Jowett: ignorance

  

Alcibiades : It is difficult, Socrates  , to gainsay what has been well spoken : one thing, however, I do observe — how many evils are caused to men by ignorance, when, as it seems, we are beguiled by her not only into doing, [143b] but — worst of all — into praying to be granted the greatest evils. Now that is a thing that no one would suppose of himself ; each of us would rather suppose he was competent to pray for his own greatest good, not his greatest evil. Why, that would seem, in truth, more like some sort of curse than a prayer ! ALCIBIADES II  

Socrates : But perhaps, my excellent friend, some person who is wiser than either you or I may say we are wrong to be so free with our abuse of ignorance, [143c] unless we can add that it is ignorance of certain things, and is a good to certain persons in certain conditions, as to those others it is an evil. ALCIBIADES II  

Socrates : Then it seems that ignorance of what is best, and to be ignorant of the best, is a bad thing. ALCIBIADES II

Socrates : So you see that ignorance of certain things is for certain persons in certain states a good, not an evil, as you supposed just now. ALCIBIADES II

Socrates : And the driver’s art too is wisdom ? Or do you think it is ignorance ? THEAGES  

Socrates : Do you see, Hippias, that I speak the truth [372b] when I say that I am persistent in questioning wise men ? And this is probably the only good thing about me, as I am otherwise quite worthless ; for I am all wrong about facts, and do not know the truth about them. And it is to me sufficient proof of the truth of this, that when I come into contact with one of you who are famous for wisdom, and to whose wisdom all the Greeks bear witness, I am found to know nothing ; [372c] for there is hardly a single thing about which you and I have the same opinion ; and yet what greater proof of ignorance is there than when one disagrees with a wise man ? But I have this one remarkable good quality, which is my salvation ; for I am not afraid to learn, but I inquire and ask questions and am very grateful to him who answers, and I never failed in gratitude to anyone ; for when I have learned anything I have never denied it, pretending that the information was a discovery of my own ; but I praise the wisdom of him who instructed me and proclaim what I learned from him. And so now I do not agree with what you say, [372d] but disagree very strongly ; and I know very well that this is my own fault, because I am the sort of man I am — not to give myself any greater title. For my opinion, Hippias, is the exact opposite of what you say ; I think that those who injure people and do wrong and speak falsehood and cheat and err voluntarily, not involuntarily, are better than those who do so involuntarily. Sometimes, however, the opposite of this seems to me to be the case, and I am all astray about these matters, [372e] evidently because I am ignorant ; but now at the present moment a sort of paroxysm of my disease has come upon me, and those who err in respect to anything voluntarily appear to me better than those who err involuntarily. And I lay the blame for my present condition upon our previous argument, which causes those who do any of these things involuntarily to appear to me at this moment worse than those who do them voluntarily. So please do me a favour and do not refuse to cure my soul ; for you will be doing me much more good if you cure my soul of ignorance, than if you were to cure my body of disease. [373a] Now if you choose to deliver a long speech, I tell you beforehand that you would not cure me — for I could not follow you — but if you are willing to answer me, as you did just now, you will do me a great deal of good, and I think you yourself will not be injured, either. And I might fairly call upon you also, son of Apemantus, for help ; for you stirred me up to converse with Hippias ; so now, if Hippias is unwilling to answer me, ask him in my behalf to do so. LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Yes, to be sure. Consequently when I agree that Pheidias is a good craftsman, [290b] "Well, then," he will say, "do you imagine that Pheidias did not know this beautiful that you speak of ?" "Why do you ask that ?" I shall say. "Because," he will say, "he did not make the eyes of his Athena of gold, nor the rest of her face, nor her hands and feet, if, that is, they were sure to appear most beautiful provided only they were made of gold, but he made them of ivory ; evidently he made this mistake through ignorance, not knowing that it is gold which makes everything beautiful to which it is added." When he says that, what reply shall we make to him, Hippias ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Good ! Then, for Heaven’s sake, Hippias, is wisdom also for this reason the most beautiful of all things and ignorance the most disgraceful of all things ? GREATER HIPPIAS

There yet remains one difficulty which has been raised by you about the sons of good men. What is the reason why good men teach their sons the knowledge which is gained from teachers, and make them wise in that, but do nothing towards improving them in the virtues which distinguish themselves ? And here, Socrates, I will leave the apologue and resume the argument. Please to consider : Is there or is there not some one quality of which all the citizens must be partakers, if there is to be a city at all ? In the answer to this question is contained the only solution of your difficulty ; there is no other. For if there be any such quality, and this quality or unity is not the art of the carpenter, or the smith, or the potter, but justice and temperance and holiness and, in a word, manly virtue — if this is the quality of which all men must be partakers, and which is the very condition of their learning or doing anything else, and if he who is wanting in this, whether he be a child only or a grown-up man or woman, must be taught and punished, until by punishment he becomes better, and he who rebels against instruction and punishment is either exiled or condemned to death under the idea that he is incurable — if what I am saying be true, good men have their sons taught other things and not this, do consider how extraordinary their conduct would appear to be. For we have shown that they think virtue capable of being taught and cultivated both in private and public ; and, notwithstanding, they have their sons taught lesser matters, ignorance of which does not involve the punishment of death : but greater things, of which the ignorance may cause death and exile to those who have no training or knowledge of them — aye, and confiscation as well as death, and, in a word, may be the ruin of families — those things, I say, they are supposed not to teach them — not to take the utmost care that they should learn. How improbable is this, Socrates ! PROTAGORAS

Yes, he said, that was certainly his meaning ; and he is twitting Pittacus with ignorance of the use of terms, which in a Lesbian, who has been accustomed to speak a barbarous language, is natural. PROTAGORAS

The nature of that art or science will be a matter of future consideration ; but the existence of such a science furnishes a demonstrative answer to the question which you asked of me and Protagoras. At the time when you asked the question, if you remember, both of us were agreeing that there was nothing mightier than knowledge, and that knowledge, in whatever existing, must have the advantage over pleasure and all other things ; and then you said that pleasure often got the advantage even over a man who has knowledge ; and we refused to allow this, and you rejoined : O Protagoras and Socrates, what is the meaning of being overcome by pleasure if not this ? — tell us what you call such a state : — if we had immediately and at the time answered "Ignorance," you would have laughed at us. But now, in laughing at us, you will be laughing at yourselves : for you also admitted that men err in their choice of pleasures and pains ; that is, in their choice of good and evil, from defect of knowledge ; and you admitted further, that they err, not only from defect of knowledge in general, but of that particular knowledge which is called measuring. And you are also aware that the erring act which is done without knowledge is done in ignorance. This, therefore, is the meaning of being overcome by pleasure ; — ignorance, and that the greatest. And our friends Protagoras and Prodicus and Hippias declare that they are the physicians of ignorance ; but you, who are under the mistaken impression that ignorance is not the cause, and that the art of which I am speaking cannot be taught, neither go yourselves, nor send your children, to the Sophists, who are the teachers of these things — you take care of your money and give them none ; and the result is, that you are the worse off both in public and private life : — Let us suppose this to be our answer to the world in general : And now I should like to ask you, Hippias, and you, Prodicus, as well as Protagoras (for the argument is to be yours as well as ours), whether you think that I am speaking the truth or not ? PROTAGORAS

Then, I said, if the pleasant is the good, nobody does anything under the idea or conviction that some other thing would be better and is also attainable, when he might do the better. And this inferiority of a man to himself is merely ignorance, as the superiority of a man to himself is wisdom. PROTAGORAS

And is not ignorance the having a false opinion and being deceived about important matters ? PROTAGORAS

That, again, I replied, is quite true. And if this has been rightly proven, then no one goes to meet what he thinks to be dangers, since the want of self-control, which makes men rush into dangers, has been shown to be ignorance. PROTAGORAS

And these base fears and confidences originate in ignorance and uninstructedness ? PROTAGORAS

And have they not been shown to be cowards through their ignorance of dangers ? PROTAGORAS

And because of that ignorance they are cowards ? PROTAGORAS

Then the ignorance of what is and is not dangerous is cowardice ? PROTAGORAS

Then the wisdom which knows what are and are not dangers is opposed to the ignorance of them ? PROTAGORAS

And the ignorance of them is cowardice ? PROTAGORAS

And the knowledge of that which is and is not dangerous is courage, and is opposed to the ignorance of these things ? PROTAGORAS

At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things ; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets ; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom — therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both ; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was. APOLOGY

But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbors good, and the evil do them evil. Now is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him, and yet I corrupt him, and intentionally, too ; — that is what you are saying, and of that you will never persuade me or any other human being. But either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally, so that on either view of the case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the law has no cognizance of unintentional offences : you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me ; for if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did unintentionally — no doubt I should ; whereas you hated to converse with me or teach me, but you indicted me in this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment. APOLOGY

Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death ; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear ; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death : then I should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown ; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance ? And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know : but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go now, and reject the counsels of Anytus, who said that if I were not put to death I ought not to have been prosecuted, and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words — if you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition, that are to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this again you shall die ; — if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply : Men of Athens, I honor and love you ; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying : O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all ? Are you not ashamed of this ? And if the person with whom I am arguing says : Yes, but I do care ; I do not depart or let him go at once ; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know ; and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not ; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. APOLOGY

[109d] Socrates : How now, friend Alcibiades ? Have you overlooked your own ignorance of this matter, or have I overlooked your learning it and taking lessons of a master who taught you to distinguish the more just and the more unjust ? And who is he ? Inform me in my turn, in order that you may introduce me to him as another pupil. ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : And you say you are bewildered in answering about just and unjust, noble and base, evil and good, expedient and inexpedient ? Now, is it not obvious that your bewilderment is caused by your ignorance of these things ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : And what if you should be on a ship at sea ? Would you think [117d] whether the tiller should be moved inwards or outwards, and in your ignorance bewilder yourself, or would you entrust it to the helmsman, and be quiet ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Then do you note that mistakes in action also are due to this ignorance of thinking one knows when one does not ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Then this ignorance is a cause of evils, and is the discreditable sort of stupidity ? ALCIBIADES I

[129b] Socrates : Come then, in what way can the same-in-itself be discovered ? For thus we may discover what we are ourselves ; whereas if we remain in ignorance of it we must surely fail. ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : But if you act unjustly, with your eyes on the godless and dark, the probability is that your acts will resemble these through your ignorance of yourselves. ALCIBIADES I

May we assume then, I said, that wisdom, viewed in this new light merely as a knowledge of knowledge and ignorance, has this advantage : — that he who possesses such knowledge will more easily learn anything which he learns ; and that everything will be clearer to him, because, in addition to the knowledge of individuals, he sees the science, and this also will better enable him to test the knowledge which others have of what he knows himself ; whereas the enquirer who is without this knowledge may be supposed to have a feebler and weaker insight ? Are not these, my friend, the real advantages which are to be gained from wisdom ? And are not we looking and seeking after something more than is to be found in her ? CHARMIDES  

Hear, then, I said, my own dream ; whether coming through the horn or the ivory gate, I cannot tell. The dream is this : Let us suppose that wisdom is such as we are now defining, and that she has absolute sway over us ; then each action will be done according to the arts or sciences, and no one professing to be a pilot when he is not, or any physician or general, or any one else pretending to know matters of which he is ignorant, will deceive or elude us ; our health will be improved ; our safety at sea, and also in battle, will be assured ; our coats and shoes, and all other instruments and implements will be skilfully made, because the workmen will be good and true. Aye, and if you please, you may suppose that prophecy, which is the knowledge of the future, will be under the control of wisdom, and that she will deter deceivers and set up the true prophets in their place as the revealers of the future. Now I quite agree that mankind, thus provided, would live and act according to knowledge, for wisdom would watch and prevent ignorance from intruding on us. But whether by acting according to knowledge we shall act well and be happy, my dear Critias  , — this is a point which we have not yet been able to determine. CHARMIDES

But that science is not wisdom or temperance, but a science of human advantage ; not a science of other sciences, or of ignorance, but of good and evil : and if this be of use, then wisdom or temperance will not be of use. CHARMIDES

And will wisdom give health ? I said ; is not this rather the effect of medicine ? Or does wisdom do the work any of the other arts, do they not each of them do their own work ? Have we not long ago asseverated that wisdom is only the knowledge of knowledge and of ignorance, and of nothing else ? CHARMIDES

Nic. I perceive, Laches, that you think nothing of having displayed your ignorance of the nature of courage, but you look only to see whether I have not made a similar display ; and if we are both equally ignorant of the things which a man who is good for anything should know, that, I suppose, will be of no consequence. You certainly appear to me very like the rest of the world, looking at your neighbour and not at yourself. I am of opinion that enough has been said on the subject which we have been discussing ; and if anything has been imperfectly said, that may be hereafter corrected by the help of Damon, whom you think to laugh down, although you have never seen him, and with the help of others. And when I am satisfied myself, I will freely impart my satisfaction to you, for I think that you are very much in want of knowledge. LACHES

And therefore we say that those who are already wise, whether Gods or men, are no longer lovers   of wisdom ; nor can they be lovers of wisdom who are ignorant to the extent of being evil, for no evil or ignorant person is a lover of wisdom. There remain those who have the misfortune to be ignorant, but are not yet hardened in their ignorance, or void of understanding, and do not as yet fancy that they know what they do not know : and therefore those who are the lovers of wisdom are as yet neither good nor bad. But the bad do not love wisdom any more than the good ; for, as we have already seen, neither is unlike the friend of unlike, nor like of like. You remember that ? LYSIS  

Euth. Yes, Socrates ; and things more wonderful still, of which the world is in ignorance. EUTHYPHRO  

Soc. Alas ! my companion, and will you leave me in despair ? I was hoping that you would instruct me in the nature of piety and impiety ; and then I might have cleared myself of Meletus and his indictment. I would have told him that I had been enlightened by Euthyphro, and had given up rash innovations and speculations, in which I indulged only through ignorance, and that now I am about to lead a better life. EUTHYPHRO

Soc. Not so, my simple friend, but because you will refute me after the manner which rhetoricians practise in courts of law. For there the one party think that they refute the other when they bring forward a number of witnesses of good repute in proof of their allegations, and their adversary has only a single one or none at all. But this kind of proof is of no value where truth is the aim ; a man may often be sworn down by a multitude of false witnesses who have a great air of respectability. And in this argument nearly every one, Athenian and stranger alike, would be on your side, if you should bring witnesses in disproof of my statement — you may, if you will, summon Nicias the son of Niceratus, and let his brothers, who gave the row of tripods which stand in the precincts of Dionysus, come with him ; or you may summon Aristocrates, the son of Scellius, who is the giver of that famous offering which is at Delphi ; summon, if you will, the whole house of Pericles, or any other great Athenian family whom you choose — they will all agree with you : I only am left alone and cannot agree, for you do not convince me ; although you produce many false witnesses against me, in the hope of depriving me of my inheritance, which is the truth. But I consider that nothing worth speaking of will have been effected by me unless I make you the one witness of my words ; nor by you, unless you make me the one witness of yours ; no matter about the rest of the world. For there are two ways of refutation, one which is yours and that of the world in general ; but mine is of another sort — let us compare them, and see in what they differ. For, indeed, we are at issue about matters which to know is honourable and not to know disgraceful ; to know or not to know happiness and misery — that is the chief of them. And what knowledge can be nobler ? or what ignorance more disgraceful than this ? And therefore I will begin by asking you whether you do not think that a man who is unjust and doing injustice can be happy, seeing that you think Archelaus unjust, and yet happy ? May I assume this to be your opinion ? GORGIAS

Soc. And this you would call injustice and ignorance and cowardice, and the like ? GORGIAS

Soc. Because I am sure that if you agree with me in any of the opinions which my soul forms, I have at last found the truth indeed. For I consider that if a man is to make a complete trial of the good or evil of the soul, he ought to have three qualities — knowledge, good-will, outspokenness, which are all possessed by you. Many whom I meet are unable to make trial of me, because they are not wise as you are ; others are wise, but they will not tell me the truth, because they have not the same interest in me which you have ; and these two strangers, Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly wise men and my very good friends, but they are not outspoken enough, and they are too modest. Why, their modesty is so great that they are driven to contradict themselves, first one and then the other of them, in the face of a large company, on matters of the highest moment. But you have all the qualities in which these others are deficient, having received an excellent education ; to this many Athenians can testify. And are my friend. Shall I tell you why I think so ? I know that you, Callicles, and Tisander of Aphidnae, and Andron the son of Androtion, and Nausicydes of the deme of Cholarges, studied together : there were four of you, and I once heard you advising with one another as to the extent to which the pursuit of philosophy should be carried, and, as I know, you came to the conclusion that the study should not be pushed too much into detail. You were cautioning one another not to be overwise ; you were afraid that too much wisdom might unconsciously to yourselves be the ruin of you. And now when I hear you giving the same advice to me which you then gave to your most intimate friends, I have a sufficient evidence of your real goodwill to me. And of the frankness of your nature and freedom from modesty I am assured by yourself, and the assurance is confirmed by your last speech. Well then, the inference in the present case clearly is, that if you agree with me in an argument about any point, that point will have been sufficiently tested by us, and will not require to be submitted to any further test. For you could not have agreed with me, either from lack of knowledge or from superfluity of modesty, nor yet from a desire to deceive me, for you are my friend, as you tell me yourself. And therefore when you and I are agreed, the result will be the attainment of perfect truth. Now there is no nobler enquiry, Callicles, than that which you censure me for making, — What ought the character of a man to be, and what his pursuits, and how far is he to go, both in maturer years and in youth ? For be assured that if I err in my own conduct I do not err intentionally, but from ignorance. Do not then desist from advising me, now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what this is which I am to practise, and how I may acquire it. And if you find me assenting to your words, and hereafter not doing that to which I assented, call me "dolt," and deem me unworthy of receiving further instruction. Once more, then, tell me what you and Pindar   mean by natural justice : Do you not mean that the superior should take the property of the inferior by force ; that the better should rule the worse, the noble have more than the mean ? Am I not right in my recollection ? GORGIAS

Soc. Is he not better off in knowing his ignorance ? MENO

Soc. We have certainly, as would seem, assisted him in some degree to the discovery of the truth ; and now he will wish to remedy his ignorance, but then he would have been ready to tell all the world again and again that the double space should have a double side. MENO

Any. Yes, by Zeus, and of ignorance too. MENO

Soc. I too speak rather in ignorance ; I only conjecture. And yet that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most certainly one of them. MENO

Then, I said, Cleinias, the sum of the matter appears to be that the goods of which we spoke before are not to be regarded as goods in themselves, but the degree of good and evil in them depends on whether they are or are not under the guidance of knowledge : under the guidance of ignorance, they are greater evils than their opposites, inasmuch as they are more able to minister to the evil principle which rules them ; and when under the guidance of wisdom and prudence, they are greater goods : but in themselves are nothing ? EUTHYDEMUS  

What then is the result of what has been said ? Is not this the result — that other things are indifferent, and that wisdom is the only good, and ignorance the only evil ? EUTHYDEMUS

Then there is no such thing as ignorance, or men who are ignorant ; for is not ignorance, if there be such a thing, a mistake of fact ? EUTHYDEMUS

O Euthydemus, I said, I have but a dull conception of these subtleties and excellent devices of wisdom ; I am afraid that I hardly understand them, and you must forgive me therefore if I ask a very stupid question : if there be no falsehood or false opinion or ignorance, there can be no such thing as erroneous action, for a man cannot fail of acting as he is acting — that is what you mean ? EUTHYDEMUS

Again I replied, Through ignorance I have answered too much, but I hope that you will forgive me. And now I will answer simply that I always know what I know with something. EUTHYDEMUS

Soc. Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother ; Here is the lovely one (erate) — for Zeus, according to tradition, loved and married her ; possibly also the name may have been given when the legislator was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer), putting the end in the place of the beginning. You will recognize the truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several times over. People dread the name of Pherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo — and with as little reason ; the fear, if I am not mistaken, only arises from their ignorance of the nature of names. But they go changing the name into Phersephone, and they are terrified at this ; whereas the new name means only that the Goddess is wise (sophe) ; for seeing that all things in the world are in motion (pheromenon), that principle which embraces and touches and is able to follow them, is wisdom. And therefore the Goddess may be truly called Pherepaphe (Pherepapha), or some name like it, because she touches that which is (tou pheromenon ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise. They alter her name into Pherephatta now-a-days, because the present generation care for euphony more than truth. There is the other name, Apollo, which, as I was saying, is generally supposed to have some terrible signification. Have you remarked this fact ? CRATYLUS  

Soc. Why yes, the end I now dedicate to God, not, however, until I have explained anagke (necessity), which ought to come next, and ekousion (the voluntary). Ekousion is certainly the yielding (eikon) and unresisting — the notion implied is yielding and not opposing, yielding, as I was just now saying, to that motion which is in accordance with our will ; but the necessary and resistant being contrary to our will, implies error and ignorance ; the idea is taken from walking through a ravine which is impassable, and rugged, and overgrown, and impedes motion — and this is the derivation of the word anagkaion (necessary) an agke ion  , going through a ravine. But while my strength lasts let us persevere, and I hope that you will persevere with your questions. CRATYLUS

Soc. That objects should be imitated in letters and syllables, and so find expression, may appear ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot be avoided — there is no better principle to which we can look for the truth of first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help, like the tragic poets, who in any perplexity have their Gods waiting in the air ; and must get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying that "the Gods gave the first names, and therefore they are right." This will be the best contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even better still, of deriving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are older than we are ; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is the same sort of excuse as the last ; for all these are not reasons but only ingenious excuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of words. And yet any sort of ignorance of first or primitive names involves an ignorance of secondary words ; for they can only be explained by the primary. Clearly then the professor of languages should be able to give a very lucid explanation of first names, or let him be assured he will only talk nonsense about the rest. Do you not suppose this to be true ? CRATYLUS

Why, my dear friend, said Socrates, must not I or any one be in a strait who has to speak after he has heard such a rich and varied discourse ? I am especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words — who could listen to them without amazement ? When I reflected on the immeasurable inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was simply to turn me and my speech, into stone, as Homer says, and strike me dumb. And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I too was a master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should be true, and that this being presupposed, out of the true the speaker was to choose the best and set them forth in the best manner. And I felt quite proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him not, without regard to truth or falsehood — that was no matter ; for the original, proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love, but only that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love every imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere ; and you say that "he is all this," and "the cause of all that," making him appear the fairest and best of all to those who know him not, for you cannot impose upon those who know him. And a noble and solemn hymn of praise have you rehearsed. But as I misunderstood the nature of the praise when I said that I would take my turn, I must beg to be absolved from the promise which I made in ignorance, and which (as Euripides would say) was a promise of the lips and not of the mind. Farewell then to such a strain : for I do not praise in that way ; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth about love, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus  , whether you would like, to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you ? SYMPOSIUM  

And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions made by Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made to the wise woman when she questioned me — I think that this will be the easiest way, and I shall take both parts myself as well as I can. As you, Agathon, suggested, I must speak first of the being and nature of Love, and then of his works. First I said to her in nearly the same words which he used to me, that Love was a mighty god, and likewise fair and she proved to me as I proved to him that, by my own showing, Love was neither fair nor good. "What do you mean, Diotima," I said, "is love then evil and foul ?" "Hush," she cried ; "must that be foul which is not fair ?" "Certainly," I said. "And is that which is not wise, ignorant ? do you not see that there is a mean between wisdom and ignorance ?" "And what may that be ?" I said. "Right opinion," she replied ; "which, as you know, being incapable of giving a reason, is not knowledge (for how can knowledge be devoid of reason ? nor again, ignorance, for neither can ignorance attain the truth), but is clearly something which is a mean between ignorance and wisdom." "Quite true," I replied. "Do not then insist," she said, "that what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good evil ; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil ; for he is in a mean between them." "Well," I said, "Love is surely admitted by all to be a great god." "By those who know or by those who do not know ?" "By all." "And how, Socrates," she said with a smile, "can Love be acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at all ?" "And who are they ?" I said. "You and I are two of them," she replied. "How can that be ?" I said. "It is quite intelligible," she replied ; "for you yourself would acknowledge that the gods are happy and fair of course you would — would to say that any god was not ?" "Certainly not," I replied. "And you mean by the happy, those who are the possessors of things good or fair ?" "Yes." "And you admitted that Love, because he was in want, desires those good and fair things of which he is in want ?" "Yes, I did." "But how can he be a god who has no portion in what is either good or fair ?" "Impossible." "Then you see that you also deny the divinity of Love." SYMPOSIUM

"What then is Love ?" I asked ; "Is he mortal ?" "No." "What then ?" "As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two." "What is he, Diotima ?" "He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal." "And what," I said, "is his power ?" "He interprets," she replied, "between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods ; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man ; but through Love. all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual ; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love. "And who," I said, "was his father, and who his mother ?" "The tale," she said, "will take time ; nevertheless I will tell you. On the birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on such occasions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay down at his side and conceived love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant. And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him ; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in ; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest ; and like his mother he is always in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and good ; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources ; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth ; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this : No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already ; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself : he has no desire for that of which he feels no want." "But — who then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish ?" "A child may answer that question," she replied ; "they are those who are in a mean between the two ; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful ; and therefore Love is also a philosopher : or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause ; for his father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all beautiful. For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed ; but the principle of love is of another nature, and is such as I have described." SYMPOSIUM

All this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love. And I remember her once saying to me, "What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and the attendant desire ? See you not how all animals, birds, as well as beasts, in their desire of procreation, are in agony when they take the infection of love, which begins with the desire of union ; whereto is added the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest are ready to battle against the strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them, and will, let themselves be tormented with hunger or suffer anything in order to maintain their young. Man may be supposed to act thus from reason ; but why should animals have these passionate feelings ? Can you tell me why ?" Again I replied that I did not know. She said to me : "And do you expect ever to become a master in the art of love, if you do not know this ?" "But I have told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason why I come to you ; for I am conscious that I want a teacher ; tell me then the cause of this and of the other mysteries of love." "Marvel not," she said, "if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged ; for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal : and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old. Nay even in the life, of the same individual there is succession and not absolute unity : a man is called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation — hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming and going ; and equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same ; but each of them individually experiences a like change. For what is implied in the word ‘recollection,’ but the departure of knowledge, which is ever being forgotten, and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears to be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar existence behind unlike the divine, which is always the same and not another ? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality ; but the immortal in another way. Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their offspring ; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality." SYMPOSIUM

I will tell you, he said. The lovers of knowledge are conscious that their souls, when philosophy receives them, are simply fastened and glued to their bodies : the soul is only able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her own nature ; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance ; and philosophy, seeing the terrible nature of her confinement, and that the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity (for the lovers of knowledge are aware that this was the original state of the soul, and that when she was in this state philosophy received and gently counseled her, and wanted to release her, pointing out to her that the eye is full of deceit, and also the ear and other senses, and persuading her to retire from them in all but the necessary use of them and to be gathered up and collected into herself, and to trust only to herself and her own intuitions of absolute existence, and mistrust that which comes to her through others and is subject to vicissitude) — philosophy shows her that this is visible and tangible, but that what she sees in her own nature is intellectual and invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks that she ought not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far as she is able ; reflecting that when a man has great joys or sorrows or fears or desires he suffers from them, not the sort of evil which might be anticipated — as, for example, the loss of his health or property, which he has sacrificed to his lusts — but he has suffered an evil greater far, which is the greatest and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks. PHAEDO  

The danger of becoming misologists, he replied, which is one of the very worst things that can happen to us. For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises from the too great confidence of inexperience ; you trust a man and think him altogether true and good and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish ; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially within the circle of his most trusted friends, as he deems them, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. I dare say that you must have observed this. PHAEDO

Let us, then, in the first place, he said, be careful of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no truth or health or soundness in any arguments at all ; but let us rather say that there is as yet no health in us, and that we must quit ourselves like men and do our best to gain health — you and all other men with a view to the whole of your future life, and I myself with a view to death. For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher ; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. For the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. And the difference between him and me at the present moment is only this — that whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself ; to convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me. And do but see how much I gain by this. For if what I say is true, then I do well to be persuaded of the truth, but if there be nothing after death, still, during the short time that remains, I shall save my friends from lamentations, and my ignorance will not last, and therefore no harm will be done. This is the state of mind, Simmias and Cebes, in which I approach the argument. And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates : agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth ; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and, like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die. PHAEDO

Soc. The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I too doubted. I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks ; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about the locality ; according to another version of the story she was taken from Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them ; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him ; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of time. Now I have no leisure for such enquiries ; shall I tell you why ? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says ; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this ; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself : am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny ? But let me ask you, friend : have we not reached the plane-tree to which you were conducting us ? PHAEDRUS

Soc. But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might answer : What amazing nonsense you are talking ! As if I forced any man to learn to speak in ignorance of the truth ! Whatever my advice may be worth, I should have told him to arrive at the truth first, and then come to me. At the same time I boldly assert that mere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion. PHAEDRUS

Soc. Then as to the other topics — are they not thrown down anyhow ? Is there any principle in them ? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic ? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition ? PHAEDRUS

Soc. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs ; but differs, in that I attend men and not women ; and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies : and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the mid-wives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just — the reason is, that the god compels me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to bring forth. And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards, as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all make astonishing progress ; and this in the opinion of others as well as in their own. It is quite dear that they never learned anything from me ; the many fine discoveries to which they cling are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery. And the proof of my words is, that many of them in their ignorance, either in their self-conceit despising me, or falling under the influence of others, have gone away too soon ; and have not only lost the children of whom I had previously delivered them by an ill bringing up, but have stifled whatever else they had in them by evil communications, being fonder of lies and shams than of the truth ; and they have at last ended by seeing themselves, as others see them, to be great fools. Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, is one of them, and there are many others. The truants often return to me, and beg that I would consort with them again — they are ready to go to me on their knees and then, if my familiar allows, which is not always the case, I receive them, and they begin to grow again. Dire are the pangs which my art is able to arouse and to allay in those who consort with me, just like the pangs of women in childbirth ; night and day they are full of perplexity and travail which is even worse than that of the women. So much for them. And there are others, Theaetetus  , who come to me apparently having nothing in them ; and as I know that they have no need of my art, I coax them into marrying some one, and by the grace of God I can generally tell who is likely to do them good. Many of them I have given away to Prodicus, and many to other inspired sages. I tell you this long story, friend Theaetetus, because I suspect, as indeed you seem to think yourself, that you are in labour — great with some conception. Come then to me, who am a midwife’s son and myself a midwife, and do your best to answer the questions which I will ask you. And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because I discover upon inspection that the conception which you have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me on that account, as the manner of women is when their first children are taken from them. For I have actually known some who were ready to bite me when I deprived them of a darling folly ; they did not perceive that I acted from good will, not knowing that no god is the enemy of man — that was not within the range of their ideas ; neither am I their enemy in all this, but it would be wrong for me to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth. Once more, then, Theaetetus, I repeat my old question, "What is knowledge ?" — and do not say that you cannot tell ; but quit yourself like a man, and by the help of God you will be able to tell. THEAETETUS

Soc. Then attend, and I will try to finish the story. The purport is that all these things are in motion, as I was saying, and that this motion is of two kinds, a slower and a quicker ; and the slower elements have their motions in the same place and with reference to things near them, and so they beget ; but what is begotten is swifter, for it is carried to fro, and moves from place to place. Apply this to sense : — When the eye and the appropriate object meet together and give birth to whiteness and the sensation connatural with it, which could not have been given by either of them going elsewhere, then, while the sight : is flowing from the eye, whiteness proceeds from the object which combines in producing the colour ; and so the eye is fulfilled with sight, and really sees, and becomes, not sight, but a seeing eye ; and the object which combined to form the colour is fulfilled with whiteness, and becomes not whiteness but a white thing, whether wood or stone or whatever the object may be which happens to be colour,ed white. And this is true of all sensible objects, hard, warm, and the like, which are similarly to be regarded, as I was saying before, not as having any absolute existence, but as being all of them of whatever kind. generated by motion in their intercourse with one another ; for of the agent and patient, as existing in separation, no trustworthy conception, as they say, can be formed, for the agent has no existence until united ; with the patient, and the patient has no existence until united with the agent ; and that which by uniting with something becomes an agent, by meeting with some other thing is converted into a patient. And from all these considerations, as I said at first, there arises a general reflection, that there is no one self-existent thing, but everything is becoming and in relation ; and being must be altogether abolished, although from habit and ignorance we are compelled even in this discussion to retain the use of the term. But great philosophers tell us that we are not to allow either the word "something," or "belonging to something," or "to me," or "this," or "that," or any other detaining name to be used, in the language of nature all things are being created and destroyed, coming into being and passing into new forms ; nor can any name fix or detain them ; he who attempts to fix them is easily refuted. And this should be the way of speaking, not only of particulars but of aggregates such aggregates as are expressed in the word "man," or "stone," or any name of animal or of a class. O Theaetetus, are not these speculations sweet as honey ? And do you not like the taste of them in the mouth ? THEAETETUS

Soc. And are not we, Protagoras, uttering the opinion of man, or rather of all mankind, when we say that every one thinks himself wiser than other men in some things, and their inferior in others ? In the hour of danger, when they are in perils of war, or of the sea, or of sickness, do they not look up to their commanders as if they were gods, and expect salvation from them, only because they excel them in knowledge ? Is not the world full of men in their several employments, who are looking for teachers and rulers of themselves and of the animals ? and there are plenty who think that they are able to teach and able to rule. Now, in all this is implied that ignorance and wisdom exist among them, least in their own opinion. THEAETETUS

Soc. And wisdom is assumed by them to be true thought, and ignorance to be false opinion. THEAETETUS

Soc. Then, as this is your wish, I will describe the leaders ; for there is no use in talking about the inferior sort. In the first place, the lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other political assembly ; they neither see nor hear the laws or decrees, as they are called, of the state written or recited ; the eagerness of political societies in the attainment of office-clubs, and banquets, and revels, and singing-maidens, — do not enter even into their dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which the philosopher no more knows than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean. Neither is he conscious of his ignorance. For he does not hold aloof in order ; that he may gain a reputation ; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the city : his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human things, is "flying all abroad" as Pindar says, measuring earth and heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach. THEAETETUS

Soc. Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away ; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal nature, and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can ; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible ; and to become like him, is to become holy, just, and wise. But, O my friend, you cannot easily convince mankind that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not merely in order that a man may seem to be good, which is the reason given by the world, and in my judgment is only a repetition of an old wives fable. Whereas, the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous — he is perfect righteousness ; and he of us who is the most righteous is most like him. Herein is seen the true cleverness of a man, and also his nothingness and want of manhood. For to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice. All other kinds of wisdom or cleverness, which seem only, such as the wisdom of politicians, or the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better not be encouraged in the illusion that his roguery is clever ; for men glory in their shame — they fancy that they hear others saying of them, "These are not mere good-for-nothing persons, mere burdens of the earth, but such as men should be who mean to dwell safely in a state." Let us tell them that they are all the more truly what they do not think they are because they do not know it ; for they do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all things they ought to know — not stripes and death, as they suppose, which evil-doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot be escaped. THEAETETUS

Soc. In the third case, not knowing and not perceiving either of you, I cannot think that one of you whom I do not know is the other whom I do not know. I need not again go over the catalogue of excluded cases, in which I cannot form a false opinion about you and Theodorus, either when I know both or when I am in ignorance of both, or when I know one and not the other. And the same of perceiving : do you understand me ? THEAETETUS

Soc. In the first place, how can a man who has the knowledge of anything be ignorant of that which he knows, not by reason of ignorance, but by reason of his own knowledge ? And, again, is it not an extreme absurdity that he should suppose another thing to be this, and this to be another thing ; — that, having knowledge present with him in his mind, he should still know nothing and be ignorant of all things ? — you might as well argue that ignorance may make a man know, and blindness make him see, as that knowledge can make him ignorant. THEAETETUS

Theaet. Perhaps, Socrates, we may have been wrong in making only forms of knowledge our birds : whereas there ought to have been forms of ignorance as well, flying about together in the mind, and then he who sought to take one of them might sometimes catch a form of knowledge, and sometimes a form of ignorance ; and thus he would have a false opinion from ignorance, but a true one from knowledge, about the same thing. THEAETETUS

Soc. I cannot help praising you, Theaetetus, and yet I must beg you to reconsider your words. Let us grant what you say — then, according to you, he who takes ignorance will have a false opinion — am I right ? THEAETETUS

Soc. Then he will think that he has captured knowledge and not ignorance ? THEAETETUS

Soc. And thus, after going a long way round, we are once more face to face with our original difficulty. The hero of dialectic will retort upon us : — "O my excellent friends, he will say, laughing, if a man knows the form of ignorance and the form of knowledge, can he think that one of them which he knows is the other which he knows ? or, if he knows neither of them, can he think that the one which he knows not is another which he knows not ? or, if he knows one and not the other, can he think the one which he knows to be the one which he does not know ? or the one which he does not know to be the one which he knows ? or will you tell me that there are other forms of knowledge which distinguish the right and wrong birds, and which the owner keeps in some other aviaries or graven on waxen blocks according to your foolish images, and which he may be said to know while he possesses them, even though he have them not at hand in his mind ? And thus, in a perpetual circle, you will be compelled to go round and round, and you will make no progress." What are we to say in reply, Theaetetus ? THEAETETUS

Soc. Capital, my friend ! and I may add that they are almost as hard to be discerned as the gods. For the true philosophers, and such as are not merely made up for the occasion, appear in various forms unrecognized by the ignorance of men, and they "hover about cities," as Homer declares, looking from above upon human life ; and some think nothing of them, and others can never think enough ; and sometimes they appear as statesmen, and sometimes as sophists ; and then, again, to many they seem to be no better than madmen. I should like to ask our Eleatic friend, if he would tell us, what is thought about them in Italy, and to whom the terms are applied. SOPHIST

Str. And what is ignorance but the aberration of a mind which is bent on truth, and in which the process of understanding is perverted ? SOPHIST

Str. And there is the other, which they call ignorance, and which, because existing only in the soul, they will not allow to be vice. SOPHIST

Theaet. I certainly admit what I at first disputed — that there are two kinds of vice in the soul, and that we ought to consider cowardice, intemperance, and injustice to be alike forms of disease in the soul, and ignorance, of which there are all sorts of varieties, to be deformity. SOPHIST

Str. Again, of the various kinds of ignorance, may not instruction be rightly said to be the remedy ? SOPHIST

Str. If we can discover a line which divides ignorance into two halves. For a division of ignorance into two parts will certainly imply that the art of instruction is also twofold, answering to the two divisions of ignorance. SOPHIST

Str. I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale against all other sorts of ignorance put together. SOPHIST

Str. And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of ignorance which specially earns the title of stupidity. SOPHIST

Str. But whereas some appear to have arrived at the conclusion that all ignorance is involuntary, and that no one who thinks himself wise is willing to learn any of those things in which he is conscious of his own cleverness, and that the admonitory sort of instruction gives much trouble and does little good — SOPHIST

Str. O my friend, do you not see that nothing can exceed out ignorance, and yet we fancy that we are saying something good ? SOPHIST

Str. There are some who imitate, knowing what they imitate, and some who do not know. And what line of distinction can there possibly be greater than that which divides ignorance from knowledge ? SOPHIST

Str. And when an individual ruler governs neither by law nor by custom, but following in the steps of the true man of science pretends that he can only act for the best by violating the laws, while in reality appetite and ignorance are the motives of the imitation, may not such an one be called a tyrant ? STATESMAN

Str. And when the foundation of politics is in the letter only and in custom, and knowledge is divorced from action, can we wonder Socrates, at the miseries which there are, and always will be, in States ? Any other art, built on such a foundation and thus conducted, would ruin all that it touched. Ought we not rather to wonder at the natural strength of the political bond ? For States have endured all this, time out of mind, and yet some of them still remain and are not overthrown, though many of them, like ships at sea, founder from time to time, and perish, and have perished and will hire after perish, through the badness of their pilots and crews, who have the worst sort of ignorance of the highest truths — I mean to say, that they are wholly unaquainted with politics, of which, above all other sciences, they believe themselves to have acquired the most perfect knowledge. STATESMAN

Str. But those who are wallowing in ignorance and baseness she bows under the yoke of slavery. STATESMAN

Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise ; the disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence ; and of this there are two kinds ; to wit, madness and ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, that state may be called disease ; and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unseasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly ; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great ; his soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body ; yet he is regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones. And in general, all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach. For no man is voluntarily bad ; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will. And in the case of pain too in like manner the soul suffers much evil from the body. For where the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up within and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are blended, with them, they produce all sorts of diseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity ; and being carried to the three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated. But however that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue ; this, however, is part of another subject. TIMAEUS  

There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treatment by which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which it is meet and right that I should say a word in turn ; for it is more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil. Everything that is good is fair, and the animal fair is not without proportion, and the animal which is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them, but of the highest and greatest we take no heed ; for there is no proportion or disproportion more productive of health and disease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul and body. This however we do not perceive, nor do we reflect that when a weak or small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul, or conversely, when a little soul is encased in a large body, then the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most important of all symmetries ; but the due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye. Just as a body which has a leg too long, or which is unsymmetrical in some other respect, is an unpleasant sight, and also, when doing its share of work, is much distressed and makes convulsive efforts, and often stumbles through awkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own self — in like manner we should conceive of the double nature which we call the living being ; and when in this compound there is an impassioned soul more powerful than the body, that soul, I say, convulses and fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man ; and when eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes wasting ; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or in public, and strifes and controversies arise, inflames and dissolves the composite frame of man and introduces rheums ; and the nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most professors of medicine, who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause. And once more, when body large and too strong for the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, then inasmuch as there are two desires natural to man, — one of food for the sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the diviner part of us — then, I say, the motions of the stronger, getting the better and increasing their own power, but making the soul dull, and stupid, and forgetful, engender ignorance, which is the greatest of diseases. There is one protection against both kinds of disproportion : — that we should not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body, and thus they will be on their guard against each other, and be healthy and well balanced. And therefore the mathematician or any one else whose thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectual pursuit, must allow his body also to have due exercise, and practise gymnastic ; and he who is careful to fashion the body, should in turn impart to the soul its proper motions, and should cultivate music and all philosophy, if he would deserve to be called truly fair and truly good. And the separate parts should be treated in the same manner, in imitation of the pattern of the universe ; for as the body is heated and also cooled within by the elements which enter into it, and is again dried up and moistened by external things, and experiences these and the like affections from both kinds of motions, the result is that the body if given up to motion when in a state of quiescence is overmastered and perishes ; but if any one, in imitation of that which we call the foster  -mother and nurse of the universe, will not allow the body ever to be inactive, but is always producing motions and agitations through its whole extent, which form the natural defence against other motions both internal and external, and by moderate exercise reduces to order according to their affinities the particles and affections which are wandering about the body, as we have already said when speaking of the universe, he will not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars and disorders in the body, but he will place friend by the side of friend, so as to create health. TIMAEUS

Thus were created women and the female sex in general. But the race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who, although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight ; these were remodelled and transformed into birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair. The race of wild pedestrian animals, again, came from those who had no philosophy in any of their thoughts, and never considered at all about the nature of the heavens, because they had ceased to use the courses of the head, but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which are in the breast. In consequence of these habits of theirs they had their front-legs and their heads resting upon the earth to which they were drawn by natural affinity ; and the crowns of their heads were elongated and of all sorts of shapes, into which the courses of the soul were crushed by reason of disuse. And this was the reason why they were created quadrupeds and polypods : God gave the more senseless of them the more support that they might be more attracted to the earth. And the most foolish of them, who trail their bodies entirely upon the ground and have no longer any need of feet, he made without feet to crawl upon the earth. The fourth class were the inhabitants of the water : these were made out of the most entirely senseless and ignorant of all, whom the transformers did not think any longer worthy of pure respiration, because they possessed a soul which was made impure by all sorts of transgression ; and instead of the subtle and pure medium of air, they gave them the deep and muddy sea to be their element of respiration ; and hence arose the race of fishes and oysters, and other aquatic animals, which have received the most remote habitations as a punishment of their outlandish ignorance. These are the laws by which animals pass into one another, now, as ever, changing as they lose or gain wisdom and folly. TIMAEUS

Critias. And I, Timaeus, accept the trust, and as you at first said that you were going to speak of high matters, and begged that some forbearance might be shown to you, I too ask the same or greater forbearance for what I am about to say. And although I very well know that my request may appear to be somewhat and discourteous, I must make it nevertheless. For will any man of sense deny that you have spoken well ? I can only attempt to show that I ought to have more indulgence than you, because my theme is more difficult ; and I shall argue that to seem to speak well of the gods to men is far easier than to speak well of men to men : for the inexperience and utter ignorance of his hearers about any subject is a great assistance to him who has to speak of it, and we know how ignorant we are concerning the gods. But I should like to make my meaning clearer, if Timaeus, you will follow me. All that is said by any of us can only be imitation and representation. For if we consider the likenesses which painters make of bodies divine and heavenly, and the different degrees of gratification with which the eye of the spectator receives them, we shall see that we are satisfied with the artist who is able in any degree to imitate the earth and its mountains, and the rivers, and the woods, and the universe, and the things that are and move therein, and further, that knowing nothing precise about such matters, we do not examine or analyze the painting ; all that is required is a sort of indistinct and deceptive mode of shadowing them forth. CRITIAS

Soc. But when you have learned what sounds are high and what low, and the number and nature of the intervals and their limits or proportions, and the systems compounded out of them, which our fathers discovered, and have handed down to us who are their descendants under the name of harmonies ; and the affections corresponding to them in the movements of the human body, which when measured by numbers ought, as they say, to be called rhythms and measures ; and they tell us that the same principle should be applied to every one and many ; — when, I say, you have learned all this, then, my dear friend, you are perfect ; and you may be said to understand any other subject, when you have a similar grasp of it. But the, infinity of kinds and the infinity of individuals which there is in each of them, when not classified, creates in every one of us a state of infinite ignorance ; and he who never looks for number in anything, will not himself be looked for in the number of famous men. PHILEBUS  

Soc. Then now there can be no doubt that neither of them has the good, for the one which had would certainly have been sufficient and perfect and eligible for every living creature or thing that was able to live such a life ; and if any of us had chosen any other, he would have chosen contrary to the nature of the truly eligible, and not of his own free will, but either through ignorance or from some unhappy necessity. PHILEBUS

Soc. And is there no difference, my friend, between that pleasure which is associated with right opinion and knowledge, and that which is often found in all of us associated with falsehood and ignorance ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And ignorance, and what is termed clownishness, are surely an evil ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Are there not three ways in which ignorance of self may be shown ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Let this, then, be the principle of division ; those of them who are weak and unable to revenge themselves, when they are laughed at, may be truly called ridiculous, but those who can defend themselves may be more truly described as strong and formidable ; for ignorance in the powerul is hateful and horrible, because hurtful to others both in reality and in fiction, but powerless ignorance may be reckoned, and in truth is, ridiculous. PHILEBUS

Soc. Did we not say that ignorance was always an evil ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And do we not acknowledge this ignorance of theirs to be a misfortune ? PHILEBUS

Ath. Are not the moments in which we are apt to be bold and shameless such as these ? — when we are under the influence of anger, love, pride, ignorance, avarice, cowardice ? or when wealth, beauty, strength, and all the intoxicating workings of pleasure madden us ? What is better adapted than the festive use of wine, in the first place to test, and in the second place to train the character of a man, if care be taken in the use of it ? What is there cheaper, or more innocent ? For do but consider which is the greater risk : — Would you rather test a man of a morose and savage nature, which is the source of ten thousand acts of injustice, by making bargains with him at a risk to yourself, or by having him as a companion at the festival of Dionysus ? Or would you, if you wanted to apply a touchstone to a man who is prone to love, entrust your wife, or your sons, or daughters to him, perilling your dearest interests in order to have a view of the condition of his soul ? I might mention numberless cases, in which the advantage would be manifest of getting to know a character in sport, and without paying dearly for experience. And I do not believe that either a Cretan, or any other man, will doubt that such a test is a fair test, and safer, cheaper, and speedier than any other. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Yes ; and I remember, and you will remember, what I said at first, that a statesman and legislator ought to ordain laws with a view to wisdom ; while you were arguing that the good lawgiver ought to order all with a view to war. And to this I replied that there were four virtues, but that upon your view one of them only was the aim of legislation ; whereas you ought to regard all virtue, and especially that which comes first, and is the leader of all the rest — I mean wisdom and mind and opinion, having affection and desire in their train. And now the argument returns to the same point, and I say once more, in jest if you like, or in earnest if you like, that the prayer of a fool is full of danger, being likely to end in the opposite of what he desires. And if you would rather receive my words in earnest, I am willing that you should ; and you will find, I suspect, as I have said already, that not cowardice was the cause of the ruin of the Dorian kings and of their whole design, nor ignorance of military matters, either on the part of the rulers or of their subjects ; but their misfortunes were due to their general degeneracy, and especially to their ignorance of the most important human affairs. That was then, and is still, and always will be the case, as I will endeavour, if you will allow me, to make out and demonstrate as well as I am able to you who are my friends, in the course of the argument. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Well, then, proceeding in the same train of thought, I say that the greatest ignorance was the ruin of the Dorian power, and that now, as then, ignorance is ruin. And if this be true, the legislator must endeavour to implant wisdom in states, and banish ignorance to the utmost of his power. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Then now consider what is really the greatest ignorance. I should like to know whether you and Megillus would agree with me in what I am about to say ; for my opinion is — LAWS BOOK III

Ath. That the greatest ignorance is when a man hates that which he nevertheless thinks to be good and noble, and loves and embraces that which he knows to be unrighteous and evil. This disagreement between the sense of pleasure and the judgment of reason in the soul is, in my opinion, the worst ignorance ; and also the greatest, because affecting the great mass of the human soul ; for the principle which feels pleasure and pain in the individual is like the mass or populace in a state. And when the soul is opposed to knowledge, or opinion, or reason, which are her natural lords, that I call folly, just as in the state, when the multitude refuses to obey their rulers and the laws ; or, again, in the individual, when fair reasonings have their habitation in the soul and yet do no good, but rather the reverse of good. All these cases I term the worst ignorance, whether in individuals or in states. You will understand, Stranger, that I am speaking of something which is very different from the ignorance of handicraftsmen. LAWS BOOK III

Cle. The probability is that ignorance will be a disorder especially prevalent among kings, because they lead a proud and luxurious life. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Is it not palpable that the chief aim of the kings of that time was to get the better of the established laws, and that they were not in harmony with the principles which they had agreed to observe by word and oath ? This want of harmony may have had the appearance of wisdom, but was really, as we assert, the greatest ignorance, and utterly overthrew the whole empire by dissonance and harsh discord. LAWS BOOK III

Of all evils the greatest is one which in the souls of most men is innate, and which a man is always excusing in himself and never correcting ; mean, what is expressed in the saying that "Every man by nature is and ought to be his own friend." Whereas the excessive love of self is in reality the source to each man of all offences ; for the lover is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and the honourable, and thinks that he ought always to prefer himself to the truth. But he who would be a great man ought to regard, not himself or his interests, but what is just, whether the just act be his own or that of another. Through a similar error men are induced to fancy that their own ignorance is wisdom, and thus we who may be truly said to know nothing, think that we know all things ; and because we will not let others act for us in what we do not know, we are compelled to act amiss ourselves. Wherefore let every man avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false shame to stand in the way. There are also minor precepts which are often repeated, and are quite as useful ; a man should recollect them and remind himself of them. For when a stream is flowing out, there should be water flowing in too ; and recollection flows in while wisdom is departing. Therefore I say that a man should refrain from excess either of laughter or tears, and should exhort his neighbour to do the same ; he should veil his immoderate sorrow or joy, and seek to behave with propriety, whether the genius of his good fortune remains with him, or whether at the crisis of his fate, when he seems to be mounting high and steep places, the Gods oppose him in some of his enterprises. Still he may ever hope, in the case of good men, that whatever afflictions are to befall them in the future God will lessen, and that present evils he will change for the better ; and as to the goods which are the opposite of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be added to them, and that they will be fortunate. Such should be men’s hopes, and such should be the exhortations with which they admonish one another, never losing an opportunity, but on every occasion distinctly reminding themselves and others of all these things, both in jest and earnest. LAWS BOOK V

Enough has now been said of divine matters, both as touching the practices which men ought to follow, and as to the sort of persons who they ought severally to be. But of human things we have not as yet spoken, and we must ; for to men we are discoursing and not to Gods. Pleasures and pains and desires are a part of human nature, and on them every mortal being must of necessity hang and depend with the most eager interest. And therefore we must praise the noblest life, not only as the fairest in appearance, but as being one which, if a man will only taste, and not, while still in his youth, desert for another, he will find to surpass also in the very thing which we all of us desire — I mean in having a greater amount of pleasure and less of pain during the whole of life. And this will be plain, if a man has a true taste of them, as will be quickly and clearly seen. But what is a true taste ? That we have to learn from the argument — the point being what is according to nature, and what is not according to nature. One life must be compared with another, the more pleasurable with the more painful, after this manner : — We desire to have pleasure, but we neither desire nor choose pain ; and the neutral state we are ready to take in exchange, not for pleasure but for pain ; and we also wish for less pain and greater pleasure, but less pleasure and greater pain we do not wish for ; and an equal balance of either we cannot venture to assert that we should desire. And all these differ or do not differ severally in number and magnitude and intensity and equality, and in the opposites of these when regarded as objects of choice, in relation to desire. And such being the necessary order of things, we wish for that life in which there are many great and intense elements of pleasure and pain, and in which the pleasures are in excess, and do not wish for that in which the opposites exceed ; nor, again, do we wish for that in which the clements of either are small and few and feeble, and the pains exceed. And when, as I said before, there is a balance of pleasure and pain in life, this is to be regarded by us as the balanced life ; while other lives are preferred by us because they exceed in what we like, or are rejected by us because they exceed in what we dislike. All the lives of men may be regarded by us as bound up in these, and we must also consider what sort of lives we by nature desire. And if we wish for any others, I say that we desire them only through some ignorance and inexperience of the lives which actually exist. LAWS BOOK V

Now, what lives are they, and how many in which, having searched out and beheld the objects of will and desire and their opposites, and making of them a law, choosing, I say, the dear and the pleasant and the best and noblest, a man may live in the happiest way possible ? Let us say that the temperate life is one kind of life, and the rational another, and the courageous another, and the healthful another ; and to these four let us oppose four other lives — the foolish, the cowardly, the intemperate, the diseased. He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not insane ; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane ; and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that no man is voluntarily intemperate ; but that the whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of self-control, or both. And the same holds of the diseased and healthy life ; they both have pleasures and pains, but in health the pleasure exceeds the pain, and in sickness the pain exceeds the pleasure. Now our intention in choosing the lives is not that the painful should exceed, but the life in which pain is exceeded by pleasure we have determined to be the more pleasant life. And we should say that the temperate life has the elements both of pleasure and pain fewer and smaller and less frequent than the intemperate, and the wise life than the foolish life, and the life of courage than the life of cowardice ; one of each pair exceeding in pleasure and the other in pain, the courageous surpassing the cowardly, and the wise exceeding the foolish. And so the one dass of lives exceeds the other class in pleasure ; the temperate and courageous and wise and healthy exceed the cowardly and foolish and intemperate and diseased lives ; and generally speaking, that which has any virtue, whether of body or soul, is pleasanter than the vicious life, and far superior in beauty and rectitude and excellence and reputation, and causes him who lives accordingly to be infinitely happier than the opposite. LAWS BOOK V

How then can we rightly order the distribution of the land ? In the first place, the number of the citizens has to be determined, and also the number and size of the divisions into which they will have to be formed ; and the land and the houses will then have to be apportioned by us as fairly as we can. The number of citizens can only be estimated satisfactorily in relation to the territory and the neighbouring states. The territory must be sufficient to maintain a certain number of inhabitants in a moderate way of life — more than this is not required ; and the number of citizens should be sufficient to defend themselves against the injustice of their neighbours, and also to give them the power of rendering efficient aid to their neighbours when they are wronged. After having taken a survey of theirs and their neighbours’ territory, we will determine the limits of them in fact as well as in theory. And now, let us proceed to legislate with a view to perfecting the form and outline of our state. The number of our citizens shall be 5040 — this will be a convenient number ; and these shall be owners of the land and protectors of the allotment. The houses and the land will be divided in the same way, so that every man may correspond to a lot. Let the whole number be first divided into two parts, and then into three ; and the number is further capable of being divided into four or five parts, or any number of parts up to ten. Every legislator ought to know so much arithmetic as to be able to tell what number is most likely to be useful to all cities ; and we are going to take that number which contains the greatest and most regular and unbroken series of divisions. The whole of number has every possible division, and the number 5040 can be divided by exactly fifty-nine divisors, and ten of these proceed without interval from one to ten : this will furnish numbers for war and peace, and for all contracts and dealings, including taxes and divisions of the land. These properties of number should be ascertained at leisure by those who are bound by law to know them ; for they are true, and should be proclaimed at the foundation of the city, with a view to use. Whether the legislator is establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of Gods and temples — the temples which are to be built in each city, and the Gods or demi-gods after whom they are to be called — if he be a man of sense, he will make no change in anything which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or the God Ammon, or any ancient tradition has sanctioned in whatever manner, whether by apparitions or reputed inspiration of Heaven, in obedience to which mankind have established sacrifices in connection with mystic rites, either originating on the spot, or derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus or some other place, and on the strength of which traditions they have consecrated oracles and images, and altars and temples, and portioned out a sacred domain for each of them. The least part of all these ought not to be disturbed by the legislator ; but he should assign to the several districts some God, or demi-god, or hero, and, in the distribution of the soil, should give to these first their chosen domain and all things fitting, that the inhabitants of the several districts may meet at fixed times, and that they may readily supply their various wants, and entertain one another with sacrifices, and become friends and acquaintances ; for there is no greater good in a state than that the citizens should be known to one another. When not light but darkness and ignorance of each other’s characters prevails among them, no one will receive the honour of which he is deserving, or the power or the justice to which he is fairly entitled : wherefore, in every state, above all things, every man should take heed that he have no deceit in him, but that he be always true and simple ; and that no deceitful person take any advantage of him. LAWS BOOK V

I have described the dances which are appropriate to noble bodies and generous souls. But it is necessary also to consider and know uncomely persons and thoughts, and those which are intended to produce laughter in comedy, and have a comic character in respect of style, song, and dance, and of the imitations which these afford. For serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either ; but he can not carry out both in action, if he is to have any degree of virtue. And for this very reason he should learn them both, in order that he may not in ignorance do or say anything which is ridiculous and out of place — he should command slaves and hired strangers to imitate such things, but he should never take any serious interest in them himself, nor should any freeman or freewoman be discovered taking pains to learn them ; and there should always be some element of novelty in the imitation. Let these then be laid down, both in law and in our discourse, as the regulations of laughable amusements which are generally called comedy. And, if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy, come to us and say — "O strangers, may we go to your city and country or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry — what is your will about these matters ?" — how shall we answer the divine men ? I think that our answer should be as follows : — Best of strangers, we will say to them, we also according to our ability are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest ; for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy. You are poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law can alone perfect, as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in the agora, or introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children, and the common people, about our institutions, in language other than our own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a state would be mad which gave you this licence, until the magistrates had determined whether your poetry might be recited, and was fit for publication or not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses, first of all show your songs to the magistrates, and let them compare them with our own, and if they are the same or better we will give you a chorus ; but if not, then, my friends, we cannot. Let these, then, be the customs ordained by law about all dances and the teaching of them, and let matters relating to slaves be separated from those relating to masters, if you do not object. LAWS BOOK VII

Cle. You seem, Stranger, to be afraid of our habitual ignorance of the subject : there is no reason why that should prevent you from speaking out. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. I certainly am afraid of the difficulties to which you allude, but I am still more afraid of those who apply themselves to this sort of knowledge, and apply themselves badly. For entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all ; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with an ill bringing up, are far more fatal. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. All freemen, I conceive, should learn as much of these branches of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the alphabet. In that country arithmetical games have been invented for the use of mere children, which they learn as a pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands, using the same number sometimes for a larger and sometimes for a lesser number of persons ; and they arrange pugilists, and wrestlers as they pair together by lot or remain over, and show how their turns come in natural order. Another mode of amusing them is to distribute vessels, sometimes of gold, brass, silver, and the like, intermixed with one another, sometimes of one metal only ; as I was saying they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use, and in this way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements and movements of armies and expeditions, in the management of a household they make people more useful to themselves, and more wide awake ; and again in measurements of things which have length, and breadth, and depth, they free us from that natural ignorance of all these things which is so ludicrous and disgraceful. LAWS BOOK VII

Cle. What kind of ignorance do you mean ? LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. O my dear Cleinias, I, like yourself, have late in life heard with amazement of our ignorance in these matters ; to me we appear to be more like pigs than men, and I am quite ashamed, not only of myself, but of all Hellenes. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. And what is the reason that dances and contests of this sort hardly ever exist in states, at least not to any extent worth speaking of ? Is this due to the ignorance of mankind and their legislators ? LAWS BOOK VIII

Now the participation of fruits shall be ordered on this wise. The goddess of Autumn has two gracious gifts : one, the joy of Dionysus which is not treasured up ; the other, which nature intends to be stored. Let this be the law, then, concerning the fruits of autumn : He who tastes the common or storing fruits of autumn, whether grapes or figs, before the season of vintage which coincides with Arcturus, either on his own land or on that of others — let him pay fifty drachmae, which shall be sacred to Dionysus, if he pluck them from his own land ; and if from his neighbour’s land, a mina, and if from any others’, two-thirds of a mina. And he who would gather the "choice" grapes or the "choice" figs, as they are now termed, if he take them off his own land, let him pluck them how and when he likes ; but if he take them from the ground of others without their leave, let him in that case be always punished in accordance with the law which ordains that he should not move what he has not laid down. And if a slave touches any fruit of this sort, without the consent of the owner of the land, he shall be beaten with as many blows as there are grapes on the bunch, or figs on the fig-tree. Let a metic purchase the "choice" autumnal fruit, and then, if he pleases, he may gather it ; but if a stranger is passing along the road, and desires to eat, let him take of the "choice" grapes for himself and a single follower without payment, as a tribute of hospitality. The law however forbids strangers from sharing in the sort which is not used for eating ; and if any one, whether he be master or slave, takes of them in ignorance, let the slave be beaten, and the freeman dismissed with admonitions, and instructed to take of the other autumnal fruits which are unfit for making raisins and wine, or for laying by as dried figs. As to pears, and apples, and pomegranates, and similar fruits, there shall be no disgrace in taking them secretly ; but he who is caught, if he be of less than thirty years of age, shall be struck and beaten off, but not wounded ; and no freeman shall have any right of satisfaction for such blows. Of these fruits the stranger may partake, just as he may of the fruits of autumn. And if an elder, who is more than thirty years of age, eat of them on the spot, let him, like the stranger, be allowed to partake of all such fruits, but he must carry away nothing. If, however, he will not obey the law, let him run risk of failing in the competition of virtue, in case any one takes notice of his actions before the judges at the time. LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. A man may truly say that ignorance is a third cause of crimes. Ignorance, however, may be conveniently divided by the legislator into two sorts : there is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offences, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom ; and he who is under the influence of the latter fancies that he knows all about matters of which he knows nothing. This second kind of ignorance, when possessed of power and strength, will be held by the legislator to be the source of great and monstrous times, but when attended with weakness, will only result in the errors of children and old men ; and these he will treat as errors, and will make laws accordingly for those who commit them, which will be the mildest and most merciful of all laws. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. But no one was ever yet heard to say that one of us is superior and another inferior to ignorance. LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. A very grievous sort of ignorance which is imagined to be the greatest wisdom. LAWS BOOK X

And if a man dying by some unexpected fate leaves daughters behind him, let him pardon the legislator if he gives them in marriage, he have a regard only to two out of three conditions — nearness of kin and the preservation of the lot, and omits the third condition, which a father would naturally consider, for he would choose out of all the citizens a son for himself, and a husband for his daughter, with a view to his character and disposition — the father, say, shall forgive the legislator if he disregards this, which to him is an impossible consideration. Let the law about these matters where practicable be as follows : — If a man dies without making a will, and leaves behind him daughters, let his brother, being the son of the same father or of the same mother, having no lot, marry the daughter and have the lot of the dead man. And if he have no brother, but only a brother’s son, in like manner let them marry, if they be of a suitable age ; and if there be not even a brother’s son, but only the son of a sister, let them do likewise, and so in the fourth degree, if there be only the testator’s father’s brother, or in the fifth degree, his father’s brother’s son, or in the sixth degree, the child of his father’s sister. Let kindred be always reckoned in this way : if a person leaves daughters the relationship shall proceed upwards through brothers and sisters, and brothers’ and sisters’ children, and first the males shall come, and after them the females in the same family. The judge shall consider and determine the suitableness or unsuitableness of age in marriage ; he shall make an inspection of the males naked, and of the women naked down to the navel. And if there be a lack of kinsmen in a family extending to grandchildren of a brother, or to the grandchildren of a grandfather’s children, the maiden may choose with the consent of her guardians any one of the citizens who is willing and whom she wills, and he shall be the heir of the dead man, and the husband of his daughter. Circumstances vary, and there may sometimes be a still greater lack of relations within the limits of the state ; and if any maiden has no kindred living in the city, and there is some one who has been sent out to a colony, and she is disposed to make him the heir of her father’s possessions, if he be indeed of her kindred, let him proceed to take the lot according to the regulation of the law ; but if he be not of her kindred, she having no kinsmen within the city, and he be chosen by the daughter of the dead man, and empowered to marry by the guardians, let him return home and take the lot of him who died intestate. And if a man has no children, either male or female, and dies without making a will, let the previous law in general hold ; and let a man and a woman go forth from the family and share the deserted house, and let the lot belong absolutely to them ; and let the heiress in the first degree be a sister, and in a second degree a daughter of a brother, and in the third, a daughter of a sister, in the fourth degree the sister of a father, and in the fifth degree the daughter of a father’s brother, and in a sixth degree of a father’s sister ; and these shall dwell with their male kinsmen, according to the degree of relationship and right, as we enacted before. Now we must not conceal from ourselves that such laws are apt to be oppressive and that there may sometimes be a hardship in the lawgiver commanding the kinsman of the dead man to marry his relation ; be may be thought not to have considered the innumerable hindrances which may arise among men in the execution of such ordinances ; for there may be cases in which the parties refuse to obey, and are ready to do anything rather than marry, when there is some bodily or mental malady or defect among those who are bidden to marry or be married. Persons may fancy that the legislator never thought of this, but they are mistaken ; wherefore let us make a common prelude on behalf of the lawgiver and of his subjects, the law begging the latter to forgive the legislator, in that he, having to take care of the common weal, cannot order at the same time the various circumstances of individuals, and begging him to pardon them if naturally they are sometimes unable to fulfil the act which he in his ignorance imposes upon them. LAWS BOOK XI

Now that the whole city has been divided into parts of which the nature and number have been described, and laws have been given about all the most important contracts as far as this was possible, the next thing will be to have justice done. The first of the courts shall consist of elected judges, who shall be chosen by the plaintiff and the defendant in common : these shall be called arbiters rather than judges. And in the second court there shall be judges of the villages and tribes corresponding to the twelvefold division of the land, and before these the litigants shall go to contend for greater damages, if the suit be not decided before the first judges ; the defendant, if he be defeated the second time, shall pay a fifth more than the damages mentioned in the indictment ; and if he find fault with his judges and would try a third time, let him carry the suit before the select judges, and if he be again defeated, let him pay the whole of the damages and half as much again. And the plaintiff, if when defeated before the first judges he persist in going on to the second, shall if he wins receive in addition to the damages a fifth part more, and if defeated he shall pay a like sum ; but if he is not satisfied with the previous decision, and will insist on proceeding to a third court, then if he win he shall receive from the defendant the amount of the damages and, as I said before, half as much again, and the plaintiff, if he lose, shall pay half of the damages claimed, Now the assignment by lot of judges to courts and the completion of the number of them, and the appointment of servants to the different magistrates, and the times at which the several causes should be heard, and the votings and delays, and all the things that necessarily concern suits, and the order of causes, and the time in which answers have to be put in and parties are to appear — of these and other things akin to these we have indeed already spoken, but there is no harm in repeating what is right twice or thrice : — All lesser and easier matters which the elder legislator has omitted may be supplied by the younger one. Private courts will be sufficiently regulated in this way, and the public and state courts, and those which the magistrates must use in the administration of their several offices, exist in many other states. Many very respectable institutions of this sort have been framed by good men, and from them the guardians of the law may by reflection derive what is necessary, for the order of our new state, considering and correcting them, and bringing them to the test of experience, until every detail appears to be satisfactorily determined ; and then putting the final seal upon them, and making them irreversible, they shall use them for ever afterwards. As to what relates to the silence of judges and the abstinence from words of evil omen and the reverse, and the different notions of the just and good and honourable which exist in our : own as compared with other states, they have been partly mentioned already, and another part of them will be mentioned hereafter as we draw near the end. To all these matters he who would be an equal judge, shall justly look, and he shall possess writings about them that he may learn them. For of all kinds of knowledge the knowledge of good laws has the greatest power of improving the learner ; otherwise there would be no meaning the divine and admirable law possessing a name akin to mind (nous, nomos). And of all other words, such as the praises and censures of individuals which occur in poetry and also in prose, whether written down or uttered in daily conversation, whether men dispute about them in the spirit of contention or weakly assent to them, as is often the case — of all these the one sure test is the writings of the legislator, which the righteous judge ought to have in his mind as the antidote of all other words, and thus make himself and the city stand upright, procuring for the good the continuance and increase of justice, and for the bad, on the other hand, a conversion from ignorance and intemperance, and in general from all unrighteousness, as far as their evil minds can be healed, but to those whose web of life is in reality finished, giving death, which is the only remedy for souls in their condition, as I may say truly again and again. And such judges and chiefs of judges will be worthy of receiving praise from the whole city. LAWS BOOK XII

But there is one point which every Greek should bear in mind — that of all Greeks we have a situation which is about the most favorable to human excellence. The praiseworthy thing in it that we have to mention is that it may be taken as midway between a wintry and a summery climate ; and our climate, being inferior in its summer to that in the region over there, as we said, has been so much later in imparting the cognizance of these cosmic deities. And let us note that [987e] whatever Greeks acquire from foreigners is finally turned by them into something nobler ; and moreover the same thing must be borne in mind regarding our present statements — that although it is hard to discover everything of this kind beyond dispute, there is hope, [988a] both strong and noble, that a really nobler and juster respect than is in the combined repute and worship which came from foreigners will be paid to all these gods by the Greeks, who have the benefit of their various education, their prophecies from Delphi, and the whole system of worship under their laws. And let none of the Greeks ever be apprehensive that being mortals we should never have dealings with divine affairs ; they should rather be of the quite opposite opinion, that the divine is never either unintelligent or in any ignorance of [988b] human nature, but knows that if it teaches us we shall follow its guidance and learn what is taught us. That it so teaches us, and that we learn number and numeration, it knows of course : for it would be most utterly unintelligent if it were ignorant of this ; since it would truly, as the saying is, be ignorant of itself, vexed with that which was able to learn, instead of whole-heartedly rejoicing with one who became good by God’s help. EPINOMIS   BOOK XII

So, listen first [3.316c] to the origin of the first of the accusations I have mentioned. It was on your invitation and Dion’s that I came to Syracuse. Dion was a tried comrade of mine and a guest-friend of old standing, and he was a man of staid middle age, — qualities that are specially required by men who possess even a particle of sense when they intend to advise concerning affairs so important as yours then were. You, on the other hand, were extremely young, and in your case I was quite without experience of those points regarding which experience was required, [3.316d] as I was totally unacquainted with you. Thereafter, some man or god or chance, with your assistance, cast out Dion, and you were left alone. Do you suppose, then, that I took any part with you in your political acts, when I had lost my wise partner and saw the unwise one left behind in the company of a crowd of evil men, not ruling himself, but being ruled by men of that sort, while fancying himself the ruler ? In these circumstances what ought I to have done ? Was I not bound to do as I did, — to bid farewell for the future to politics, [3.316e] shunning the slanders which proceed from envy, and to use every endeavor to make you and Dion as friendly to each other as possible, separated though you were and at variance with each other ? Yea, you yourself also are a witness of this, that I have never yet ceased to strive for this very object. And it was agreed between us — although with difficulty — that I should sail home, [3.317a] since you were engaged in war, and that, when peace was restored, Dion and I should go to Syracuse and that you should invite us. And that was how things took place as regards my first sojourn at Syracuse and my safe return home again. But on the second occasion, when peace was restored, you did not keep to our agreement in the invitation you gave me but wrote that I should come alone, and stated that you would send for Dion later on. On this account I did not go ; and, moreover, I was vexed also with Dion ; [3.317b] for he was of opinion that it was better for me to go and to yield to your wishes. Subsequently, after a year’s interval, a trireme arrived with letters from you, and the first words written in the letters were to the effect that if I came I should find that Dion’s affairs would all proceed as I desired, but the opposite if I failed to come. And indeed I am ashamed to say how many letters came at that time from Italy and Sicily from you and [3.317c] from others on your account, or to how many of my friends and acquaintances they were addressed, all enjoining me to go and beseeching me to trust you entirely. It was the firm opinion of everyone, beginning with Dion, that it was my duty to make the voyage and not be faint-hearted. But I always made my age an excuse ; and as for you, I kept assuring them that you would not be able to withstand those who slander us and desire that we should quarrel ; for I saw then, as I see now, that, as a rule, when great and exorbitant wealth is in the hands either of private citizens or of monarchs, [3.317d] the greater it is, the greater and more numerous are the slanderers it breeds and the hordes of parasites and wastrels — than which there is no greater evil generated by wealth or by the other privileges of power. Notwithstanding, I put aside all these considerations and went, resolving that none of my friends should lay it to my charge that owing to my lack of energy all their fortunes were ruined when they might have been saved from ruin. [3.317e] On my arrival — for you know, to be sure, all that subsequently took place — I, of course, requested, in accordance with the agreement in your letters, that you should, in the first place, recall Dion on terms of friendship — which terms I mentioned ; and if you had then yielded to this request, things would probably have turned out better than they have done now both for you and Syracuse and for the rest of Greece — that, at least, is my own intuitive belief. Next, I requested that Dion’s family should have possession of his property, [3.318a] instead of the distributors, whom you wot of, having the distribution of it. And further, I deemed it right that the revenue which was usually paid over to him year by year should be forwarded to him all the more, rather than all the less, because of my presence. None of these requests being granted, I asked leave to depart. Thereupon you kept urging me to stop for the year, declaring that you would sell all Dion’s property and send one half of the proceeds to Corinth and retain the other half for his son. [3.318b] And I could mention many other promises none of which you fulfilled ; but the number of them is so great that I cut it short. For when you had sold all the goods, without Dion’s consent — though you had declared that without his consent you would not dispose of them — you put the coping-stone on all your promises, my admirable friend, in a most outrageous way : you invented a plan that was neither noble nor ingenious nor just nor profitable — namely, to scare me off from so much as [3.318c] seeking for the dispatch of the money, as being in ignorance of the events then going on. For when you sought to expel Heracleides unjustly, as it seemed to the Syracusans as well as to myself — because I had joined with Theodotes and Eurybius in entreating you not to do so, you took this as an ample excuse, and asserted that it had long been plain to you that I paid no regard to you, but only to Dion and Dion’s friends and connections, and now that Theodotes and Heracleides, who were Dion’s connections, were the subjects of accusations, I was using every means to prevent their paying the just penalty. LETTERS LETTER III

The murderer of Dion has, without knowing it, done the same as Dionysios. For as regards Dion, I know right well, so far as it is possible for a man to say anything positively about other men, that, if he had got the supreme power, he would never have turned his mind to any other form of rule, but that, dealing first with Syracuse, his own native land, when he had made an end of her slavery, clothed her in bright apparel, and given her the garb of freedom, he would then by every means in his power have ordered aright the lives of his fellow-citizens by suitable and excellent laws ; and the thing next in order, which he would have set his heart to accomplish, was to found again all the States of Sicily and make them free from the barbarians, driving out some and subduing others, an easier task for him than it was for Hiero. If these things had been accomplished by a man who was just and brave and temperate and a philosopher, the same belief with regard to virtue would have been established among the majority which, if Dionysios had been won over, would have been established, I might almost say, among all mankind and would have given them salvation. But now some higher power or avenging fiend has fallen upon them, inspiring them with lawlessness, godlessness and acts of recklessness issuing from ignorance, the seed from which all evils for all mankind take root and grow and will in future bear the bitterest harvest for those who brought them into being. This ignorance it was which in that second venture wrecked and ruined everything. LETTERS LETTER VII

And about knowledge and ignorance in general ; see whether you think that any man who has knowledge ever would wish to have the choice of saying or doing more than another man who has knowledge. Would he not rather say or do the same as his like in the same case ? THE REPUBLIC   BOOK I

Thrasymachus made all these admissions, not fluently, as I repeat them, but with extreme reluctance ; it was a hot summer’s day, and the perspiration poured from him in torrents ; and then I saw what I had never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing. As we were now agreed that justice was virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignorance, I proceeded to another point : THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Then I will repeat the question which I asked before, in order that our examination of the relative nature of justice and injustice may be carried on regularly. A statement was made that injustice is stronger and more powerful than justice, but now justice, having been identified with wisdom and virtue, is easily shown to be stronger than injustice, if injustice is ignorance ; this can no longer be questioned by anyone. But I want to view the matter, Thrasymachus, in a different way : You would not deny that a State may be unjust and may be unjustly attempting to enslave other States, or may have already enslaved them, and may be holding many of them in subjection ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie ; for the lie in words is only a kind of imitation and shadowy image of a previous affection of the soul, not pure unadulterated falsehood. Am I not right ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

Yes, I said ; a reward which a man might fairly expect who never understood that, if Asclepius did not instruct his descendants in valetudinarian arts, the omission arose, not from ignorance or inexperience of such a branch of medicine, but because he knew that in all well-ordered States every individual has an occupation to which he must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend in continually being ill. This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer   sort. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized, never using the weapon of persuasion — he is like a wild beast, all violence and fierceness, and knows no other way of dealing ; and he lives in all ignorance and evil conditions, and has no sense of propriety and grace. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And good counsel is clearly a kind of knowledge, for not by ignorance, but by knowledge, do men counsel well ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned, however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man : for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others — he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself ; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals — when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business ; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Must not injustice be a strife which arises among the three principles — a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal — what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice, and intemperance, and cowardice, and ignorance, and every form of vice ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

And, as knowledge corresponded to being and ignorance of necessity to not-being, for that intermediate between being and not-being there has to be discovered a corresponding intermediate between ignorance and knowledge, if there be such ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Of not-being, ignorance was assumed to be the necessary correlative ; of being, knowledge ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And can therefore neither be ignorance nor knowledge ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

But is opinion to be sought without and beyond either of them, in a greater clearness than knowledge, or in a greater darkness than ignorance ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Then I suppose that opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance ? 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

Yes, I said, that they should begin by reproaching us with our ignorance of the good, and then presume our knowledge of it — for the good they define to be knowledge of the good, just as if we understood them when they use the term "good" — this is of course ridiculous. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Of this then, which every soul of man pursues and makes the end of all his actions, having a presentiment that there is such an end, and yet hesitating because neither knowing the nature nor having the same assurance of this as of other things, and therefore losing whatever good there is in other things — of a principle such and so great as this ought the best men in our State, to whom everything is intrusted, to be in the darkness of ignorance ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And as to truth, I said, is not a soul equally to be deemed halt and lame which hates voluntary falsehood and is extremely indignant at herself and others when they tell lies, but is patient of involuntary falsehood, and does not mind wallowing like a swinish beast in the mire of ignorance, and has no shame at being detected ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

And the end is that when they see the people, not of their own accord, but through ignorance, and because they are deceived by informers, seeking to do them wrong, then at last they are forced to become oligarchs in reality ; they do not wish to be, but the sting of the drones torments them and breeds revolution in them. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

All that would arise out of his ignorance of the true upper and middle and lower regions ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And ignorance and folly are inanitions of the soul ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

Their pleasures are mixed with pains — how can they be otherwise ? For they are mere shadows and pictures of the true, and are colored by contrast, which exaggerates both light and shade, and so they implant in the minds of fools insane desires of themselves ; and they are fought about as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of Helen at Troy, in ignorance of the truth. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man — whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

Yes, he said, there are all the evils which we were just now passing in review : unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X