Jowett: sick man

[139e] Socrates   : And do you believe that a sick man must necessarily have the gout, or a fever, or ophthalmia ? Do you not think that, although he may be afflicted in none of these ways, he may be suffering from some other disease ? For surely there are many of them : these are not the only ones. ALCIBIADES II  
Socrates : Hence the state or soul that is to live aright must hold fast to this knowledge, exactly as a sick man does to a doctor, or as he who would voyage safely does to a pilot. For without this, [147a] the more briskly it is wafted by fortune either to the acquisition of wealth or to bodily strength or aught else of the sort, the greater will be the mistakes in which these things, it would seem, must needs involve it. And he who has acquired the so-called mastery of learning and arts, but is destitute of this knowledge and impelled by this or that one among those others, is sure to meet with much rough weather, as he truly deserves ; since, I imagine, he must continue without a pilot on the high seas, and has only the brief span of his life in which to run his course. [147b] So that his case aptly fits the saying of the poet, in which he complains of somebody or other that ALCIBIADES II  
Soc. Or will the rhapsode know better than the physician what the ruler of a sick man ought to say ? ION  
Nic. Why, because he does not see that the physician’s knowledge only extends to the nature of health and disease : he can tell the sick man no more than this. Do you imagine, Laches, that the physician knows whether health or disease is the more terrible to a man ? Had not many a man better never get up from a sick bed ? I should like to know whether you think that life is always better than death. May not death often be the better of the two ? LACHES
Beggar with beggar ; and of all other things he affirmed, in like manner, "That of necessity the most like are most full of envy, strife, and hatred of one another, and the most unlike, of friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician ; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows." And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly ; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike : for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things ; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives nothing from like. And I thought that he who said this was a charming man, and that he spoke well. What do the rest of you say ? LYSIS  
I do not wonder at that, I said. But perhaps, if I put the matter in another way, you will be able to follow me, and my own meaning will be clearer to myself. The sick man, as I was just now saying, is the friend of the physician — is he not ? LYSIS
Soc. For what use is there, Callicles, in giving to the body of a sick man who is in a bad state of health a quantity of the most delightful food or drink or any other pleasant thing, which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him nothing, or even worse if rightly estimated. Is not that true ? GORGIAS
And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence ; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. And I would beg you not to my words in the letter, but to take the meaning of them as I will explain them. Remember what has been already said, — that to the sick man his food appears to be and is bitter, and to the man in health the opposite of bitter. Now I cannot conceive that one of these men can be or ought to be made wiser than the other : nor can you assert that the sick man because he has one impression is foolish, and the healthy man because he has another is wise ; but the one state requires to be changed into the other, the worse into the better. As in education, a change of state has to be effected, and the sophist accomplishes by words the change which the physician works by the aid of drugs. Not that any one ever made another think truly, who previously thought falsely. For no one can think what is not, or think anything different from that which he feels ; and this is always true. But as the inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive that a good mind causes men to have good thoughts ; and these which the inexperienced call true, I maintain to be only better, and not truer than others. And, O my dear Socrates, I do not call wise men tadpoles : far from it ; I say that they are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants — for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy sensations — aye and true ones ; and the wise and good rhetoricians make the good instead of the evil to seem just to states ; for whatever appears to a state to be just and fair, so long as it is regarded as such, is just and fair to it ; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality. And in like manner the Sophist who is able to train his pupils in this spirit is a wise man, and deserves to be well paid by them. And so one man is wiser than another ; and no one thinks falsely, and you, whether you will or not, must endure to be a measure. On these foundations the argument stands firm, which you, Socrates, may, if you please, overthrow by an opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me — a method to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I must beg you to put fair questions : for there is great inconsistency in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic : the disputer may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun ; but the dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept. If you do so, your adversary will lay the blame of his own confusion and perplexity on himself, and not on you ; will follow and love you, and will hate himself, and escape from himself into philosophy, in order that he may become different from what he was. But the other mode of arguing, which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite effect upon him ; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher, he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion, and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner you will consider whether knowledge and sensation are the same or different, but you will not argue, as you were just now doing, from the customary use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all sorts of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another. THEAETETUS  
Ath. And did you ever observe that there are two classes of patients in states, slaves and freemen ; and the slave doctors run about and cure the slaves, or wait for them in the dispensaries — practitioners of this sort never talk to their patients individually, or let them talk about their own individual complaints ? The slave doctor prescribes what mere experience suggests, as if he had exact knowledge ; and when he has given his orders, like a tyrant, he rushes off with equal assurance to some other servant who is ill ; and so he relieves the master of the house of the care of his invalid slaves. But the other doctor, who is a freeman, attends and practises upon freemen ; and he carries his enquiries far back, and goes into the nature of the disorder ; he enters into discourse with the patient and with his friends, and is at once getting information from the sick man, and also instructing him as far as he is able, and he will not prescribe for him until he has first convinced him ; at last, when he has brought the patient more and more under his persuasive influences and set him on the road to health, he attempts to effect a cure. Now which is the better way of proceeding in a physician and in a trainer ? Is he the better who accomplishes his ends in a double way, or he who works in one way, and that the ruder and inferior ? LAWS BOOK IV
Ath. Excellent. I was running on too fast, Cleinias, and you impinged upon me, and brought me to my senses, reminding me of what, indeed, had occurred to mind already, that legislation was never yet rightly worked out, as I may say in passing. — Do you remember the image in which I likened the men for whom laws are now made to slaves who are doctored by slaves ? For of this you may be very sure, that if one of those empirical physicians, who practise medicine without science, were to come upon the gentleman physician talking to his gentleman patient, and using the language almost of philosophy, beginning at the beginning of the disease and discoursing about the whole nature of the body, he would burst into a hearty laugh — he would say what most of those who are called doctors always have at their tongue’s end : — Foolish fellow, he would say, you are not healing the sick man, but you are educating him ; and he does not want to be made a doctor, but to get well. LAWS BOOK IX
He who advises a sick man, whose manner of life is prejudicial to health, is clearly bound first of all to change his patient’s manner of life, and if the patient is willing to obey him, he may go on to give him other advice. But if he is not willing, I shall consider one who declines to advise such a patient to be a man and a physician, and one who gives in to him to be unmanly and unprofessional. In the same way with regard to a State, whether it be under a single ruler or more than one, if, while the government is being carried on methodically and in a right course, it asks advice about any details of policy, it is the part of a wise man to advise such people. But when men are travelling altogether outside the path of right government and flatly refuse to move in the right path, and start by giving notice to their adviser that he must leave the government alone and make no change in it under penalty of death — if such men should order their counsellors to pander to their wishes and desires and to advise them in what way their object may most readily and easily be once for all accomplished, I should consider as unmanly one who accepts the duty of giving such forms of advice, and one who refuses it to be a true man. LETTERS LETTER VII