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Yes, I said; and what a delightful life they lead! they are always doctoring
and increasing and complicating their disorders, and always fancying that
they will be cured by any nostrum which anybody advises them to try.
Such cases are very common, he said, with invalids of this sort.
Yes, I replied; and the charming thing is that they deem him their worst
enemy who tells them the truth, which is simply that, unless they give up
eating and drinking and wenching and idling, nether drug nor cautery nor
spell nor amulet nor any other remedy will avail.
Charming! he replied. I see nothing in going into a passion with a man who
tells you what is right.
These gentlemen, I said, do not seem to be in your good graces.
Assuredly not.
Nor would you praise the behavior of States which act like the men whom I
was just now describing. For are there not ill-ordered States in which the
citizens are forbidden under pain of death to alter the constitution; and yet he
who most sweetly courts those who live under this regime and indulges them
and fawns upon them and is skilful in anticipating and gratifying their humors
is held to be a great and good statesman—do not these States resemble the
persons whom I was describing?
Yes, he said; the States are as bad as the men; and I am very far from
praising them.
But do you not admire, I said, the coolness and dexterity of these ready
ministers of political corruption?
Yes, he said, I do; but not of all of them, for there are some whom the
applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really
statesmen, and these are not much to be admired.
What do you mean? I said; you should have more feeling for them. When a
man cannot measure, and a great many others who cannot measure declare
that he is four cubits high, can he help believing what they say?
Nay, he said, certainly not in that case.
Well, then, do not be angry with them; for are they not as good as a play,
trying their hand at paltry reforms such as I was describing; they are always
fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and
the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in
reality cutting off the heads of a hydra?
Yes, he said; that is just what they are doing.
1115
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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