Dialogues

please, overthrow by an opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me⁠—a method to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I must beg you to put fair questions: for there is great inconsistency in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic: the disputer may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun; but the dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept. If you do so, your adversary will lay the blame of his own confusion and perplexity on himself, and not on you. He will follow and love you, and will hate himself, and escape from himself into philosophy, in order that he may become different from what he was. But the other mode of arguing, which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite effect upon him; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher, he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion, and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner you will consider whether knowledge and sensation are the same or different, but you will not argue, as you were just now doing, from the customary use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all sorts of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another. Such, Theodorus, is the very slight help which I am able to offer to your old friend;315 had he been living, he would have helped himself in a far more gloriose style. Theodorus You are jesting, Socrates; indeed, your defence of him has been most valorous. Socrates Thank you, friend; and I hope that you observed Protagoras bidding us be serious, as the text, “Man is the measure of all things,” was a solemn one; and he reproached us with making a boy the medium of discourse, and said that the boy’s timidity was made to tell against his argument; he also declared that we made a joke of him. Theodorus How could I fail to observe all that, Socrates? Socrates Well, and shall we do as he says? Theodorus By all means. Socrates But if his wishes are to be regarded, you and I must take up the argument, and in all seriousness,316 and ask and answer one another, for you see that the rest of us are nothing but boys. In no other way can we escape the imputation, that in our fresh analysis of his thesis we are making fun with boys. Theodorus Well, but is not Theaetetus better able to follow a philosophical enquiry than a great many men who have long beards? Socrates Yes, Theodorus, but not better than you; and therefore please not to imagine that I am to defend by every means in my power your departed friend; and that you are to defend nothing and nobody. At any rate, my good man, do not sheer off until we know whether you are a true measure of diagrams, or whether all men are equally measures and sufficient for themselves in astronomy and geometry, and the other branches of knowledge in which you are supposed to excel them. Theodorus He who is sitting by you, Socrates, will not easily avoid being drawn into an argument; and when I said just now that you would excuse me, and not, like the Lacedaemonians, compel me to strip and fight, I was talking nonsense⁠—I should rather compare you to Scirrhon, who threw travellers from the rocks; for the Lacedaemonian rule is “strip or depart,” but you seem to go about your work more after the fashion of Antaeus: you will not allow anyone who approaches you to depart until you have stripped him, and he has been compelled to try a fall with you in argument. Socrates There, Theodorus, you have hit off precisely the nature of my complaint; but I am even more pugnacious than the giants of old, for I have met with no end of heroes; many a Heracles, many a Theseus, mighty in words, has broken my head; nevertheless I am always at this rough exercise, which inspires me like a passion. Please, then, to try a fall with me, whereby you will do yourself good as well as me. Theodorus I consent; lead me whither you will, for I know that you are like destiny; no man can escape from any argument which you may weave for him. But I am not disposed to go further than you suggest. Socrates Once will be enough; and now take particular care that we do not again unwittingly expose ourselves to the reproach of talking childishly. Theodorus I will do my best to avoid that error. Socrates In the first place, let us return to our old objection, and see whether we were right in blaming and taking offence at Protagoras on the ground that he assumed all to be equal and sufficient in wisdom; although he admitted that there was a better and worse, and that in respect of this, some who as he said were the wise excelled others. Theodorus Very true. Socrates Had Protagoras been living and answered for himself, instead of our answering for him, there would have been no need of our reviewing or reinforcing the argument. But as he is not here, and someone may accuse us of speaking without authority on his behalf, had we not better come to a clearer agreement about his meaning, for a great deal may be at stake? Theodorus True. Socrates Then