generations, as tradition tells, the people of Atlantis
were obedient to the laws and to the gods, and practised gentleness
and wisdom in their intercourse with one another. They knew that
they could only have the true use of riches by not caring about
them. But gradually the divine portion of their souls became di-
luted with too much of the mortal admixture, and they began to
degenerate, though to the outward eye they appeared glorious as
ever at the very time when they were filled with all iniquity. The all-
seeing Zeus, wanting to punish them, held a council of the gods,
and when he had called them together, he spoke as follows:—
No one knew better than Plato how to invent ‘a noble lie.’ Ob-
serve (1) the innocent declaration of Socrates, that the truth of the
story is a great advantage: (2) the manner in which traditional names
and indications of geography are intermingled (‘Why, here be
truths!’): (3) the extreme minuteness with which the numbers are
given, as in the Old Epic poetry: (4) the ingenious reason assigned
for the Greek names occurring in the Egyptian tale: (5) the remark
that the armed statue of Athena indicated the common warrior life
of men and women: (6) the particularity with which the third del-
uge before that of Deucalion is affirmed to have been the great de-
struction: (7) the happy guess that great geological changes have

528
 Plato

been effected by water: (8) the indulgence of the prejudice against

sailing beyond the Columns, and the popular belief of the shallow-
ness of the ocean in that part: (9) the confession that the depth of
the ditch in the Island of Atlantis was not to be believed, and ‘yet he
could only repeat what he had heard’, compared with the statement
made in an earlier passage that Poseidon, being a God, found no
difficulty in contriving the water-supply of the centre island: (10)
the mention of the old rivalry of Poseidon and Athene, and the
creation of the first inhabitants out of the soil. Plato here, as else-
where, ingeniously gives the impression that he is telling the truth
which mythology had corrupted.
The world, like a child, has readily, and for the most part
unhesitatingly, accepted the tale of the Island of Atlantis. In modern
times we hardly seek for traces of the submerged continent; but even
Mr. Grote is inclined to believe in the Egyptian poem of Solon of
which there is no evidence in antiquity; while others, like Martin,
discuss the Egyptian origin of the legend, or like M. de Humboldt,
whom he quotes, are disposed to find in it a vestige of a widely-spread
tradition. Others, adopting a different vein of reflection, regard the
Island of Atlantis as the anticipation of a still greater island—the Con-
tinent of America. ‘The tale,’ says M. Martin, ‘rests upon the author-
ity of the Egyptian priests; and the Egyptian priests took a pleasure in
deceiving the Greeks.’ He never appears to suspect that there is a
greater deceiver or magician than the Egyptian priests, that is to say,
Plato himself, from the dominion of whose genius the critic and natural
philosopher of modern times are not wholly emancipated. Although
worthless in respect of any result which can be attained by them,
discussions like those of M. Martin (Timee) have an interest of their
own, and may be compared to the similar discussions regarding the
Lost Tribes (2 Esdras), as showing how the chance word of some poet
or philosopher has given birth to endless religious or historical enqui-
ries. (See Introduction to the Timaeus.)
In contrasting the small Greek city numbering about twenty thou-
sand inhabitants with the barbaric greatness of the island of Atlantis,
Plato probably intended to show that a state, such as the ideal Ath-
ens, was invincible, though matched against any number of oppo-
nents (cp. Rep.). Even in a great empire there might be a degree of

529
Critias

virtue and justice, such as the Greeks believed to have existed under
the sway of the first Persian kings. But all such empires were liable
to degenerate, and soon incurred the anger of the gods. Their Ori-
ental wealth, and splendour of gold and silver, and variety of colours,
seemed also to be at variance with the simplicity of Greek notions.
In the island of Atlantis, Plato is describing a sort of Babylonian or
Egyptian city, to which he opposes the frugal life of the true Hel-
lenic citizen. It is remarkable that in his brief sketch of them, he
idealizes the husbandmen ‘who are lovers of honour and true hus-
bandmen,’ as well as the warriors who are his sole concern in the
Republic; and that though he speaks of the common pursuits of
men and women, he says nothing of the community of wives and
children.
It is singular that Plato should have prefixed the most detested of
Athenian names to this dialogue, and even more singular that he
should have put into the mouth of Socrates a panegyric on him
(Tim.). Yet we know that his character was accounted infamous by
Xenophon, and that the mere acquaintance with him was made a
subject of accusation against Socrates. We can only infer that in
this, and perhaps in some other cases, Plato’s characters have no
reference to the actual facts. The desire to do honour to his own
family, and the connection with Solon, may have suggested the in-
troduction of his name. Why the Critias was never completed,
whether from accident, or from advancing age, or from a sense of
the artistic difficulty of the design, cannot be determined.

530
 Plato

CRITIAS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Critias, Hermocrates, Timaeus,
Socrates.

TIMAEUS: How thankful I am, Socrates, that I have arrived at

last, and, like a weary traveller after a long journey, may be at rest!
And I pray the being who always was of old, and has now been by
me revealed, to grant that my words may endure in so far as they
have been spoken truly and acceptably to him; but if unintention-
ally I have said anything wrong, I pray that he will impose upon me
a just retribution, and the just retribution of him who errs is that he
should be set right. Wishing, then, to speak truly in future concern-
ing the generation of the gods, I pray him to give me knowledge,
which of all medicines is the most perfect and best. And now hav-
ing offered my prayer I deliver up the argument to Critias, who is to
speak next according to our agreement. (Tim.)

CRITIAS: And I, Timaeus, accept the trust, and as you at first said
that you were going to speak of high matters, and begged that some
forbearance might be shown to you, I too ask the same or greater
forbearance for what I am about to say. And although I very well
know that my request may appear to be somewhat ambitious and
discourteous, I must make it nevertheless. For will any man of sense
deny that you have spoken well? I can only attempt to show that I
ought to have more indulgence than you, because my theme is more
difficult; and I shall argue that to seem to speak well of the gods to
men is far easier than to speak well of men to men: for the inexperi-
ence and utter ignorance of his hearers about any subject is a great
assistance to him who has to speak of it, and we know how ignorant
we are concerning the gods. But I should like to make my meaning
clearer, if you will follow me. All that is said by any of us can only be
imitation and representation. For if we consider the likenesses which
painters make of bodies divine and heavenly, and the different de-

531
Critias

grees of gratification with which the eye of the spectator receives

them, we shall see that we are satisfied with the artist who is able in
any degree to imitate the earth and its mountains, and the rivers,
and the woods, and the universe, and the things that are and move
therein, and further, that knowing nothing precise about such mat-
ters, we do not examine or analyze the painting; all that is required
is a sort of indistinct and deceptive mode of shadowing them forth.
But when a person endeavours to paint the human form we are
quick at finding out defects, and our familiar knowledge makes us
severe judges of any one who does not render every point of similar-
ity. And we may observe the same thing to happen in discourse; we
are satisfied with a picture of divine and heavenly things which has
very little likeness to them; but we are more precise in our criticism
of mortal and human things. Wherefore if at the moment of speak-
ing I cannot suitably express my meaning, you must excuse me,
considering that to form approved likenesses of human things is the
reverse of easy. This is what I want to suggest to you, and at the
same time to beg, Socrates, that I may have not less, but more in-
dulgence conceded to me in what I am about to say. Which favour,
if I am right in asking, I hope that you will be ready to grant.

SOCRATES: Certainly, Critias, we will grant your request, and we

will grant the same by anticipation to Hermocrates, as well as to
you and Timaeus; for I have no doubt that when his turn comes a
little while hence, he will make the same request which you have
made. In order, then, that he may provide himself with a fresh be-
ginning, and not be compelled to say the same things over again, let
him understand that the indulgence is already extended by antici-
pation to him. And now, friend Critias, I will announce to you the
judgment of the theatre. They are of opinion that the last performer
was wonderfully successful, and that you will need a great deal of
indulgence before you will be able to take his place.

HERMOCRATES: The warning, Socrates, which you have ad-

dressed to him, I must also take to myself. But remember, Critias,
that faint heart never yet raised a trophy; and therefore you must go
and attack the argument like a man. First invoke Apollo and the

532
 Plato

Muses, and then let us hear you sound the praises and show forth
the virtues of your ancient citizens.

CRITIAS: Friend Hermocrates, you, who are stationed last and have
another in front of you, have not lost heart as yet; the gravity of the
situation will soon be revealed to you; meanwhile I accept your ex-
hortations and encouragements. But besides the gods and goddesses
whom you have mentioned, I would specially invoke Mnemosyne;
for all the important part of my discourse is dependent on her favour,
and if I can recollect and recite enough of what was said by the
priests and brought hither by Solon, I doubt not that I shall satisfy
the requirements of this theatre. And now, making no more ex-
cuses, I will proceed.
Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the
sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have
taken place between those who dwelt outside the pillars of Heracles
and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of
the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to
have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants
on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as
I was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and
when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable bar-
rier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean.
The progress of the history will unfold the various nations of barbar-
ians and families of Hellenes which then existed, as they successively
appear on the scene; but I must describe first of all the Athenians of
that day, and their enemies who fought with them, and then the re-
spective powers and governments of the two kingdoms. Let us give
the precedence to Athens.
In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among
them by allotment (Cp. Polit.) There was no quarrelling; for you
cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper
for each of them to have, or, knowing this, that they would seek to
procure for themselves by contention that which more properly be-
longed to others. They all of them by just apportionment obtained
what they wanted, and peopled their own districts; and when they
had peopled them they tended us, their nurselings and possessions,

533
Critias

as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use
blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots
from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding ani-
mals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to
their own pleasure;—thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now
different gods had their allotments in different places which they
set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister,
and sprang from the same father, having a common nature, and
being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained
as their common portion this land, which was naturally adapted for
wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave children of the
soil, and put into their minds the order of government; their names
are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the
destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of
ages. For when there were any survivors, as I have already said, they
were men who dwelt in the mountains; and they were ignorant of
the art of writing, and had heard only the names of the chiefs of the
land, but very little about their actions. The names they were will-
ing enough to give to their children; but the virtues and the laws of
their predecessors, they knew only by obscure traditions; and as
they themselves and their children lacked for many generations the
necessaries of life, they directed their attention to the supply of their
wants, and of them they conversed, to the neglect of events that had
happened in times long past; for mythology and the enquiry into
antiquity are first introduced into cities when they begin to have
leisure (Cp. Arist. Metaphys.), and when they see that the neces-
saries of life have already been provided, but not before. And this is
the reason why the names of the ancients have been preserved to us
and not their actions. This I infer because Solon said that the priests
in their narrative of that war mentioned most of the names which
are recorded prior to the time of Theseus, such as Cecrops, and
Erechtheus, and Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, and the names of
the women in like manner. Moreover, since military pursuits were
then common to men and women, the men of those days in accor-
dance with the custom of the time set up a figure and image of the
goddess in full armour, to be a testimony that all animals which
associate together, male as well as female, may, if they please, prac-

534
 Plato

tise in common the virtue which belongs to them without distinc-

tion of sex.
Now the country was inhabited in those days by various classes of
citizens;—there were artisans, and there were husbandmen, and there
was also a warrior class originally set apart by divine men. The latter
dwelt by themselves, and had all things suitable for nurture and
education; neither had any of them anything of their own, but they
regarded all that they had as common property; nor did they claim
to receive of the other citizens anything more than their necessary
food. And they practised all the pursuits which we yesterday de-
scribed as those of our imaginary guardians. Concerning the coun-
try the Egyptian priests said what is not only probable but mani-
festly true, that the boundaries were in those days fixed by the Isth-
mus, and that in the direction of the continent they extended as far
as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes; the boundary line came
down in the direction of the sea, having the district of Oropus on
the right, and with the river Asopus as the limit on the left. The
land was the best in the world, and was therefore able in those days
to support a vast army, raised from the surrounding people. Even
the remnant of Attica which now exists may compare with any re-
gion in the world for the variety and excellence of its fruits and the
suitableness of its pastures to every sort of animal, which proves
what I am saying; but in those days the country was fair as now and
yielded far more abundant produce. How shall I establish my words?
and what part of it can be truly called a remnant of the land that
then was? The whole country is only a long promontory extending
far into the sea away from the rest of the continent, while the sur-
rounding basin of the sea is everywhere deep in the neighbourhood
of the shore. Many great deluges have taken place during the nine
thousand years, for that is the number of years which have elapsed
since the time of which I am speaking; and during all this time and
through so many changes, there has never been any considerable
accumulation of the soil coming down from the mountains, as in
other places, but the earth has fallen away all round and sunk out of
sight. The consequence is, that in comparison of what then was,
there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may
be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer

535
Critias

parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the
land being left. But in the primitive state of the country, its moun-
tains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are
termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abun-
dance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain,
for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to
bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber
cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover
the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated
by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle. Moreover, the
land reaped the benefit of the annual rainfall, not as now losing the
water which flows off the bare earth into the sea, but, having an
abundant supply in all places, and receiving it into herself and trea-
suring it up in the close clay soil, it let off into the hollows the
streams which it absorbed from the heights, providing everywhere
abundant fountains and rivers, of which there may still be observed
sacred memorials in places where fountains once existed; and this
proves the truth of what I am saying.
Such was the natural state of the country, which was cultivated, as
we may well believe, by true husbandmen, who made husbandry
their business, and were lovers of honour, and of a noble nature,
and had a soil the best in the world, and abundance of water, and in
the heaven above an excellently attempered climate. Now the city
in those days was arranged on this wise. In the first place the Acropolis
was not as now. For the fact is that a single night of excessive rain
washed away the earth and laid bare the rock; at the same time there
were earthquakes, and then occurred the extraordinary inundation,
which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion. But
in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus
and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus
as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well
covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places.
Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt
artisans, and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground
near; the warrior class dwelt by themselves around the temples of
Athene and Hephaestus at the summit, which moreover they had
enclosed with a single fence like the garden of a single house. On

536
 Plato

the north side they had dwellings in common and had erected halls
for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which they needed
for their common life, besides temples, but there was no adorning
of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for any
purpose; they took a middle course between meanness and ostenta-
tion, and built modest houses in which they and their children’s
children grew old, and they handed them down to others who were
like themselves, always the same. But in summer-time they left their
gardens and gymnasia and dining halls, and then the southern side
of the hill was made use of by them for the same purpose. Where
the Acropolis now is there was a fountain, which was choked by the
earthquake, and has left only the few small streams which still exist
in the vicinity, but in those days the fountain gave an abundant
supply of water for all and of suitable temperature in summer and
in winter. This is how they dwelt, being the guardians of their own
citizens and the leaders of the Hellenes, who were their willing fol-
lowers. And they took care to preserve the same number of men and
women through all time, being so many as were required for war-
like purposes, then as now—that is to say, about twenty thousand.
Such were the ancient Athenians, and after this manner they righ-
teously administered their own land and the rest of Hellas; they
were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their per-
sons and for the many virtues of their souls, and of all men who
lived in those days they were the most illustrious. And next, if I
have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I will impart to
you the character and origin of their adversaries. For friends should
not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in common.
Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative, I ought to warn
you, that you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear
Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this:
Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, enquired
into the meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians
in writing them down had translated them into their own language,
and he recovered the meaning of the several names and when copy-
ing them out again translated them into our language. My great-
grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my
possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child.

537
Critias

Therefore if you hear names such as are used in this country, you
must not be surprised, for I have told how they came to be intro-
duced. The tale, which was of great length, began as follows:—
I have before remarked in speaking of the allotments of the gods,
that they distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent,
and made for themselves temples and instituted sacrifices. And
Poseidon, receiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by
a mortal woman, and settled them in a part of the island, which I will
describe. Looking towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole
island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all
plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre of
the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not
very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-
born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he
had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter who was
called Cleito. The maiden had already reached womanhood, when
her father and mother died; Poseidon fell in love with her and had
intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in
which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land
larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and
three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its cir-
cumference equidistant every way from the centre, so that no man
could get to the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet. He
himself, being a god, found no difficulty in making special arrange-
ments for the centre island, bringing up two springs of water from
beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold, and
making every variety of food to spring up abundantly from the soil.
He also begat and brought up five pairs of twin male children; and
dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions, he gave to the first-
born of the eldest pair his mother’s dwelling and the surrounding
allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king over
the rest; the others he made princes, and gave them rule over many
men, and a large territory. And he named them all; the eldest, who
was the first king, he named Atlas, and after him the whole island and
the ocean were called Atlantic. To his twin brother, who was born
after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards
the pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the

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region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in
the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which
is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins he called
one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon. To the elder of the third pair
of twins he gave the name Mneseus, and Autochthon to the one who
followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus,
and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the
name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and
their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rul-
ers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said,
they held sway in our direction over the country within the pillars as
far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Now Atlas had a numerous and honourable
family, and they retained the kingdom, the eldest son handing it on
to his eldest for many generations; and they had such an amount of
wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates, and is
not likely ever to be again, and they were furnished with everything
which they needed, both in the city and country. For because of the
greatness of their empire many things were brought to them from
foreign countries, and the island itself provided most of what was
required by them for the uses of life. In the first place, they dug out of
the earth whatever was to be found there, solid as well as fusile, and
that which is now only a name and was then something more than a
name, orichalcum, was dug out of the earth in many parts of the
island, being more precious in those days than anything except gold.
There was an abundance of wood for carpenter’s work, and sufficient
maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great
number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all
other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes
and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains,
so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of
all. Also whatever fragrant things there now are in the earth, whether
roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and
flower, grew and thrived in that land; also the fruit which admits of
cultivation, both the dry sort, which is given us for nourishment and
any other which we use for food—we call them all by the common
name of pulse, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and
meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which

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furnish pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keep-
ing, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console our-
selves after dinner, when we are tired of eating—all these that sacred
island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and
wondrous and in infinite abundance. With such blessings the earth
freely furnished them; meanwhile they went on constructing their
temples and palaces and harbours and docks. And they arranged the
whole country in the following manner:—
First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded
the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace.
And at the very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of
the god and of their ancestors, which they continued to ornament
in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who went
before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building
a marvel to behold for size and for beauty. And beginning from the
sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hun-
dred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried
through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to
this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to
enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided at
the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving
room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and
they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for
the ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the water.
Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the
sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came
next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the
other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the
central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the
palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All this including
the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in
width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing tow-
ers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone
which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the
centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well
as the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third
red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double

540
 Plato

docks, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their
buildings were simple, but in others they put together different
stones, varying the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural
source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round
the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the
circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which
encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.
The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this
wise:—In the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and
Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an
enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten
princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought
the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be
an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon’s own temple which
was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a pro-
portionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the
outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they
covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of
the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with
gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls
and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple
they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a
chariot—the charioteer of six winged horses—and of such a size
that he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him
there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was
thought to be the number of them by the men of those days. There
were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been
dedicated by private persons. And around the temple on the out-
side were placed statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten
kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings
of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city itself and
from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an
altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this mag-
nificence, and the palaces, in like manner, answered to the greatness
of the kingdom and the glory of the temple.
In the next place, they had fountains, one of cold and another of
hot water, in gracious plenty flowing; and they were wonderfully

541
Critias

adapted for use by reason of the pleasantness and excellence of their

waters. They constructed buildings about them and planted suit-
able trees, also they made cisterns, some open to the heaven, others
roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths; there were the
kings’ baths, and the baths of private persons, which were kept apart;
and there were separate baths for women, and for horses and cattle,
and to each of them they gave as much adornment as was suitable.
Of the water which ran off they carried some to the grove of Poseidon,
where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and
beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil, while the remainder was
conveyed by aqueducts along the bridges to the outer circles; and
there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also
gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and others for horses
in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the centre of
the larger of the two there was set apart a race-course of a stadium in
width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for
horses to race in. Also there were guard-houses at intervals for the
guards, the more trusted of whom were appointed to keep watch in
the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis; while the most
trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel, near the
persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and naval stores,
and all things were quite ready for use. Enough of the plan of the
royal palace.
Leaving the palace and passing out across the three harbours, you
came to a wall which began at the sea and went all round: this was
everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone or harbour, and
enclosed the whole, the ends meeting at the mouth of the channel
which led to the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habi-
tations; and the canal and the largest of the harbours were full of
vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their num-
bers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices, and din and
clatter of all sorts night and day.
I have described the city and the environs of the ancient palace
nearly in the words of Solon, and now I must endeavour to repre-
sent to you the nature and arrangement of the rest of the land. The
whole country was said by him to be very lofty and precipitous on
the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and sur-

542
 Plato

rounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains

which descended towards the sea; it was smooth and even, and of
an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia,
but across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia. This part of
the island looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the
north. The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their num-
ber and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in
them also many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, and
lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild
or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for each and
every kind of work.
I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature and by
the labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was
for the most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of
the straight line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width,
and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression
that a work of such extent, in addition to so many others, could
never have been artificial. Nevertheless I must say what I was told.
It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was
a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain,
and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which
came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain and
meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea. Further inland,
likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from it
through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea:
these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they
brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and con-
veyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages
from one canal into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they
gathered the fruits of the earth—in winter having the benefit of the
rains of heaven, and in summer the water which the land supplied
by introducing streams from the canals.
As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a
leader for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of
a lot was a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all
the lots was sixty thousand. And of the inhabitants of the moun-
tains and of the rest of the country there was also a vast multitude,

543
Critias

which was distributed among the lots and had leaders assigned to
them according to their districts and villages. The leader was re-
quired to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as
to make up a total of ten thousand chariots; also two horses and
riders for them, and a pair of chariot-horses without a seat, accom-
panied by a horseman who could fight on foot carrying a small
shield, and having a charioteer who stood behind the man-at-arms
to guide the two horses; also, he was bound to furnish two heavy-
armed soldiers, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters and
three javelin-men, who were light-armed, and four sailors to make
up the complement of twelve hundred ships. Such was the military
order of the royal city—the order of the other nine governments
varied, and it would be wearisome to recount their several differ-
ences.
As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from
the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own
city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of
the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the
order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were
regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed
down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of
orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the
temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every
fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to
the odd and to the even number. And when they were gathered
together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired
if any one had transgressed in anything, and passed judgment, and
before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another
on this wise:—There were bulls who had the range of the temple of
Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after
they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the
victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weap-
ons, but with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught
they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that
the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, be-
sides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses
on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the

544
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accustomed manner, they had burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of
wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the
victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round.
Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups, and pouring a liba-
tion on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the
laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had
already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if
they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would
neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them,
to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon.
This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and
for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the
cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god; and after they
had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and
the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beauti-
ful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the em-
bers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all
the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any
of them had an accusation to bring against any one; and when they
had given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences
on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be
a memorial.
There were many special laws affecting the several kings inscribed
about the temples, but the most important was the following: They
were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to
come to the rescue if any one in any of their cities attempted to over-
throw the royal house; like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in
common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the
descendants of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life
and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the
majority of the ten.
Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of
Atlantis; and this he afterwards directed against our land for the
following reasons, as tradition tells: For many generations, as long
as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws,
and well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were; for
they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentle-

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Critias

ness with wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their inter-
course with one another. They despised everything but virtue, car-
ing little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the
possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden
to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth
deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw
clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and friendship
with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for them,
they are lost and friendship with them. By such reflections and by
the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we
have described grew and increased among them; but when the di-
vine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and
too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got
the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, be-
haved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly
debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but
to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared
glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice
and unrighteous power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according
to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an
honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict pun-
ishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, col-
lected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being
placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And
when he had called them together, he spake as follows—*

* The rest of the Dialogue of Critias has been lost.

546