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

The main purpose of Sokrates is to drive Alkibiades into self-contradictions, and to force upon him a painful consciousness of ignorance and mental defect, upon grave and important subjects, while he is yet young enough to amend it. Towards this purpose he is made to lay claim to a divine mission similar to that which the real Sokrates announces in the Apology61 A number of perplexing questions and difficulties are accumulated: it is not meant that these difficulties are insoluble, but that they cannot be solved by one who has never seriously reflected on them — by one who (as the Xenophontic Sokrates says to Euthydemus),62 is so confident of knowing the subject that he has never meditated upon it at all. The disheartened Alkibiades feels the necessity of improving himself and supplicates the assistance of Sokrates:63 who reminds him that he must first determine what “Himself” is. Here again we find ourselves upon the track of Sokrates in the Platonic Apology, and under the influence of the memorable inscription at Delphi — Nosce teipsum. Your mind is yourself; your body is a mere instrument of your mind: your wealth and power are simple appurtenances or adjuncts. To know yourself, which is genuine Sophrosynê or temperance, is to know your mind: but this can only be done by looking into another mind, and into its most intelligent compartment: just as the eye can only see itself by looking into the centre of vision of another eye.64

At the same time, when, after having convicted Alkibiades of deplorable ignorance, Sokrates is called upon to prescribe remedies — all distinctness of indication disappears. It is exacted only when the purpose is to bring difficulties and contradictions to view: it is dispensed with, when the purpose is to solve them. The conclusion is, that assuming happiness as the acknowledged ultimate end,65 Alkibiades cannot secure this either for himself or for his city, by striving for wealth and power, private or public: he can only secure it by acquiring for himself, and implanting in his country-men, justice, temperance, and virtue. This is perfectly Sokratic, and conformable to what is said by the real Sokrates in the Platonic Apology. But coming at the close of Alkibiadês I., it presents no meaning and imparts no instruction: because Sokrates had shown in the earlier part of the dialogue, that neither he himself, nor Alkibiades, nor the general public, knew what justice and virtue were. The positive solution which Sokrates professes to give, is therefore illusory. He throws us back upon those old, familiar, emotional, associations, unconscious products and unexamined transmissions from mind to mind — which he had already shown to represent the fancy of knowledge without the reality — deep-seated belief without any assignable intellectual basis, or outward standard of rectitude.

Throughout the various Platonic dialogues, we find alternately two distinct and opposite methods of handling — the generalising of the special, and the specialising of the general. In Alkibiadês I, the specialising of the general preponderates — as it does in most of the conversations of the Xenophontic Memorabilia: the number of exemplifying particulars is unusually great. Sokrates does not accept as an answer a general term, without illustrating it by several of the specific terms comprehended under it: and this several times on occasions when an instructed reader thinks it superfluous and tiresome: hence, partly, the inclination of some modern critics to disallow the dialogue. But we must recollect that though a modern reader practised in the use of general terms may seize the meaning at once, an Athenian youth of the Platonic age would not be sure of doing the same. No conscious analysis had yet been applied to general terms: no grammar or logic then entered into education. Confident affirmation, without fully knowing the meaning of what is affirmed, is the besetting sin against which Plato here makes war: and his precautions for exposing it are pushed to extreme minuteness. So, too, in the Sophistês and Politikus, when he wishes to illustrate the process of logical division and subdivision, he applies it to cases so trifling and so multiplied, that Socher is revolted and rejects the dialogues altogether.

But Plato himself foresees and replies to the objection; declaring expressly that his main purpose is, not to expound the particular subject chosen, but to make manifest and familiar the steps and conditions of the general classifying process — and that prolixity cannot be avoided.66 We must reckon upon a similar purpose in Alkibiadês I. The dialogue is a specimen of that which Aristotle calls Inductive Dialectic, as distinguished from Syllogistic: the Inductive he considers to be plainer and easier, suitable when you have an ordinary collocutor — the Syllogistic is the more cogent, when you are dealing with a practised disputant.67

It has been seen that Alkibiadês I, though professing to give something like a solution, gives what is really no solution at all. Alkibiadês II., similar in many respects, is here different, inasmuch as it does not even profess to solve the difficulty which had been raised. The general mental defect — false persuasion of knowledge without the reality — is presented in its application to a particular case. Alkibiades is obliged to admit that he does not know what he ought to pray to the Gods for: neither what is good, to be granted, nor what is evil, to be averted. He relies upon Sokrates for dispelling this mist from his mind: which Sokrates promises to do, but adjourns for another occasion.

Sokrates here ascribes to the Spartans, and to various philosophers, the practice of putting up prayers in undefined language, for good and honourable things generally. He commends that practice. Xenophon tells us that the historical Sokrates observed it:68 but he tells us also that the historical Sokrates, though not praying for any special presents from the Gods, yet prayed for and believed himself to receive special irregular revelations and advice as to what was good to be done or avoided in particular cases. He held that these special revelations were essential to any tolerable life: that the dispensations of the Gods, though administered upon regular principles on certain subjects and up to a certain point, were kept by them designedly inscrutable beyond that point: but that the Gods would, if properly solicited, afford premonitory warnings to any favoured person, such as would enable him to keep out of the way of evil, and put himself in the way of good. He declared that to consult and obey oracles and prophets was not less a maxim of prudence than a duty of piety: for himself, he was farther privileged through his divine sign or monitor, which he implicitly followed.69 Such premonitory warnings were the only special favour which he thought it suitable to pray for — besides good things generally. For special presents he did not pray, because he professed not to know whether any of the ordinary objects of desire were good or bad.

He proves in his conversation with Euthydêmus, that all those acquisitions which are usually accounted means of happiness — beauty, strength, wealth, reputation, nay, even good health and wisdom — are sometimes good or causes of happiness, sometimes evil or causes of misery; and therefore cannot be considered either as absolutely the one or absolutely the other.70

This impossibility of determining what is good and what is evil, in consequence of the uncertainty in the dispensations of the Gods and in human affairs — is a doctrine forcibly insisted on by the Xenophontic Sokrates in his discourse with Euthydêmus, and much akin to the Platonic Alkibiadês II., being applied to the special case of prayer. But we must not suppose that Sokrates adheres to this doctrine throughout all the colloquies of the Xenophontic Memorabilia: on the contrary, we find him, in other places, reasoning upon such matters, as health, strength, and wisdom, as if they were decidedly good.71 The fact is, that the arguments of Sokrates, in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, vary materially according to the occasion and the person with whom he is discoursing: and the case is similar with the Platonic dialogues: illustrating farther the questionable evidence on which Schleiermacher and other critics proceed, when they declare one dialogue to be spurious, because it contains reasoning inconsistent with another.

We find in Alkibiadês II. another doctrine which is also proclaimed by Sokrates in the Xenophontic Memorabilia: that the Gods are not moved by costly sacrifice more than by humble sacrifice, according to the circumstances of the offerer:72 they attend only to the mind of the offerer, whether he be just and wise: that is, “whether he knows what ought to be done both towards Gods and towards men”.73

But we find also in Alkibiadês II. another doctrine, more remarkable. Sokrates will not proclaim absolutely that knowledge is good, and that ignorance is evil. In some cases, he contends, ignorance is good; and he discriminates which the cases are. That which we are principally interested in knowing, is Good, or The Best — The Profitable:74 phrases used as equivalent. The knowledge of this is good, and the ignorance of it mischievous, under all supposable circumstances. And if a man knows good, the more he knows of everything else, the better; since he will sure to make a good use of his knowledge. But if he does not know good, the knowledge of other things will be hurtful rather than beneficial to him. To be skilful in particular arts and accomplishments, under the capital mental deficiency supposed, will render him an instrument of evil and not of good. The more he knows — and the more he believes himself to know — the more forward will he be in acting, and therefore the greater amount of harm will he do. It is better that he should act as little as possible. Such a man is not fit to direct his own conduct, like a freeman: he must be directed and controlled by others, like a slave. The greater number of mankind are fools of this description — ignorant of good: the wise men who know good, and are fit to direct, are very few. The wise man alone, knowing good, follows reason: the rest trust to opinion, without reason.75 He alone is competent to direct both his own conduct and that of the society.

The stress which is laid here upon the knowledge of good, as distinguished from all other varieties of knowledge — the identification of the good with the profitable, and of the knowledge of good with reason (νοῦς), while other varieties of knowledge are ranked with opinion (δόξα) — these are points which, under one phraseology or another, pervade many of the Platonic dialogues. The old phrase of Herakleitus — Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει — “much learning does not teach reason” — seems to have been present to the mind of Plato in composing this dialogue. The man of much learning and art, without the knowledge of good, and surrendering himself to the guidance of one or other among his accomplishments, is like a vessel tossed about at sea without a pilot.76

What Plato here calls the knowledge of Good, or Reason — the just discrimination and comparative appreciation of Ends and Means — appears in the Politikus and Euthydêmus, under the title of the Regal or Political Art, of employing or directing77 the results of all other arts, which are considered as subordinate: in the Protagoras, under the title of art of calculation or mensuration: in the Philêbus, as measure and proportion: in the Phædrus (in regard to rhetoric) as the art of turning to account, for the main purpose of persuasion, all the special processes, stratagems, decorations, &c., imparted by professional masters. In the Republic, it is personified in the few venerable Elders who constitute the Reason of the society, and whose directions all the rest (Guardians and Producers) are bound implicitly to follow: the virtue of the subordinates consisting in this implicit obedience. In the Leges, it is defined as the complete subjection in the mind, of pleasures and pains to right Reason,78 without which, no special aptitudes are worth having. In the Xenophontic Memorabilia, it stands as a Sokratic authority under the title of Sophrosynê or Temperance:79 and the Profitable is declared identical with the Good, as the directing and limiting principle for all human pursuits and proceedings.80