ATHENIAN: Let us conduct the inquiry more or less like this: suppose somebody were to praise goat-keeping, and commended the goat as a valuable article of possession; suppose somebody else were to disparage goats because he had seen some doing damage to cultivated land by grazing on it without a goatherd, and were to find similar fault with every animal he saw under incompetent control or none at all. What do we think of the censure of someone like that? Does it carry any weight at all?
MEGILLUS: Hardly.
ATHENIAN: If a man possesses only the science of navigation, can we say that he will be a useful captain on board a ship, and ignore the question [b] whether he suffers from seasickness or not? Can we say that, or can’t we?
MEGILLUS: Certainly not, at any rate if, for all his skill, he’s prone to the complaint you mention.
ATHENIAN: What about the commander of an army? Is he capable of taking command just by virtue of military skill, in spite of being a coward in face of danger? The ‘seasickness’ in this case is produced by being, as it were, drunk with terror.
MEGILLUS: Hardly a capable commander, that.
ATHENIAN: And what if he combines cowardice with incompetence?
MEGILLUS: You are describing a downright useless fellow—a commander of the daintiest of dainty women, not of men at all.
ATHENIAN: Take any social gathering you like, which functions naturally [c] under a leader and serves a useful purpose under his guidance: what are we to think of the observer who praises or censures it although he has never seen it gathered together and running properly under its leader, but always with bad leaders or none at all? Given that kind of observer and that kind of gathering, do we reckon that his blame or praise will have any value?
MEGILLUS: How could it, when he has never seen or joined any of these [d] gatherings run in the proper way?
ATHENIAN: Hold on a moment. There are many kinds of gatherings, and presumably we’d say drinkers and drinking-parties were one?
MEGILLUS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: Has anyone ever seen such a gathering run in the proper way? You two, of course, find the answer easy: ‘Never, absolutely never’; drinking-parties are just not held in your countries, besides being illegal. But I have come across a great many, in different places, and I have investigated pretty nearly all of them. However, I have never seen or heard [e] of one that was properly conducted throughout; one could approve of a few insignificant details, but most of them were mismanaged virtually all the time.
CLINIAS: What are you getting at, sir? Be a little more explicit. As you said, we have no experience of such events, so that even if we did find ourselves at one we would probably be unable to tell off-hand which [640] features were correct and which not.
ATHENIAN: Very likely. But you can try to understand from my explanation. You appreciate that each and every assembly and gathering for any purpose whatever should invariably have a leader?
CLINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: We said a moment ago that if it is a case of men fighting, their leader must be brave.
CLINIAS: Yes, indeed.
ATHENIAN: And a brave man, surely, is less thrown off balance by fears than cowards are.
[b] CLINIAS: That too is true enough.
ATHENIAN: If there were some device by which we could put in charge of an army a commander who was completely fearless and imperturbable, this is what we should make every effort to do, surely?
CLINIAS: It certainly is.
ATHENIAN: But the man we are discussing now is not going to take the lead in hostile encounters as between enemies, but in the peaceful meetings of friends with friends, gathering to foster mutual goodwill.
CLINIAS: Exactly.
[c] ATHENIAN: But we can assume that this sort of assembly will get rather drunk, so it won’t be free of a certain amount of disturbance, I suppose.
CLINIAS: Of course not—I imagine precisely the opposite.
ATHENIAN: To start with, then, the members of the gathering will need a leader?
CLINIAS: Of course they will, more than anybody else.
ATHENIAN: Presumably we should if possible equip them with a leader who can keep his head?
CLINIAS: Naturally.
ATHENIAN: And he should also, presumably, be a man who knows how to handle a social gathering, because his duty is not only to preserve the existing friendliness among its members, but to see that it is strengthened [d] as a result of the party.
CLINIAS: Quite true.
ATHENIAN: So, when men become merry with drink, don’t they need someone put in charge of them who is sober and discreet rather than the opposite? If the man in charge of the revellers were himself a drinker, or young and indiscreet, he ought to thank his lucky stars if he managed to avoid starting some serious trouble.
CLINIAS: Lucky? I’ll say so!
ATHENIAN: Consequently, an attack on such gatherings in cities where [e] they are conducted impeccably might not in itself amount to unjustified criticism, provided the critic were attacking the institution itself. But if he abuses the institution simply because he sees every possible mistake being made in running it, he clearly does not realize, first, that this is a case of mismanagement, and secondly that any and every practice will appear in the same light if it is carried on without a sober leader to control it. Surely you appreciate that a drunken steersman, or any commander of anything, [641] will always make a total wreck of his ship or chariot or army, or whatever else he may be directing?
CLINIAS: Yes, sir, there’s truth in that, certainly. But the next step is for you to tell us what conceivable benefit this custom of drinking parties would be to us, given proper management. For instance, to take our example of a moment ago, if an army were properly controlled, its soldiers would win the war and this would be a considerable benefit, and the same [b] reasoning applies to our other instances. But what solid benefit would it be to individuals or the state to instruct a drinking party how to behave itself?
ATHENIAN: Well, what solid benefit are we to say it is to the state when just one lad or just one chorus of them has been properly instructed? If the question were put like that, we should say that the state gets very little benefit from just one; but ask in general what great benefit the state derives from the training by which it educates its citizens, and the reply will be perfectly straightforward. The good education they have received will make them good men, and being good they will achieve success in other [c] ways, and even conquer their enemies in battle. Education leads to victory; but victory, on occasions, results in the loss of education, because men often swell with pride when they have won a victory in war, and this pride fills them with a million other vices. Men have won many ‘Cadmean victories’, and will win many more, but there has never been such a thing as ‘Cadmean education’.12
CLINIAS: It looks to us, my friend, as if you mean to imply that passing [d] the time with friends over a drink—provided we behave ourselves—is a considerable contribution to education.
ATHENIAN: Most certainly.
CLINIAS: Well then, could you now produce some justification for this view?
ATHENIAN: Justification? Only a god, sir, would be entitled to insist that this view is correct—there are so many conflicting opinions. But if necessary I am quite prepared to give my own, now that we have launched into a discussion of laws and political organizations.
CLINIAS: This is precisely what we are trying to discover—your own [e] opinion of the business we are now debating.
ATHENIAN: Well then, let that be our agenda: you have to direct your efforts to understanding the argument, while I direct mine to expounding it as clearly as I can. But first listen to this, by way of preface: you’ll find every Greek takes it for granted that my city likes talking and does a great deal of it, whereas Sparta is a city of few words and Crete cultivates the [642] intellect rather than the tongue. I don’t want to make you feel that I am saying an awful lot about a triviality, if I deal exhaustively and at length with such a limited topic a
s drinking. In fact, the genuinely correct way to regulate drinking can hardly be explained adequately and clearly except in the context of a correct theory of culture; and it is impossible to explain this without considering the whole subject of education. That calls for a very long discussion indeed. So what do you think we ought to do now? What about skipping all this for the moment, and passing on to some [b] other legal topic?
MEGILLUS: As it happens, sir—perhaps you haven’t heard—my family represents the interests of your state, Athens, in Sparta. I dare say all children, when they learn they are proxeni13 of a state, conceive a liking for it from their earliest years; each of us thinks of the state he represents as a fatherland, second only to his own country. This is exactly my own [c] experience now. When the Spartans were criticizing or praising the Athenians, I used to hear the little children say, ‘Megillus, your state has done the dirty on us,’ or, ‘it has done us proud.’ By listening to all this and constantly resisting on your behalf the charges of Athens’ detractors, I acquired a whole-hearted affection for her, so that to this day I very much enjoy the sound of your accent. It is commonly said that when an Athenian is good, he is ‘very very good’, and I’m sure that’s right. They are unique in that they are good not because of any compulsion, but spontaneously, [d] by grace of heaven; it is all so genuine and unfeigned. So you’re welcome to speak as long as you like, so far as I’m concerned.
CLINIAS: I endorse your freedom to say as much as you like, sir: you’ll see that when you’ve heard what I have to say, too. You have probably heard that Epimenides, a man who was divinely inspired, was born hereabouts. He was connected with my family, and ten years before the Persian [e] attack he obeyed the command of the oracle to go to Athens,14 where he performed certain sacrifices which the god had ordered. He told the Athenians, who were apprehensive at the preparations the Persians were making, that the Persians would not come for ten years, and that when they did, they would go back with all their intentions frustrated, after sustaining greater losses than they had inflicted. That was when my ancestors formed ties of friendship with you Athenians, and ever since then my [643] forebears and I have held you in affection.
ATHENIAN: Well then, on your part you are prepared to listen, apparently; on my side, I am ready and willing to go ahead, but the job will certainly tax my abilities. Still, the effort must be made. To assist the argument, we ought to take the preliminary step of defining education and its potentialities, because we have ventured on a discussion which is intended to lead us to the god of wine, and we are agreed that education is as it were the route we have to take.
CLINIAS: Certainly let’s do that, if you like.
ATHENIAN: I am going to explain how one should describe education: [b] see if you approve of my account.
CLINIAS: Your explanation, then, please.
ATHENIAN: It is this: I insist that a man who intends to be good at a particular occupation must practice it from childhood: both at work and at play he must be surrounded by the special ‘tools of the trade’. For instance, the man who intends to be a good farmer must play at farming, and the man who is to be a good builder must spend his playtime building [c] toy houses; and in each case the teacher must provide miniature tools that copy the real thing. In particular, in this elementary stage they must learn the essential elementary skills. For example, the carpenter must learn in his play how to handle a rule and plumb-line, and the soldier must learn to ride a horse (either by actually doing it, in play, or by some similar activity). We should try to use the children’s games to channel their pleasures and desires towards the activities in which they will have to engage when they are adult. To sum up, we say that the correct way to bring up [d] and educate a child is to use his playtime to imbue his soul with the greatest possible liking for the occupation in which he will have to be absolutely perfect when he grows up. Now, as I suggested, consider the argument so far: do you approve of my account?
CLINIAS: Of course.
ATHENIAN: But let’s not leave our description of education in the air. When we abuse or commend the upbringing of individual people and say that one of us is educated and the other uneducated, we sometimes use this latter term of men who have in fact had a thorough education—one directed towards petty trade or the merchant-shipping business, or [e] something like that. But I take it that for the purpose of the present discussion we are not going to treat this sort of thing as ‘education’; what we have in mind is education from childhood in virtue, a training which produces a keen desire to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled as justice demands. I suppose we should want to mark [644] off this sort of training from others and reserve the title ‘education’ for it alone. A training directed to acquiring money or a robust physique, or even to some intellectual facility not guided by reason and justice, we should want to call coarse and illiberal, and say that it had no claim whatever to be called education. Still, let’s not quibble over a name; let’s stick to the proposition we agreed on just now: as a rule, men with a correct education become good, and nowhere in the world should education be [b] despised, for when combined with great virtue, it is an asset of incalculable value. If it ever becomes corrupt, but can be put right again, this is a lifelong task which everyone should undertake to the limit of his strength.
CLINIAS: True. We agree with your description.
ATHENIAN: Here is a further point on which we agreed some time ago:15 those who can control themselves are good, those who cannot are bad.
CLINIAS: Perfectly correct.
[c] ATHENIAN: Let’s take up this point again and consider even more closely just what we mean. Perhaps you’ll let me try to clarify the issue by means of an illustration.
CLINIAS: By all means.
ATHENIAN: Are we to assume, then, that each of us is a single individual?
CLINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: But that he possesses within himself a pair of witless and mutually antagonistic advisers, which we call pleasure and pain?
CLINIAS: That is so.
ATHENIAN: In addition to these two, he has opinions about the future, whose general name is ‘expectations’. Specifically, the anticipation of pain [d] is called ‘fear’, and the anticipation of the opposite is called ‘confidence’. Over and against all these we have ‘calculation’, by which we judge the relative merits of pleasure and pain, and when this is expressed as a public decision of a state, it receives the title ‘law’.
CLINIAS: I can scarcely follow you; but assume I do, and carry on with what comes next.
MEGILLUS: Yes, I’m in the same difficulty.
ATHENIAN: I suggest we look at the problem in this way: let’s imagine that each of us living beings is a puppet of the gods. Whether we have been constructed to serve as their plaything, or for some serious reason, [e] is something beyond our ken, but what we certainly do know is this: we have these emotions in us, which act like cords or strings and tug us about; they work in opposition, and tug against each other to make us perform actions that are opposed correspondingly; back and forth we go across the boundary line where vice and virtue meet. One of these dragging forces, according to our argument, demands our constant obedience, and this is [645] the one we have to hang on to, come what may; the pull of the other cords we must resist. This cord, which is golden and holy, transmits the power of ‘calculation’, a power which in a state is called the public law; being golden, it is pliant, while the others, whose composition resembles a variety of other substances, are tough and inflexible. The force exerted by law is excellent, and one should always co-operate with it, because although ‘calculation’ is a noble thing, it is gentle, not violent, and its efforts need assistants, so that the gold in us may prevail over the other substances. If [b] we do give our help, the moral point of this fable, in which we appear as puppets, will have been well and truly made; the meaning of the terms ‘self-superior’ and ‘self-inferior’16 will somehow become clearer, and the duties of state and individual will be better
appreciated. The latter must digest the truth about these forces that pull him, and act on it in his life; the state must get an account of it either from one of the gods or from the human expert we’ve mentioned, and incorporate it in the form of a law to govern both its internal affairs and its relations with other states. A further result will be a clearer distinction between virtue and vice; the [c] light cast on that problem will perhaps in turn help to clarify the subject of education and the various other practices, particularly the business of drinking parties. It may well be thought that this is a triviality on which a great deal too much has been said, but equally it may turn out that the topic really does deserve this extended discussion.
CLINIAS: You are quite right; we certainly ought to give full consideration to anything that deserves our attention in the ‘symposium’ we are having now.
ATHENIAN: Well then, tell me: if we give drink to this puppet of ours, [d] what effect do we have on it?
CLINIAS: What’s your purpose in harking back to that question?
ATHENIAN: No particular purpose, for the moment. I’m just asking, in a general way, what effect is had on something when it is associated with something else. I’ll try to explain my meaning even more clearly. This is what I’m asking; does drinking wine make pleasures and pains, anger and love, more intense?
CLINIAS: Very much so.
ATHENIAN: What about sensations, memory, opinions and thought? Do [e] these too become more intense? Or rather, don’t they entirely desert a man if he fills himself with drink?
CLINIAS: Yes, they desert him entirely.
ATHENIAN: So he reverts to the mental state he was in as a young child?
CLINIAS: Indeed.
ATHENIAN: And it’s then that his self-control would be at its lowest?
CLINIAS: Yes, at its lowest. [646]
ATHENIAN: A man in that condition, we agree, is very bad indeed.
CLINIAS: Very.
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