Jowett: sentiments

Soc. Then the laws will say : "Consider, Socrates  , if this is true, that in your present attempt you are going to do us wrong. For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him ; and none of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any of you who does not like us and the city, and who wants to go to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, and take his goods with him. But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong : first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents ; secondly, because we are the authors of his education ; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands ; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are wrong ; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of obeying or convincing us ; that is what we offer, and he does neither. These are the sort of accusations to which, as we were saying, you, Socrates, will be exposed if you accomplish your intentions ; you, above all other Athenians." Suppose I ask, why is this ? they will justly retort upon me that I above all other men have acknowledged the agreement. "There is clear proof," they will say, "Socrates, that we and the city were not displeasing to you. Of all Athenians you have been the most constant resident in the city, which, as you never leave, you may be supposed to love. For you never went out of the city either to see the games, except once when you went to the Isthmus, or to any other place unless when you were on military service ; nor did you travel as other men do. Nor had you any curiosity to know other States or their laws : your affections did not go beyond us and our State ; we were your special favorites, and you acquiesced in our government of you ; and this is the State in which you begat your children, which is a proof of your satisfaction. Moreover, you might, if you had liked, have fixed the penalty at banishment in the course of the trial — the State which refuses to let you go now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you preferred death to exile, and that you were not grieved at death. And now you have forgotten these fine sentiments, and pay no respect to us, the laws, of whom you are the destroyer ; and are doing what only a miserable slave would do, running away and turning your back upon the compacts and agreements which you made as a citizen. And first of all answer this very question : Are we right in saying that you agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not in word only ? Is that true or not ?" How shall we answer that, Crito   ? Must we not agree ? CRITO

"For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of way, what good will you do, either to yourself or to your friends ? That your friends will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or will lose their property, is tolerably certain ; and you yourself, if you fly to one of the neighboring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara, both of which are well-governed cities, will come to them as an enemy, Socrates, and their government will be against you, and all patriotic citizens will cast an evil eye upon you as a subverter of the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of the judges the justice of their own condemnation of you. For he who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be corrupter of the young and foolish portion of mankind. Will you then flee from well-ordered cities and virtuous men ? and is existence worth having on these terms ? Or will you go to them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates ? And what will you say to them ? What you say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws being the best things among men ? Would that be decent of you ? Surely not. But if you go away from well-governed States to Crito’s friends in Thessaly, where there is great disorder and license, they will be charmed to have the tale of your escape from prison, set off with ludicrous particulars of the manner in which you were wrapped in a goatskin or some other disguise, and metamorphosed as the fashion of runaways is — that is very likely ; but will there be no one to remind you that in your old age you violated the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a little more life ? Perhaps not, if you keep them in a good temper ; but if they are out of temper you will hear many degrading things ; you will live, but how ? — as the flatterer of all men, and the servant of all men ; and doing what ? — eating and drinking in Thessaly, having gone abroad in order that you may get a dinner. And where will be your fine sentiments about justice and virtue then ? Say that you wish to live for the sake of your children, that you may bring them up and educate them — will you take them into Thessaly and deprive them of Athenian citizenship ? Is that the benefit which you would confer upon them ? Or are you under the impression that they will be better cared for and educated here if you are still alive, although absent from them ; for that your friends will take care of them ? Do you fancy that if you are an inhabitant of Thessaly they will take care of them, and if you are an inhabitant of the other world they will not take care of them ? Nay ; but if they who call themselves friends are truly friends, they surely will. CRITO

La. I have but one feeling, Nicias, or (shall I say ?) two feelings, about discussions. Some would think that I am a lover, and to others I may seem to be a hater of discourse ; for when I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure : and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre, or any pleasant instrument of music ; for truly he has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged, not in the Ionian, or in the Phrygian mode, nor yet in the Lydian, but in the true Hellenic mode, which is the Dorian, and no other. Such an one makes me merry with the sound of his voice ; and when I hear him I am thought to be a lover of discourse ; so eager am I in drinking in his words. But a man whose actions do not agree with his words is an annoyance to me ; and the better he speaks the more I hate him, and then I seem to be a hater of discourse. As to Socrates, I have no knowledge of his words, but of old, as would seem, I have had experience of his deeds ; and his deeds show that free and noble sentiments are natural to him. And if his words accord, then I am of one mind with him, and shall be delighted to be interrogated by a man such as he is, and shall not be annoyed at having to learn of him : for I too agree with Solon, "that I would fain grow old, learning many things." But I must be allowed to add "of the good only." Socrates must be willing to allow that he is a good teacher, or I shall be a dull and uncongenial pupil : but that the teacher is younger, or not as yet in repute-anything of that sort is of no account with me. And therefore, Socrates, I give you notice that you may teach and confute me as much as ever you like, and also learn of me anything which I know. So high is the opinion which I have entertained of you ever since the day on which you were my companion in danger, and gave a proof of your valour such as only the man of merit can give. Therefore, say whatever you like, and do not mind about the difference of our ages. LACHES

Soc. Well, but are you and I expected to praise the sentiments of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and tournure of the language ? As to the first I willingly submit to your better judgment, for I am not worthy to form an opinion, having only attended to the rhetorical manner ; and I was doubting whether this could have been defended even by Lysias himself ; I thought, though I speak under correction, that he repeated himself two or three times, either from want of words or from want of pains ; and also, he appeared to me ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing in two or three ways. PHAEDRUS  

Soc. And thus, my friend, on every occasion, private as well as public, as I said at first, when he appears in a law-court, or in any place in which he has to speak of things which are at his feet and before his eyes, he is the jest, not only of Thracian handmaids but of the general herd, tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through his inexperience. His awkwardness is fearful, and gives the impression of imbecility. When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in answer to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals of any one, and they do not interest him ; and therefore he is laughed at for his sheepishness ; and when others are being praised and glorified, in the simplicity of his heart he cannot help going into fits of laughter, so that he seems to be a downright idiot. When he hears a tyrant or king eulogized, he fancies that he is listening to the praises of some keeper of cattle — a swineherd, or shepherd, or perhaps a cowherd, who is congratulated on the quantity of milk which he squeezes from them ; and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less traitable and more insidious nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd — for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth ; and when they sing the, praises of family, and say that someone is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable. And when people pride themselves on having a pedigree of twenty-five ancestors, which goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand their poverty of ideas. Why are they unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him and he had a fiftieth, and so on ? He amuses himself with the notion that they cannot count, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of their senseless vanity. Now, in all these cases our philosopher is derided by the vulgar, partly because he is thought to despise them, and also because he is ignorant of what is before him, and always at a loss. THEAETETUS  

Str. It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion about the honourable and good ; — indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised — never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another ; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State. STATESMAN

Ath. Then there is some hope that your citizens may be virtuous : had you been on the sea, and well provided with harbours, and an importing rather than a producing country, some mighty saviour would have been needed, and lawgivers more than mortal, if you were ever to have a chance of preserving your state from degeneracy and discordance of manners. But there is comfort in the eighty stadia ; although the sea is too near, especially if, as you say, the harbours are so good. Still we may be content. The sea is pleasant enough as a daily companion, but has indeed also a bitter and brackish quality ; filling the streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begetting in the souls of men uncertain and unfaithful ways — making the state unfriendly and unfaithful both to her own citizens, and also to other nations. There is a consolation, therefore, in the country producing all things at home ; and yet, owing to the ruggedness of the soil, not providing anything in great abundance. Had there been abundance, there might have been a great export trade, and a great return of gold and silver ; which, as we may safely affirm, has the most fatal results on a State whose aim is the attainment of just and noble sentiments : this was said by us, if you remember, in the previous discussion. LAWS BOOK IV

These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our anger ; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus ; neither shall we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true worshippers of the gods and like them. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK II

and other sentiments of the same kind. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can be approved. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale of Theseus, son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous, son of Zeus, going forth as they did to perpetrate a horrid rape ; or of any other hero or son of a god daring to do such impious and dreadful things as they falsely ascribe to them in our day : and let us further compel the poets to declare either that these acts were done by them, or that they were not the sons of God ; both in the same breath they shall not be permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to persuade our youth that the gods are the authors of evil, and that heroes are no better than men — sentiments which, as we were saying, are neither pious nor true, for we have already proved that evil cannot come from the gods. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

No, my friend, and they have seldom, if ever, heard free and noble sentiments ; such as men utter when they are earnestly and by every means in their power seeking after truth for the sake of knowledge, while they look coldly on the subtleties of controversy, of which the end is opinion and strife, whether they meet with them in the courts of law or in society. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI