c. 4:--"Memoriâ teneo, solitum ipsum narrare, se in primâ juventâ

studium philosophiæ, _ultra quam concessum Romano et senatori_, hausisse; ni prudentia matris incensum ac flagrantem animum coercuisset".

I have already cited this last passage, and commented upon the same point, in my notes at the end of the Euthydêmus, p. 230.]

[Side-note: Position of one who dissents, upon material points, from the fixed opinions and creed of his countrymen.]

That in order to succeed politically, a man must be a genuine believer in the creed of King Nomos or the ruling force--cast in the same spiritual mould--(I here take the word _creed_ not as confined to religion, but as embracing the whole of a man's critical _idéal_, on moral or social practice, politics, or taste--the ends which he deems worthy of being aspired to, or proper to be shunned, by himself or others) is laid down by Sokrates as a general position: and with perfect truth. In disposing of the force or influence of government, whoever possesses that force will use it conformably to his own maxims. A man who dissents from these maxims will find no favour in the public assembly; nor, probably, if his dissent be grave and wide, will he ever be able to speak out his convictions aloud in it, without incurring dangerous antipathy. But what is to become of such a dissenter[122]--the man who frequents the same porticos with the people, but does not hold the same creed, nor share their judgments respecting social _expetenda_ and _fugienda_? How is he to be treated by the government, or by the orthodox majority of society in their individual capacity? Debarred, by the necessity of the case, from influence over the public councils--what latitude of pursuit, profession, or conduct, is to be left to him as a citizen? How far is he to question, or expose, or require to be proved, that which the majority believe without proof? Shall he be required to profess, or to obey, or to refrain from contradicting, religious or ethical doctrines which he has examined and rejected? Shall such requirement be enforced by threat of legal penalties, or of ill-treatment from individuals, which is not less intolerable than legal penalties? What is likely to be his character, if compelled to suppress all declaration of his own creed, and to act and speak as if he were believer in another?

[Footnote 122: Horat. Epist. i. 1, 70--

"Quod si me populus Romanus forté roget, cur Non ut porticibus, sic judiciis fruar iisdem, Nec sequar aut fugiam quæ diligit ipse vel odit: Olim quod vulpes ægroto cauta leoni Respondit, referam: Quia me vestigia terrent Omnia te adversum spectantia, nulla retrorsum."]

[Side-note: Probable feelings of Plato on this subject. Claim put forward in the Gorgias of an independent _locus standi_ for philosophy, but without the indiscriminate cross-examination pursued by Sokrates.]

The questions here suggested must have impressed themselves forcibly on the mind of Plato when he recollected the fate of Sokrates. In spite of a blameless life, Sokrates had been judicially condemned and executed for publicly questioning received opinions, innovating upon the established religion, and instilling into young persons habits of doubt. To dissent only for the better, afforded no assurance of safety: and Plato knew well that his own dissent from the Athenian public was even wider and more systematic than that of his master. The position and plan of life for an active-minded reasoner, dissenting from the established opinions of the public, could not but be an object of interesting reflection to him.[123] The Gorgias (written, in my judgment, long after the death of Sokrates, probably after the Platonic school was established) announces the vocation of the philosopher, and claims an open field for speculation, apart from the actualities of politics--for the self-acting reason of the individual doubter and investigator, against the authority of numbers and the pressure of inherited tradition. A formal assertion to this effect was worthy of the founder of the Academy--the earliest philosophical school at Athens. Yet we may observe that while the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias adopts the life of philosophy, he does not renew that farther demand with which the historical Sokrates had coupled it in his Apology--the liberty of oral and aggressive cross-examination, addressed to individuals personally and indiscriminately[124]--to the _primores populi_ as well as to the _populum tributim_. The fate of Sokrates rendered Plato more cautious, and induced him to utter his ethical interrogations and novelties of opinion in no other way except that of lectures to chosen hearers and written dialogue: borrowing the name of Sokrates or some other speaker, and refraining upon system (as his letters[125] tell us that he did) from publishing any doctrines in his own name.

[Footnote 123: I have already referred to the treatise of Mr. John Stuart Mill "On Liberty," where this important topic is discussed in a manner equally profound and enlightened. The co-existence of individual reasoners enquiring and philosophising for themselves, with the fixed opinions of the majority, is one of the main conditions which distinguish a progressive from a stationary community.]

[Footnote 124: Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 21-22-23-28 E. [Greek: tou= de\ theou= ta/ttontos, ô(s e)gô\ ô)|ê/thên te kai\ u(pe/labon, philophou=nta me dei=n zê=|n kai\ _e)xeta/zonta e)mauto/n te kai\ tou\s a)/llous_], &c.]

[Footnote 125: Plat. Epist. ii. 314 B. K. F. Hermann (Ueber Platon's Schriftstellerische Motive, p. 290) treats any such prudential discretion, in respect to the form and mode of putting forward unpopular opinions, as unworthy of Plato, and worthy only of Protagoras and other Sophists. I dissent from this opinion altogether. We know that Protagoras was very circumspect as to form (Timon ap. Sext. Emp. adv. Mathemat. ix. s. 57); but the passage of Plato cited by Hermann does not prove it.]

[Side-note: Importance of maintaining the utmost liberty of discussion. Tendency of all ruling orthodoxy towards intolerance.]

As a man dissenting from received opinions, Sokrates had his path marked out in the field of philosophy or individual speculation. To such a mind as his, the fullest liberty ought to be left, of professing and defending his own opinions, as well as of combating other opinions, accredited or not, which he may consider false or uncertified.[126] The public guidance of the state thus falls to one class of minds, the activity of speculative discussion to another; though accident may produce, here and there, a superior individual, comprehensive or dexterous enough to suffice for both. But the main desideratum is that this freedom of discussion should exist: that room shall be made, and encouragement held out, to the claims of individual reason, and to the full publication of all doubts or opinions, be they what they may: that the natural tendency of all ruling force, whether in few or in many hands, to perpetuate their own dogmas by proscribing or silencing all heretics and questioners, may be neutralised as far as possible. The great expansive vigour of the Greek mind--the sympathy felt among the best varieties of Greeks for intellectual superiority in all its forms--and the privilege of free speech ([Greek: par)r(êsi/a]), on which the democratical citizens of Athens prided themselves--did in fact neutralise very considerably these tendencies in Athens. A greater and more durable liberty of philosophising was procured for Athens, and through Athens for Greece generally, than had ever been known before in the history of mankind.

[Footnote 126: So Sokrates also says in the Platonic Apology, pp. 31-32. [Greek: Ou) ga\r e)/stin o(/stis a)nthrô/pôn sôthê/setai ou)/te u(mi=n ou)/te a)/llô| plê/thei ou)deni\ gnêsi/ôs e)nantiou/menos, kai\ diakôlu/ôn polla\ a)/dika kai\ para/noma e)n tê=| po/lei gi/gnesthai; a)ll' a)nagkai=o/n e)sti to\n tô=| o)/nti machou/menon u(pe\r tou= dikai/ou, kai\ ei) me/llei o)li/gon chro/non sôthê/sesthai, _i)diôteu/ein a)lla\ mê\ dêmosieu/ein_.]

The reader will find the speculative individuality of Sokrates illustrated in the sixty-eighth chapter of my History of Greece.

The antithesis of the philosophising or speculative life, against the rhetorical, political, forensic life--which is put so much to the advantage of the former by Plato in the Gorgias, Theætêtus (p. 173, seq.), and elsewhere was the theme of Cicero's lost dialogue called Hortensius: wherein Hortensius was introduced pleading the cause against philosophy, (see Orelli, Fragm. Ciceron. pp. 479-480), while the other speakers were provided by Cicero with arguments mainly in defence of philosophy, partly also against rhetoric. The competition between the teachers of rhetoric and the teachers of philosophy continued to be not merely animated but bitter, from Plato downward throughout the Ciceronian age. (Cicero, De Orat. i. 45-46-47-75, &c.)

We read in the treatise of Plutarch against the Epikurean Kolôtes, an acrimonious invective against Epikurus and his followers, for recommending a scheme of life such as to withdraw men from active political functions (Plutarch, adv. Kolôt. pp. 1125 C, 1127-1128); the like also in his other treatise, Non Posse Suaviter Vivi secundum Epicurum. But Plutarch at the same time speaks as if Epikurus were the only philosopher who had recommended this, and as if all the other philosophers had recommended an active life; nay, he talks of Plato among the philosophers actively engaged in practical reformatory legislation, through Dion and the pupils of the Academy (p. 1126, B, C). Here Plutarch mistakes: the Platonic tendencies were quite different from what he supposes. The Gorgias and Theætêtus enforce upon the philosopher a life quite apart from politics, pursuing his own course, and not meddling with others--[Greek: philoso/phou ta\ au(tou= pra/xantos kai\ ou) polupragmonê/santos e)n tô=| bi/ô|] (Gorg. 526 C); which is the same advice as Epikurus gave. It is set forth eloquently in the poetry of Lucretius, but it had been set forth previously, not less eloquently, in the rhetoric of Plato.]

[Side-note: Issue between philosophy and rhetoric--not satisfactorily handled by Plato. Injustice done to rhetoric. Ignoble manner in which it is presented by Polus and Kalliklês.]

This antithesis of the philosophical life to the rhetorical or political, constitutes one of the most interesting features of the Platonic Gorgias. But when we follow the pleadings upon which Plato rests this grand issue, and the line which he draws between the two functions, we find much that is unsatisfactory. Since Plato himself pleads both sides of the case, he is bound in fairness to set forth the case which he attacks (that of rhetoric), as it would be put by competent and honourable advocates--by Perikles, for example, or Demosthenes, or Isokrates, or Quintilian. He does this, to a certain extent, in the first part of the dialogue, carried on by Sokrates with Gorgias. But in the succeeding portions--carried on with Pôlus and Kalliklês, and occupying three-fourths of the whole--he alters the character of the defence, and merges it in ethical theories which Perikles, had he been the defender, would not only have put aside as misplaced, but disavowed as untrue. Perikles would have listened with mixed surprise and anger, if he had heard any one utter the monstrous assertion which Plato puts into the mouth of Polus--That rhetors, like despots, kill, impoverish, or expel any citizen at their pleasure. Though Perikles was the most powerful of all Athenian rhetors, yet he had to contend all his life against fierce opposition from others, and was even fined during his last years. He would hardly have understood how an Athenian citizen could have made any assertion so completely falsified by all the history of Athens, respecting the omnipotence of the rhetors. Again, if he had heard Kalliklês proclaiming that the strong giant had a natural right to satiate all his desires at the cost of the weaker Many--and that these latter sinned against Nature when they took precautions to prevent him--Perikles would have protested against the proclamation as emphatically as Plato.[127]

[Footnote 127: Perikles might indeed have referred to his own panegyrical oration in Thucydides, ii. 37.]

[Side-note: Perikles would have accepted the defence of rhetoric, as Plato has put it into the mouth of Gorgias.]

If we suppose Perikles to have undertaken the defence of the rhetorical element at Athens, against the dialectic element represented by Sokrates, he would have accepted it, though not a position of his own choosing, on the footing on which Plato places it in the mouth of Gorgias: "Rhetoric is an engine of persuasion addressed to numerous assembled auditors: it ensures freedom to the city (through the free exercise of such a gift by many competing orators) and political ascendency or command to the ablest rhetor. It thus confers great power on him who possesses it in the highest measure: but he ought by no means to employ that power for unjust purposes." It is very probable that Perikles might have recommended rhetorical study to Sokrates, as a means of defending himself against unjust accusations, and of acquiring a certain measure of influence on public affairs.[128] But he would have distinguished carefully (as Horace does) between defending yourself against unjust attacks, and making unjust attacks upon others: though the same weapon may suit for both.

[Footnote 128: Horat. Satir. ii. 1, 39--

"Hic stilus haud petet ultro Quemquam animantem; et me veluti custodiet ensis Vaginâ tectus; quem cur destringere coner, Tutus ab infestis latronibus? Oh pater et rex Jupiter! ut pereat positum rubigine telum, Nec quisquam noceat cupido mihi pacis! At ille Qui me commôrit (melius non tangere! clamo) Flebit, et insignis totâ cantabitur urbe."

We need only read the Memorabilia of Xenophon (ii. 9), to see that the historical Sokrates judged of these matters differently from the Platonic Sokrates of the Gorgias. Kriton complained to Sokrates that life was difficult at Athens for a quiet man who wished only to mind his own business ([Greek: ta\ e(autou= pra/ttein]); because there were persons who brought unjust actions at law against him, for the purpose of extorting money to buy them off. The Platonic Sokrates of the Gorgias would have replied to him: "Never mind: you are just, and these assailants are unjust: they are by their own conduct entailing upon themselves a terrible distemper, from which, if you leave them unpunished, they will suffer all their lives: they injure themselves more than they injure you". But the historical Sokrates in Xenophon replies in quite another spirit. He advises Kriton to look out for a clever and active friend, to attach this person to his interest by attention and favours, and to trust to him for keeping off the assailants. Accordingly, a poor but energetic man named Archedemus is found, who takes Kriton's part against the assailants, and even brings counterattacks against them, which force them to leave Kriton alone, and to give money to Archedemus himself. The advice given by the Xenophontic Sokrates to Kriton is the same in principle as the advice given by Kallikles to the Platonic Sokrates.]

[Side-note: The Athenian people recognise a distinction between the pleasurable and the good: but not the same as that which Plato conceived.]

Farther, neither Perikles, nor any defender of free speech, would assent to the definition of rhetoric--That it is a branch of the art of flattery, studying the immediately pleasurable, and disregarding the good.[129] This indeed represents Plato's own sentiment, and was true in the sense which the Platonic Sokrates assigns (in the Gorgias, though not in the Protagoras) to the words _good_ and _evil_. But it is not true in the sense which the Athenian people and the Athenian public men assigned to those words. Both the one and the other used the words _pleasurable_ and _good_ as familiarly as Plato, and had sentiments corresponding to both of them. The pleasurable and painful referred to present and temporary causes: the Good and Evil to prospective causes and permanent situations, involving security against indefinite future suffering, combined with love of national dignity and repugnance to degradation, as well as with a strong sense of common interests and common obligations to each other. To provide satisfaction for these common patriotic feelings--to sustain the dignity of the city by effective and even imposing public establishments, against foreign enemies--to protect the individual rights of citizens by an equitable administration of justice--counted in the view of the Athenians as objects _good_ and _honourable_: while the efforts and sacrifices necessary for these permanent ends, were, so far as they went, a renunciation of what they would call the _pleasurable_. When, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians, acting on the advice of Perikles, allowed all Attica to be ravaged, and submitted to the distress of cooping the whole population within the long walls, rather than purchase peace by abnegating their Hellenic dignity, independence, and security--they not only renounced much that was pleasurable, but endured great immediate distress, for the sake of what they regarded as a permanent good.[130] Eighty years afterwards, when Demosthenes pointed out to them the growing power and encroachments of the Macedonian Philip, and exhorted them to the efforts requisite for keeping back that formidable enemy, while there was yet time--they could not be wound up to the pitch requisite for affronting so serious an amount of danger and suffering. They had lost that sense of Hellenic dignity, and that association of self-respect with active personal soldiership and sailorship, which rendered submission to an enemy the most intolerable of all pains, at the time when Perikles had addressed them. They shut their eyes to an impending danger, which ultimately proved their ruin. On both these occasions, we have the _pleasurable_ and the _good_ brought into contrast in the Athenian mind; in both we have the two most eminent orators of Grecian antiquity enforcing the _good_ in opposition to the _pleasurable_: the first successfully, the last vainly, in opposition to other orators.

[Footnote 129: The reply composed by the rhetor Aristeides to the Gorgias of Plato is well deserving of perusal, though (like all his compositions) it is very prolix and wordy. See Aristeides, Orationes xlv. and xlvi.--[Greek: Perei\ R(êtorikê=s], and [Greek: U(pe\r tô=n Tetta/rôn]. In the last of the two orations he defends the four eminent Athenians (Miltiades, Themistoklês, Periklês, Kimon) whom Plato disparages in the Gorgias.

Aristeides insists forcibly on the partial and narrow view here taken by Plato of persuasion, as a working force both for establishing laws and carrying on government. He remarks truly that there are only two forces between which the choice must be made, intimidation and persuasion: that the substitution of persuasion in place of force is the great improvement which has made public and private life worth having ([Greek: mo/nê biôto\n ê(mi=n pepoi/êke to\n bi/on], Orat. xlv. p. 64, Dindorf); that neither laws could be discussed and passed, nor judicial trial held under them, without [Greek: r(êtorikê\] as the engine of persuasion (pp. 66-67-136); that Plato in attacking Rhetoric had no right to single out despots and violent conspirators as illustrations of it--[Greek: ei)=t' e)le/gchein me\n bou/letai tê\n r(êtorikê/n, katêgorei= de\ tô=n tura/nnôn kai\ dunastô=n, _ta\ a)/mikta mignu/s--ti/s_ ga\r ou)k oi)=den, o(/ti r(êtorikê\ kai\ turanni\s tosou=ton a)llê/lôn kechôri/stai, o(/son to\ pei/thein tou= bia/zesthai] (p. 99). He impugns the distinction which Plato has drawn between [Greek: i)atrikê/, gumnastikê/, kubernêtikê/, nomothetikê/], &c., on the one side, which Plato calls [Greek: te/chnai], arts or sciences, and affirms to rest on scientific principles--and [Greek: r(êtorikê/, mageirikê/], &c., on the other side, which Plato affirms to be only guess work or groping, resting on empirical analogies. Aristeides says that [Greek: i)atrikê\] and [Greek: r(êtorikê\] are in this respect both on a par; that both are partly reducible to rule, but partly also driven by necessity to conjectures and analogies, and the physician not less than the rhetor (pp. 45-48-49); which the Platonic Sokrates himself affirms in another dialogue, Philêbus, p. 56 A.

The most curious part of the argument of Aristeides is where he disputes the prerogative which Plato had claimed for [Greek: i)atrikê/, gumnastikê/] &c., on the ground of their being arts or reducible to rules. The effects of human art (says Aristeides) are much inferior to those of [Greek: thei/a moi=ra] or divine inspiration. Many patients are cured of disease by human art; but many more are cured by the responses and directions of the Delphian oracle, by the suggestion of dreams, and by other varieties of the divine prompting, delivered through the Pythian priestess, a woman altogether ignorant (p. 11). [Greek: kai/toi mikra\ me\n ê( pa/ntas ei)dui=a lo/gous i)atrikê\ pro\s ta\s e)k Delphô=n du/natai lu/seis, o(/sai kai\ i)di/a| kai\ koinê=| kai\ no/sôn kai\ pathêma/tôn a(pantôn a)nthrôpi/nôn e)pha/nthêsan.] Patients who are cured in this way by the Gods without medical art, acquire a natural impulse which leads them to the appropriate remedy--[Greek: e)pithumi/a au)tou\s a)/gei e)pi\ to\ o)/nêson] (p. 20). Aristeides says that he can himself depose--from his own personal experience as a sick man seeking cure, and from personal knowledge of many other such--how much more efficacious in healing is aid from the Gods, given in dreams and other ways, than advice from physicians; who might well shudder when they heard the stories which he could tell (pp. 21-22). To undervalue science and art (he says) is the principle from which men start, when they flee to the Gods for help--[Greek: tou= kataphugei=n e)pi\ tou\s theou\s schedo\n a)rchê/, to\ tê=s te/chnês u(peridei=n e)/stin.]]

[Footnote 130: Nothing can be more at variance with the doctrine which Plato assigns to Kalliklês in the Gorgias, than the three memorable speeches of Perikles in Thucydides, i. 144, ii. 35, ii. 60, seq. All these speeches are penetrated with the deepest sense of that [Greek: koinôni/a] and [Greek: phili/a] which the Platonic Sokrates extols: not one of them countenances [Greek: pleonexi/an], which the Platonic Sokrates forbids (Gorg. 508 E). [Greek: To\ prostalaipôrei=n tô=| do/xanti kalô=|] (to use the expressive phrase of Thucydides,