Complete Works (135 page)

A
LCIBIADES
: But you’re talking about a madman, Socrates: do you think any person of sound mind would have dared to make such a prayer?

S
OCRATES
: Do you take madness to be the opposite of wisdom?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, indeed.

S
OCRATES
: Do you think there are some people who are wise and some [d] who are stupid?

A
LCIBIADES
: So it seems.

S
OCRATES
: Well, then, let’s see which are which. We have agreed that there are some people who are stupid, some who are wise, and others who are mad.

A
LCIBIADES
: Agreed.

S
OCRATES
: Are there some people who are healthy?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And others who are sick?

[139]
A
LCIBIADES
: Indeed.

S
OCRATES
: Not the same people?

A
LCIBIADES
: Of course not.

S
OCRATES
: Are there any other people who are neither one thing nor the other?

A
LCIBIADES
: No.

S
OCRATES
: Because a person has to be either sick or not sick?

A
LCIBIADES
: That’s what I think.

S
OCRATES
: Well now, do you have the same view about wisdom and stupidity?

A
LCIBIADES
: How do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: Do you think it is only possible either to be wise or stupid, [b] or is there also a third state in between in which a person is neither wise nor stupid?

A
LCIBIADES
: No, there isn’t.

S
OCRATES
: So you have to be one or the other?

A
LCIBIADES
: So I believe.

S
OCRATES
: Now do you remember that you agreed that madness is the opposite of wisdom?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, I did.

S
OCRATES
: And that there is no third state in which a person is neither wise nor stupid?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And can one thing have two distinct opposites?

A
LCIBIADES
: No.

[c] S
OCRATES
: So it looks as if stupidity and madness are one and the same thing.

A
LCIBIADES
: It does.

S
OCRATES
: So would it be correct to say that all stupid people are mad—not just any of your contemporaries who are stupid, as some of them certainly are, but even older people? Tell me, in God’s name, don’t you think that in our city the wise are in a minority, and most people are stupid, or, as you would say, mad?

A
LCIBIADES
: I do.

[d] S
OCRATES
: But do you think we could live comfortably in a city of so many madmen? Would we not have met our fate long ago, and been punched and beaten and subjected to every madman’s trick? Things aren’t quite like that, are they?

A
LCIBIADES
: No, not at all; it looks as if I’ve not got the matter quite right.

S
OCRATES
: I don’t think so either. Try looking at it another way.

A
LCIBIADES
: What way do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: I’ll tell you. We take it that some people are sick, don’t we?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, indeed.

S
OCRATES
: Do you think that anyone who is sick must necessarily have [e] gout, or fever, or eye ache? Or can a person be sick in some other way without having any of these? Surely there are many other diseases besides these?

A
LCIBIADES
: Surely.

S
OCRATES
: Eye ache is always a sickness, don’t you think?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: But is sickness always eye ache?

A
LCIBIADES
: No; but I’m not sure what to say.

S
OCRATES
: But if you pay attention to me, we may find out; for two heads
[140]
are better than one.

A
LCIBIADES
: I am paying attention, Socrates, as well as I can.

S
OCRATES
: Well, we have agreed that while eye ache is always a sickness, not every sickness is eye ache, have we not?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes, we have.

S
OCRATES
: And rightly. Anyone with a fever is sick, but not everyone who is sick has a fever—nor gout, I take it, nor eye ache. Each of these is [b] a disease, but they present quite different symptoms, to use the doctors’ term. They are not all alike, and they do not have like effects; each of them works according to its own nature, but they are all none the less diseases. Similarly, we classify some people as workmen, don’t we?

A
LCIBIADES
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: There are shoemakers, and carpenters, and sculptors, and very many others whom we needn’t enumerate. They all have their own share of work, and they are all workmen; but they are not all carpenters or [c] shoemakers or sculptors even though they are all workmen.

A
LCIBIADES
: No.

S
OCRATES
: Well now, in the same way people have shared out stupidity among themselves; those who have the largest share we call madmen, those with a smaller share we call fools or asses. People who prefer euphemisms call them big-hearted or simple, or perhaps innocent, naive, or [d] dumb: you will come across many other names if you look for them. But all these things are stupidity, and differ from each other in the way one kind of work and one kind of disease differs from another. Isn’t that right?

A
LCIBIADES
: Absolutely.

S
OCRATES
: Let’s go back, then. At the beginning of our discussion we set out to discover which people were wise and which were stupid, because we had agreed that some were one and some were the other.

A
LCIBIADES
: We had indeed.

S
OCRATES
: Is it your view that the wise are those who know what should [e] be done and said?

A
LCIBIADES
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And who are the stupid? Those who know neither of these things?

A
LCIBIADES
: Just so.

S
OCRATES
: And those who know neither of these things will say and do what they ought not, without knowing that this is what they are saying and doing?

A
LCIBIADES
: So it seems.

[141]
S
OCRATES
: And just such a person—I said—was Oedipus. And in our own time you will find many such people—not in a rage as he was—who pray for things that are bad for them in the belief that they are good for them. He did not think so, or pray so; but there are others who are in a very different case. Suppose that the god to whom you are about to pray were to appear to you and ask you, before you began praying, whether you would be happy to be sole ruler of the city of Athens—or, if that [b] seemed mean and tiny, were to offer you all the Greeks as well—or, if he saw that you regarded that too as insignificant unless the whole of Europe were included, were to promise you all of that plus simultaneous acknowledgment by the whole human race of the rule of Alcibiades son of Clinias. If that happened, I imagine, you would go home very happy and think you had come into possession of the greatest of goods.

A
LCIBIADES
: So would anyone else, I imagine, Socrates, if he were given the same promise.

[c] S
OCRATES
: But you would not give your own life in exchange for the territory and sole rule of all the Greeks and all the barbarians?

A
LCIBIADES
: I should think not, since they would be no use to me.

S
OCRATES
: But suppose you were going to use them, but were going to make a bad and harmful use of them? Would you want them then?

A
LCIBIADES
: No.

S
OCRATES
: So you see, it is not safe to accept without thinking what one [d] is given, nor to pray for something which is going to injure one or take away one’s life altogether. We could name many people who set their hearts on obtaining sole rulership, and strove to achieve this goal as a great good, and then had their lives taken by plotters against their rule. I think you are not unaware of the events of the last few days: Archelaus of Macedon was in love with a man whose love for Archelaus’ kingship was greater than Archelaus’ love for him, and who killed his lover in order [e] to make himself a king and a happy man. He had only ruled for three or four days when he in his turn fell victim to a plot and was killed himself.

Among our own citizens too—as we know not just by hearsay, but as
[142]
eye-witnesses—we see some who have longed to command armies, and having got what they wanted are now exiled from the city or have lost their lives altogether. And even those who seem to have done best have lived amidst dangers and fears; not only during their campaigns, but when they have returned home where they have been besieged by informers as tightly as they were by the enemy, so that some of them wished to heaven [b] that they had stayed privates rather than generals. Of course, it would make some sense if these dangers and burdens brought any benefit; but in fact it’s quite the contrary.

You will find the same in the matter of children: some people pray to have them, and when they have them they bring them utter disaster and grief. Some people’s children are so thoroughly bad that they make their whole life a misery; other people have good children and lose them in [c] some calamity and end up no less miserable than the others, wishing they had never had children at all.

However, in spite of all these and similar dire examples, you rarely find anyone who declines a gift or who refrains from praying for what he hopes to be granted. Most people, if given the chance to become a ruler or a general, or any of the other things which bring more harm than good, will [d] not hesitate to take the opportunity; and they will even pray for such things before they are on offer. After a while, however, they change their tune and pray away their former prayers.

I wonder, then, if humans are not wrong in “placing the blame” for their ills on the gods, when “they themselves by their own presumption”—or stupidity, should we say?—“have brought sorrows on themselves beyond their destined lot.”
²
There was a poet who composed a prayer for [e] all his friends to say in common, more or less like this:

King Zeus, whether we pray or not, give us what is good for us
[143]
What is bad for us, give us not, however hard we pray for it.
³

He certainly seems to have been a wise man: I expect he had stupid friends whom he had seen working and praying for things that it was better for them not to have, no matter what they thought. That is what he recommended, and in my view he spoke well and soundly; but if you have anything against what he said, speak up.

A
LCIBIADES
: It is hard, Socrates, to speak against what has been well spoken. One thing I do observe is that the cause of very many human evils is ignorance: it is ignorance which deceives us into doing and—what [b] is worse—praying for the greatest evils. No one, however, thinks thus about himself; each of us thinks himself quite capable of praying not for the worst but for the best. For such a prayer would really seem to be more like a curse than a prayer!

S
OCRATES
: Well said! But perhaps someone even wiser than you and I might say that we were wrong to blame ignorance in such general terms; [c] we should specify what it is ignorance
of
. Indeed, just as ignorance is an evil to some people, there are other people, in certain states, to whom it is a good.

A
LCIBIADES
: How do you mean? Can there be anything of which it is better for people to have ignorance than knowledge, no matter what state they are in?

S
OCRATES
: I think there can; don’t you?

A
LCIBIADES
: No, I don’t; not on your life.

S
OCRATES
: But surely I am not to judge that you would ever want to [d] commit against your mother crimes like those of Orestes and Alcmaeon
⁴
and anyone else like them?

A
LCIBIADES
: Spare me, for God’s sake, Socrates!

S
OCRATES
: It isn’t the person who says that you would not ever want to behave like that whom you should ask to spare you, but rather anyone who contradicted him; for the act seems to you so horrendous that you do not like to hear it spoken of even by way of example. But do you think that Orestes, if he had been of sound mind and known what was best for him to do, would have dared to commit any such crime?

A
LCIBIADES
: No, I don’t.

[e] S
OCRATES
: Nor, I think, would anyone else.

A
LCIBIADES
: Certainly not.

S
OCRATES
: It seems then that it is ignorance of the best, failing to know what is best, that is a bad thing.

A
LCIBIADES
: So it seems.

S
OCRATES
: And not only for the person himself, but also for everyone else?

A
LCIBIADES
: I agree.

S
OCRATES
: Let’s consider a further point. Suppose the thought sprang into your mind that it would be an excellent thing to kill your friend and mentor Pericles,
⁵
and you took a dagger and went to his door and asked
[144]
if he were at home, with the intention of killing him and him alone, and they said he was at home. I don’t mean to say that you would wish to do any such thing; but just suppose that you were to think that the worst thing was the best thing—that’s a thought that might at any time occur to someone who is ignorant of what is really best—or don’t you think so?