plausible. What good, he argues, have men ever gained by justice, continence, and moderation? For one poor instance which his opponent can adduce of virtue being rewarded upon earth, the fluent sophist quotes a dozen against him of those who have made their gain by the opposite qualities. Honesty is not the best policy among mortals; and most assuredly the moral virtues receive no countenance from the example of the gods. Sophistical as the argument is, and utterly unfair as we know it to be if intended to represent the real teaching of Socrates, the satirist seems to have been fully justified in his representation so far as some of the popular lecturers of the day were concerned. The arguments which Plato, in his 'Republic,' has put into the mouth of the sophist Thrasymachus—that justice is really only the good of others, while injustice is more profitable to a man's self—that those who abuse injustice do so "from the fear of suffering it, not from the fear of doing it"— that justice is merely "an obedience yielded by the weak to the orders of the strong,"—do but express in grave philosophical language the same principles which Aristophanes here exaggerates in the person of his devil's advocate.[1] This latter winds up the controversy by plying his antagonist with a few categorical questions, quite in the style of Socrates:—
- ↑ See Plato's Republic, Book I. Of course it must be remembered that we have here only the representation of Thrasymachus's teaching as given by an opponent. As Mr Grote fairly remarks: "How far the real Thrasymachus may have argued in the slashing and offensive style here described, we have no means of deciding."—Grote's Plato, i. 145.
