Complete Works (325 page)

C
LINIAS
: What a pernicious doctrine you’ve explained, sir! It must be [b] the ruin of the younger generation, both in the state at large and in private families.

A
THENIAN
: That’s very true, Clinias. So what do you think the legislator ought to do, faced with such a long-established thesis as this? Is he simply to stand up in public and threaten all the citizens with punishment if they don’t admit the existence of gods and mentally accept the law’s description of them? He could make the same threat about their notions of beauty and justice and all such vital concepts, as well as about anything that encourages virtue or vice; he could demand that the citizens’ belief and [c] actions should accord with his written instructions, and insist that anyone not showing the proper obedience to the laws must be punished either by death, or by a whipping and imprisonment, deprivation of civic rights, or by being sent into exile a poorer man. But what about
persuading
them? When he establishes a legal code for his people, shouldn’t he try to talk them into being as amenable as he can make them?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly, sir. If even limited persuasion can be applied in this [d] field, no legislator of even moderate ability should shrink from making the effort. On the contrary, he should argue ‘till the cows come home’, as the saying is, to back up the old doctrine that the gods exist, and to support the other arguments you ran through just now. In particular, he should defend law itself and art as either part of nature or existing by reason of some no less powerful agency—being in fact, to tell the truth, creations of reason. That, I think, is the point you’re making, and I agree.

A
THENIAN
: Really, Clinias, you
are
enthusiastic! But when these themes [e] are presented as you suggest, in addresses composed for a popular audience, aren’t they found rather difficult to understand? And don’t the addresses tend to go on for ever?

C
LINIAS
: Well, sir, we put up with one long discussion, about inebriation in the cause of culture, so surely we can tolerate another, about theology and so forth. And of course this helps intelligent legislation tremendously,
[891]
because legal instructions, once written down, remain fixed and permanent, ready to stand up to scrutiny forever. So there’s no reason for alarm if at first they make difficult listening, because your slow learner will be able to go back again and again and examine them. Nor does their length, provided they’re useful, justify any man in committing what seems to me, at least, an impiety: I mean refusing to facilitate these explanations as best he can.

M
EGILLUS
: Yes, sir, I entirely approve of what Clinias says.

[b] A
THENIAN
: As well you may, Megillus, and we must do as he suggests. Of course, if this sort of argument had not been disseminated so widely over pretty well the entire human race, there would be no call for arguments to prove the existence of gods. But in present circumstances we’ve no choice. When the most important laws are being trampled under foot by scoundrels, whose duty is it to rush to their defense, if not the legislator’s?

M
EGILLUS
: Nobody’s.

[c] A
THENIAN
: Now then, Clinias, you must take your share in the explanation, so tell me your opinion again. I assume the upholder of this doctrine thinks of fire and water, earth and air as being the first of all substances, and this is precisely what he means by the term ‘nature’; soul, he thinks, was derived from them, at a later stage. No, I do more than ‘assume’: I’d say he argues the point explicitly.

C
LINIAS
: True.

A
THENIAN
: Now then, by heaven, haven’t we discovered the fountainhead, so to speak, of the senseless opinions of all those who have ever undertaken investigation into nature? Scrutinize carefully every stage in [d] their argument, because it will be crucial if we can show that these people who have embraced impious doctrines and lead others on are using fallacious arguments rather than cogent ones—which I think is in fact the case.

C
LINIAS
: You’re right, but try to explain their error.

A
THENIAN
: Well, it looks as if we have to embark on a rather unfamiliar line of argument.

C
LINIAS
: Don’t hesitate, sir. I realize you think we’ll be straying outside legislation if we attempt such an explanation, but if this is the only way [e] to reach agreement that the beings currently described as gods in our law are properly so described, then this, my dear sir, is the kind of explanation we must give.

A
THENIAN
: So it looks as if I must now argue along rather unfamiliar lines. Well then, the doctrine which produces an impious soul also ‘produces’, in a sense, the soul itself, in that it denies the priority of what was in fact the first cause of the birth and destruction of all things, and regards it as a later creation. Conversely, it asserts that what actually came later, came first. That’s the source of the mistake these people have made about the real nature of the gods.

[892]
C
LINIAS
: So far, the point escapes me.

A
THENIAN
: It’s the
soul
, my good friend, that nearly everybody seems to have misunderstood, not realizing its nature and power. Quite apart from the other points about it, people are particularly ignorant about its birth. It is one of the
first
creations, born long before all physical things, and is the chief cause of all their alterations and transformations. Now if that’s true, anything closely related to soul will necessarily have been created before material things, won’t it, since soul itself is older than matter? [b]

C
LINIAS
: Necessarily.

A
THENIAN
: Opinion, diligence, reason, art and law will be prior to roughness and smoothness, heaviness and lightness. In particular, the grand and primary works and creations, precisely
because
they come in the category ‘primary’, will be attributable to art. Natural things, and nature herself—to use the mistaken terminology of our opponents—will be secondary products from art and reason.

C
LINIAS
: Why do you say ‘mistaken’? [c]

A
THENIAN
: When they use the term ‘nature’, they mean the process by which the primary substances were created. But if it can be shown that soul came first, not fire or air, and that it was one of the first things to be created, it will be quite correct to say that soul is preeminently natural. This is true, provided you can demonstrate that soul is older than matter, but not otherwise.

C
LINIAS
: Very true.

A
THENIAN
: So this is precisely the point we have to tackle next? [d]

C
LINIAS
: Of course.

A
THENIAN
: It’s an extremely tricky argument, and we old men must be careful not to be taken in by its freshness and novelty, so that it eludes our grasp and makes us look like ridiculous fools whose ambitious ideas lead to failure even in little things. Just consider. Imagine the three of us had to cross a river in spate, and I were the younger and had plenty of experience of currents. Suppose I said, ‘I ought to try first on my own [e] account, and leave you two in safety while I see if the river is fordable for you two older men as well, or if not, just how bad it is. If it turns out to be fordable, I’ll then call you and put my experience at your disposal in helping you to cross; but if in the event it cannot be crossed by old men like yourselves, then the only risk has been mine.’ Wouldn’t that strike you as fair enough? The situation is the same now: the argument ahead runs too deep, and men as weak as you will probably get out of your depth. I want to prevent you novices in answering from being dazed and dizzied by a stream of questions, which would put you in an undignified
[893]
and humiliating position you’d find most unpleasant. So this is what I think I’d better do now: first I’ll ask questions of myself, while you listen in safety; then I’ll go over the answers again and in this way work through the whole argument until the soul has been thoroughly dealt with and its priority to matter proved.

C
LINIAS
: We think that’s a splendid idea, sir. Please act on your suggestion.

A
THENIAN
: Come then, if ever we needed to call upon the help of God, [b] it’s now. Let’s take it the gods have been most pressingly invoked to assist the proof of their own existence, and let’s rely on their help as if it were a rope steadying us as we enter the deep waters of our present theme. Now when I’m under interrogation on this sort of topic, and such questions as the following are put to me, the safest replies seem to be these. Suppose someone asks ‘Sir, do all things stand still, and does nothing move? Or is precisely the opposite true? Or do some things move, while others are [c] motionless?’ My reply will be ‘I suppose some move and others remain at rest.’ ‘So surely there must be some
space
in which the stationary objects remain at rest, and those in motion move?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Some of them, presumably, will do so in one location, others in several?’ ‘Do you mean’, we shall reply, ‘that “moving in one location” is the action of objects which are able to keep their centers immobile? For instance, there are circles which are said to “stay put” even though as a whole they are revolving.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And we appreciate that when a disk revolves like that, points near and far from the center describe circles of different radii in the same time; [d] their motion varies according to these radii and is proportionately quick or slow. This motion gives rise to all sorts of wonderful phenomena, because these points simultaneously traverse circles of large and small circumference at proportionately high or low speeds—an effect one might have expected to be impossible.’ ‘You’re quite right.’ ‘When you speak of motion in many locations I suppose you’re referring to objects that are always leaving one spot and moving on to another. Sometimes their motion involves only one point of contact with their successive situations, sometimes [e] several, as in rolling.

‘From time to time objects meet; a moving one colliding with a stationary one disintegrates, but if it meets other objects traveling in the opposite direction they coalesce into a single intermediate substance, half one and half the other.’ ‘Yes, I agree to your statement of the case.’ ‘Further, such combination leads to an increase in bulk, while their separation leads to diminution—so long as the existing states of the objects remain unimpaired; but if either combination or separation entails the abolition of the existing state, the objects concerned are destroyed.

[894]
‘Now, what conditions are always present when anything is produced? Clearly, an initial impulse grows and reaches the second stage and then the third stage out of the second, finally (at the third stage) presenting percipient beings with something to perceive. This then is the process of change and alteration to which everything owes its birth. A thing exists as such so long as it is stable, but when it changes its essential state it is completely destroyed.’

So, my friends, haven’t we now classified and numbered all forms of [b] motion, except two?

C
LINIAS
: Which two?

A
THENIAN
: My dear chap, they are the two which constitute the real purpose of every question we’ve asked.

C
LINIAS
: Try to be more explicit.

A
THENIAN
: What we really had in view was soul, wasn’t it?

C
LINIAS
: Certainly.

A
THENIAN
: The one kind of motion is that which is permanently capable of moving other things but not itself; the other is permanently capable of moving
both
itself
and
other things by processes of combination and separation, increase and diminution, generation and destruction. Let these stand as two further distinct types in our complete list of motions. [c]

C
LINIAS
: Agreed.

A
THENIAN
: So we shall put ninth the kind which always imparts motion to something else and is itself changed by another thing. Then
³
to be first, in ancestry as well there’s the motion that moves both itself and other things, suitable for all active and passive processes and accurately termed the source of change and motion in all things that exist. I suppose we’ll call that the tenth.

C
LINIAS
: Certainly.

A
THENIAN
: Now which of our (roughly) ten motions should we be justified in singling out as the most powerful and radically effective? [d]

C
LINIAS
: We can’t resist the conclusion that the motion which can generate itself is infinitely superior, and all the others are inferior to it.

A
THENIAN
: Well said! So shouldn’t we correct one or two inaccuracies in the points we’ve just made?

C
LINIAS
: What sort of inaccuracy do you mean?

A
THENIAN
: It wasn’t quite right to call that motion the ‘tenth’.

C
LINIAS
: Why not?

A
THENIAN
: It can be shown to be first, in ancestry as well as in power; the next kind—although oddly enough a moment ago we called it ‘ninth’—[e] we’ll put second.

C
LINIAS
: What are you getting at?

A
THENIAN
: This: when we find one thing producing a change in another, and that in turn affecting something else, and so forth, will there ever be, in such a sequence, an original cause of change? How could anything whose motion is transmitted to it from something else be the
first
thing to effect an alteration? It’s impossible. In reality, when something which has set itself moving effects an alteration in something, and that in turn effects something else, so that the motion is transmitted to thousands upon thousands of things one after another, the entire sequence of their
[895]
movements must surely spring from some initial principle, which can hardly be anything except the change effected by self-generated motion.