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Socrates, that the sons of good flute-players would be more likely to be good
than the sons of bad ones? I think not. Would not their sons grow up to be
distinguished or undistinguished according to their own natural capacities as
flute-players, and the son of a good player would often turn out to be a bad
one, and the son of a bad player to be a good one, all flute-players would be
good enough in comparison of those who were ignorant and unacquainted
with the art of flute-playing? In like manner I would have you consider that
he who appears to you to be the worst of those who have been brought up in
laws and humanities, would appear to be a just man and a master of justice if
he were to be compared with men who had no education, or courts of justice,
or laws, or any restraints upon them which compelled them to practise virtue
— with the savages, for example, whom the poet Pherecrates exhibited on the
stage at the last year’s Lenaean festival. If you were living among men such
as the man-haters in his Chorus, you would be only too glad to meet with
Eurybates and Phrynondas, and you would sorrowfully long to revisit the
rascality of this part of the world. You, Socrates, are discontented, and why?
Because all men are teachers of virtue, each one according to his ability; and
you say Where are the teachers? You might as well ask, Who teaches Greek?
For of that too there will not be any teachers found. Or you might ask, Who is
to teach the sons of our artisans this same art which they have learned of their
fathers? He and his fellow-workmen have taught them to the best of their
ability,—but who will carry them further in their arts? And you would
certainly have a difficulty, Socrates, in finding a teacher of them; but there
would be no difficulty in finding a teacher of those who are wholly ignorant.
And this is true of virtue or of anything else; if a man is better able than we
are to promote virtue ever so little, we must be content with the result. A
teacher of this sort I believe myself to be, and above all other men to have the
knowledge which makes a man noble and good; and I give my pupils their
money’s-worth, and even more, as they themselves confess. And therefore I
have introduced the following mode of payment:—When a man has been my
pupil, if he likes he pays my price, but there is no compulsion; and if he does
not like, he has only to go into a temple and take an oath of the value of the
instructions, and he pays no more than he declares to be their value.
Such is my Apologue, Socrates, and such is the argument by which I
endeavour to show that virtue may be taught, and that this is the opinion of
the Athenians. And I have also attempted to show that you are not to wonder
at good fathers having bad sons, or at good sons having bad fathers, of which
the sons of Polycleitus afford an example, who are the companions of our
friends here, Paralus and Xanthippus, but are nothing in comparison with their
father; and this is true of the sons of many other artists. As yet I ought not to
say the same of Paralus and Xanthippus themselves, for they are young and
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Buch The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Titel
- The Complete Plato
- Autor
- Plato
- Datum
- ~347 B.C.
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 1612
- Schlagwörter
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Kategorien
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International