The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose Volume I - Greece Part 9

Certainly.

And at last he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him as he is in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate his nature.

Certainly.

And after this, he will reason that the sun is he who gives the seasons and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold....

No question, he said.

This allegory, I said, you may now append to the previous argument; the prison is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, the ascent and vision of the things above you may truly regard as the upward progress of the soul into the intellectual world; that is my poor belief, to which, at your desire, I have given expression.

Whether I am right or not G.o.d only knows; but, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is inferred also to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and the lord of light in his world, and the source of truth and reason in the other; this is the first great cause which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must behold.

I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.

I should like to have your agreement in another matter I said. For I would not have you marvel that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; but their souls are ever hastening into the upper world in which they desire to dwell; and this is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.

Certainly, that is quite natural.

And is there anything surprizing in one who pa.s.ses from divine contemplation to human things, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the darkness visible, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen the absolute justice?

There is nothing surprizing in that, he replied.

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees the soul of any one whose vision is perplexed and weak will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And then he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets the other from the den.

That, he said, is a very just remark.

But if this is true, then certain professors of education must be mistaken in saying that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like giving eyes to the blind.

Yes, that is what they say, he replied.

Whereas, I said, our argument shows that the power is already in the soul; and that as the eye can not turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too, when the eye of the soul is turned round, the whole soul must be turned from the world of generation into that of being, and become able to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being--that is to say, of the good.

Very true.

And this is conversion; and the art will be how to accomplish this as easily and completely as possible; not implanting eyes, for they exist already, but giving them a right direction, which they have not.

Yes, he said, that may be a.s.sumed.

And hence while the other qualities seem to be akin to the body, being infused by habit and exercise and not originally innate, the virtue of wisdom is part of a divine essence, and has a power which is everlasting, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable, and is also capable of becoming hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flas.h.i.+ng from the keen eye of a clever rogue--how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen sight is taken into the service of evil, and he is dangerous in proportion to his intelligence?

Very true, he said.

But what if there had been a circ.u.mcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from the leaden weights, as I may call them, with which they are born into the world, which lead on to sensual pleasures, such as those of eating and drinking, and drag them down and turn the vision of their souls about the things that are below--if, I say, these natures had been released from these tendencies and turned round to the truth, the very same faculty in these very same persons would have seen the other as keenly as they now see that on which the eye is fixt.

That is very likely.

Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely, or rather a necessary inference from what has proceeded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of state; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already in the islands of the blest.

Very true, he replied.

Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the state will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which has been already declared by us to be the greatest of all--to that eminence they must ascend and arrive at the good, and when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.

What do you mean?

I mean that they remain in the upper world; but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.

But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them an inferior life, when they might have a superior one?

You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator; he did not aim at making any one cla.s.s in the state happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole state, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not that they should please themselves, but they were to be his instruments in binding up the state.

True, he said, I had forgotten that.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 56: Plato is one of the very few Greek authors none of whose work has been lost. He shares this good fortune with Xenophon. Of the dialog Plato was practically, if not actually, the originator, and the form has survived to our day.]

[Footnote 57: From "The Republic." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. In this famous work Plato describes an ideal commonwealth.]

[Footnote 58: The speaker here is Glaucon, Plato's brother.]

II

GOOD AND EVIL[59]

I suppose that you are satisfied at having a life of pleasure which is without pain. And if you are satisfied, and if you are unable to show any good or evil which does not end in pleasure and pain, hear the consequences: If this is true, then I say that the argument is absurd which affirms that a man often does evil knowingly when he might abstain, because he is seduced and amazed by pleasure; or again, when you say that a man knowingly refuses to do what is good because he is overcome at the moment by pleasure. Now that this is ridiculous will be evident if we only give up the use of various names, such as pleasant and painful and good and evil. As there are two things, let us call them by two names--first, good and evil, and then pleasant and painful. a.s.suming this, let us go on to say that a man does evil knowing that he does evil. But some one will ask, Why? Because he is overcome, is the first answer. And by what is he overcome? the inquirer will proceed to ask. And we shall not be able to reply, by pleasure, for the name of pleasure has been exchanged for that of good.

In our answer, then, we shall say only that he is overcome. By what?

he will reiterate. By the good, we shall have to reply; indeed, we shall. Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, that is too ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be evil when he ought not, because he is overcome by good. Is that, he will ask, because the good was worthy or not worthy of conquering the evil? And in answer to that we shall clearly reply, because it was not worthy; for if it had been worthy, then he who, as we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not have been wrong. But how, he will reply, can the good be unworthy of the evil, or the evil of the good? Is not the real explanation that they are out of proportion to each other, either as greater and smaller, or more and fewer? This we can not deny. And when you speak of being overcome, what do you mean, he will say, but that you choose the greater evil in exchange for the lesser good? This being the case, let us now subst.i.tute the names of pleasure and pain, and say, not as before, that a man does what is evil knowingly, but that he does what is painful knowingly, and because he is overcome by pleasure, which is unworthy to overcome.

And what measure is there of the relations of pleasure to pain other than excess and defect, which means that they become greater and smaller, and more and fewer, and differ in degree? For if any one says, Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs widely from future pleasure and pain, to which I should reply: And do they differ in any other way except by reason of pleasure and pain? There can be no other measure of them. And do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near and distant, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other? If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and the less; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful. Would you not admit, my friends, that this is true? I am confident that they can not deny this.

He agreed with me.

Well then, I shall say, if you admit that, be so good as to answer me a question: Do not the same magnitudes appear larger to your sight when near, and smaller when at a distance. They will acknowledge that.

And the same holds of thickness and number; also sounds which are in themselves equal are greater when near and lesser when at a distance.

They will grant that also. Now supposing that happiness consisted in making and taking large things, what would be the saving principle of human life? Would the art of measuring be the saving principle or would the power of appearance? Is not the latter that deceiving art which makes us wander up and down and take the things at one time of which we repent at another, both in our actions and in our choice of things great and small? But the art of measurement is that which would do away with the effect of appearances, and, showing the truth, would fain teach the soul at last to find rest in the truth, and would thus save our life. Would not mankind generally acknowledge that the art which accomplishes this is the art of measurement?

Yes, he said, the art of measurement.

Suppose, again, the salvation of human life to depend on the choice of odd and even, and on the knowledge of when men ought to choose the greater or less, either in reference to themselves or to each other whether near or at a distance; what would be the saving principles of our lives? Would not knowledge?--a knowledge of measuring, when the question is one of excess and defect, and a knowledge of number, when the question is of odd and even? The world will acknowledge that, will they not?

Protagoras admitted that they would.

Well then, I say to them, my friends, seeing that the salvation of human life has been found to consist in the right choice of pleasures and pains--in the choice of the more and the fewer, and the greater and the less, and the nearer and remoter--must not this measuring be a consideration of excess and defect and equality in relation to one another?

That is undeniably true.