Jowett: faculty

Socrates   : And our admission seems to me quite right. For everyone in a fever is sick, but yet not everyone who is sick has a fever or the gout [140b] or ophthalmia, I take it ; though everything of the sort is a disease, but differs — to quote those whom we call doctors — in its manifestation. For they are not all alike, nor of like effect, but each works according to its own faculty, and yet all are diseases. In the same way, we conceive of some men as artisans, do we not ? ALCIBIADES II  

But then what profit, Critias  , I said, is there any longer in wisdom or temperance which yet remains, if this is wisdom ? If, indeed, as we were supposing at first, the wise man had been able to distinguish what he knew and did not know, and that he knew the one and did not know the other, and to recognize a similar faculty of discernment in others, there would certainly have been a great advantage in being wise ; for then we should never have made a mistake, but have passed through life the unerring guides of ourselves and of those who are under us ; and we should not have attempted to do what we did not know, but we should have found out those who knew, and have handed the business over to them and trusted in them ; nor should we have allowed those who were under us to do anything which they were not likely to do well and they would be likely to do well just that of which they had knowledge ; and the house or state which was ordered or administered under the guidance of wisdom, and everything else of which wisdom was the lord, would have been well ordered ; for truth guiding, and error having been eliminated, in all their doings, men would have done well, and would have been happy. Was not this, Critias, what we spoke of as the great advantage of wisdom to know what is known and what is unknown to us ? CHARMIDES  

There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names, who would never have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour ; — they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing ; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter t is only a modern and tasteless insertion. And this is confirmed by the name which was given by them to the rational investigation of futurity, whether made by the help of birds or of other signs — this, for as much as it is an art which supplies from the reasoning faculty mind (nous) and information (istoria) to human thought (oiesis) they originally termed oionoistike, but the word has been lately altered and made sonorous by the modern introduction of the letter Omega (oionoistike and oionistike), and in proportion prophecy (mantike) is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind (sophrosune) for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin. Again, where plagues and mightiest woes have bred in certain families, owing to some ancient blood-guiltiness, there madness has entered with holy prayers and rites, and by inspired utterances found a way of deliverance for those who are in need ; and he who has part in this gift, and is truly possessed and duly out of his mind, is by the use of purifications and mysteries made whole and except from evil, future as well as present, and has a release from the calamity which was afflicting him. The third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses ; which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers ; with these adorning the myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But he who, having no touch of the Muses’ madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art — he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted ; the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman. PHAEDRUS  

Soc. And you would admit that what you perceive through one faculty you cannot perceive through another ; the objects of hearing, for example, cannot be perceived through sight, or the objects of sight through hearing ? THEAETETUS  

Soc. But through what do you perceive all this about them ? for neither through hearing nor yet through seeing can you apprehend that which they have in common. Let me give you an illustration of the point at issue : — If there were any meaning in asking whether sounds and colours are saline or not, you would be able to tell me what faculty would consider the question. It would not be sight or hearing, but some other. THEAETETUS

Theaet. Certainly ; the faculty of taste. THEAETETUS

Str. And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion about contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules-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. SOPHIST

Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner ; they were 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 here after 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 conquered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed 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 attaining 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. TIMAEUS  

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 proportioned 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 intermediate state, when water is changing into air and air into water ; and all of them are either vapor 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 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. TIMAEUS

Soc. Dear Protarchus, I never asked which was the greatest 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 quarrel 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 science of which I have been speaking is most likely to possess the faculty, or whether there be some other which has higher claims. PHILEBUS  

And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of administration in a State which a woman has because she is a woman, or which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both ; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK V

As being the same with knowledge, or another faculty ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Another faculty. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Then let me tell you my view about them. I do not see them, and therefore the distinctions of figure, color, and the like, which enable me to discern the differences of some things, do not apply to them. In speaking of a faculty I think only of its sphere and its result ; and that which has the same sphere and the same result I call the same faculty, but that which has another sphere and another result I call different. Would that be your way of speaking ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And will you be so very good as to answer one more question ? Would you say that knowledge is a faculty, or in what class would you place it ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Certainly knowledge is a faculty, and the mightiest of all faculties. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And is opinion also a faculty ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Nay, he replied, that has been already disproven ; if difference in faculty implies difference in the sphere or subject-matter, and if, as we were saying, opinion and knowledge are distinct faculties, then the sphere of knowledge and of opinion cannot be the same. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

But were we not saying before, that if anything appeared to be of a sort which is and is not at the same time, that sort of thing would appear also to lie in the interval between pure being and absolute not-being ; and that the corresponding faculty is neither knowledge nor ignorance, but will be found in the interval between them ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Then what remains to be discovered is the object which partakes equally of the nature of being and not-being, and cannot rightly be termed either, pure and simple ; this unknown term, when discovered, we may truly call the subject of opinion, and assign each to their proper faculty — the extremes to the faculties of the extremes and the mean to the faculty of the mean. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Yes ; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind which we might find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of knowledge ; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by the intermediate faculty. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner ; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth ; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below — if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate ; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic ; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

But the release of the prisoners from chains, and their translation from the shadows to the images and to the light, and the ascent from the underground den to the sun, while in his presence they are vainly trying to look on animals and plants and the light of the sun, but are able to perceive even with their weak eyes the images in the water (which are divine), and are the shadows of true existence (not shadows of images cast by a light of fire, which compared with the sun is only an image) — this power of elevating the highest principle in the soul to the contemplation of that which is best in existence, with which we may compare the raising of that faculty which is the very light of the body to the sight of that which is brightest in the material and visible world — this power is given, as I was saying, by all that study and pursuit of the arts which have been described. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Further, the very faculty which is the instrument of judgment is not possessed by the covetous or ambitious man, but only by the philosopher ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

What faculty ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And what is the faculty in man to which imitation is addressed ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

But were we not saying that such a contradiction is impossible — the same faculty cannot have contrary opinions at the same time about the same thing ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

Do not rely, I said, on a probability derived from the analogy of painting ; but let us examine further and see whether the faculty with which poetical imitation is concerned is good or bad. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous ? There are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and yet on the comic stage, or indeed in private, when you hear them, you are greatly amused by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness ; the case of pity is repeated ; there is a principle in human nature which is disposed to raise a laugh, and this which you once restrained by reason, because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let out again ; and having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre, you are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet at home. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X