ii. 53) was a remarkable feature in the character of the Athenians of

that day: it was subdued for the moment by the overwhelming misery of pestilence and war combined.]

[Side-note: Rhetoric was employed at Athens in appealing to all the various established sentiments and opinions. Erroneous inferences raised by the Kalliklês of Plato.]

Lastly, it is not merely the political power of the Athenians that Perikles employs his eloquence to uphold. He dwells also with emphasis on the elegance of taste, on the intellectual force and activity, which warranted him in decorating the city with the title of Preceptress of Hellas.[131] All this belongs, not to the pleasurable as distinguished from the good, but to good (whether immediately pleasurable or not) in its most comprehensive sense, embracing the improvement and refinement of the collective mind. If Perikles, in this remarkable funeral harangue, flattered the sentiments of the people--as he doubtless did--he flattered them by kindling their aspirations towards good. And Plato himself does the same (though less nobly and powerfully), adopting the received framework of Athenian sentiment, in his dialogue called Menexenus, which we shall come to in a future chapter.

[Footnote 131: Thucyd. ii. 41-42. [Greek: xunelô/n te le/gô tê/n te pa=san po/lin tê=s E(lla/dos pai/deusin ei)=nai], &c.]

[Side-note: The Platonic Idéal exacts, as good, some order, system, discipline. But order may be directed to bad ends as well as to good. Divergent ideas about virtue.]

The issue, therefore, which Plato here takes against Rhetoric, must stand or fall with the Platonic Idéal of Good and Evil. But when he thus denounces both the general public and the most patriotic rhetors, to ensure exclusive worship for his own Idéal of Good--we may at least require that he shall explain, wherein consists that Good--by what mark it is distinguishable--and on what authority pre-eminence is claimed for it. So far, indeed, we advance by the help of Plato's similes[132]--order, discipline, health and strength of body--that we are called upon to recognise, apart from all particular moments of enjoyment or suffering, of action or quiescence, a certain permanent mental condition and habit--a certain order, regulation, discipline--as an object of high importance to be attained. This (as I have before remarked) is a valuable idea which pervades, in one form or another, all the Hellenic social views, from Sokrates downward, and even before Sokrates; an idea, moreover, which was common to Peripatetics, Stoics, Epikureans. But mental order and discipline is not in itself an end: it may be differently cast, and may subserve many different purposes. The Pythagorean brotherhood was intensely restrictive in its canons. The Spartan system exhibited the strictest order and discipline--an assemblage of principles and habits predetermined by authority and enforced upon all--yet neither Plato nor Aristotle approve of its results. Order and discipline attained full perfection in the armies of Julius Caesar and the French Emperor Napoleon; in the middle ages, also, several of the monastic orders stood high in respect to finished discipline pervading the whole character: and the Jesuits stood higher than any. Each of these systems has included terms equivalent to justice, temperance, virtue, vice, &c., with sentiments associated therewith, yet very different from what Plato would have approved. The question--What is Virtue?--_Vir bonus est quis?_--will be answered differently in each. The Spartans--when they entrapped (by a delusive pretence of liberation and military decoration) two thousand of their bravest Helot warriors, and took them off by private assassinations,[133]--did not offend against their own idea of virtue, or against the Platonic exigency of Order--Measure--System.

[Footnote 132: Plat. Gorg. p. 504.]

[Footnote 133: Thucydid. iv. 80.]

[Side-note: How to discriminate the right order from the wrong. Plato does not advise us.]

It is therefore altogether unsatisfactory, when Plato--professing to teach us how to determine scientifically, which pleasures are bad, and which pains are good--refers to a durable mental order and discipline. Of such order there existed historically many varieties; and many more are conceivable, as Plato himself has shown in the Republic and Leges. By what tests is the right order to be distinguished from the wrong? If by its results, by _what_ results?--calculations for minimising pains, and maximising pleasures, being excluded by the supposition? Here the Sokrates of the Gorgias is at fault. He has not told us by what scientific test the intelligent Expert proceeds in determining what pleasures are bad, and what pains are good. He leaves such determination to the unscientific sentiment of each society and each individual. He has not, in fact, responded to the clear and pertinent challenge thrown out by the Sokrates of the Protagoras.

[Side-note: The Gorgias upholds the independence and dignity of the dissenting philosopher.]

I think, for these reasons, that the logic of the Gorgias is not at all on a par with its eloquence. But there is one peculiar feature which distinguishes it among all the Platonic dialogues. Nowhere in ancient literature is the title, position, and dignity of individual dissenting opinion, ethical and political--against established ethical and political orthodoxy--so clearly marked out and so boldly asserted. "The Athenians will judge as they think right: none but those speakers who are in harmony with them, have any chance of addressing their public assemblies with effect, and acquiring political influence. I, Sokrates, dissent from them, and have no chance of political influence: but I claim the right of following out, proclaiming, and defending, the conclusions of my own individual reason, until debate satisfies me that I am wrong."