Part 40

SOCRATES: Then this is your judgment; and this is the answer which, upon your authority, we will give to all masters of the art of misinterpretation?

PROTARCHUS: What answer?

SOCRATES: That there are two arts of arithmetic, and two of mensuration; and also several other arts which in like manner have this double nature, and yet only one name.

PROTARCHUS: Let us boldly return this answer to the masters of whom you speak, Socrates, and hope for good luck.

SOCRATES: We have explained what we term the most exact arts or sciences.

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: And yet, Protarchus, dialectic will refuse to acknowledge us, if we do not award to her the first place.

PROTARCHUS: And pray, what is dialectic?

SOCRATES: Clearly the science which has to do with all that knowledge of which we are now speaking; for I am sure that all men who have a grain of intelligence will admit that the knowledge which has to do with being and reality, and sameness and unchangeableness, is by far the truest of all. But how would you decide this question, Protarchus?

PROTARCHUS: I have often heard Gorgias maintain, Socrates, that the art of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says, is by far the best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will. Now, I should not like to quarrel either with you or with him.

SOCRATES: You mean to say that you would like to desert, if you were not ashamed?

PROTARCHUS: As you please.

SOCRATES: May I not have led you into a misapprehension?

PROTARCHUS: How?

SOCRATES: Dear Protarchus, I never asked which was the greatest or best or usefullest of arts or sciences, but which had clearness and accuracy, and the greatest amount of truth, however humble and little useful an art. And as for Gorgias, if you do not deny that his art has the advantage in usefulness to mankind, he will not quarrel with you for saying that the study of which I am speaking is superior in this particular of essential truth; as in the comparison of white colours, a little whiteness, if that little be only pure, was said to be superior in truth to a great mass which is impure. And now let us give our best attention and consider well, not the comparative use or reputation of the sciences, but the power or faculty, if there be such, which the soul has of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of it; let us search into the pure element of mind and intelligence, and then we shall be able to say whether the science of which I have been speaking is most likely to possess the faculty, or whether there be some other which has higher claims.

PROTARCHUS: Well, I have been considering, and I can hardly think that any other science or art has a firmer grasp of the truth than this.

SOCRATES: Do you say so because you observe that the arts in general and those engaged in them make use of opinion, and are resolutely engaged in the investigation of matters of opinion? Even he who supposes himself to be occupied with nature is really occupied with the things of this world, how created, how acting or acted upon. Is not this the sort of enquiry in which his life is spent?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: He is labouring, not after eternal being, but about things which are becoming, or which will or have become.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And can we say that any of these things which neither are nor have been nor will be unchangeable, when judged by the strict rule of truth ever become certain?

PROTARCHUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: How can anything fixed be concerned with that which has no fixedness?

PROTARCHUS: How indeed?

SOCRATES: Then mind and science when employed about such changing things do not attain the highest truth?

PROTARCHUS: I should imagine not.

SOCRATES: And now let us bid farewell, a long farewell, to you or me or Philebus or Gorgias, and urge on behalf of the argument a single point.

PROTARCHUS: What point?