INTRODUCTION

In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his

interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is

the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no

severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to

think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the

digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the

dialogues there is also a certain natural growth or unity; the

beginning is not forgotten at the end, and numerous allusions and

references are interspersed, which form the loose connecting links of

the whole. We must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt

to confine the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single

idea. (Compare Introduction to the Phaedrus.)

Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this

matter. First, they have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one

another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite

and contradictory assertions respecting their order and sequence. The

mantle of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have

applied his method with the most various results. The value and use of

the method has been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them.

Secondly, they have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each

separate dialogue; in this way they think that they have escaped all

difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they

have lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily

pass into one another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we

can only realize by an effort, imperceptibly blend with the more

familiar theories of modern philosophers. An eye for proportion is

needed (his own art of measuring) in the study of Plato, as well as of

other great artists. We may hardly admit that the moral antithesis of

good and pleasure, or the intellectual antithesis of knowledge and

opinion, being and appearance, are never far off in a Platonic

discussion. But because they are in the background, we should not bring

them into the foreground, or expect to discern them equally in all the

dialogues.

There may be some advantage in drawing out a little the main outlines

of the building; but the use of this is limited, and may be easily

exaggerated. We may give Plato too much system, and alter the natural

form and connection of his thoughts. Under the idea that his dialogues

are finished works of art, we may find a reason for everything, and

lose the highest characteristic of art, which is simplicity. Most great

works receive a new light from a new and original mind. But whether

these new lights are true or only suggestive, will depend on their

agreement with the spirit of Plato, and the amount of direct evidence

which can be urged in support of them. When a theory is running away

with us, criticism does a friendly office in counselling moderation,

and recalling us to the indications of the text.

Like the Phaedrus, the Gorgias has puzzled students of Plato by the

appearance of two or more subjects. Under the cover of rhetoric higher

themes are introduced; the argument expands into a general view of the

good and evil of man. After making an ineffectual attempt to obtain a

sound definition of his art from Gorgias, Socrates assumes the

existence of a universal art of flattery or simulation having several

branches:—this is the genus of which rhetoric is only one, and not the

highest species. To flattery is opposed the true and noble art of life

which he who possesses seeks always to impart to others, and which at

last triumphs, if not here, at any rate in another world. These two

aspects of life and knowledge appear to be the two leading ideas of the

dialogue. The true and the false in individuals and states, in the

treatment of the soul as well as of the body, are conceived under the

forms of true and false art. In the development of this opposition

there arise various other questions, such as the two famous paradoxes

of Socrates (paradoxes as they are to the world in general, ideals as

they may be more worthily called): (1) that to do is worse than to

suffer evil; and (2) that when a man has done evil he had better be

punished than unpunished; to which may be added (3) a third Socratic

paradox or ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but not what

they desire, for the desire of all is towards the good. That pleasure

is to be distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness of

pleasure and pain, and by the possibility of the bad having in certain

cases pleasures as great as those of the good, or even greater. Not

merely rhetoricians, but poets, musicians, and other artists, the whole

tribe of statesmen, past as well as present, are included in the class

of flatterers. The true and false finally appear before the

judgment-seat of the gods below.

The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three

characters of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond;

and the form and manner change with the stages of the argument.

Socrates is deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting in

dealing with the youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his

encounter with Callicles. In the first division the question is

asked—What is rhetoric? To this there is no answer given, for Gorgias

is soon made to contradict himself by Socrates, and the argument is

transferred to the hands of his disciple Polus, who rushes to the

defence of his master. The answer has at last to be given by Socrates

himself, but before he can even explain his meaning to Polus, he must

enlighten him upon the great subject of shams or flatteries. When Polus

finds his favourite art reduced to the level of cookery, he replies

that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have great power. Socrates

denies that they have any real power, and hence arise the three

paradoxes already mentioned. Although they are strange to him, Polus is

at last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem to him to follow

legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act of the dialogue

closes. Then Callicles appears on the scene, at first maintaining that

pleasure is good, and that might is right, and that law is nothing but

the combination of the many weak against the few strong. When he is

confuted he withdraws from the argument, and leaves Socrates to arrive

at the conclusion by himself. The conclusion is that there are two

kinds of statesmanship, a higher and a lower—that which makes the

people better, and that which only flatters them, and he exhorts

Callicles to choose the higher. The dialogue terminates with a mythus

of a final judgment, in which there will be no more flattery or

disguise, and no further use for the teaching of rhetoric.

The characters of the three interlocutors also correspond to the parts

which are assigned to them. Gorgias is the great rhetorician, now

advanced in years, who goes from city to city displaying his talents,

and is celebrated throughout Greece. Like all the Sophists in the

dialogues of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has also a certain

dignity, and is treated by Socrates with considerable respect. But he

is no match for him in dialectics. Although he has been teaching

rhetoric all his life, he is still incapable of defining his own art.

When his ideas begin to clear up, he is unwilling to admit that

rhetoric can be wholly separated from justice and injustice, and this

lingering sentiment of morality, or regard for public opinion, enables

Socrates to detect him in a contradiction. Like Protagoras, he is

described as of a generous nature; he expresses his approbation of

Socrates’ manner of approaching a question; he is quite “one of

Socrates’ sort, ready to be refuted as well as to refute,” and very

eager that Callicles and Socrates should have the game out. He knows by

experience that rhetoric exercises great influence over other men, but

he is unable to explain the puzzle how rhetoric can teach everything

and know nothing.

Polus is an impetuous youth, a runaway “colt,” as Socrates describes

him, who wanted originally to have taken the place of Gorgias under the

pretext that the old man was tired, and now avails himself of the

earliest opportunity to enter the lists. He is said to be the author of

a work on rhetoric, and is again mentioned in the Phaedrus, as the

inventor of balanced or double forms of speech (compare Gorg.; Symp.).

At first he is violent and ill-mannered, and is angry at seeing his

master overthrown. But in the judicious hands of Socrates he is soon

restored to good-humour, and compelled to assent to the required

conclusion. Like Gorgias, he is overthrown because he compromises; he

is unwilling to say that to do is fairer or more honourable than to

suffer injustice. Though he is fascinated by the power of rhetoric, and

dazzled by the splendour of success, he is not insensible to higher

arguments. Plato may have felt that there would be an incongruity in a

youth maintaining the cause of injustice against the world. He has

never heard the other side of the question, and he listens to the

paradoxes, as they appear to him, of Socrates with evident

astonishment. He can hardly understand the meaning of Archelaus being

miserable, or of rhetoric being only useful in self-accusation. When

the argument with him has fairly run out.

Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the

stage: he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for

if these things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the

foundations of society are upside down. In him another type of

character is represented; he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but

man of the world, and an accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be

described in modern language as a cynic or materialist, a lover of

power and also of pleasure, and unscrupulous in his means of attaining

both. There is no desire on his part to offer any compromise in the

interests of morality; nor is any concession made by him. Like

Thrasymachus in the Republic, though he is not of the same weak and

vulgar class, he consistently maintains that might is right. His great

motive of action is political ambition; in this he is

characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy of

the Sophists; but favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as

an excellent weapon of attack and defence. He is a despiser of mankind

as he is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the state only a

violation of the order of nature, which intended that the stronger

should govern the weaker (compare Republic). Like other men of the

world who are of a speculative turn of mind, he generalizes the bad

side of human nature, and has easily brought down his principles to his

practice. Philosophy and poetry alike supply him with distinctions

suited to his view of human life. He has a good will to Socrates, whose

talents he evidently admires, while he censures the puerile use which

he makes of them. He expresses a keen intellectual interest in the

argument. Like Anytus, again, he has a sympathy with other men of the

world; the Athenian statesmen of a former generation, who showed no

weakness and made no mistakes, such as Miltiades, Themistocles,

Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of human character is a man of

great passions and great powers, which he has developed to the utmost,

and which he uses in his own enjoyment and in the government of others.

Had Critias been the name instead of Callicles, about whom we know

nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man would have seemed

to reflect the history of his life.

And now the combat deepens. In Callicles, far more than in any sophist

or rhetorician, is concentrated the spirit of evil against which

Socrates is contending, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the many

contending against the one wise man, of which the Sophists, as he

describes them in the Republic, are the imitators rather than the

authors, being themselves carried away by the great tide of public

opinion. Socrates approaches his antagonist warily from a distance,

with a sort of irony which touches with a light hand both his personal

vices (probably in allusion to some scandal of the day) and his

servility to the populace. At the same time, he is in most profound

earnest, as Chaerephon remarks. Callicles soon loses his temper, but

the more he is irritated, the more provoking and matter of fact does

Socrates become. A repartee of his which appears to have been really

made to the “omniscient” Hippias, according to the testimony of

Xenophon (Mem.), is introduced. He is called by Callicles a popular

declaimer, and certainly shows that he has the power, in the words of

Gorgias, of being “as long as he pleases,” or “as short as he pleases”

(compare Protag.). Callicles exhibits great ability in defending

himself and attacking Socrates, whom he accuses of trifling and

word-splitting; he is scandalized that the legitimate consequences of

his own argument should be stated in plain terms; after the manner of

men of the world, he wishes to preserve the decencies of life. But he

cannot consistently maintain the bad sense of words; and getting

confused between the abstract notions of better, superior, stronger, he

is easily turned round by Socrates, and only induced to continue the

argument by the authority of Gorgias. Once, when Socrates is describing

the manner in which the ambitious citizen has to identify himself with

the people, he partially recognizes the truth of his words.

The Socrates of the Gorgias may be compared with the Socrates of the

Protagoras and Meno. As in other dialogues, he is the enemy of the

Sophists and rhetoricians; and also of the statesmen, whom he regards

as another variety of the same species. His behaviour is governed by

that of his opponents; the least forwardness or egotism on their part

is met by a corresponding irony on the part of Socrates. He must speak,

for philosophy will not allow him to be silent. He is indeed more

ironical and provoking than in any other of Plato’s writings: for he is

“fooled to the top of his bent” by the worldliness of Callicles. But he

is also more deeply in earnest. He rises higher than even in the Phaedo

and Crito: at first enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust

and dialectics, he ends by losing his method, his life, himself, in

them. As in the Protagoras and Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of

irony, he makes a speech, but, true to his character, not until his

adversary has refused to answer any more questions. The presentiment of

his own fate is hanging over him. He is aware that Socrates, the single

real teacher of politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot safely

go to war with the whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will

be condemned. But he will be justified in the world below. Then the

position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed; all those things

“unfit for ears polite” which Callicles has prophesied as likely to

happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on the

ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the

similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and the philosopher in

the Theaetetus).

There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial of

the generals after the battle of Arginusae, which he ironically

attributes to his ignorance of the manner in which a vote of the

assembly should be taken. This is said to have happened “last year”

(B.C. 406), and therefore the assumed date of the dialogue has been

fixed at 405 B.C., when Socrates would already have been an old man.

The date is clearly marked, but is scarcely reconcilable with another

indication of time, viz. the “recent” usurpation of Archelaus, which

occurred in the year 413; and still less with the “recent” death of

Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429 B.C.) and

is afterwards reckoned among the statesmen of a past age; or with the

mention of Nicias, who died in 413, and is nevertheless spoken of as a

living witness. But we shall hereafter have reason to observe, that

although there is a general consistency of times and persons in the

Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an invention of his

commentators (Preface to Republic).

The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable, (1) for the truly

characteristic declaration of Socrates that he is ignorant of the true

nature and bearing of these things, while he affirms at the same time

that no one can maintain any other view without being ridiculous. The

profession of ignorance reminds us of the earlier and more exclusively

Socratic Dialogues. But neither in them, nor in the Apology, nor in the

Memorabilia of Xenophon, does Socrates express any doubt of the

fundamental truths of morality. He evidently regards this “among the

multitude of questions” which agitate human life “as the principle

which alone remains unshaken.” He does not insist here, any more than

in the Phaedo, on the literal truth of the myth, but only on the

soundness of the doctrine which is contained in it, that doing wrong is

worse than suffering, and that a man should be rather than seem; for

the next best thing to a man’s being just is that he should be

corrected and become just; also that he should avoid all flattery,

whether of himself or of others; and that rhetoric should be employed

for the maintenance of the right only. The revelation of another life

is a recapitulation of the argument in a figure.

(2) Socrates makes the singular remark, that he is himself the only

true politician of his age. In other passages, especially in the

Apology, he disclaims being a politician at all. There he is convinced

that he or any other good man who attempted to resist the popular will

would be put to death before he had done any good to himself or others.

Here he anticipates such a fate for himself, from the fact that he is

“the only man of the present day who performs his public duties at

all.” The two points of view are not really inconsistent, but the

difference between them is worth noticing: Socrates is and is not a

public man. Not in the ordinary sense, like Alcibiades or Pericles, but

in a higher one; and this will sooner or later entail the same

consequences on him. He cannot be a private man if he would; neither

can he separate morals from politics. Nor is he unwilling to be a

politician, although he foresees the dangers which await him; but he

must first become a better and wiser man, for he as well as Callicles

is in a state of perplexity and uncertainty. And yet there is an

inconsistency: for should not Socrates too have taught the citizens

better than to put him to death?

And now, as he himself says, we will “resume the argument from the

beginning.”

Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple, Chaerephon,

meets Callicles in the streets of Athens. He is informed that he has

just missed an exhibition of Gorgias, which he regrets, because he was

desirous, not of hearing Gorgias display his rhetoric, but of

interrogating him concerning the nature of his art. Callicles proposes

that they shall go with him to his own house, where Gorgias is staying.

There they find the great rhetorician and his younger friend and

disciple Polus.

SOCRATES: Put the question to him, Chaerephon.

CHAEREPHON: What question?

SOCRATES: Who is he?—such a question as would elicit from a man the

answer, “I am a cobbler.”

Polus suggests that Gorgias may be tired, and desires to answer for

him. “Who is Gorgias?” asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his

master Socrates. “One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best

and noblest of experimental arts,” etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical

and balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and

unmeaningness of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that

he has mistaken the quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to

Gorgias, that Polus has learnt how to make a speech, but not how to

answer a question. He wishes that Gorgias would answer him. Gorgias is

willing enough, and replies to the question asked by Chaerephon,—that

he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric language, “boasts himself to be a

good one.” At the request of Socrates he promises to be brief; for “he

can be as long as he pleases, and as short as he pleases.” Socrates

would have him bestow his length on others, and proceeds to ask him a

number of questions, which are answered by him to his own great

satisfaction, and with a brevity which excites the admiration of

Socrates. The result of the discussion may be summed up as follows:—

Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and other

particular arts, are also concerned with discourse; in what way then

does rhetoric differ from them? Gorgias draws a distinction between the

arts which deal with words, and the arts which have to do with external

actions. Socrates extends this distinction further, and divides all

productive arts into two classes: (1) arts which may be carried on in

silence; and (2) arts which have to do with words, or in which words

are coextensive with action, such as arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric.

But still Gorgias could hardly have meant to say that arithmetic was

the same as rhetoric. Even in the arts which are concerned with words

there are differences. What then distinguishes rhetoric from the other

arts which have to do with words? “The words which rhetoric uses relate

to the best and greatest of human things.” But tell me, Gorgias, what

are the best? “Health first, beauty next, wealth third,” in the words

of the old song, or how would you rank them? The arts will come to you

in a body, each claiming precedence and saying that her own good is

superior to that of the rest—How will you choose between them? “I

should say, Socrates, that the art of persuasion, which gives freedom

to all men, and to individuals power in the state, is the greatest

good.” But what is the exact nature of this persuasion?—is the

persevering retort: You could not describe Zeuxis as a painter, or even

as a painter of figures, if there were other painters of figures;

neither can you define rhetoric simply as an art of persuasion, because

there are other arts which persuade, such as arithmetic, which is an

art of persuasion about odd and even numbers. Gorgias is made to see

the necessity of a further limitation, and he now defines rhetoric as

the art of persuading in the law courts, and in the assembly, about the

just and unjust. But still there are two sorts of persuasion: one which

gives knowledge, and another which gives belief without knowledge; and

knowledge is always true, but belief may be either true or false,—there

is therefore a further question: which of the two sorts of persuasion

does rhetoric effect in courts of law and assemblies? Plainly that

which gives belief and not that which gives knowledge; for no one can

impart a real knowledge of such matters to a crowd of persons in a few

minutes. And there is another point to be considered:—when the assembly

meets to advise about walls or docks or military expeditions, the

rhetorician is not taken into counsel, but the architect, or the

general. How would Gorgias explain this phenomenon? All who intend to

become disciples, of whom there are several in the company, and not

Socrates only, are eagerly asking:—About what then will rhetoric teach

us to persuade or advise the state?

Gorgias illustrates the nature of rhetoric by adducing the example of

Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians to build their docks and

walls, and of Pericles, whom Socrates himself has heard speaking about

the middle wall of the Piraeus. He adds that he has exercised a similar

power over the patients of his brother Herodicus. He could be chosen a

physician by the assembly if he pleased, for no physician could compete

with a rhetorician in popularity and influence. He could persuade the

multitude of anything by the power of his rhetoric; not that the

rhetorician ought to abuse this power any more than a boxer should

abuse the art of self-defence. Rhetoric is a good thing, but, like all

good things, may be unlawfully used. Neither is the teacher of the art

to be deemed unjust because his pupils are unjust and make a bad use of

the lessons which they have learned from him.

Socrates would like to know before he replies, whether Gorgias will

quarrel with him if he points out a slight inconsistency into which he

has fallen, or whether he, like himself, is one who loves to be

refuted. Gorgias declares that he is quite one of his sort, but fears

that the argument may be tedious to the company. The company cheer, and

Chaerephon and Callicles exhort them to proceed. Socrates gently points

out the supposed inconsistency into which Gorgias appears to have

fallen, and which he is inclined to think may arise out of a

misapprehension of his own. The rhetorician has been declared by

Gorgias to be more persuasive to the ignorant than the physician, or

any other expert. And he is said to be ignorant, and this ignorance of

his is regarded by Gorgias as a happy condition, for he has escaped the

trouble of learning. But is he as ignorant of just and unjust as he is

of medicine or building? Gorgias is compelled to admit that if he did

not know them previously he must learn them from his teacher as a part

of the art of rhetoric. But he who has learned carpentry is a

carpenter, and he who has learned music is a musician, and he who has

learned justice is just. The rhetorician then must be a just man, and

rhetoric is a just thing. But Gorgias has already admitted the opposite

of this, viz. that rhetoric may be abused, and that the rhetorician may

act unjustly. How is the inconsistency to be explained?

The fallacy of this argument is twofold; for in the first place, a man

may know justice and not be just—here is the old confusion of the arts

and the virtues;—nor can any teacher be expected to counteract wholly

the bent of natural character; and secondly, a man may have a degree of

justice, but not sufficient to prevent him from ever doing wrong. Polus

is naturally exasperated at the sophism, which he is unable to detect;

of course, he says, the rhetorician, like every one else, will admit

that he knows justice (how can he do otherwise when pressed by the

interrogations of Socrates?), but he thinks that great want of manners

is shown in bringing the argument to such a pass. Socrates ironically

replies, that when old men trip, the young set them on their legs

again; and he is quite willing to retract, if he can be shown to be in

error, but upon one condition, which is that Polus studies brevity.

Polus is in great indignation at not being allowed to use as many words

as he pleases in the free state of Athens. Socrates retorts, that yet

harder will be his own case, if he is compelled to stay and listen to

them. After some altercation they agree (compare Protag.), that Polus

shall ask and Socrates answer.

“What is the art of Rhetoric?” says Polus. Not an art at all, replies

Socrates, but a thing which in your book you affirm to have created

art. Polus asks, “What thing?” and Socrates answers, An experience or

routine of making a sort of delight or gratification. “But is not

rhetoric a fine thing?” I have not yet told you what rhetoric is. Will

you ask me another question—What is cookery? “What is cookery?” An

experience or routine of making a sort of delight or gratification.

Then they are the same, or rather fall under the same class, and

rhetoric has still to be distinguished from cookery. “What is

rhetoric?” asks Polus once more. A part of a not very creditable whole,

which may be termed flattery, is the reply. “But what part?” A shadow

of a part of politics. This, as might be expected, is wholly

unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus; and, in order to explain his

meaning to them, Socrates draws a distinction between shadows or

appearances and realities; e.g. there is real health of body or soul,

and the appearance of them; real arts and sciences, and the simulations

of them. Now the soul and body have two arts waiting upon them, first

the art of politics, which attends on the soul, having a legislative

part and a judicial part; and another art attending on the body, which

has no generic name, but may also be described as having two divisions,

one of which is medicine and the other gymnastic. Corresponding with

these four arts or sciences there are four shams or simulations of

them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they give no

reason of their own existence. The art of dressing up is the sham or

simulation of gymnastic, the art of cookery, of medicine; rhetoric is

the simulation of justice, and sophistic of legislation. They may be

summed up in an arithmetical formula:—

Tiring: gymnastic:: cookery: medicine:: sophistic: legislation.

And,

Cookery: medicine:: rhetoric: the art of justice.

And this is the true scheme of them, but when measured only by the

gratification which they procure, they become jumbled together and

return to their aboriginal chaos. Socrates apologizes for the length of

his speech, which was necessary to the explanation of the subject, and

begs Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.

“Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed flatterers?”

They are not esteemed at all. “Why, have they not great power, and can

they not do whatever they desire?” They have no power, and they only do

what they think best, and never what they desire; for they never attain

the true object of desire, which is the good. “As if you, Socrates,

would not envy the possessor of despotic power, who can imprison,

exile, kill any one whom he pleases.” But Socrates replies that he has

no wish to put any one to death; he who kills another, even justly, is

not to be envied, and he who kills him unjustly is to be pitied; it is

better to suffer than to do injustice. He does not consider that going

about with a dagger and putting men out of the way, or setting a house

on fire, is real power. To this Polus assents, on the ground that such

acts would be punished, but he is still of opinion that evil-doers, if

they are unpunished, may be happy enough. He instances Archelaus, son

of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia. Does not Socrates think him

happy?—Socrates would like to know more about him; he cannot pronounce

even the great king to be happy, unless he knows his mental and moral

condition. Polus explains that Archelaus was a slave, being the son of

a woman who was the slave of Alcetas, brother of Perdiccas king of

Macedon—and he, by every species of crime, first murdering his uncle

and then his cousin and half-brother, obtained the kingdom. This was

very wicked, and yet all the world, including Socrates, would like to

have his place. Socrates dismisses the appeal to numbers; Polus, if he

will, may summon all the rich men of Athens, Nicias and his brothers,

Aristocrates, the house of Pericles, or any other great family—this is

the kind of evidence which is adduced in courts of justice, where truth

depends upon numbers. But Socrates employs proof of another sort; his

appeal is to one witness only,—that is to say, the person with whom he

is speaking; him he will convict out of his own mouth. And he is

prepared to show, after his manner, that Archelaus cannot be a wicked

man and yet happy.

The evil-doer is deemed happy if he escapes, and miserable if he

suffers punishment; but Socrates thinks him less miserable if he

suffers than if he escapes. Polus is of opinion that such a paradox as

this hardly deserves refutation, and is at any rate sufficiently

refuted by the fact. Socrates has only to compare the lot of the

successful tyrant who is the envy of the world, and of the wretch who,

having been detected in a criminal attempt against the state, is

crucified or burnt to death. Socrates replies, that if they are both

criminal they are both miserable, but that the unpunished is the more

miserable of the two. At this Polus laughs outright, which leads

Socrates to remark that laughter is a new species of refutation. Polus

replies, that he is already refuted; for if he will take the votes of

the company, he will find that no one agrees with him. To this Socrates

rejoins, that he is not a public man, and (referring to his own conduct

at the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae) is unable

to take the suffrages of any company, as he had shown on a recent

occasion; he can only deal with one witness at a time, and that is the

person with whom he is arguing. But he is certain that in the opinion

of any man to do is worse than to suffer evil.

Polus, though he will not admit this, is ready to acknowledge that to

do evil is considered the more foul or dishonourable of the two. But

what is fair and what is foul; whether the terms are applied to bodies,

colours, figures, laws, habits, studies, must they not be defined with

reference to pleasure and utility? Polus assents to this latter

doctrine, and is easily persuaded that the fouler of two things must

exceed either in pain or in hurt. But the doing cannot exceed the

suffering of evil in pain, and therefore must exceed in hurt. Thus

doing is proved by the testimony of Polus himself to be worse or more

hurtful than suffering.

There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better off when he is

punished or when he is unpunished? Socrates replies, that what is done

justly is suffered justly: if the act is just, the effect is just; if

to punish is just, to be punished is just, and therefore fair, and

therefore beneficent; and the benefit is that the soul is improved.

There are three evils from which a man may suffer, and which affect him

in estate, body, and soul;—these are, poverty, disease, injustice; and

the foulest of these is injustice, the evil of the soul, because that

brings the greatest hurt. And there are three arts which heal these

evils—trading, medicine, justice—and the fairest of these is justice.

Happy is he who has never committed injustice, and happy in the second

degree he who has been healed by punishment. And therefore the criminal

should himself go to the judge as he would to the physician, and purge

away his crime. Rhetoric will enable him to display his guilt in proper

colours, and to sustain himself and others in enduring the necessary

penalty. And similarly if a man has an enemy, he will desire not to

punish him, but that he shall go unpunished and become worse and worse,

taking care only that he does no injury to himself. These are at least

conceivable uses of the art, and no others have been discovered by us.

Here Callicles, who has been listening in silent amazement, asks

Chaerephon whether Socrates is in earnest, and on receiving the

assurance that he is, proceeds to ask the same question of Socrates

himself. For if such doctrines are true, life must have been turned

upside down, and all of us are doing the opposite of what we ought to

be doing.

Socrates replies in a style of playful irony, that before men can

understand one another they must have some common feeling. And such a

community of feeling exists between himself and Callicles, for both of

them are lovers, and they have both a pair of loves; the beloved of

Callicles are the Athenian Demos and Demos the son of Pyrilampes; the

beloved of Socrates are Alcibiades and philosophy. The peculiarity of

Callicles is that he can never contradict his loves; he changes as his

Demos changes in all his opinions; he watches the countenance of both

his loves, and repeats their sentiments, and if any one is surprised at

his sayings and doings, the explanation of them is, that he is not a

free agent, but must always be imitating his two loves. And this is the

explanation of Socrates’ peculiarities also. He is always repeating

what his mistress, Philosophy, is saying to him, who unlike his other

love, Alcibiades, is ever the same, ever true. Callicles must refute

her, or he will never be at unity with himself; and discord in life is

far worse than the discord of musical sounds.

Callicles answers, that Gorgias was overthrown because, as Polus said,

in compliance with popular prejudice he had admitted that if his pupil

did not know justice the rhetorician must teach him; and Polus has been

similarly entangled, because his modesty led him to admit that to

suffer is more honourable than to do injustice. By custom “yes,” but

not by nature, says Callicles. And Socrates is always playing between

the two points of view, and putting one in the place of the other. In

this very argument, what Polus only meant in a conventional sense has

been affirmed by him to be a law of nature. For convention says that

“injustice is dishonourable,” but nature says that “might is right.”

And we are always taming down the nobler spirits among us to the

conventional level. But sometimes a great man will rise up and reassert

his original rights, trampling under foot all our formularies, and then

the light of natural justice shines forth. Pindar says, “Law, the king

of all, does violence with high hand;” as is indeed proved by the

example of Heracles, who drove off the oxen of Geryon and never paid

for them.

This is the truth, Socrates, as you will be convinced, if you leave

philosophy and pass on to the real business of life. A little

philosophy is an excellent thing; too much is the ruin of a man. He who

has not “passed his metaphysics” before he has grown up to manhood will

never know the world. Philosophers are ridiculous when they take to

politics, and I dare say that politicians are equally ridiculous when

they take to philosophy: “Every man,” as Euripides says, “is fondest of

that in which he is best.” Philosophy is graceful in youth, like the

lisp of infancy, and should be cultivated as a part of education; but

when a grown-up man lisps or studies philosophy, I should like to beat

him. None of those over-refined natures ever come to any good; they

avoid the busy haunts of men, and skulk in corners, whispering to a few

admiring youths, and never giving utterance to any noble sentiments.

For you, Socrates, I have a regard, and therefore I say to you, as

Zethus says to Amphion in the play, that you have “a noble soul

disguised in a puerile exterior.” And I would have you consider the

danger which you and other philosophers incur. For you would not know

how to defend yourself if any one accused you in a law-court,—there you

would stand, with gaping mouth and dizzy brain, and might be murdered,

robbed, boxed on the ears with impunity. Take my advice, then, and get

a little common sense; leave to others these frivolities; walk in the

ways of the wealthy and be wise.

Socrates professes to have found in Callicles the philosopher’s

touchstone; and he is certain that any opinion in which they both agree

must be the very truth. Callicles has all the three qualities which are

needed in a critic—knowledge, good-will, frankness; Gorgias and Polus,

although learned men, were too modest, and their modesty made them

contradict themselves. But Callicles is well-educated; and he is not

too modest to speak out (of this he has already given proof), and his

good-will is shown both by his own profession and by his giving the

same caution against philosophy to Socrates, which Socrates remembers

hearing him give long ago to his own clique of friends. He will pledge

himself to retract any error into which he may have fallen, and which

Callicles may point out. But he would like to know first of all what he

and Pindar mean by natural justice. Do they suppose that the rule of

justice is the rule of the stronger or of the better?” “There is no

difference.” Then are not the many superior to the one, and the

opinions of the many better? And their opinion is that justice is

equality, and that to do is more dishonourable than to suffer wrong.

And as they are the superior or stronger, this opinion of theirs must

be in accordance with natural as well as conventional justice. “Why

will you continue splitting words? Have I not told you that the

superior is the better?” But what do you mean by the better? Tell me

that, and please to be a little milder in your language, if you do not

wish to drive me away. “I mean the worthier, the wiser.” You mean to

say that one man of sense ought to rule over ten thousand fools? “Yes,

that is my meaning.” Ought the physician then to have a larger share of

meats and drinks? or the weaver to have more coats, or the cobbler

larger shoes, or the farmer more seed? “You are always saying the same

things, Socrates.” Yes, and on the same subjects too; but you are never

saying the same things. For, first, you defined the superior to be the

stronger, and then the wiser, and now something else;—what DO you mean?

“I mean men of political ability, who ought to govern and to have more

than the governed.” Than themselves? “What do you mean?” I mean to say

that every man is his own governor. “I see that you mean those dolts,

the temperate. But my doctrine is, that a man should let his desires

grow, and take the means of satisfying them. To the many this is

impossible, and therefore they combine to prevent him. But if he is a

king, and has power, how base would he be in submitting to them! To

invite the common herd to be lord over him, when he might have the

enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates, that luxury and

self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.”

Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other

men only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not

happy. “Why,” says Callicles, “if they were, stones and the dead would

be happy.” Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic

vein of reflection. “Who knows,” as Euripides says, “whether life may

not be death, and death life?” Nay, there are philosophers who maintain

that even in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb

(sema) of the soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory,

in which he represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be

carrying water to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly

holey sieve, and this sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful,

but nevertheless is a figure of a truth which I want to make you

acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment is better than the life

of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? “Far otherwise.” Then

hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence

may be represented respectively by two men, who are filling jars with

streams of wine, honey, milk,—the jars of the one are sound, and the

jars of the other leaky; the first fills his jars, and has no more

trouble with them; the second is always filling them, and would suffer

extreme misery if he desisted. Are you of the same opinion still? “Yes,

Socrates, and the figure expresses what I mean. For true pleasure is a

perpetual stream, flowing in and flowing out. To be hungry and always

eating, to be thirsty and always drinking, and to have all the other

desires and to satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of

happiness.” And to be itching and always scratching? “I do not deny

that there may be happiness even in that.” And to indulge unnatural

desires, if they are abundantly satisfied? Callicles is indignant at

the introduction of such topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that

they are introduced, not by him, but by the maintainer of the identity

of pleasure and good. Will Callicles still maintain this? “Yes, for the

sake of consistency, he will.” The answer does not satisfy Socrates,

who fears that he is losing his touchstone. A profession of seriousness

on the part of Callicles reassures him, and they proceed with the

argument. Pleasure and good are the same, but knowledge and courage are

not the same either with pleasure or good, or with one another.

Socrates disproves the first of these statements by showing that two

opposites cannot coexist, but must alternate with one another—to be

well and ill together is impossible. But pleasure and pain are

simultaneous, and the cessation of them is simultaneous; e.g. in the

case of drinking and thirsting, whereas good and evil are not

simultaneous, and do not cease simultaneously, and therefore pleasure

cannot be the same as good.

Callicles has already lost his temper, and can only be persuaded to go

on by the interposition of Gorgias. Socrates, having already guarded

against objections by distinguishing courage and knowledge from

pleasure and good, proceeds:—The good are good by the presence of good,

and the bad are bad by the presence of evil. And the brave and wise are

good, and the cowardly and foolish are bad. And he who feels pleasure

is good, and he who feels pain is bad, and both feel pleasure and pain

in nearly the same degree, and sometimes the bad man or coward in a

greater degree. Therefore the bad man or coward is as good as the brave

or may be even better.

Callicles endeavours now to avert the inevitable absurdity by affirming

that he and all mankind admitted some pleasures to be good and others

bad. The good are the beneficial, and the bad are the hurtful, and we

should choose the one and avoid the other. But this, as Socrates

observes, is a return to the old doctrine of himself and Polus, that

all things should be done for the sake of the good.

Callicles assents to this, and Socrates, finding that they are agreed

in distinguishing pleasure from good, returns to his old division of

empirical habits, or shams, or flatteries, which study pleasure only,

and the arts which are concerned with the higher interests of soul and

body. Does Callicles agree to this division? Callicles will agree to

anything, in order that he may get through the argument. Which of the

arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral

exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on

the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who

was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of

Tragedy is bent upon pleasure, and not upon improvement. Poetry in

general is only a rhetorical address to a mixed audience of men, women,

and children. And the orators are very far from speaking with a view to

what is best; their way is to humour the assembly as if they were

children.

Callicles replies, that this is only true of some of them; others have

a real regard for their fellow-citizens. Granted; then there are two

species of oratory; the one a flattery, another which has a real regard

for the citizens. But where are the orators among whom you find the

latter? Callicles admits that there are none remaining, but there were

such in the days when Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and the great

Pericles were still alive. Socrates replies that none of these were

true artists, setting before themselves the duty of bringing order out

of disorder. The good man and true orator has a settled design, running

through his life, to which he conforms all his words and actions; he

desires to implant justice and eradicate injustice, to implant all

virtue and eradicate all vice in the minds of his citizens. He is the

physician who will not allow the sick man to indulge his appetites with

a variety of meats and drinks, but insists on his exercising

self-restraint. And this is good for the soul, and better than the

unrestrained indulgence which Callicles was recently approving.

Here Callicles, who had been with difficulty brought to this point,

turns restive, and suggests that Socrates shall answer his own

questions. “Then,” says Socrates, “one man must do for two;” and though

he had hoped to have given Callicles an “Amphion” in return for his

“Zethus,” he is willing to proceed; at the same time, he hopes that

Callicles will correct him, if he falls into error. He recapitulates

the advantages which he has already won:—

The pleasant is not the same as the good—Callicles and I are agreed

about that,—but pleasure is to be pursued for the sake of the good, and

the good is that of which the presence makes us good; we and all things

good have acquired some virtue or other. And virtue, whether of body or

soul, of things or persons, is not attained by accident, but is due to

order and harmonious arrangement. And the soul which has order is

better than the soul which is without order, and is therefore temperate

and is therefore good, and the intemperate is bad. And he who is

temperate is also just and brave and pious, and has attained the

perfection of goodness and therefore of happiness, and the intemperate

whom you approve is the opposite of all this and is wretched. He

therefore who would be happy must pursue temperance and avoid

intemperance, and if possible escape the necessity of punishment, but

if he have done wrong he must endure punishment. In this way states and

individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as the wise tell us,

is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles has never

discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he would

have men aim at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in this,

and if self-control is the true secret of happiness, then the paradox

is true that the only use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus

was right in saying that to do wrong is worse than to suffer wrong, and

Gorgias was right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man.

And you were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in

saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears

with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than

to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast

in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things,

but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do

wrong is the greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next

greatest evil. He who would avoid the last must be a ruler, or the

friend of a ruler; and to be the friend he must be the equal of the

ruler, and must also resemble him. Under his protection he will suffer

no evil, but will he also do no evil? Nay, will he not rather do all

the evil which he can and escape? And in this way the greatest of all

evils will befall him. “But this imitator of the tyrant,” rejoins

Callicles, “will kill any one who does not similarly imitate him.”

Socrates replies that he is not deaf, and that he has heard that

repeated many times, and can only reply, that a bad man will kill a

good one. “Yes, and that is the provoking thing.” Not provoking to a

man of sense who is not studying the arts which will preserve him from

danger; and this, as you say, is the use of rhetoric in courts of

justice. But how many other arts are there which also save men from

death, and are yet quite humble in their pretensions—such as the art of

swimming, or the art of the pilot? Does not the pilot do men at least

as much service as the rhetorician, and yet for the voyage from Aegina

to Athens he does not charge more than two obols, and when he

disembarks is quite unassuming in his demeanour? The reason is that he

is not certain whether he has done his passengers any good in saving

them from death, if one of them is diseased in body, and still more if

he is diseased in mind—who can say? The engineer too will often save

whole cities, and yet you despise him, and would not allow your son to

marry his daughter, or his son to marry yours. But what reason is there

in this? For if virtue only means the saving of life, whether your own

or another’s, you have no right to despise him or any practiser of

saving arts. But is not virtue something different from saving and

being saved? I would have you rather consider whether you ought not to

disregard length of life, and think only how you can live best, leaving

all besides to the will of Heaven. For you must not expect to have

influence either with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of

Pyrilampes, unless you become like them. What do you say to this?

“There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not entirely

believe you.”

That is because you are in love with Demos. But let us have a little

more conversation. You remember the two processes—one which was

directed to pleasure, the other which was directed to making men as

good as possible. And those who have the care of the city should make

the citizens as good as possible. But who would undertake a public

building, if he had never had a teacher of the art of building, and had

never constructed a building before? or who would undertake the duty of

state-physician, if he had never cured either himself or any one else?

Should we not examine him before we entrusted him with the office? And

as Callicles is about to enter public life, should we not examine him?

Whom has he made better? For we have already admitted that this is the

statesman’s proper business. And we must ask the same question about

Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles. Whom did they

make better? Nay, did not Pericles make the citizens worse? For he gave

them pay, and at first he was very popular with them, but at last they

condemned him to death. Yet surely he would be a bad tamer of animals

who, having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt, and man

is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only made him

wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he could not have

been a good statesman. The same tale might be repeated about Cimon,

Themistocles, Miltiades. But the charioteer who keeps his seat at first

is not thrown out when he gains greater experience and skill. The

inference is, that the statesman of a past age were no better than

those of our own. They may have been cleverer constructors of docks and

harbours, but they did not improve the character of the citizens. I

have told you again and again (and I purposely use the same images)

that the soul, like the body, may be treated in two ways—there is the

meaner and the higher art. You seemed to understand what I said at the

time, but when I ask you who were the really good statesmen, you

answer—as if I asked you who were the good trainers, and you answered,

Thearion, the baker, Mithoecus, the author of the Sicilian

cookery-book, Sarambus, the vintner. And you would be affronted if I

told you that these are a parcel of cooks who make men fat only to make

them thin. And those whom they have fattened applaud them, instead of

finding fault with them, and lay the blame of their subsequent

disorders on their physicians. In this respect, Callicles, you are like

them; you applaud the statesmen of old, who pandered to the vices of

the citizens, and filled the city with docks and harbours, but

neglected virtue and justice. And when the fit of illness comes, the

citizens who in like manner applauded Themistocles, Pericles, and

others, will lay hold of you and my friend Alcibiades, and you will

suffer for the misdeeds of your predecessors. The old story is always

being repeated—“after all his services, the ungrateful city banished

him, or condemned him to death.” As if the statesman should not have

taught the city better! He surely cannot blame the state for having

unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or teacher can find fault

with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist and orator are in

the same case; although you admire rhetoric and despise sophistic,

whereas sophistic is really the higher of the two. The teacher of the

arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or politics takes no money,

because this is the only kind of service which makes the disciple

desirous of requiting his teacher.

Socrates concludes by finally asking, to which of the two modes of

serving the state Callicles invites him:—“to the inferior and

ministerial one,” is the ingenuous reply. That is the only way of

avoiding death, replies Socrates; and he has heard often enough, and

would rather not hear again, that the bad man will kill the good. But

he thinks that such a fate is very likely reserved for him, because he

remarks that he is the only person who teaches the true art of

politics. And very probably, as in the case which he described to

Polus, he may be the physician who is tried by a jury of children. He

cannot say that he has procured the citizens any pleasure, and if any

one charges him with perplexing them, or with reviling their elders, he

will not be able to make them understand that he has only been actuated

by a desire for their good. And therefore there is no saying what his

fate may be. “And do you think that a man who is unable to help himself

is in a good condition?” Yes, Callicles, if he have the true self-help,

which is never to have said or done any wrong to himself or others. If

I had not this kind of self-help, I should be ashamed; but if I die for

want of your flattering rhetoric, I shall die in peace. For death is no

evil, but to go to the world below laden with offences is the worst of

evils. In proof of which I will tell you a tale:—

Under the rule of Cronos, men were judged on the day of their death,

and when judgment had been given upon them they departed—the good to

the islands of the blest, the bad to the house of vengeance. But as

they were still living, and had their clothes on at the time when they

were being judged, there was favouritism, and Zeus, when he came to the

throne, was obliged to alter the mode of procedure, and try them after

death, having first sent down Prometheus to take away from them the

foreknowledge of death. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus were appointed

to be the judges; Rhadamanthus for Asia, Aeacus for Europe, and Minos

was to hold the court of appeal. Now death is the separation of soul

and body, but after death soul and body alike retain their

characteristics; the fat man, the dandy, the branded slave, are all

distinguishable. Some prince or potentate, perhaps even the great king

himself, appears before Rhadamanthus, and he instantly detects him,

though he knows not who he is; he sees the scars of perjury and

iniquity, and sends him away to the house of torment.

For there are two classes of souls who undergo punishment—the curable

and the incurable. The curable are those who are benefited by their

punishment; the incurable are such as Archelaus, who benefit others by

becoming a warning to them. The latter class are generally kings and

potentates; meaner persons, happily for themselves, have not the same

power of doing injustice. Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites, are

supposed by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not that

there is anything to prevent a great man from being a good one, as is

shown by the famous example of Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But

to Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as good or bad; they are

stripped of their dignities and preferments; he despatches the bad to

Tartarus, labelled either as curable or incurable, and looks with love

and admiration on the soul of some just one, whom he sends to the

islands of the blest. Similar is the practice of Aeacus; and Minos

overlooks them, holding a golden sceptre, as Odysseus in Homer saw him

“Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.”

My wish for myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls

undefiled to the judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to

meet death. And I exhort you, and retort upon you the reproach which

you cast upon me,—that you will stand before the judge, gaping, and

with dizzy brain, and any one may box you on the ear, and do you all

manner of evil.

Perhaps you think that this is an old wives’ fable. But you, who are

the three wisest men in Hellas, have nothing better to say, and no one

will ever show that to do is better than to suffer evil. A man should

study to be, and not merely to seem. If he is bad, he should become

good, and avoid all flattery, whether of the many or of the few.

Follow me, then; and if you are looked down upon, that will do you no

harm. And when we have practised virtue, we will betake ourselves to

politics, but not until we are delivered from the shameful state of

ignorance and uncertainty in which we are at present. Let us follow in

the way of virtue and justice, and not in the way to which you,

Callicles, invite us; for that way is nothing worth.

We will now consider in order some of the principal points of the

dialogue. Having regard (1) to the age of Plato and the ironical

character of his writings, we may compare him with himself, and with

other great teachers, and we may note in passing the objections of his

critics. And then (2) casting one eye upon him, we may cast another

upon ourselves, and endeavour to draw out the great lessons which he

teaches for all time, stripped of the accidental form in which they are

enveloped.

(1) In the Gorgias, as in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, we

are made aware that formal logic has as yet no existence. The old

difficulty of framing a definition recurs. The illusive analogy of the

arts and the virtues also continues. The ambiguity of several words,

such as nature, custom, the honourable, the good, is not cleared up.

The Sophists are still floundering about the distinction of the real

and seeming. Figures of speech are made the basis of arguments. The

possibility of conceiving a universal art or science, which admits of

application to a particular subject-matter, is a difficulty which

remains unsolved, and has not altogether ceased to haunt the world at

the present day (compare Charmides). The defect of clearness is also

apparent in Socrates himself, unless we suppose him to be practising on

the simplicity of his opponent, or rather perhaps trying an experiment

in dialectics. Nothing can be more fallacious than the contradiction

which he pretends to have discovered in the answers of Gorgias (see

above). The advantages which he gains over Polus are also due to a

false antithesis of pleasure and good, and to an erroneous assertion

that an agent and a patient may be described by similar predicates;—a

mistake which Aristotle partly shares and partly corrects in the

Nicomachean Ethics. Traces of a “robust sophistry” are likewise

discernible in his argument with Callicles.

(2) Although Socrates professes to be convinced by reason only, yet the

argument is often a sort of dialectical fiction, by which he conducts

himself and others to his own ideal of life and action. And we may

sometimes wish that we could have suggested answers to his antagonists,

or pointed out to them the rocks which lay concealed under the

ambiguous terms good, pleasure, and the like. But it would be as

useless to examine his arguments by the requirements of modern logic,

as to criticise this ideal from a merely utilitarian point of view. If

we say that the ideal is generally regarded as unattainable, and that

mankind will by no means agree in thinking that the criminal is happier

when punished than when unpunished, any more than they would agree to

the stoical paradox that a man may be happy on the rack, Plato has

already admitted that the world is against him. Neither does he mean to

say that Archelaus is tormented by the stings of conscience; or that

the sensations of the impaled criminal are more agreeable than those of

the tyrant drowned in luxurious enjoyment. Neither is he speaking, as

in the Protagoras, of virtue as a calculation of pleasure, an opinion

which he afterwards repudiates in the Phaedo. What then is his meaning?

His meaning we shall be able to illustrate best by parallel notions,

which, whether justifiable by logic or not, have always existed among

mankind. We must remind the reader that Socrates himself implies that

he will be understood or appreciated by very few.

He is speaking not of the consciousness of happiness, but of the idea

of happiness. When a martyr dies in a good cause, when a soldier falls

in battle, we do not suppose that death or wounds are without pain, or

that their physical suffering is always compensated by a mental

satisfaction. Still we regard them as happy, and we would a thousand

times rather have their death than a shameful life. Nor is this only

because we believe that they will obtain an immortality of fame, or

that they will have crowns of glory in another world, when their

enemies and persecutors will be proportionably tormented. Men are found

in a few instances to do what is right, without reference to public

opinion or to consequences. And we regard them as happy on this ground

only, much as Socrates’ friends in the opening of the Phaedo are

described as regarding him; or as was said of another, “they looked

upon his face as upon the face of an angel.” We are not concerned to

justify this idealism by the standard of utility or public opinion, but

merely to point out the existence of such a sentiment in the better

part of human nature.

The idealism of Plato is founded upon this sentiment. He would maintain

that in some sense or other truth and right are alone to be sought, and

that all other goods are only desirable as means towards these. He is

thought to have erred in “considering the agent only, and making no

reference to the happiness of others, as affected by him.” But the

happiness of others or of mankind, if regarded as an end, is really

quite as ideal and almost as paradoxical to the common understanding as

Plato’s conception of happiness. For the greatest happiness of the

greatest number may mean also the greatest pain of the individual which

will procure the greatest pleasure of the greatest number. Ideas of

utility, like those of duty and right, may be pushed to unpleasant

consequences. Nor can Plato in the Gorgias be deemed purely

self-regarding, considering that Socrates expressly mentions the duty

of imparting the truth when discovered to others. Nor must we forget

that the side of ethics which regards others is by the ancients merged

in politics. Both in Plato and Aristotle, as well as in the Stoics, the

social principle, though taking another form, is really far more

prominent than in most modern treatises on ethics.

The idealizing of suffering is one of the conceptions which have

exercised the greatest influence on mankind. Into the theological

import of this, or into the consideration of the errors to which the

idea may have given rise, we need not now enter. All will agree that

the ideal of the Divine Sufferer, whose words the world would not

receive, the man of sorrows of whom the Hebrew prophets spoke, has sunk

deep into the heart of the human race. It is a similar picture of

suffering goodness which Plato desires to pourtray, not without an

allusion to the fate of his master Socrates. He is convinced that,

somehow or other, such an one must be happy in life or after death. In

the Republic, he endeavours to show that his happiness would be assured

here in a well-ordered state. But in the actual condition of human

things the wise and good are weak and miserable; such an one is like a

man fallen among wild beasts, exposed to every sort of wrong and

obloquy.

Plato, like other philosophers, is thus led on to the conclusion, that

if “the ways of God” to man are to be “justified,” the hopes of another

life must be included. If the question could have been put to him,

whether a man dying in torments was happy still, even if, as he

suggests in the Apology, “death be only a long sleep,” we can hardly

tell what would have been his answer. There have been a few, who, quite

independently of rewards and punishments or of posthumous reputation,

or any other influence of public opinion, have been willing to

sacrifice their lives for the good of others. It is difficult to say

how far in such cases an unconscious hope of a future life, or a

general faith in the victory of good in the world, may have supported

the sufferers. But this extreme idealism is not in accordance with the

spirit of Plato. He supposes a day of retribution, in which the good

are to be rewarded and the wicked punished. Though, as he says in the

Phaedo, no man of sense will maintain that the details of the stories

about another world are true, he will insist that something of the kind

is true, and will frame his life with a view to this unknown future.

Even in the Republic he introduces a future life as an afterthought,

when the superior happiness of the just has been established on what is

thought to be an immutable foundation. At the same time he makes a

point of determining his main thesis independently of remoter

consequences.

(3) Plato’s theory of punishment is partly vindictive, partly

corrective. In the Gorgias, as well as in the Phaedo and Republic, a

few great criminals, chiefly tyrants, are reserved as examples. But

most men have never had the opportunity of attaining this pre-eminence

of evil. They are not incurable, and their punishment is intended for

their improvement. They are to suffer because they have sinned; like

sick men, they must go to the physician and be healed. On this

representation of Plato’s the criticism has been made, that the analogy

of disease and injustice is partial only, and that suffering, instead

of improving men, may have just the opposite effect.

Like the general analogy of the arts and the virtues, the analogy of

disease and injustice, or of medicine and justice, is certainly

imperfect. But ideas must be given through something; the nature of the

mind which is unseen can only be represented under figures derived from

visible objects. If these figures are suggestive of some new aspect

under which the mind may be considered, we cannot find fault with them

for not exactly coinciding with the ideas represented. They partake of

the imperfect nature of language, and must not be construed in too

strict a manner. That Plato sometimes reasons from them as if they were

not figures but realities, is due to the defective logical analysis of

his age.

Nor does he distinguish between the suffering which improves and the

suffering which only punishes and deters. He applies to the sphere of

ethics a conception of punishment which is really derived from criminal

law. He does not see that such punishment is only negative, and

supplies no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off

the higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and

to be continued in other stages of existence, which is further

developed in the Republic. And Christian thinkers, who have ventured

out of the beaten track in their meditations on the “last things,” have

found a ray of light in his writings. But he has not explained how or

in what way punishment is to contribute to the improvement of mankind.

He has not followed out the principle which he affirms in the Republic,

that “God is the author of evil only with a view to good,” and that

“they were the better for being punished.” Still his doctrine of a

future state of rewards and punishments may be compared favourably with

that perversion of Christian doctrine which makes the everlasting

punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment of time, or even on

the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the difficulty which

has often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of the meaner

sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good nor

very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.

We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of

argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the

horizon of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design.

The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a

future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and

to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according

to the truth. Plato may be accused of representing a superhuman or

transcendental virtue in the description of the just man in the

Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of the philosopher in the

Theaetetus; and at the same time may be thought to be condemning a

state of the world which always has existed and always will exist among

men. But such ideals act powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And

such condemnations are not mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the

natural rebellion of the higher sense of right in man against the

ordinary conditions of human life. The greatest statesmen have fallen

very far short of the political ideal, and are therefore justly

involved in the general condemnation.

Subordinate to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other

questions, which may be briefly considered:—

a. The antithesis of good and pleasure, which as in other dialogues is

supposed to consist in the permanent nature of the one compared with

the transient and relative nature of the other. Good and pleasure,

knowledge and sense, truth and opinion, essence and generation, virtue

and pleasure, the real and the apparent, the infinite and finite,

harmony or beauty and discord, dialectic and rhetoric or poetry, are so

many pairs of opposites, which in Plato easily pass into one another,

and are seldom kept perfectly distinct. And we must not forget that

Plato’s conception of pleasure is the Heracleitean flux transferred to

the sphere of human conduct. There is some degree of unfairness in

opposing the principle of good, which is objective, to the principle of

pleasure, which is subjective. For the assertion of the permanence of

good is only based on the assumption of its objective character. Had

Plato fixed his mind, not on the ideal nature of good, but on the

subjective consciousness of happiness, that would have been found to be

as transient and precarious as pleasure.

b. The arts or sciences, when pursued without any view to truth, or the

improvement of human life, are called flatteries. They are all alike

dependent upon the opinion of mankind, from which they are derived. To

Plato the whole world appears to be sunk in error, based on

self-interest. To this is opposed the one wise man hardly professing to

have found truth, yet strong in the conviction that a virtuous life is

the only good, whether regarded with reference to this world or to

another. Statesmen, Sophists, rhetoricians, poets, are alike brought up

for judgment. They are the parodies of wise men, and their arts are the

parodies of true arts and sciences. All that they call science is

merely the result of that study of the tempers of the Great Beast,

which he describes in the Republic.

c. Various other points of contact naturally suggest themselves between

the Gorgias and other dialogues, especially the Republic, the Philebus,

and the Protagoras. There are closer resemblances both of spirit and

language in the Republic than in any other dialogue, the verbal

similarity tending to show that they were written at the same period of

Plato’s life. For the Republic supplies that education and training of

which the Gorgias suggests the necessity. The theory of the many weak

combining against the few strong in the formation of society (which is

indeed a partial truth), is similar in both of them, and is expressed

in nearly the same language. The sufferings and fate of the just man,

the powerlessness of evil, and the reversal of the situation in another

life, are also points of similarity. The poets, like the rhetoricians,

are condemned because they aim at pleasure only, as in the Republic

they are expelled by the State, because they are imitators, and

minister to the weaker side of human nature. That poetry is akin to

rhetoric may be compared with the analogous notion, which occurs in the

Protagoras, that the ancient poets were the Sophists of their day. In

some other respects the Protagoras rather offers a contrast than a

parallel. The character of Protagoras may be compared with that of

Gorgias, but the conception of happiness is different in the two

dialogues; being described in the former, according to the old Socratic

notion, as deferred or accumulated pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and

in the Phaedo, pleasure and good are distinctly opposed.

This opposition is carried out from a speculative point of view in the

Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief

good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the

Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains,

are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias’

definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorg.), as the art of

persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit, not by

compulsion, but of their own free will—marks a close and perhaps

designed connection between the two dialogues. In both the ideas of

measure, order, harmony, are the connecting links between the beautiful

and the good.

In general spirit and character, that is, in irony and antagonism to

public opinion, the Gorgias most nearly resembles the Apology, Crito,

and portions of the Republic, and like the Philebus, though from

another point of view, may be thought to stand in the same relation to

Plato’s theory of morals which the Theaetetus bears to his theory of

knowledge.

d. A few minor points still remain to be summed up: (1) The extravagant

irony in the reason which is assigned for the pilot’s modest charge;

and in the proposed use of rhetoric as an instrument of

self-condemnation; and in the mighty power of geometrical equality in

both worlds. (2) The reference of the mythus to the previous discussion

should not be overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable criminals

such as Archelaus; the retaliation of the box on the ears; the

nakedness of the souls and of the judges who are stript of the clothes

or disguises which rhetoric and public opinion have hitherto provided

for them (compare Swift’s notion that the universe is a suit of

clothes, Tale of a Tub). The fiction seems to have involved Plato in

the necessity of supposing that the soul retained a sort of corporeal

likeness after death. (3) The appeal of the authority of Homer, who

says that Odysseus saw Minos in his court “holding a golden sceptre,”

which gives verisimilitude to the tale.

It is scarcely necessary to repeat that Plato is playing “both sides of

the game,” and that in criticising the characters of Gorgias and Polus,

we are not passing any judgment on historical individuals, but only

attempting to analyze the “dramatis personae’ as they were conceived by

him. Neither is it necessary to enlarge upon the obvious fact that

Plato is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be

assumed to be those which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any

other speaker who appears to have the best of the argument; or to

repeat the observation that he is a poet as well as a philosopher; or

to remark that he is not to be tried by a modern standard, but

interpreted with reference to his place in the history of thought and

the opinion of his time.

It has been said that the most characteristic feature of the Gorgias is

the assertion of the right of dissent, or private judgment. But this

mode of stating the question is really opposed both to the spirit of

Plato and of ancient philosophy generally. For Plato is not asserting

any abstract right or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived

from freedom of thought; indeed, in some other parts of his writings

(e.g. Laws), he has fairly laid himself open to the charge of

intolerance. No speculations had as yet arisen respecting the “liberty

of prophesying;’ and Plato is not affirming any abstract right of this

nature: but he is asserting the duty and right of the one wise and true

man to dissent from the folly and falsehood of the many. At the same

time he acknowledges the natural result, which he hardly seeks to

avert, that he who speaks the truth to a multitude, regardless of

consequences, will probably share the fate of Socrates.

The irony of Plato sometimes veils from us the height of idealism to

which he soars. When declaring truths which the many will not receive,

he puts on an armour which cannot be pierced by them. The weapons of

ridicule are taken out of their hands and the laugh is turned against

themselves. The disguises which Socrates assumes are like the parables

of the New Testament, or the oracles of the Delphian God; they half

conceal, half reveal, his meaning. The more he is in earnest, the more

ironical he becomes; and he is never more in earnest or more ironical

than in the Gorgias. He hardly troubles himself to answer seriously the

objections of Gorgias and Polus, and therefore he sometimes appears to

be careless of the ordinary requirements of logic. Yet in the highest

sense he is always logical and consistent with himself. The form of the

argument may be paradoxical; the substance is an appeal to the higher

reason. He is uttering truths before they can be understood, as in all

ages the words of philosophers, when they are first uttered, have found

the world unprepared for them. A further misunderstanding arises out of

the wildness of his humour; he is supposed not only by Callicles, but

by the rest of mankind, to be jesting when he is profoundly serious. At

length he makes even Polus in earnest. Finally, he drops the argument,

and heedless any longer of the forms of dialectic, he loses himself in

a sort of triumph, while at the same time he retaliates upon his

adversaries. From this confusion of jest and earnest, we may now return

to the ideal truth, and draw out in a simple form the main theses of

the dialogue.