Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CLINIAS: Isn’t that satisfactory?

  [889] ATHENIAN: Oh, I expect they’ve got it more or less right—they’re clever fellows. Still, let’s keep track of them, and see what’s really implied in the theories of that school of thought.

  CLINIAS: By all means.

  ATHENIAN: The facts show—so they claim—that the greatest and finest things in the world are the products of nature and chance, the creations of art being comparatively trivial. The works of nature, they say, are grand and primary, and constitute a ready-made source for all the minor works constructed and fashioned by art—artefacts, as they’re generally called.

  CLINIAS: How do you mean?

  [b] ATHENIAN: I’ll put it more precisely. They maintain that fire, water, earth and air owe their existence to nature and chance, and in no case to art, and that it is by means of these entirely inanimate substances2 that the secondary physical bodies—the earth, sun, moon and stars—have been produced. These substances moved at random, each impelled by virtue of its own inherent properties, which depended on various suitable amalgamations of hot and cold, dry and wet, soft and hard, and all other haphazard combinations that inevitably resulted when the opposites were [c] mixed. This is the process to which all the heavens and everything that is in them owe their birth, and the consequent establishment of the four seasons led to the appearance of all plants and living creatures. The cause of all this, they say, was neither intelligent planning, nor a deity, nor art, but—as we’ve explained—nature and chance. Art, the brain-child of these living creatures, arose later, the mortal child of mortal beings; it has produced, [d] at a late stage, various amusing trifles that are hardly real at all—mere insubstantial images of the same order as the arts themselves (I mean for instance the productions of the arts of painting and music, and all their ancillary skills). But if there are in fact some techniques that produce worthwhile results, they are those that co-operate with nature, like medicine and farming and physical training. This school of thought maintains that government, in particular, has very little to do with nature, and is largely [e] a matter of art; similarly legislation is never a natural process but is based on technique, and its enactments are quite artificial.

  CLINIAS: What are you driving at?

  ATHENIAN: My dear fellow, the first thing these people say about the gods is that they are artificial concepts corresponding to nothing in nature; they are legal fictions, which moreover vary very widely according to the different conventions people agree on when they produce a legal code. In particular, goodness according to nature and goodness according to the law are two different things, and there is no natural standard of justice at all. On the contrary, men are always wrangling about their moral standards and altering them, and every change introduced becomes binding from the moment it’s made, regardless of the fact that it is entirely artificial, [890] and based on convention, not nature in the slightest degree. All this, my friends, is the theme of experts—as our young people regard them—who in their prose and poetry maintain that anything one can get away with by force is absolutely justified. This is why we experience outbreaks of impiety among the young, who assume that the kind of gods the law tells them to believe in do not exist; this is why we get treasonable efforts to convert people to the ‘true natural life’, which is essentially nothing but a life of conquest over others, not one of service to your neighbor as the law enjoins.

  CLINIAS: What a pernicious doctrine you’ve explained, sir! It must be [b] the ruin of the younger generation, both in the state at large and in private families.

  ATHENIAN: That’s very true, Clinias. So what do you think the legislator ought to do, faced with such a long-established thesis as this? Is he simply to stand up in public and threaten all the citizens with punishment if they don’t admit the existence of gods and mentally accept the law’s description of them? He could make the same threat about their notions of beauty and justice and all such vital concepts, as well as about anything that encourages virtue or vice; he could demand that the citizens’ belief and [c] actions should accord with his written instructions, and insist that anyone not showing the proper obedience to the laws must be punished either by death, or by a whipping and imprisonment, deprivation of civic rights, or by being sent into exile a poorer man. But what about persuading them? When he establishes a legal code for his people, shouldn’t he try to talk them into being as amenable as he can make them?

  CLINIAS: Certainly, sir. If even limited persuasion can be applied in this [d] field, no legislator of even moderate ability should shrink from making the effort. On the contrary, he should argue ‘till the cows come home’, as the saying is, to back up the old doctrine that the gods exist, and to support the other arguments you ran through just now. In particular, he should defend law itself and art as either part of nature or existing by reason of some no less powerful agency—being in fact, to tell the truth, creations of reason. That, I think, is the point you’re making, and I agree.

  ATHENIAN: Really, Clinias, you are enthusiastic! But when these themes [e] are presented as you suggest, in addresses composed for a popular audience, aren’t they found rather difficult to understand? And don’t the addresses tend to go on for ever?

  CLINIAS: Well, sir, we put up with one long discussion, about inebriation in the cause of culture, so surely we can tolerate another, about theology and so forth. And of course this helps intelligent legislation tremendously, [891] because legal instructions, once written down, remain fixed and permanent, ready to stand up to scrutiny forever. So there’s no reason for alarm if at first they make difficult listening, because your slow learner will be able to go back again and again and examine them. Nor does their length, provided they’re useful, justify any man in committing what seems to me, at least, an impiety: I mean refusing to facilitate these explanations as best he can.

  MEGILLUS: Yes, sir, I entirely approve of what Clinias says.

  [b] ATHENIAN: As well you may, Megillus, and we must do as he suggests. Of course, if this sort of argument had not been disseminated so widely over pretty well the entire human race, there would be no call for arguments to prove the existence of gods. But in present circumstances we’ve no choice. When the most important laws are being trampled under foot by scoundrels, whose duty is it to rush to their defense, if not the legislator’s?

  MEGILLUS: Nobody’s.

  [c] ATHENIAN: Now then, Clinias, you must take your share in the explanation, so tell me your opinion again. I assume the upholder of this doctrine thinks of fire and water, earth and air as being the first of all substances, and this is precisely what he means by the term ‘nature’; soul, he thinks, was derived from them, at a later stage. No, I do more than ‘assume’: I’d say he argues the point explicitly.

  CLINIAS: True.

  ATHENIAN: Now then, by heaven, haven’t we discovered the fountainhead, so to speak, of the senseless opinions of all those who have ever undertaken investigation into nature? Scrutinize carefully every stage in [d] their argument, because it will be crucial if we can show that these people who have embraced impious doctrines and lead others on are using fallacious arguments rather than cogent ones—which I think is in fact the case.

  CLINIAS: You’re right, but try to explain their error.

  ATHENIAN: Well, it looks as if we have to embark on a rather unfamiliar line of argument.

  CLINIAS: Don’t hesitate, sir. I realize you think we’ll be straying outside legislation if we attempt such an explanation, but if this is the only way [e] to reach agreement that the beings currently described as gods in our law are properly so described, then this, my dear sir, is the kind of explanation we must give.

  ATHENIAN: So it looks as if I must now argue along rather unfamiliar lines. Well then, the doctrine which produces an impious soul also ‘produces’, in a sense, the soul itself, in that it denies the priority of what was in fact the first cause of the birth and destruction of all things, and regards it as a later creation. Conversely, it asserts t
hat what actually came later, came first. That’s the source of the mistake these people have made about the real nature of the gods.

  [892] CLINIAS: So far, the point escapes me.

  ATHENIAN: It’s the soul, my good friend, that nearly everybody seems to have misunderstood, not realizing its nature and power. Quite apart from the other points about it, people are particularly ignorant about its birth. It is one of the first creations, born long before all physical things, and is the chief cause of all their alterations and transformations. Now if that’s true, anything closely related to soul will necessarily have been created before material things, won’t it, since soul itself is older than matter? [b]

  CLINIAS: Necessarily.

  ATHENIAN: Opinion, diligence, reason, art and law will be prior to roughness and smoothness, heaviness and lightness. In particular, the grand and primary works and creations, precisely because they come in the category ‘primary’, will be attributable to art. Natural things, and nature herself—to use the mistaken terminology of our opponents—will be secondary products from art and reason.

  CLINIAS: Why do you say ‘mistaken’? [c]

  ATHENIAN: When they use the term ‘nature’, they mean the process by which the primary substances were created. But if it can be shown that soul came first, not fire or air, and that it was one of the first things to be created, it will be quite correct to say that soul is preeminently natural. This is true, provided you can demonstrate that soul is older than matter, but not otherwise.

  CLINIAS: Very true.

  ATHENIAN: So this is precisely the point we have to tackle next? [d]

  CLINIAS: Of course.

  ATHENIAN: It’s an extremely tricky argument, and we old men must be careful not to be taken in by its freshness and novelty, so that it eludes our grasp and makes us look like ridiculous fools whose ambitious ideas lead to failure even in little things. Just consider. Imagine the three of us had to cross a river in spate, and I were the younger and had plenty of experience of currents. Suppose I said, ‘I ought to try first on my own [e] account, and leave you two in safety while I see if the river is fordable for you two older men as well, or if not, just how bad it is. If it turns out to be fordable, I’ll then call you and put my experience at your disposal in helping you to cross; but if in the event it cannot be crossed by old men like yourselves, then the only risk has been mine.’ Wouldn’t that strike you as fair enough? The situation is the same now: the argument ahead runs too deep, and men as weak as you will probably get out of your depth. I want to prevent you novices in answering from being dazed and dizzied by a stream of questions, which would put you in an undignified [893] and humiliating position you’d find most unpleasant. So this is what I think I’d better do now: first I’ll ask questions of myself, while you listen in safety; then I’ll go over the answers again and in this way work through the whole argument until the soul has been thoroughly dealt with and its priority to matter proved.

  CLINIAS: We think that’s a splendid idea, sir. Please act on your suggestion.

  ATHENIAN: Come then, if ever we needed to call upon the help of God, [b] it’s now. Let’s take it the gods have been most pressingly invoked to assist the proof of their own existence, and let’s rely on their help as if it were a rope steadying us as we enter the deep waters of our present theme. Now when I’m under interrogation on this sort of topic, and such questions as the following are put to me, the safest replies seem to be these. Suppose someone asks ‘Sir, do all things stand still, and does nothing move? Or is precisely the opposite true? Or do some things move, while others are [c] motionless?’ My reply will be ‘I suppose some move and others remain at rest.’ ‘So surely there must be some space in which the stationary objects remain at rest, and those in motion move?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Some of them, presumably, will do so in one location, others in several?’ ‘Do you mean’, we shall reply, ‘that “moving in one location” is the action of objects which are able to keep their centers immobile? For instance, there are circles which are said to “stay put” even though as a whole they are revolving.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And we appreciate that when a disk revolves like that, points near and far from the center describe circles of different radii in the same time; [d] their motion varies according to these radii and is proportionately quick or slow. This motion gives rise to all sorts of wonderful phenomena, because these points simultaneously traverse circles of large and small circumference at proportionately high or low speeds—an effect one might have expected to be impossible.’ ‘You’re quite right.’ ‘When you speak of motion in many locations I suppose you’re referring to objects that are always leaving one spot and moving on to another. Sometimes their motion involves only one point of contact with their successive situations, sometimes [e] several, as in rolling.

  ‘From time to time objects meet; a moving one colliding with a stationary one disintegrates, but if it meets other objects traveling in the opposite direction they coalesce into a single intermediate substance, half one and half the other.’ ‘Yes, I agree to your statement of the case.’ ‘Further, such combination leads to an increase in bulk, while their separation leads to diminution—so long as the existing states of the objects remain unimpaired; but if either combination or separation entails the abolition of the existing state, the objects concerned are destroyed.

  [894] ‘Now, what conditions are always present when anything is produced? Clearly, an initial impulse grows and reaches the second stage and then the third stage out of the second, finally (at the third stage) presenting percipient beings with something to perceive. This then is the process of change and alteration to which everything owes its birth. A thing exists as such so long as it is stable, but when it changes its essential state it is completely destroyed.’

  So, my friends, haven’t we now classified and numbered all forms of [b] motion, except two?

  CLINIAS: Which two?

  ATHENIAN: My dear chap, they are the two which constitute the real purpose of every question we’ve asked.

  CLINIAS: Try to be more explicit.

  ATHENIAN: What we really had in view was soul, wasn’t it?

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: The one kind of motion is that which is permanently capable of moving other things but not itself; the other is permanently capable of moving both itself and other things by processes of combination and separation, increase and diminution, generation and destruction. Let these stand as two further distinct types in our complete list of motions. [c]

  CLINIAS: Agreed.

  ATHENIAN: So we shall put ninth the kind which always imparts motion to something else and is itself changed by another thing. Then3 to be first, in ancestry as well there’s the motion that moves both itself and other things, suitable for all active and passive processes and accurately termed the source of change and motion in all things that exist. I suppose we’ll call that the tenth.

  CLINIAS: Certainly.

  ATHENIAN: Now which of our (roughly) ten motions should we be justified in singling out as the most powerful and radically effective? [d]

  CLINIAS: We can’t resist the conclusion that the motion which can generate itself is infinitely superior, and all the others are inferior to it.

  ATHENIAN: Well said! So shouldn’t we correct one or two inaccuracies in the points we’ve just made?

  CLINIAS: What sort of inaccuracy do you mean?

  ATHENIAN: It wasn’t quite right to call that motion the ‘tenth’.

  CLINIAS: Why not?

  ATHENIAN: It can be shown to be first, in ancestry as well as in power; the next kind—although oddly enough a moment ago we called it ‘ninth’—[e] we’ll put second.

  CLINIAS: What are you getting at?

  ATHENIAN: This: when we find one thing producing a change in another, and that in turn affecting something else, and so forth, will there ever be, in such a sequence, an original cause of change? How could anything whose motion is transmitted to it from something else be the first thing to effe
ct an alteration? It’s impossible. In reality, when something which has set itself moving effects an alteration in something, and that in turn effects something else, so that the motion is transmitted to thousands upon thousands of things one after another, the entire sequence of their [895] movements must surely spring from some initial principle, which can hardly be anything except the change effected by self-generated motion.

  CLINIAS: You’ve put it admirably, and your point must be allowed.

  ATHENIAN: Now let’s put the point in a different way, and once again answer our own questions: ‘Suppose the whole universe were somehow to coalesce and come to a standstill—the theory which most of our philosopher-fellows are actually bold enough to maintain—which of the motions we have enumerated would inevitably be the first to arise in it?’ ‘Self-generating [b] motion, surely, because no antecedent impulse can ever be transmitted from something else in a situation where no antecedent impulse exists. Self-generating motion, then, is the source of all motions, and the primary force in both stationary and moving objects, and we shan’t be able to avoid the conclusion that it is the most ancient and the most potent of all changes, whereas the change which is produced by something else and is in turn transmitted to other objects, comes second.’

  CLINIAS: You’re absolutely right.

  [c] ATHENIAN: So now we’ve reached this point in our discussion, here’s another question we should answer.

  CLINIAS: What?

  ATHENIAN: If we ever saw this phenomenon—self-generating motion—arise in an object made of earth, water or fire (alone or in combination) how should we describe that object’s condition?

  CLINIAS: Of course, what you’re really asking me is this: when an object moves itself, are we to say that it is ‘alive’?

  ATHENIAN: That’s right.

  CLINIAS: It emphatically is alive.

  ATHENIAN: Well then, when we see that a thing has a soul, the situation is exactly the same, isn’t it? We have to admit that it is alive.

  CLINIAS: Yes, exactly the same.