“Why so?” I asked.
“To-day,” he replied, “both I ought to cut off mine and you yours, if
our argument must die, and we are unable to revive it. And I, if I were
you, and the arguments were to escape me, would take an oath, as the
Argives do, not to suffer my hair to grow until I had renewed the
contest, and vanquished the arguments of Simmias and Cebes.”
“But,” I said, “even Hercules himself is said not to have been a match
for two.”
“Call upon me, then,” he said, “as your Iolaus, while it is yet day.”
“I do call on you, then,” I said, “not as Hercules upon Iolaus, but as
Iolaus upon Hercules.”
“It will make no difference,” he replied. “But first of all we must
beware lest we meet with some mischance.”
“What?” I asked.
“That we do not become,” he answered, “haters of reasoning as some
become haters of men; for no greater evil can happen to any one than to
hate reasoning. 88. But hatred of reasoning and hatred of mankind both
spring from the same source. For hatred of mankind is produced in us
from having placed too great reliance on some one without sufficient
knowledge of him, and from having considered him to be a man altogether
true, sincere, and faithful, and then after a little while finding him
depraved and unfaithful, and after him another. And when a man has often
experienced this, and especially from those whom he considered his most
intimate and best friends, at length, having frequently stumbled, he
hates all men, and thinks that there is no soundness at all in any of
them. Have you not perceived that this happens so?”
“Certainly,” I replied.
“Is it not a shame?” he said, “and is it not evident that such a one
attempts to deal with men, without sufficient knowledge of human
affairs? For if he had dealt with them with competent knowledge, as the
case really is, so he would have considered that the good and the bad
are each very few in number, and that those between both are most
numerous.”