Dialogues

that the means by which we obtain what is useful for a certain object should always be useful for the same object: for it seems that bad actions may sometimes serve good purposes? The matter will be still plainer if we look at it in this way:⁠—If things are useful towards the several ends for which they exist, which ends would not come into existence without them, how would you regard them? Can ignorance, for instance, be useful for knowledge, or disease for health, or vice for virtue?

Critias: Never.

Socrates: And yet we have already agreed⁠—have we not?⁠—that there can be no knowledge where there has not previously been ignorance, nor health where there has not been disease, nor virtue where there has not been vice?

Critias: I think that we have.

Socrates: But then it would seem that the antecedents without which a thing cannot exist are not necessarily useful to it. Otherwise ignorance would appear useful for knowledge, disease for health, and vice for virtue.

Critias still showed great reluctance to accept any argument which went to prove that all these things were useless. I saw that it was as difficult to persuade him as (according to the proverb) it is to boil a stone, so I said: Let us bid “goodbye” to the discussion, since we cannot agree whether these things are useful and a part of wealth or not. But what shall we say to another question: Which is the happier and better man⁠—he who requires the greatest quantity of necessaries for body and diet, or he who requires only the fewest and least? The answer will perhaps become more obvious if we suppose someone, comparing the man himself at different times, to consider whether his condition is better when he is sick or when he is well?

Critias: That is not a question which needs much consideration.

Socrates: Probably, I said, everyone can understand that health is a better condition than disease. But when have we the greatest and the most various needs, when we are sick or when we are well?

Critias: When we are sick.

Socrates: And when we are in the worst state we have the greatest and most especial need and desire of bodily pleasures?

Critias: True.

Socrates: And seeing that a man is best off when he is least in need of such things, does not the same reasoning apply to the case of any two persons, of whom one has many and great wants and desires, and the other few and moderate? For instance, some men are gamblers, some drunkards, and some gluttons: and gambling and the love of drink and greediness are all desires?

Critias: Certainly.

Socrates: But desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none or very slight ones?

Critias: Certainly I consider that those who have such wants are bad, and that the greater their wants the worse they are.

Socrates: And do we think it possible that a thing should be useful for a purpose unless we have need of it for that purpose?

Critias: No.

Socrates: Then if these things are useful for supplying the needs of the body, we must want them for that purpose?

Critias: That is my opinion.

Socrates: And he to whom the greatest number of things are useful for his purpose, will also want the greatest number of means of accomplishing it, supposing that we necessarily feel the want of all useful things?

Critias: It seems so.

Socrates: The argument proves then that he who has great riches has likewise need of many things for the supply of the wants of the body; for wealth appears useful towards that end. And the richest must be in the worst condition, since they seem to be most in want of such things.

Endnotes

1. Dedication to the Aeneis. ↩

2. There have been added also in the Third Edition remarks on other subjects. A list of the most important of these additions is given at the end of this Preface. ↩

3. Compare Bentley’s Works (Dyce’s Edition), volume II 136 following, 222. ↩

4. Compare the striking remark of the great Scaliger respecting the Magna moralia:⁠—Haec non sunt Aristotelis, tamen utitur auctor Aristotelis nomine tanquam suo. ↩

5. See Journal of Philology XIII 38, and elsewhere. ↩

6. Compare Cicero Tusculan Disputations, III 8, 16, “σωφροσύνη, quam soleo equidem tum temperantiam, tum moderationem appellare, nonnunquam etiam modestiam:” following. ↩

7. The English reader has to observe that the word “make” (ποιεῖν), in Greek, has also the sense of “do” (πράττειν). ↩

8. Reading, according to Heusde’s conjecture, δμολογήσοντός σοι. ↩

9. Socrates is intending to show that science differs from the object of science, as any other relative differs from the object of relation. But where there is comparison⁠—greater, less, heavier, lighter, and the like⁠—a relation to self as well as to other things involves an absolute contradiction; and in other cases, as in the case of the senses, is hardly conceivable. The use of the genitive after the comparative in Greek, μεῖζόν τινος, creates an unavoidable obscurity in the translation. ↩

10. Omitting φιλῇ, or reading μισῇ instead. ↩

11. Iliad XXIV 348. ↩

12. Compare Republic X 600 D. ↩

13. Odyssey XI 601 following. ↩

14. Odyssey XI 582 following. ↩

15. Borrowed by Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII 2, 3. ↩

16. Reading ὑμῖν. ↩

17. Iliad XXI 308. ↩

18. Works and Days, 264 following. ↩

19. Reading φιλεῖν καὶ ἐπαινεῖν καὶ φίλον τινὶ κ.τ.λ.