Page - 1115 - in The Complete Plato

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