Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 2

What is true about the bodily movements depending upon strength, is not less true about those depending on grace and elegance. To be wilfully ungraceful, belongs only to the well-constituted body: none but the badly-constituted body is ungraceful without wishing it. The same, also, about the feet, voice, eyes, ears, nose: of these organs, those which act badly through will and intention, are preferable to those which act badly without will or intention. Lameness of feet is a misfortune and disgrace: feet which go lame only by intention are much to be preferred.64

Again, in the instruments which we use, a rudder or a bow, — or the animals about us, horses or dogs, — those are better with which we work badly when we choose; those are worse, with which we work badly without design, and contrary to our own wishes.

It is better to have the mind of a bowman who misses his mark by design, than that of one who misses when he tries to hit. The like about all other arts — the physician, the harper, the flute-player. In each of these artists, that mind is better, which goes wrong only wilfully — that mind is worse, which goes wrong unwillingly, while wishing to go right. In regard to the minds of our slaves, we should all prefer those which go wrong only when they choose, to those which go wrong without their own choice.65

Sokr. — Well! should we not wish to have our own minds as good as possible? Hip. — Yes. Sokr. — We have seen that they will be better if they do mischief and go wrong wilfully, than if they do so unwillingly? Hip. — But it will be dreadful, Sokrates, if the willing wrong-doers are to pass for better men than the unwilling.

Sokr. — Nevertheless — it seems so: from what we have said. Hip. — It does not seem so to me. Sokr. — I thought that it would have seemed so to you, as it does to me. However, answer me once more — Is not justice either a certain mental capacity? or else knowledge? or both together?66 Hip. — Yes! it is. Sokr. — If justice be a capacity of the mind, the more capable mind will also be the juster: and we have already seen that the more capable soul is the better. Hip. — We have. Sokr. — If it be knowledge, the more knowing or wiser mind will of course be the juster: if it be a combination of both capacity and knowledge, that mind which is more capable as well as more knowing, — will be the juster that which is less capable and less knowing, will be the more unjust. Hip. — So it appears. Sokr. — Now we have shown that the more capable and knowing mind is at once the better mind, and more competent to exert itself both ways — to do what is honourable as well as what is base — in every employment. Hip. — Yes. Sokr. — When, therefore, such a mind does what is base, it does so wilfully, through its capacity or intelligence, which we have seen to be of the nature of justice? Hip. — It seems so. Sokr. — Doing base things, is acting unjustly: doing honourable things, is acting justly. Accordingly, when this more capable and better mind acts unjustly, it will do so wilfully; while the less capable and worse mind will do so without willing it? Hip. — Apparently.

Sokr. — Now the good man is he that has the good mind: the bad man is he that has the bad mind. It belongs therefore to the good man to do wrong wilfully, to the bad man, to do wrong without wishing it — that is, if the good man be he that has the good mind? Hip. — But that is unquestionable — that he has it. Sokr. — Accordingly, he that goes wrong and does base and unjust things wilfully, if there be any such character — can be no other than the good man. Hip. — I do not know how to concede that to you, Sokrates.67 Sokr. — Nor I, how to concede it to myself, Hippias: yet so it must appear to us, now at least, from the past debate. As I told you long ago, I waver hither and thither upon this matter; my conclusions never remain the same. No wonder indeed that I and other vulgar men waver; but if you wise men waver also, that becomes a fearful mischief even to us, since we cannot even by coming to you escape from our embarrassment.68

Now, if the dialogue just concluded had come down to us with the parts inverted, and with the reasoning of Sokrates assigned to Hippias, most critics would probably have produced it as a tissue of sophistry justifying the harsh epithets which they bestow upon the Athenian Sophists — as persons who considered truth and falsehood to be on a par — subverters of morality — and corruptors of the youth of Athens.69 But as we read it, all that, which in the mouth of Hippias would have passed for sophistry, is here put forward by Sokrates; while Hippias not only resists his conclusions, and adheres to the received ethical sentiment tenaciously, even when he is unable to defend it, but hates the propositions forced upon him, protests against the perverse captiousness of Sokrates, and requires much pressing to induce him to continue the debate. Upon the views adopted by the critics, Hippias ought to receive credit for this conduct, as a friend of virtue and morality. To me, such reluctance to debate appears a defect rather than a merit; but I cite the dialogue as illustrating what I have already said in another place — that Sokrates and Plato threw out more startling novelties in ethical doctrine, than either Hippias or Protagoras, or any of the other persons denounced as Sophists.

That Plato intended to represent this accomplished Sophist as humiliated by Sokrates, is evident enough: and the words put into his mouth are suited to this purpose. The eloquent lecturer, so soon as his admiring crowd of auditors has retired, proves unable to parry the questions of a single expert dialectician who remains behind, upon a matter which appears to him almost self-evident, and upon which every one (from Homer downward) agrees with him. Besides this, however, Plato is not satisfied without making him say very simple and absurd things. All this is the personal, polemical, comic scope of the dialogue. It lends (whether well-placed or not) a certain animation and variety, which the author naturally looked out for, in an aggregate of dialogues all handling analogous matters about man and society.

But though the polemical purpose of the dialogue is thus plain, its philosophical purpose perplexes the critics considerably. They do not like to see Sokrates employing sophistry against the Sophists: that is, as they think, casting out devils by the help of Beelzebub. And certainly, upon the theory which they adopt, respecting the relation between Plato and Sokrates on one side, and the Sophists on the other, I think this dialogue is very difficult to explain. But I do not think it is difficult, upon a true theory of the Platonic writings.

In a former chapter, I tried to elucidate the general character and purpose of those Dialogues of Search, which occupy more than half the Thrasyllean Canon, and of which we have already reviewed two or three specimens — Euthyphron, Alkibiadês, &c. We have seen that they are distinguished by the absence of any affirmative conclusion: that they prove nothing, but only, at the most, disprove one or more supposable solutions: that they are not processes in which one man who knows communicates his knowledge to ignorant hearers, but in which all are alike ignorant, and all are employed, either in groping, or guessing, or testing the guesses of the rest. We have farther seen that the value of these Dialogues depends upon the Platonic theory about knowledge; that Plato did not consider any one to know, who could not explain to others all that he knew, reply to the cross-examination of a Sokratic Elenchus, and cross-examine others to test their knowledge: that knowledge in this sense could not be attained by hearing, or reading, or committing to memory a theorem, together with the steps of reasoning which directly conducted to it: — but that there was required, besides, an acquaintance with many counter-theorems, each having more or less appearance of truth; as well as with various embarrassing aspects and plausible delusions on the subject, which an expert cross-examiner would not fail to urge. Unless you are practised in meeting all the difficulties which he can devise, you cannot be said to know.

Now the Greater and Lesser Hippias are peculiar specimens of these Dialogues of Search, and each serves the purpose above indicated. The Greater Hippias enumerates a string of tentatives, each one of which ends in acknowledged failure: the Lesser Hippias enunciates a thesis, which Sokrates proceeds to demonstrate, by plausible arguments such as Hippias is forced to admit. But though Hippias admits each successive step, he still mistrusts the conclusion, and suspects that he has been misled — a feeling which Plato70 describes elsewhere as being frequent among the respondents of Sokrates. Nay, Sokrates himself shares in the mistrust — presents himself as an unwilling propounder of arguments which force themselves upon him,71 and complains of his own mental embarrassment. Now you may call this sophistry, if you please; and you may silence its propounders by calling them hard names. But such ethical prudery — hiding all the uncomfortable logical puzzles which start up when you begin to analyse an established sentiment, and treating them as non-existent because you refuse to look at them — is not the way, to attain what Plato calls knowledge. If there be any argument, the process of which seems indisputable, while yet its conclusion contradicts, or seems to contradict, what is known, upon other evidence — the full and patient analysis of that argument is indispensable, before you can become master of the truth and able to defend it.

Until you have gone through such analysis, your mind must remain in that state of confusion which is indicated by Sokrates at the end of the Lesser Hippias. As it is a part of the process of Search, to travel in the path of the Greater Hippias — that is, to go through a string of erroneous solutions, each of which can be proved, by reasons shown, to be erroneous: so it is an equally important part of the same process, to travel in the path of the Lesser Hippias — that is, to acquaint ourselves with all those arguments, bearing on the case, in which two contrary conclusions appear to be both of them plausibly demonstrated, and in which therefore we cannot as yet determine which of them is erroneous — or whether both are not erroneous. The Greater Hippias exhibits errors, — the Lesser Hippias puts before us confusion. With both these enemies the Searcher for truth must contend: and Bacon tells us, that confusion is the worst enemy of the two — “Citius emergit veritas ex errore, quam ex confusione”. Plato, in the Lesser Hippias, having in hand a genuine Sokratic thesis, does not disdain to invest Sokrates with the task (sophistical, as some call it, yet not the less useful and instructive) of setting forth at large this case of confusion, and avowing his inability to clear it up. It is enough for Sokrates that he brings home the painful sense of confusion to the feelings of his hearer as well as to his own.

In that painful sentiment lies the stimulus provocative of farther intellectual effort.72 The dialogue ends but the process of search, far from ending along with it, is emphatically declared to be unfinished, and, to be in a condition not merely unsatisfactory but intolerable, not to be relieved except by farther investigation, which thus becomes a necessary sequel.

There are two circumstances which lend particular interest to this dialogue — Hippias Minor. 1. That the thesis out of which the confusion arises, is one which we know to have been laid down by the historical Sokrates himself. 2. That Aristotle expressly notices this thesis, as well as the dialogue in which it is contained, and combats it.