PLATO 203 Three persons maintain different views respecting the nature and origin of language. Hermogenes affirms that language is conventional, Cratylus (the Heraclitcan) that it is natural. Socrates, mediating between these sophistical extremes, declares that language, like other institutions, is national, and therefore (1) is based on nature, but (2) modified by convention. In his dialectical treatment of the subject, Socrates displays a tissue of wild etymologies in reliance on the " inspiration " of Euthyphro. Presently a distinction appears between primary and secondary words. Many primary words convey tlie notion of move ment and change. It follows that the legislator or word-maker held Heraclitean views. Socrates thus far presses on Hermogenes the view of Cratylus. Then turning to Cratylus he asks if there are no false names. "False language," Cratylus argues, "is impossible." Socrates shows that a true image may be inadequate, so that we have a right to criticize the work of the word-maker. And the facts indicate an element of meaningless convention. Nor was the original word-maker consistently Heraclitean. For some important words point not to motion but to rest. But the question returns Are we sure that the theory of nature which the word-maker held was true ? This difficulty cannot be touched by verbal arguments. In seeking to resolve it we must consider, not words, but things. If there is a true beauty and a true good, which are immutable, and if these are accessible to knowledge, that world of truth can have nothing to do with flux and change. V. Gorgias, RepuUic. In the Symposium and Phsedrus Plato largely redeems the promise implied in the Pkxdo, where Socrates tells his friends to look among themselves for a charmer who may soothe away the fear of death. But he was pledged also to a sterner duty by the warning of Socrates to the Athenians, in the Apology, that after he was gone there would arise others for their reproof, more harsh than he had been. To this graver task, which he had but partially fulfilled with the light satire upon Lysias or the gentle message to Isocrates, the philosopher now directs his powers, by holding up the mirror of what ought to be against what is, the principles of truth and right against the practice of men. For the good has more than one aspect. The beautiful or noble when realized in action becomes the just. And to the question, What is just? are closely allied those other questions of Socrates What is a state 1 What is it to be a statesman 1 In the Gorgias Plato assert.; the absolute supremacy of justice through the dramatic portraiture of Socrates in his opposition to the world ; in the Republic he strives at greater length to define the nature of justice through the imaginary creation of an ideal community. . In the former dialogue the Platonic Socrates appears in direct antagonism with the Athenian world. The shadow of his fate is hanging over him. Chajrephon (who is still alive) understands him, but to the other inter locutors, Gorgias, Polus, Callicles, he appears perversely paradoxical. Yet he effectively dominates them all. And to the reader of the dialogue this image of " Socrates contra mundum " is hardly less impressive than that former image of Socrates confronting death. 1. Gorgias asserts that rhetoric is an art concerned with justice, and that persuasion is the secret of power. n. Socrates, after suggesting some ironical doubts, declares his opinion that rhetoric is no art, but a knack of pleasing, or in other words "the counterfeit of a subsection of statesmanship." This oracular definition rouses the interest of Gorgias, and Socrates proceeds with the following "generalization and division": Management of I Soul. Body. Real. 1 Pretended. I Heal. Sophistic. Rhetoric. Gymnastic. Medicine. Cosmetic. Confec- Legis- Juris- latiun. prudence. tionery. Flattery. Flattery influences men through pleasure without knowledge. And the rhetor is a kind of confectioner, who can with difficulty be distinguished from the sophist. 1. Rhetoric, then, is not an art. And persuasion is not the secret of power. Here Socrates maintains against Polus the three paradoxes : The tyrant does what he chooses but not what he wishes ; It is less evil to sutler wrong than to do wrong ; It is better for the wrongdoer to be punished than to escape punishment. The only use of rhetoric, therefore, is for self-accusation, and (if it is ever permissible to do harm) to prevent the punishment of one s enemy. 2. Callicles here loses patience and breaks in. He propounds his theory, which is based on the opposition of nature and custom. " There is no natural right but the right of the stronger. And natural nobility is to have strong passions and power to gratify them. The lawful is a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep tlio strong in awe." Socrates entangles him in an argument in which it is proved that pleasure is different from good, and that there are good and bad pleasures. Now the question is whether the life of philosophy, or the life which Callicles defends, is conducive to good. And it has been shown that rhetoric is one of a class of pursuits which minister to pleasure without discriminating what is good. Callicles again becomes impatient. Did not Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles labour for their country s good ? Socrates then renews his demonstration, proving that if the just man is wronged the evil lies with the wrongdoer, not with him, and that it is worst for the wrongdoer if he escape. And for avoidance of this greatest evil not rhetoric avails anything, nor any of the arts which save life (seeing that life may be used well or ill), nor even such an art of politics as Themistocles, Cimon, or Pericles knew, but another science of politics which Socrates alone of the Athenians practises. The pursuit of it may well endanger him ; but his strength lies in having done no wrong. For in the world to come he can present his soul faultless before her judge. Not the show of justice but the reality will avail him there. This truth is enforced by an impressive myth. And Callicles is invited to leave the life which relies on rhetoric and to follow Socrates in practising the life of philosophic virtue. The value of justice has been shown. But what is justice ? Is the life upheld by Socrates sufficiently defi nite for practical guidance ? The views of Callicles have been overborne ; but have they been thoroughly examined ? Socrates claims to be the only politician. But how can that deserve the name of policy which results in doing nothing? These and cognate questions may well have haunted Plato when he planned the greatest of his works. For that which lay deepest in him was not mere specula tive interest or poetic fervour, but the practical enthusiasm of a reformer. The example of Socrates had fired him with an ideal of wisdom, courage, temperance, and righteousness, which under various guises, both abstract and concrete, has appeared and reappeared in the preceding dialogues. But the more vividly he conceived of this ideal life, the more keenly he felt its isolation in the present world that of the restored Athenian democracy. For to a Greek mind above all others life was nothing with out the social environment, and justice, of all virtues, could least be realized apart from a community. Hence it became necessary to imagine a form of society in which the ideal man might find himself at home, a state to which the philosopher might stand in harmonious relationship, no longer as an alien sojourner, but as a native citizen, not standing aloof in lonely contemplation, but acting with the full consent of other men and ruling in the right of wisdom. Plato did not regard his o wn republic as a barren dream. He believed that sooner or later in the course of time a state essentially resembling his ideal commonwealth would come into being. Still more firmly was he con vinced that until then mankind would not attain their highest possible development. To ignore this real aspect of his most serious work is to lose much of the author s meaning. Yet it is hardly less erroneous to interpret a
great imaginative creation au pied de la lettre, as if exam-