George Grote

“ I do not believe this doctrine (continues Sokrates) . Priests, priestesses, and poets (Pindar among them) tell us, that the mind of man is immortal and has existed throughout all past time, in conjunction with successive bodies; alternately abandoning one body, or dying — and taking up new life or reviving in another body. In this perpetual succession of existences, it has seen every thing, — both here and in Hades and everywhere else — and has learnt every thing. But though thus omniscient, it has forgotten the larger portion of its knowledge. ”

“ Every man employs sophisms more or less; every man does so inadvertently, some do it by design also; moreover, almost every reasoner does it largely, in the estimation of his opponents. No distinct line can be drawn between the Sophist and the Dialectician: the definition given by Aristotle applies to an ideal in his own mind, but to no reality without: Protagoras and Prodikus no more correspond to it than Sokrates and Plato. ”

“ The disposition to admire and almost to worship the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.... They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly — a select, though I am afraid, a small party — who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. ”

“ Sokrates resolves upon a scheme of life for himself — to study permanent good, and not immediate satisfaction.
Such are the essential conditions of political success and popularity. But I, Kalliklês, have already distinguished two schemes of life; one aiming at pleasure, the other aiming at good: one, that of the statesman who studies the felt wants, wishes, and impulses of the people, displaying his genius in providing for them effective satisfaction — the other, the statesman who makes it his chief or sole object to amend the character and disposition of the people. ”

“ That justice, temperance, self-restraint, are indeed indispensable to the happiness of ordinary men; but if there be any one individual, so immensely superior in force as to trample down and make slaves of the rest, this one man would be a fool if he restrained himself: having the means of gratifying all his appetites, the more appetites he has, the more enjoyments will he have and the greater happiness.84 Observe — that Kalliklês applies this doctrine only to the one omnipotent despot: to all other members of society, he maintains that self-restraint is essential. ”

“ The Platonic Sokrates of the Gorgias would have replied to him: “Never mind: you are just, and these assailants are unjust: they are by their own conduct entailing upon themselves a terrible distemper, from which, if you leave them unpunished, they will suffer all their lives: they injure themselves more than they injure you”. But the historical Sokrates in Xenophon replies in quite another spirit. He advises Kriton to look out for a clever and active friend, to attach this person to his interest by attention and favours, and to trust to him for keeping off the assailants. ”

“ As a builder labours to construct a ship or a house, by putting together its various parts with order and symmetry — so these statesmen would have laboured to implant order and symmetry in the minds and bodies of the citizens: that is, justice and temperance in their minds, health and strength in their bodies.97 Unless the statesman can do this, it is fruitless to supply the wants, to fulfil the desires and requirements, to uphold or enlarge the power, of the citizens. This is like supplying ample nourishment to a distempered body: the more such a body takes in, the worse it becomes. ”

“ We shall come presently to an elaborate dialogue (Theætêtus) in which Plato makes many attempts to determine knowledge generally, but ends in a confessed failure. Knowledge must be knowledge possessed by some one, and must be knowledge of something. What is it, that a man must know, in order that his justice or courage may become profitable? Is it pleasures and pains, with their causes, and the comparative magnitude of each (as Sokrates declares in the Protagoras) , in order that he may contribute to diminish the sum of pains, increase that of pleasures, to himself or to the society? ”

“ Plato makes them all absurd and ridiculous. He gives a caricature of a dialectic debate, not unworthy of his namesake Plato Comicus — or of Aristophanes, Swift, or Voltaire. The sophisms appear for the most part so silly, as he puts them, that the reader asks himself how any one could have been ever imposed upon by such a palpable delusion? Yet such confidence is by no means justified. A sophism, perfectly analogous in character to those which Plato here exposes to ridicule, may, in another case, easily escape detection from the hearer, and even from the reasoner himself. ”

“ I have already remarked when reviewing the doctrine of Sokrates in the Protagoras, that it appears to me seriously defective, inasmuch as it takes into account the pleasures and pains of the agent only, and omits the pleasures and pains of other persons affected by his conduct. But this is not less true respecting the doctrine of Sokrates in the Gorgias: for whatever criterion he may there have in his mind to determine which among our pleasures are bad, it is certainly not this — that the agent in procuring them is obliged to hurt others. ”

“ This appears still farther when the cross-examination is taken up by Sokrates instead of by Lachês. We are then made to perceive, that the knowledge of things terrible and not terrible is a part, but an inseparable part, of the knowledge of good and evil generally: the lesser cannot be had without the greater — and the greater carries with it not merely courage, but all the other virtues besides. None can know good or evil generally except the perfectly Wise Man. The perfect condition of the Intelligence, is the sole and all-sufficient condition of virtue. ”

“ If any one accuses me of corrupting the youth by making them sceptical, or of libelling the older men in my private and public talk — it will be in vain for me to justify myself by saying the real truth. ”

“ Temperance, or self-knowledge, is the knowledge what a man knows, and what he does not know.15 Now two questions arise upon this: First, is it possible for a man to know, that he knows what he does know, and that he does not know what he does not know? Next, granting it to be possible, in what way do we gain by it? The first of these two questions involves much difficulty. How can there be any cognition, which is not cognition of a given cognitum, but cognition merely of other cognitions and non-cognitions? ”

“ Whoever has reflected on the generation of ideas in his own mind, or has investigated the causes of misunderstandings among mankind, will be obliged to proclaim as a fact deeply seated in human nature — That most of the misunderstandings and contradictions among men, most of the controversies and errors both in science and in society, arise usually from our assuming (consciously or unconsciously) fundamental maxims and fundamental facts as if they were self-evident, and as if they must be assumed by every one else besides. ”

“ It seems by most persons to be taken for granted, that a Fallacy is to be dreaded merely as a weapon fashioned and wielded by a skilful Sophist: or, if they allow that a man may with honest intentions slide into one, unconsciously, in the heat of argument — still they seem to suppose, that where there is no dispute, there is no cause to dread Fallacy. ”

“ Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man — from Plato down to Franklin — appear to us to have failed deplorably. ”

“ The whole man is one, with all these distinct and sometimes conflicting attributes: in following one impulse, he must resist others — in turning his aptitudes to one object, he must turn them away from others — he must, as Plato says, distinguish the right use of his force from the wrong, by virtue of knowledge, intelligence, reason. Such discriminating intelligence, which in this dialogue is called the Regal or political art, — what is the object of it? ”

“ Sokrates passed his life in talking, with every one indiscriminately, and upon each man’s particular subject; often perplexing the artist himself. Xenophon recounts conversations with various professional men — a painter, a sculptor, an armourer — and informs us that it was instructive to all of them, though Sokrates was no practitioner in any craft.26 It was not merely Demokritus, but Plato and Aristotle also, who talked or wrote upon almost every subject included in contemporary observation. ”

“ But as to Nikias and Lachês, they are both older and richer than I am: so that they may well have learnt it from others, or acquired it for themselves. They must be thoroughly satisfied of their own knowledge on the work of education; otherwise they would hardly have given such confident opinions, pronouncing what pursuits are good or bad for youth. For my part, I trust them implicitly: the only thing which surprises me, is, that they dissent from each other.7 It is for you therefore, Lysimachus, to ask Nikias and Lachês, — Who have been their masters? ”

“ To be inferior to yourself is nothing else than ignorance: to be superior to yourself, is nothing else than wisdom. Ignorance consists in holding false opinions, and in being deceived respecting matters of high importance. (Agreed by all.) Accordingly, no one willingly enters upon courses which are evil, or which he believes to be evil; nor is it in the nature of man to enter upon what he thinks evil courses, in preference to good. ”

“ The Philosopher, as a recompense for having detached himself during life as much as possible from the body and all its functions, will be admitted after death to existence as a soul pure and simple, unattached to any body. ”

“ Plato undoubtedly did not conceive the definition of the philosopher in the same way as Sokrates. The close of the Erastæ is employed in opening a distant and dim view of the Platonic conception. We are given to understand, that the philosopher has a province of his own, wherein he is not second-best, but a first-rate actor and adviser. To indicate, in many different ways, that there is or must be such a peculiar, appertaining to philosophy — distinct from, though analogous to, the peculiar of each several art — is one leading purpose in many Platonic dialogues. ”

“ Les peuples du Canada se représentent les âmes sous la forme d’ombres errantes: les Patagons, les habitans du Sud de l’Asie, croient entendre leurs voix dans l’écho: et les anciens Romains eux-mêmes n’étaient pas étrangers à cette opinion. Les Négres s’imaginent que la destinée de l’âme après la vie est encore liée à celle du corps, et fondent sur cette idée une foule de pratiques. ”

“ As Sokrates distinguishes elsewhere τὸ δίκαιον or αὐτο-δίκαιον from τὰ δίκαια — so here he distinguishes (νόμος from τὰ νομιζόμενα) Law, from the assemblage of actual commands or customs received as laws among mankind. These latter are variable according to time and place; but Law is always one and the same. Plato will acknowledge nothing to be Law, except that which (he thinks) ought to be Law: that which emanates from a lawgiver of consummate knowledge, who aims at the accomplishment of the good and the real, and knows how to discover and realise that end. ”

“ We know it by looking into another mind, and into the most rational and divine portion thereof: just as the eye can only know itself by looking into another eye, and seeing itself therein reflected.24 It is only in this way that we can come to know ourselves, or become temperate: and if we do not know ourselves, we cannot even know what belongs to ourselves, or what belongs to others: all these are branches of one and the same cognition. We can have no knowledge of affairs, either public or private: we shall go wrong, and shall be unable to secure happiness either for ourselves or for others. ”

“ Nature is not formed from without, as men construct a table: the table is indeed constructed intelligently, but by an Intelligence extraneous to this wooden material. It is this extraneous form which we are apt to think of as representing Intelligence, when we hear it talked of: but what is really meant is, the Universal — the immanent nature of the object itself. The Νοῦς is not a thinking Being without, which has arranged the world: by such an interpretation the Idea of Anaxagoras would be quite perverted and deprived of all philosophical value. ”

“ Possessing many arts and accomplishments, and prosecuting one after another, but without the knowledge of good, — he will only fall into greater trouble, like a ship sailing without a pilot. Knowledge of good is, in other words, knowledge of what is useful and profitable. ”

“ On the principle assumed by M. Boeckh, every one who agreed with Panætius in considering the elaborate proof given in the Phædon, of the immortality of the soul, as illogical and delusive — would also agree with Panætius in declaring that the Phædon was not the work of Plato. It is one question, whether the reasoning in any dialogue be good or bad: it is another question, whether the dialogue be written by Plato or not. Unfortunately, the Platonic critics often treat the first question as if it determined the second. ”

“ To sing well is a special accomplishment, which is possessed only by a few, and which no man is blamed for not possessing. The distinction between such special accomplishments, and justice or rectitude of behaviour, is well brought out in the speech which Plato puts into the mouth of the Sophist Protagoras.78 “The special artists (he says) are few in number: one of them is sufficient for many private citizens. But every citizen, without exception, must possess justice and a sense of shame: if he does not, he must be put away as a nuisance — otherwise, society could not be maintained.” ”

“ Virtue is knowledge — no possessions, no attributes, either of mind or body, are good or profitable, except under the guidance of knowledge.
Sokrates proceeds to prove that virtue is knowledge, or a mode of knowledge. Virtue is good: all good things are profitable. But none of the things accounted good are profitable, unless they be rightly employed; that is, employed with knowledge or intelligence. This is true not only of health, wealth, beauty, strength, power, &c., but also of the mental attributes justice, moderation, courage, quick apprehension, &c. ”

“ Good or Evil is nothing but pleasure or pain to us — or that which procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good or evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the law-maker ”